“I’m going up to Lou’s a minute to get some cigarettes,” Daddy had said. “You look after your brother till I get back.” Mama had gone with Aunt Margaret to buy canning jars in Seneca, leaving Ben and me with Daddy, telling him to watch us and the pot of beans she’d left simmering on the stove. But Daddy needed his cigarettes, so he left us there in the front room, Ben on the floor playing with a toy train and me in a chair doing math homework. After a few minutes Ben said, “I’m hungry,” and got up while I added a last column of figures and wrote down the answer. Only a few seconds passed before I followed him into the kitchen, but Ben’s hand was already on the handle, his arm trembling as he pulled the two-gallon pot of beans off the eye, my arm reaching out for the handle but too late as scalding water and beans poured onto Ben’s face and my left arm and leg. For a few moments I didn’t know the water had scalded me as well, because it was like I’d cast every sense and emotion out of myself and across the two-foot space between Ben and me, done this because sight alone wasn’t enough to comprehend what had happened to my brother. How could it be otherwise when only the eyes Ben had closed at the last instant were saved.