Tomato Pulp Makes the Wound Look Worse

I never owned a bow and arrow as a kid but learned archery from my friend, Stanley Llewellyn. Using mud, we painted a target on an old tree in Llewellyn’s backyard. We were eleven and it was too easy, so we tried shooting into a gap – no wider than my thumb – in a stone wall taller than we were. When I finally got one through, it raced across the neighbor’s garden, pierced a ripe tomato and embedded in the left knee of seventy-three-year-old Reggie Smothers, who was pruning the hedge. Tomato pulp made the wound look worse. Although true, my defense – that I wasn’t aiming at anything – failed to absolve me. And poor old Smothers limped for the rest of his life.

End