Eight

My Uncle Joseph only has eight fingers.

Well, to be exact, he has six fingers, and two thumbs.  One hand with all its appendages whole and functional, the other one, damaged – the one he refers to as his talon.

Uncle Joseph is endlessly patient. He’s quite happy to sit with me and tell me all about those missing digits. “The first one, you see, now that was self-defence. You can’t really blame me for that one. That little pinky was the nicest finger, at least to begin with. Never gave me any trouble, sweet little dumpling. But then, one day, it just started getting a mind of its own. Now, it just started with a faint little tingle. Barely noticeable. But after a while that tingle became a twitch. And it would just start going off at unexpected times. Entirely inconsiderate, if you want the truth. I’d just be reading or writing or getting dressed or eating my dinner, and it would start waggling, all of its own accord.

“Oh, and it would start having opinions as well. I’d be at the supermarket reaching for the chocolate ice-cream, and suddenly that little finger would be tugging me towards the salted caramel. Now, I ask you: whose idea was it to make salt-flavoured ice-cream? Huh? I mean what goes through a man’s head when he thinks oh, that’s a good idea, salty ice-cream. Really?”

I might interrupt for just long enough to say that I kinda like the salted caramel ice-cream, that I had some at Stevie Johnson’s birthday party last month and it was kind of all right.

“Ah. Well, you young folks. How old did you say you were now?”

“Eight.”

“Eight? Oh, grief. These socks are older than eight. I think I have a nose hair… Let me just see if I can find the right one…”

Uncle Joseph. He can always make me laugh. Like nobody else can. He’s not just an uncle though, or so my mother says. He’s not even a great uncle, he’s a great, great uncle. And I don’t doubt it. You can see it all over his face, all the twists and turns of being old. And he does seem old. So much older than any of the other uncles. Older than Grandad. I feel like he’s the oldest man I’ve ever met.

And he says, “So, anyway. That finger. That’s right. It was making a nuisance of itself. Thinking it could decide what ice-cream I’m allowed to buy. What next? Was it going to tell me how to dress? Was it going to start getting into my underwear? I wasn’t having that. That’s why I taped it to the finger next to it. One of my good, well-behaved fingers. I figured that’d teach it some manners. The other finger would be a good influence on the little trouble-maker.

“And I tell you. It felt like it was working. Until I started hearing this little voice. Now I couldn’t work out what it was saying, it was too quiet - and all wispy - for that. But it plagued me. Disturbing me at night. A half-heard sound that you just can’t brush to the side. Driving me nearly batty it was, Miss Ursula. Round the bend, you know. Couldn’t work out what it was, or why it was always so much worse when I was trying to sleep at night.

“But then it occurred to me. You see, when I sleep, where do I put my hand? Why, it’s right next to my head, just tucked under the corner of my pillow. Sneaky little blighter, whispering in my ear. I untaped it, and what do you know? That little finger had a face on it. Now it wasn’t a really clear face and it didn’t have many features, it wasn’t much to look at, except for the fact that it was a face on my fingertip. A crude mouth, and little sunken eyes, and a sort of proddy bit that was meant to be the nose. Just that.

“But it grew. As the days went by it got more and more distinctive, it got dark, knobbly, all scaly, and the face started taking on more shape, it had a pudgy little clefted chin, and flared cheekbones, that mouth was growing it some lips. Bit of stubble, y’know, around the chin – because, you know, I wasn’t going to shave the darn thing, now was I? And the eyes: you could see the white bits, you could see they were blue, had little lashes, and little eyebrows. But then, you see, then it started getting sinister. The eyes darkened, and the face got sharper, meaner, there were little tusks growing at the edges of the mouth, little stubs that were threatening to turn themselves into horns. That mouth had little fangs! I swear it on my last five goldfish. And it started to say the most horrible things, trying to convince me that I should do the most wicked, ugly stuff. It’d see Mrs Hubbs walking down the road and it’d be telling me I should trip her up and push her in front of a car. Now really, that had to stop. That’s why I picked up the meat cleave with my other hand and lopped the little monster off.

“Sure. It seems kinda rough. It needed the rest of my hand to survive, and I don’t think it liked the rubbish bin one bit. But like I said, it was self-defence, wasn’t it? That thing was only going to do me harm, or Mrs Hubbs, or who knows who?”

“Did it hurt though?”

“Oh, sure. It hurt. Not right away. It takes a couple of seconds for your brain to figure out that you’ve hurt yourself, and then for all those nerve endings to tell it hey, I didn’t like that so much. After that, it hurt though.”

“Uncle Joseph, you’re silly. I don’t believe anything you say.”

He reaches to pick some lint off my shoulder. “Oh, now, sure you do. I’m as honest as the day is long. That’s my Winter Solstice joke, you know.”

It’s always us. Me and Uncle Joseph. I guess because I’m the sick one, and because he’s just so old. We’re side-lined a bit. The rest of the family can move about freely, jump up and down, get in and out of chairs. Since we can’t, we keep to the corners. Me and him. Me with my gimpy legs all locked up in braces. Him with his legs that move like a tortoise, with a stick to guide them. I have two sticks. “No fair,” he says, “Why do I only get one?”

“I hate them.”

“Don’t, don’t, you’ll hurt their feelings.”

And he tells me about his other finger. “Oh, that one, that was carelessness really. I don’t suppose I can blame the finger for that one. It was just a bit of bad luck really that I found that interdimensional portal in my bedroom window. Just looked like a little wee glitch in the window at first, a little smudge in the glass. But then I’d start to see colours in it, and I’d start to see it moving. When I put my eye up to it, well, there it was: that whole other universe. All these white and blue stars, and these fuzzy clouds. And you could see ‘em sometimes, the space ships, whizzing and to and fro between them. Fascinating stuff.

“But that’s when I did something mighty silly, my girl. I put my finger up against the portal, and just tried to see if I could poke it a little way in. You’d think I’d never watched a sci-fi programme, right? Well, it did what portals do. It got one little hook into one little bit of flesh, and it started trying to pull the whole thing through. I could feel it tugging at every bit of me all at once. Pulling hard. And it was winning, I tell you. The portal was getting bigger. And my finger was getting further and further in. It was pulling at my other finger next to it, and the naughty stump on the other side. I really had no choice except to grab that trusty old meat cleaver once again.”

Uncle Joseph’s hands. I think their beautiful. I know most people would look at them and see this old cripple. They’d see something withered and spent, and all-but-gone. They might kinda turn away from it. But I think they’re beautiful, missing bits and all. There’s so many stories in the creases and stains, in the calluses and crooked nails. I lay my hand overtop of one, and I realise how big they are. Or is it just that my hands are so small? That they have such a long way to go to catch up to Uncle Joseph’s hands.

Uncle Joseph tells me, “And then there’s my extra little toe.” He always wears shoes and socks, or slippers, so I never get to see the extra toe. And he tells me, “Well, I couldn’t show it to you anyway, on account of how it’s so shy. It’d run away if it saw you. Shrink right back up into my foot, it would.”

Uncle Joseph. I don’t know if half of what he tells me is true.

I hope most of it is.

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work