When the sheriff didn’t show—but who would have called him?—Dan headed down the oak’s slope with his bundle of sinful rags, past that Blasted Contraption to the corral fence, climbed it, his naked legs in boots, jumped it, left the corral gate hanging open, a beeline to the house, through the mudroom and parlor, some tornado had hit, no time to study it, beelined to Grannie’s powder room. Soap sat in a dish shaped like a swan, stopped the drain, ran warm water, hot, filled the sink to the rim, submerged his swollen face causing overflow, pink, a goodly deluge to the innocent mat. He blinked out water. Stared. One eye was swollen shut, a slit. He lathered soap. He held his right lid open with glistening shaking fingers, tips and knuckles doing all the work. His body parts fought each other, a war over open or shut, the eye. Fingers prevailed in the end. He tipped his head back, dripped soap in the slit, howled, kicked the wall above the baseboard heater. Heater rattled cacophonous, an old model. He pounded the wall around the mirror with both fists. The mirror fell across the sink, did not break yet, but water splashed the poor mat again. It could take no more, this mat. He repeated with the slit, fingers and soap, added clean water from the tap, bent over, repeated, the sink overflowing until the slit was clean as the day it was born. Hydrogen peroxide, a nearly full brown bottle, was behind the door where the mirror had been. He trickled it onto the slit, wept it out, kicked the toilet off its bolts and its lid slipped off and cracked in two. The mirror shattered on the mat this time. He found the sewing kit in the left bottom drawer and threaded the largest needle, a difficult and slow procedure. His hands. He knelt on the mat to look down into a shard, the best angle. His knees turned warm in an instant on the mat and glass. He tacked the lid closed over the slit with the first stitch. Blue thread. The needle entered his upper lid, a dive. It quivered silver and red as it punctured into the blue-black folds. Horrible. It felt good to do this. Correct to sew it. He was a baby once, like everyone, perfect, no pain at all until that birth tunnel crushed him, yes, expanding next, as planned, grew and became a man and then-now was crushed again. That’s the promise of birth, dark then light. No need to howl, shush my baby. Men have lived without eyes, pirates and soldiers. Thread was needed, a little soap, on battlefields, in ditches, on the high seas, among the stars. Scars bridge over gashes and slits and pits of all kinds.

No one witnessed “The Sewing of the Eye.” So was it true?