Never
previously a matter of deliberation, Brother Skunk’s current careful selection
from his limited wardrobe, for the first time forsaking all those as did not
bear the Levi Strauss and Co. branding, suggested some dissonance in the
familiar settled cadence of his hospital visits, preoccupied him even to the
extent of his leaving the house empty-handed, walking until sudden recall
prompted his hurried reclum home to retrieve the visit’s forgotten impetus.
He
finally arrived at the ward only minutes before visitors’ curfew, barely time
enough to return the comatose girl her squat confidant whose own recently
repaired body sought to convalesce next to her familiar flesh, but this flesh
made alien by its brutal marking.
