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Eft
Onwoc
By Emmet Quinn
Peter
folds closed the book. It’s just staple bound, heavy paper, wide
pages. This always makes his books seem informal. He remembers the days
when he could own cloth bound volumes, sturdy, stately—the kind that
induce vague reverence when seen on a shelf. Knopf was his favorite publisher,
their hard back Everyman’s Library editions, even if cloth bound
$22/book white classics could hardly be every man’s library. Of course
Vintage was his choice for paper back. The Vintage Book of Contemporary
World Poetry—he still has it. Poetry is easier to read when half
blind. Squinting through a lens for a page of broken lines that contain
more than most books, he can do that. Cost-Benefit. He reads one poem,
chews it over and over for days, unfolding meaning upon meaning upon meaning.
Every part of Peter’s body is at war with itself but not only the
ways one expects. His hair is brown that could have once been blonde or
red, half fighting to turn back, half fighting to go black. He jokes with
his friends that it’s this battle that curls his hair when in truth,
it’s the flood of new hormones. His eyes are a mash of every color
in his family—his father’s green, his mother’s brown, even
some of his grandfather’s blue. He used to study his eyes in the
mirror, learned the precise angle of light that makes the gold rings flash.
His best friend, the one he loved, used to study them, too. She had found
more colors than earthy gold. She had broken off her study one day, and
said, "There’s red in your eyes. That’s frightening."
Sometimes he wants to go back to her, beg her to take up her study one
last time to see if there is any hint of that dead, blind blue.
He peers across his desk at the clock with the two-inch high letters.
It is 9:03. Visiting hours are supposed to end at 10, but he knows they
will let him in whenever he comes. He knows his grandfather no longer
really sleeps. Still, he likes to make his visits seem legal.
His mother hardly speaks to him any more, doesn’t call him by his
rightful name, but finally has stopped berating him for never going to
visit his grandfather. Every time he went to visit his grandfather with
them, his mother, father, and younger brothers, he was repulsed by the
way they called him to the present, jackhammering his fragile body to
his death bed as they bludgeoned him with new stories, current events,
the latest in the family chronicles. Peter thinks this is no way to show
love and respect. He meets his grandfather on his grandfather’s terms—as
a ghost or the 20-year-old shadow of an eighty-year-old man.
Peter stands up from his desk and goes to the bookshelf. He has forgotten
where they left off in their reading. He runs his fingers over the top
of the over thick books until he feels the post-it note left hanging.
Mark chapter 4, he reads. When he is cold and detached reading his psychology
texts, Peter considers experimenting, reading the books all out of order.
Would his grandfather notice? What would the effects on the old man be?
But it’s only when he’s studying that he thinks like this.
He takes Mark then another book, Beowulf. He’s not sure if they will
get to one or either, but he thinks that his Grandpa has read this before.
Peter only reads him books he has read before and tells no new stories.
It’s Grandpa who tells the stories, Grandpa who has skin wiser than
Braille. Peter carries his stories in the over wide staple bound volumes,
traces out the text that Grandpa has read a dozen times before, and waits
to hear what he will learn. It’s Peter who will become a part of
his grandfather’s stories, a character or three, will be half told
stories of eighty years ago—half told because his grandfather believes
that Peter already knows these stories having been there fifty, eighty
years ago.
It’s already dark when Peter leaves the house. He loses track of
time so quickly these days. Maybe he is becoming like his grandfather,
losing half his sight, losing track of the hours. He shakes his head.
Sight and time, for him are not related.
Peter likes the light on the street, the soft knowing yellows, so much
more gentle than the industrial light of libraries. He’s glad he
doesn’t have to open his eyes to read any more. He starts out walking
quickly, the clip-clip of his steps not echoing on the pavement. There’s
too much growing in August for that. Growing things absorb sound the way
they absorb light. He is certain of this. He is certain that some day
it will be proven that plants feed on sound as much as light. Maybe it
has all ready been proven—scientific endeavors inspired by wives’
tales. There’s a little bit of wind tonight, the kind Peter thinks
of as a kissing wind, the breeze that comes after a too hot day and taking
a little of the edge. It’s not because he thinks this is a wind to
kiss to that Peter thinks this. It’s that it’s the wind that
is kissing passers-by.
It’s a short walk to Cadbury, just two blocks down then a right and
eight more blocks. Peter knows there must be some more of a meaning for
the name "Cadbury," but all it conjures for him is bad chocolate
and bunnies that cluck. Why name a nursing home after that? There must
be another meaning to the name. Someday Peter will search it out. The
wind blows Peter’s hair a little. It’s only been in the last
three weeks that his hair has been long enough for that. He’s been
keeping it clipped so short, but now, he wants to show off the curl a
little like his deepening voice and the beginnings of his beard. He feels
his face in confirmation.
