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And the whole time, Mr. Graves continued to croon at us. "Now, I know all about what to do with a gunshot. All we need is some light on the subject. First thing, after you stop the blood coming out, is you take a magnet, and you hold it over the wound, and it draws out the shot. Why, my brother had such a strong magnet when we were boys that once he shot himself in the foot by mistake and that shot just popped out of there, flew to the magnet, though he held it a couple of inches from the wound. It didn’t hurt him any, so we tried a few things out, like how far from the wound could you hold it so it would pop the shot out, and would the magnet stick to his foot through the skin and flesh and bone, from the other side, you see, if the shot was in there? Well, he said it did, but I myself didn’t see that, but I thought if he had left the shot in there and tried that magnet from the other side before he took any out, it might have, but we didn’t think of that first thing. I always wished we had."

Wasn’t shot made of lead? But his talk was like a lullaby, or a work song, and I focused on it to ease my passage to Lawrence.

"I knew another man who got shot, some years ago, and if you’ll pardon my language, ma’am, he said that the thing to do was to make water on the wound, to clean it out without touching it, and so me and some other men, two of them, we stood there and made water on the wound—it was in his hip—and then he left it open to the air. And after four hours, he had us make water on it again, and so on, for two days. Well, I mean to tell you, this was in Arkansas, and you can never tell why they do some things in Arkansas, and no doctor would approve of such a procedure, I am sure, but after two days, the man got up and walked, naked from the hip down on one side, of course, walked right into town like that, easy as you please, but he did get over that wound in no time at all. Said the Indians told him about that. But that’s what everyone says. If the Indians always said what they are supposed to have said, then they would be talking all the time, but as you know, Indians are by and large a taciturn folk...."

And then we were in Lawrence, and then we were at Louisa’s, and then it was dawn, and then Thomas was back in our old bedstead and me next to him, holding his hand, and somehow I dozed off while Louisa was tending to the wounds.

A doctor Charles knew came. I woke up to find him bending over me, and then I sat up and realized that he was bending over Thomas. He glanced toward me and said, "Hello, my dear," and I eased as quickly as I could out of bed and straightened my clothes. I looked at his face before I looked at Thomas, and his face was grave. Then I dared to look at Thomas. The doctor had bared his wounds and was probing the one in his shoulder with his penknife. Thomas’s skin was impossibly white and his face nearly blue. He winced one time, but other than that, he was unresponsive. I put my hands in front of my face, and Louisa put her arm around me and walked me over to one of her chairs and sat me down. She said, "I hope you are prepared for the worst, my dear."

I nodded to say that I was, and perhaps I was: he had already been alive twelve hours or so longer than I had expected him to be; but perhaps I wasn’t, because at the same time that I sat there among the sober faces and the low tones of voice and the shaking heads, I also did not trust for one moment that these were actual scenes. I knew better: this would fade away, and something more familiar would come in its place. The doctor said, "Well, he’s full of lead, that’s for sure," and I thought, Then they won’t be able to get anything out with a magnet, will they? I said, "Has he spoken at all?"

"He asked after you right at first, but he hasn’t spoken since."

"That isn’t good, is it, Louisa?"

She shook her head, then said, "Lidie, dear, the fever’s set in."

I nodded, to show that I understood what that meant, but I didn’t, really. I didn’t know why the fever had set in.

"I can pick at it," said the doctor,