Body and Bread by Nan Cuba Page B

with bleached human bones. My father picked out a fibula, a tibia, a talus, then one of the feet, its sections held together with wires. Pointing, working the joints, he helped Hugh memorize the names, explained the procedures for making and wearing a prosthetic foot. Hugh assumed I’d already been given the lesson, and my father seemed to forget I was there. Hugh asked questions (“Does it hurt when you walk?” “Can you swim in it?”), and my father answered, using medical terms (“mechanical device,” “supplement the function,” “ extensor digitorum longus ”).
    “Are these real?” Hugh asked. “Did you know…him?” He tried to walk the foot across the desk, anklebones limp at the joint, toes skidding.
    My father folded a section of newspaper, stuffed it in a wastebasket. “He wasn’t anybody. Granddaddy calls him Beaner.”
    I laughed, thinking the name sounded silly. Now, knowing how close my father was to Otis and Ruby, I wonder how he reconciled his father’s racism. Years later, he’d try to explain. “It was common in that generation.”
    “Cause he’s like a bunch of beans?” Hugh asked. He turned the foot over, its segmented parts flopping.
    “No, it’s just his name.”
    “Crazy,” Hugh said, balancing the sole on his hand, toes like claws, dangling. Then, appalled: “Granddaddy knew him?”
    My father slumped in his chair, his elbows on his thighs. He wiped one side of his high-boned face, tugged his nose. “No, of course not. I didn’t say that.”
    “But where’d the name come from? You said—”
    “Granddaddy told me the story.”
    “Tell us ,” Hugh said, peeking over a scapula, “please.”
    My father ruffled a book’s pages. “I don’t think so,” he said, looking at his watch, then surprising me with a wink. “I’m awful late. Couldn’t possibly.”
    “Awww, Daddy, please?” Hugh’s forehead wrinkled; his mouth fell open.
    “Are you big enough?” My father caught Hugh’s arm, pulled him like a crane hook—Hugh’s feet barely kept up with his body. “This is serious, now.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Yes what?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    My father glanced at the carpet. “The whole thing started when a farmer and his family were killed, and the sheriff arrested a man who had swum across the border from Juárez. He was wearing the farmer’s pants, and the farmer’s wedding ring was in the pocket.” Folding his arms, he seemed to go into a trance.
    Hugh blinked, then stared, receptive as Sam must’ve been at the same age.
    “Know what?” My father slapped his thighs then leaned on his hands, serious. “I really don’t like this story much.” He studied his watch, sucked his teeth. “I really do have to go. Granddaddy’s waiting. We’ll have to finish our talk later.”
    “But you can’t quit now,” Hugh pleaded, not realizing that our father wasn’t teasing anymore. He wrapped one arm around Dad’s neck. “You already started.”
    “Hugh,” my father said, exasperated. He rolled his chair toward the windows, stared at a pecan tree in the yard. “Those days, you see,” his words uttered by rote, as if counted off a list, as if dredged then reported, “Nugent was a wild place with things happening we’d never stand for today.” He faced Hugh again. “And, with everybody so mad at the man for killing their friend, a big crowd got together and, oh, they hanged him. And since nobody knew who the guy was, Granddaddy thought, well…he brought the body home.” He stood, then swatted nervously at a grease stain. “Anyway, that’s Beaner.”
    “Uh, Dad?” I interrupted, unable to stop myself. “You mean it was, ah, a lynching?” I couldn’t think about my grandfather and the dead body yet.
    “Times were different then, Sarah.”
    “But what happened to the skin and hair and all?” Hugh asked, his face puckered as the one he imagined.
    “I know—” my father started.
    “No, excuse me,” I said, nervous but determined. “Could you tell us