He nods to the strangers he passes on the street. The strangers are just
foggy shapes approaching, but he nods all the same as much to hide his
loss of sight as out of politeness. He knows he could keep walking forever,
knows that he could just keep walking and never speak to another human
being, not even nod, not even see them, hear their footsteps only as something
to avoid knocking like uneven pavement or a trick stair. He could vanish
from the world at any moment—be banished again and again until he
appears to the seeing as only a hazy shape in the shadows. Peter looks
to the light and turns the corner.
He has the impulse to feel his watch for the time, but his other hand
is full of books. He wonders if he could feel the time pressed up against
his face. He wonders if his cheek is literate. He doesn’t want to
think about his grandfather yet, doesn’t want to think about the
way Grandpa caught him between his knees when he was a little, little
girl, how his grandfather smiled every time he saw him, how he called
Peter Sweet-Pea, how they played the running up and down game. He would
be close to his grandfather, teasing him somehow, and then his grandfather
would shoot out his legs, catch him, and he would run squealing towards
Grandpa’s toes, run squealing only to be caught by Grandpa’s
toes closing together, laughing and giggling. Grandpa’s toes opening
then closing just in time to prevent escape. He wonders at the thought
of feeling safe between another’s legs.
Peter crosses the halfway street. He doesn’t really look both ways
before he crosses any more. He just listens as he approaches, then looks
left for bikers. He wonders who he will be tonight, which brother or son
Grandpa will make him tonight. He makes himself stop.
The home—that’s what his family calls it—is quiet when
he gets there. He feels the look of recognition from the nurse’s
station. There is a feeling to being watched, he knows. His mind spins
a little quicker. It’s Tuesday. It should be Bette, the redhead.
He thinks his grandfather talks about her sometimes, brings her into his
stories. He stops to talk to her. She updates him on his grandfather’s
health. He doesn’t pay attention to this. He doesn’t record
the litany of prescriptions and treatments his mother does. It doesn’t
matter.
Bette asks him about the weather, then what books he has brought tonight.
Peter still has old reactions. He lifts the books at an angle from his
waist and looks down at them as if he can see them, as if they have print
on them, as if he needs a reminder of what they are. "We’re
on chapter four of Mark, and then I brought Beowulf," he says.
"Beowulf," says Bette. "I remember reading that in college."
Peter nods. "I think he read it in school, too."
Bette says she is certain his grandfather will like it.
Peter ducks his head. "I hope so." He says good-bye to her and
starts for his grandfather’s room. Every time he comes here he is
torn between letting in all the smells to know the place and shutting
them out to keep his stomach from turning. He hates the sterile, medical
smells of all hospitals. He could almost tolerate the death and dying
smells so potent here, the smell of moth-balled bodies, if it were not
for the sterile alcohol smell sharp as a syringe on top.
His grandfather’s door is the third on the right. The door is half
ajar. He knocks.
"Eh?" Peter hears his grandfather trying to rouse himself from
the haze. "Eh? Who’s there?"
Peter pushes open the door. "It’s me."
"Jackie? Jack?" his grandfather asks, "Is that you?"
He is Grandpa’s younger brother Jack. They have done this one before.
"How’s my big brother doing?" Peter asks.
His grandfather makes the "aw" noise, the one that encapsulates
being over touched by kindness or valor he did not expect, relief that
those around him can live up to all he expects of them, and a humor that
Peter does not yet understand.
For a moment, Peter wants to stop, smack his grandfather back into the
present. Peter has a nearly insuppressible urge to throw off the garments
of a thousand imagined people his grandfather and everyone else has saddled
onto him and proclaim, I am your grandson, Peter, the one you caught between
your knees. But even at his most lucid moment, even if all the drugs and
their unknown damage could be lifted with the pain, his grandfather would
remember no grandson named Peter. At his grandfather’s most lucid
moment, there would be no Peter—only the sweet-pea-girl who is gone
forever.
His grandfather’s voice comes back in over Peter’s thoughts.
They are back in 1943 when his grandfather was sent home from the war
because of the burns on his hands. Peter knows these stories, how his
grandfather’s hands have looked ancient from age 26 on. Peter has
never known the skin on his grandfather’s hands to look any different
from the skin on the rest of his body, but he thinks there is a metaphor
in ancient hands on such a young man. Tonight, his grandfather does not
tell him so much of the war stories that hardly interest Peter. Instead,
he talks mostly about the nurse, the redhead, Grace. Grace was his grandmother’s
name. He remembers that his grandfather always called her Gracie when
she was alive. Grandpa asks if she was still on duty when Peter came in.
