Wanted

Chapter 51

When McCarthy came back into the kitchen, John was standing in front of his wife who had just finished dressing up his wounds. His hair was cut short, neat and tidy, but altogether he made a scrawny looking appearance with his skinny chest that bore several bruises as well as the scars.

Mrs McCarthy moved herself to the side somewhat, as if to present John to her husband who looked down at the boy with serious eyes, nodding in approval.

It had been a bit of a struggle earlier to get him to cooperate. The boy didn't want them to cut his hair even shorter. McCarthy wasn't sure if it was his threat to use force or his wife's promise that he would be allowed to let his hair grow out again that did the trick. It was obvious from the way Harris had butchered the lad's hair, that the boy was willing to put up a fight, despite his sores and broken bone, so McCarthy reckoned Clarissa must have had the winning argument.

McCarthy had brought in a wooden trunk that he plunked onto one of the benches at the kitchen table and then addressed his wife.

"What are they like? Does he need to see a doctor?"

Mrs McCarthy shook her head and then proceeded to put the things, that she had used to dress the wounds on John's chest with, into a little wooden box that was lying on the table beside her.

"I don't think so, Matthew," she replied softly, "some of them are still a little weepy and one is a little redder and angrier looking than the others, but by and large I think they are going in the right direction. They'd been well taken care of. Whoever looked after him knew what they were doing."

She got up and carried the little box into the larder at the other side of the kitchen.

"I've put a bit of your whiskey on them," she called from inside.

John looked up at McCarthy to see if using the whiskey on him was a problem, but McCarthy did not seem to mind. He picked up John's shirt from the back of the chair, opened it up and held it out in front of him indicating to John that he wanted him to slip into it and John obeyed.

"He didn't even flinch. He's a right little soldier," Mrs McCarthy announced happily to her husband as she came back out of the little room carrying a smoked ham.

"I think I mention the injuries to Dr Foster tomorrow after church, what do you think," McCarthy asked his wife who now turned her attention to cutting some bread and laying the table for lunch.

Despite McCarthy carefully helping John into his shirt and even closing the buttons for him when he saw him struggling, John felt they were talking about him as if he wasn't even in the room and he didn't like it one bit.

"Can you make him a sling as well. It can't be comfortable having to hold your arm in that position all the time but apart from that it's too easy to forget it's there. I don't want the lads accidentally hurting him," McCarthy called to his wife and then added thoughtfully, while touching his own collar bone as he spoke, "I wonder if that bump is there to stay, and if he is more likely to get a break there again."

John could have told them that Enkoodabooaoo had said that the bump was going to be there forever but that his muscles would grow around the break, so that when he was a grown man no one could see it, and only he would know that it was there. He never said anything about it being weaker, but John would have liked the answer to that himself.

"Right, this is yours," McCarthy told John as he opened the chest beside the table. "You keep your things in there. I don't want any of your stuff lying about here in the kitchen. Understood?" McCarthy lectured.

John nodded.

"I didn't quite hear you, what's that?" McCarthy asked.

"Yes sir," John went.