Nine Lives?

Today, as a bunch of us were waiting for the end of shift whistle to leave the boat, one of the firewatches was talking to a guy in my department about back troubles. He was a black man, I’d guess in his late 40s, not a contractor, but a laborer who works for our company. He said he’d had to have a back operation for a crushed disc. This had been the second back operation he’d had. In fact, he said, he’d had just about every operation there was. An exaggeration, no doubt, but he said he’d had brain surgery for an anurism, and claimed to have had his "whole belly" opened up, drawing a line with his finger almost from his groin to his rib cage. I didn’t catch what all that had been for, but I think a hernia may have been part of it, but obviously something more serious as well. Then he went on to say that in addition to the surgeries, he’d been shot twice and had his throat cut twice. I expressed surprise at this, and he said his own brother had cut his throat one time. "Wow," I said, "You must have really pissed him off for him to want to cut your throat." He said it was because he tried to throw his brother out of his house. The brother was a "bad drunk," who apparently was freeloading. He also said his brother had served nine years in prison for shooting somebody in the face. The man said his survival through all of this was due to the intervention of God. "I’m blessed," he said. As I left, some of his friends were urging him to "give testimony."