Autonomic Nerves

Jaeger 41 Lowell Jaeger Autonomic Nerves I escaped the pithing of leopard frogs with a quick trip to the restroom, leaving my lab partner responsible for following directions I could not. Orders were to string the amphibians from a ringstand of higher education, peel those camouflaged thighs, wire the pink quadriceps to a charge and measure the enthusiasm of their flushed involuntary response. In the restroom I studied the tiles, pink, gray and white, and I almost cracked the code. Almost my ears went Leopard skin in the mirror, reflecting on beads of cold water splashed on my face. If I quit school or got kicked out, I'd be live bait for some landmine within a year. Float through jungles half-eaten by mosquitos or hooked with bamboo shoots under my nails, testicles hot-wired by one of those innocent Viet-Cong kids I'd seen on TV. Then too on this side of the globe I was strung on alternating currents of a woman I wanted to love and wanted to scramble her frontal lobes. Two a.m. I jumped to her electric touch as she sprang from sleep beside me for her ex-husband ringing on the phone, the loser who won his freedom by beating her senseless twice. Never trust a man, she confided and I made compulsive investigations 42 the minnesota review through her abandoned purse, patrolled shopping lists, the daily mail for an unfriendly invasion from someone more blond, more fun-loving than I could pretend. The miracles of modern science were ticking like a stopwatch upon my return, timing the unintentional outcomes all around. I didn't give a damn about the frogs. When I was a kid I'd pierce them with treble hooks and feed them to the pike in the slough just outside of town, slap their bellies on blue reflected sunshine as I cast them forty yards from shore. Always they'd be dumbfounded till the water calmed and they'd kick as I expected, every contraction hailing the dark, sharp eyes of annihilation through the best years of my life. Three, four times my lab partner pulled the switch and I witnessed how the dead frog twitched in compliance with natural law. So what? I had bones thick as baseball bats and hamstrings woven like mesh cable steel. I had muscles from deep knee-bends I hadn't used in years. Cast into the world terrified, stunned on the impact of war, wounded in love and suddenly so damn hard to bust loose from that classroom I jerked on my coat and sprang for the door. On the cold street under the eyes of God I swore I'd never go back again. I couldn't avoid no matter how faint the kick left in me, one last long swim for shore. It was the least I could do. ...