He says, "Yes."
His grandfather laughs then recounts a story about asking for a sponge
bath. Peter laughs. He knows his grandfather asked his grandmother for
a sponge bath when they first met. Peter think about the old pictures
of his grandfather in uniform, how he looked like a Kennedy. Peter listens
in the long pauses between his grandfather’s sentences. He doesn’t
think his grandfather knows about the pauses. They wouldn’t have
been there in 1943.
"Ma came to see me day today," Grandpa says. "Tell her
that I’m going to be absolutely fine. I don’t want her to worry."
"I tell her that everyday," Peter says. "I think she’s
starting to believe me."
"I’m going to get my hands back," he says.
"How could you not?" Peter says and let’s himself laugh
a little, not about the irony of worrying over injuries healed half a
century ago, but slipping into his role, Grandpa’s little brother.
"You’re my big brother, damn luckiest man alive."
His grandfather laughs. "I’m not sure yet," he says. "If
I get that redhead, the one out there. Did you meet her?"
"Sure did."
"If I get that one to give me my sponge bath, then I’ll be.
She’s a whippersnapper, you know. Gotta watch out for those redheads."
They laugh. Then his grandfather’s voice falls off. Peter hears a
shifting, settling sound. His grandfather will drift for awhile now.
Peter lets the scent of mothballed bodies seep into him. He looks through
the window at the knowing yellow light of the streetlights. He settles
back in his chair and waits. He thinks about the last time he saw his
mother. It was here when he used to visit earlier. He had been Jackie
that night, too. They had been talking about the war, how it was going.
Grandpa had asked for news, and Peter had given him vague bits about a
coming victory, careful not to be too specific, careful not to jar a conflicting
memory he did not know about. He felt his mother behind him boil, standing
in the doorway fuming. Finally she came in, gliding rage across the floor
to him.
"Sandra," she hissed, "Sandra, what the hell are you doing?
Are you trying to kill your grandfather, too?"
Peter drew a deep breath to speak when his grandfather’s voice came
over him.
"Who are you?" his grandfather asked his mother. "Who are
you?"
She looked up at him. "I’m sorry, Dad," she said, her voice
soft, the way Peter wishes he could remember. "I’ll get her
out of here. She’s not supposed to be here. I’m sorry, Dad,"
she moved closer to him, reaching out to take his hand, Peter thinks.
"It’s just a phase. Don’t worry about it." Peter heard
a hand clasp then, a moment of nothing—clear, perfect silence of
oxygen tanks. Then sheets and his grandfather pushing away. She took Peter’s
arm then, fingers synching into it. "Get up," she hissed. "Get
up."
Peter felt his grandfather’s confusion return, welling up towards
anger and hysteria. "What are you doing? Leave my brother alone."
He felt his mother’s grip on his arm slack a bit. "You bitch,"
his grandfather called, "leave my brother alone."
His mother’s grip tightened to a vice on his arm. "Get out of
here. Look at what you are doing."
Peter heard his grandfather struggling in bed, trying to get up to defend
his baby brother. He heard the IV tubes rustling and became afraid. "Bill,"
he said, desperately trying to drag his grandfather back to the peace
of 1943, "Bill, it’s all right, but I’ve got to go now,
okay?" He picked up his Bible.
His grandfather did not stop struggling. He kept shouting, "You bitch,
you harpy, you harpy."
His mother stopped trying to move him and looked at Grandpa. "Dad,
it’s me Margaret," she said. "Dad, it’s me Margaret,
your daughter." She recited the date, his condition, his position
as head of her family, everything she could to fix him in the time and
place she needed. Nothing worked. Peter sat paralyzed. His grandfather
kept cursing her, kept struggling to rise and defend his baby brother,
kept straining the IV tubes, and finally let out one long cry that deteriorated
into sobs and stopped struggling. His mother turned back to Peter. He
is still certain there were tears in her eyes. He let her drag him from
the room.
In the hallway, his mother continued her tirade of, "Are you trying
to kill your grandfather, too?" but shaking now. She pulled him towards
the exit, and Peter said nothing. At the nurses’ station, she had
halted, became steely again, and displayed him. For a moment, Peter wanted
to touch her face, give her flowers, but she wasn’t seeing him.
