Educated

know Dad was standing next to the car, his body pressed against the frame,
when the tank exploded.
He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, leather gloves and a welding shield.
His face and fingers took the brunt of the blast. The heat from the explosion
melted through the shield as if it were a plastic spoon. The lower half of his
face liquefied: the fire consumed plastic, then skin, then muscle. The same
process was repeated with his fingers—the leather gloves were no match for
the inferno that passed over and through them—then tongues of flame licked
across his shoulders and chest. When he crawled away from the flaming
vehicle, I imagine he looked more like a corpse than a living man.
It is unfathomable to me that he was able to move, let alone drag himself a
quarter mile through fields and over ditches. If ever a man needed angels, it
was that man. But against all reason he did it, and—as his father had years
before—huddled outside his wife’s door, unable to knock.
My cousin Kylie was working for my mother that day, filling vials of
essential oil. A few other women worked nearby, weighing dried leaves or
straining tinctures. Kylie heard a soft tap on the back door, as if someone was
bumping it with their elbow. She opened it but has no memory of what was
on the other side. “I’ve blocked it out,” she would later tell me. “I can’t
remember what I saw. I only remember what I thought, which was, He has no
skin.”
My father was carried to the couch. Rescue Remedy—the homeopathic for
shock—was poured into the lipless cavity that had been his mouth. They gave
him lobelia and skullcap for the pain, the same mixture Mother had given
Luke years before. Dad choked on the medicine. He couldn’t swallow. He’d
inhaled the fiery blast, and his insides were charred.
Mother tried to take him to the hospital, but between rasping breaths he
whispered that he’d rather die than see a doctor. The authority of the man was
such that she gave way.
The dead skin was gently cut away and he was slathered in salve—the
same salve Mother had used on Luke’s leg years before—from his waist to
the tip of his head, then bandaged. Mother gave him ice cubes to suck on,
hoping to hydrate him, but the inside of his mouth and throat were so badly
burned, they absorbed no liquid, and without lips or muscles he couldn’t hold
the ice in his mouth. It would slide down his throat and choke him.
They nearly lost him many times that first night. His breathing would slow,
then stop, and my mother—and the heavenly host of women who worked for