George

“Towards closing time, he unbuttoned his cheap jacket and hoisted up his shirt. The scar was there, pale white and smooth against yellow, wrinkled skin. “And there is the man who was with me,” he said, as someone handed him another large whiskey, “Master MacMahon.” He lifted his glass to me with a shaking hand. I tried to remember the boy of that snowy March morning, wild, tearful eyes, a sob, hands pressed to a dark, spreading stain. I remembered him vividly, as I had held him against the huckster’s door, pale face and red, wet lips. But he was not the boaster who stood before me, whiskey wet upon his chin’s stubble. Only the scar joined them, surgical, unnaturally smooth, time’s umbilicus.”
― Thomas Flanagan, The Tenants of Time