Opinion & Comment

Uncle's Thumbs . . .

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK - Steve Oden

William Tell, the medieval archer who shot an apple off his son’s head in a feat of marksmanship seldom equaled, would be mortified by my southern Appalachian uncles who, together, would be hard pressed to prove they have one set of functioning opposable thumbs between the two of them.

The story, absolutely true and documented by hospital admission records, starts innocently enough with my cousin, a Texas university professor, deciding to present his father, my uncle, with a special birthday present: a high-priced crossbow.

Several Appalachian states have recently legalized crossbow hunting for deer. My uncle happens to live in one of the crossbow-OK jurisdictions, and he was delighted to receive a new crossbow, a model that, fully tricked out for hunting, cost around $1,000.

He took the new crossbow into the field with pride on the first morning of archery deer season. He climbed into the tree stand, pulled up his new weapon, and settled down to await the break of day.

At 7:43 a.m., precisely, he shot off the thumb of his left hand by extending the digit above the rail of the crossbow. Why he did this after hours of practice with the crossbow, even he cannot fathom. The deer at which he shot escaped, unscathed. My uncle’s thumb, severed above the first joint, fell to the floor of the shooting platform.

Being a true Son of Appalachia — tempered by economic hardships at home and further hardened by combat in the Korean War, he wrapped a handkerchief around the wound, picked up the thumb, and climbed down from the tree. He drove himself to the hospital, was admitted, and fortunately had the thumb re-attached by a team of expert orthopedic surgeons.

He swore to never again cock and shoot a crossbow, bequeathing the offending instrument of injury to one of his brothers, a retired state prison guard who pooh-poohed the thumb detachment as a freak accident, caused mainly by his sibling’s ineptitude.

He accepted the crossbow and took it hunting without even shooting. This uncle of mine is an expert deer hunter, who owns a wall adorned with trophy buck mounts. He, therefore, did not worry about the crossbow’s brief, bloody history when he drew a bead on a whitetail deer that slipped close to his tree stand.

. . . And shot off the tip of his left thumb!

A career as a prison guard imbued my uncle with stoicism and intestinal fortitude. After a short hospital stay for re-attachment of the thumb tip, he again found himself in the tree stand, crossbow-equipped. His left thumb, wrapped in a thick roll of gauze, shined like a badge of honor as he aimed – again -- and squeezed the crossbow’s trigger . . .

. . . And again extended the digit above the arrow rail and cut it off, below the joint this time!

Uncle dutifully retrieved the severed digit, this time easier to find because at least half of the thumb tip was clad in white gauze. The astounded surgeons re-connected bone, tendon, and muscle. Uncle was released from the hospital with the admonition to never-ever again handle a cross bow.

Of course, he could not wait to go hunting. For the third time, he climbed the tree and ensconced himself in the stand . . . with the demon crossbow cradled in his arms. After all, what were the odds that he would extend the mutilated digit above the rail and repeat the past mishaps?

A three-year-old 10-point buck chased a doe into the food plot, 15 yards from my uncle’s stand. He took aim, checked the elevation of his bandage-clad thumb, and fired.

The crossbow bolt ricocheted off a locust tree branch and missed the buck by 20 feet, but it drew blood. Uncle’s thumb was gone for good.

“You danged idgit!” commented his brother, the original crossbow owner, when physicians conceded there was not enough thumb remaining to be reconstructed.

On the spot, in the hospital recovery room, he re-possessed the crossbow and pledged to never again touch the instrument of torture.

What, then, happened to the crossbow that deprived two veteran Appalachian hunters of their digits?

It resides today in a nephew’s gun cabinet. He tries to ignore its ominous presence but is afraid with the approach of a new hunting season that the “Thumb-i-nator” will exert an inexorable lure. Will he be tempted?

If the editors of this column at their various newspapers see copy filed next October with typographical errors like this, “&sh 7#26gFamd,” they will know. Oh, yes, they will know that the Thumb-i-nator has cursed another member of this family. Familiar with certain of these editors as I am, readers may be confident that the development will be reported in an aside known infamously as the “Editor’s Note.”

I just hope that I detect no glee in their revelation of my maiming.