“What’s a torpedoed liver?”
He tried to explain. In the light of a maturer understanding, I assume he meant a torpid liver. But I was little wiser than he that morning, so one liver was as good as another.
“Year, but they ain’t got so many as me—Ma and Pa leaves. Ma says all us Forges has got too much iron in our blood and it makes us rust all over, outside.”
“Iron in yer blood!” I looked at the Forge boy incredulously. Was he spoofing me?
“Howja know?” I demanded. “Can yer hear it clank together?”
I had a mental suggestion of sundry billets and bars of cold steel, wagon springs, old horseshoes, machine castings circulating through the new boy’s system and wondered how he managed it.
“Naw,” he went on. “’Tain’t that kind of iron. It’s all melted or ground up to powder or sumpin’. I ain’t never heard it make no noise, anyway.”
“Maybe we ain’t got no floatin’ iron in our family,” I defended, “but my Aunt Lucy’s got sumpin’ just as good and horrible. She’s got floatin’ ribs, three of ’em. Betcha you ain’t got nobody in your old family with floatin’ ribs.”
It was now the small Forge boy’s turn to show incredulity. And momentarily I exulted.
“But ribs don’t float,” he contradicted. “They’re hitched to yer backbone and run around yer stomach like hoops. I seen a pitcher of a man with his skin off, once. If they was loose and floated, you’d be all flat and hollow and sort of pushed in across your chest.”