pEROXIDE and cLOVE oIL7*

The shamble leg man was known to drink thermoses of Whisky and dry Vermouth, cupfuls of broth sluiced with Listerine and Burgees’ medicinal tonic. He gargled with peroxide and clove oil, a recipe handed down from his grandmother, a seamstress with gray hair and a lazy eye that twitched like a metronome. She boiled burlap sacs in yeast and vinegar, and then stitched the sacs together with fishing line and a bone needle she kept in a mahogany box on her dresser. She called them chattel dresses, not burlap taffetas or sac cloth gussy ups. His mother, the man with the shamble leg’s mother, wore sac-cloth and burlap, scullery dresses roily with yeast and vinegar, chattel skirts with uneven hems and stitching. She smoked non-filtered cigarettes, Export A’s and Player’s, and drank Burgee’s medicinal tonic to stave off the chills and quell her jimmy-legs. She ate watercress sandwiches smothered in mayonnaise, and Rye Melbas that pricked her gums, beans with gravy and celery root, and anything boiled in a pot, hocks and shoulder, butt and cow’s tripe salted with brine. She loathed her mother, and took every opportunity to hide her bone needle, the one she kept in a mahogany box on the dresser. She took thalidomide for the queasiness in her stomach, and spat out her son, the shamble leg man, like a rotten oyster.