"This…this…" she struggled with what to say, with
whether to call him girl and appear crazy or call him boy and feel crazy.
She gave up. "…is not allowed here, not to see my Dad."
The nurse was a redhead. He had had that feeling of being watched.
"Yes, Mrs. Neill," Bette said, her eyes still on Peter.
Outside of nursing home, in the light of the streetlights just turned
on, he thought of the time he gathered all the blossoms of his mother’s
snap peas as one beautiful gift for her and wants to cry.
Peter had waited until almost ten to come two nights later. Bette had
been on duty again. "She’s been gone for two hours now. You
know I didn’t record that," she had said.
He thanked her.
"He’s happiest when you’re around," Bette said.
Peter ducked his head.
Peter hears his grandfather stir and opens the Braille Bible on his lap.
He hears the change in his grandfather’s breath that signals he is
as awake as he will be. Peter begins reading, "A reading from the
Gospel according to Mark." Peter hears the same rustling pattern
he hears every time he begins this way. It took him months to realize
that his grandfather is making tiny crosses on his forehead, lips, and
heart—may the word of God be always in my mind, on my lips, and in
my heart. Peter reads the Parable of the Sower who cast seed on good and
poor soil. He thinks about planting his mother’s garden when he was
a child and reads, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
He thinks about the tiny furrows they dug for snap peas and the tall trellises
she let him stand on his tiptoes wind the twine across.
When he finishes, his grandfather says, "Amen," and then there
is silence for a few minutes. Peter knows this time. It happens almost
every time he comes to read to his grandfather—the silent time when
Peter feels a change in his grandfather, when he feels like his grandfather
is in a place he hasn’t been before and a place he has always been.
He wonders what will happen when they reach Revelations. He thinks about
first grade science class when they were supposed to grow plants in plastic
cups on the windowsill and how after weeks of no growing, he and his teacher
had turned over his cup and found nothing inside. Peter thinks about dirt
farmers.
He doesn’t know who his grandfather thinks he is at these times.
He waits for his grandfather to speak and watches the light outside the
window.
His grandfather inhales. "Who are you?"
Peter doesn’t know how to answer. Peter always waits for his grandfather
to tell him who he is. Peter always knocks at the door, says "It’s
me," and waits to be told what me means. His mind is racing. He’s
back in his mother’s garden with the peas, leaning over the furrows,
trying to plant the rows, but the peas are slippery. His grandfather’s
waiting there in the darkness, and Peter can feel seeds sliding through
his fingers. "I’m your grandson, Peter," he says and waits
empty handed.
His grandfather makes the "aw" noise twice. Peter hears him
reaching out his hand, grasping at where. "Where are you?" Peter
takes his hand. "Aw, there you are," his grandfather says and
pats his hand the way he did when Peter was Sandra. "I’m getting
a little blind, you know?" he pats Peter’s hand again, "My
grandson, Peter, such a good boy." Peter goes cold and teary at once.
In the joy of hearing my grandson, he knows he could have said Humphrey
Bogart or Lawrence Welk or Bettie Boop and elicited the same response.
He could have called himself The Morning Star and his grandfather still
would have taken his hand. He wants to scream, speak the news of today—not
1943, jar his grandfather out of the haze and jackhammer him to his deathbed
like his mother does. He touches the pages of his book looking for a word
to read. He wishes no one asked questions ever.
"What else have you brought to read to me, Peter?" his grandfather
asks.
"I brought you Beowulf, Grandpa," he says and sees his younger
self patting earth over furrows.
"Aw," says Grandpa, "aw. Read it, will you?"
"Yes," he says and tries to take back his hand. His grandfather
squeezes tighter. Peter watches the knowing yellow light outside the window.
"I need my hand back, Grandpa." His grandfather lets go. Peter
sees seeds slipping through his fingers. He keeps watching the light outside
and listening to his grandfather drift off to sleep as he reads.
Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings,
leader beloved, and long he ruled
in fame with all folk, since his father had gone,
away from the world, till awoke an heir
Peter remembers having to memorize this passage in Old English. He toys
with trying to remember the words but can’t. His grandfather turns
in his sleep, makes the "aw" noise and recites the old English
like an incantation.
_a wæs on burgum Beowulf Scyldinga,
leof leodcyning, longe _rage
folcum gefræge fæder ellor hwearf,
aldor of earde, o__æt him eft onwoc
-End-
Emmet
Quinn lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has received a Vermont Studio
Center Fellowship and a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
His work has appeared in Blithe House Quarterly and Pinned Down By Pronouns.
He is a veteran of a Catholic education and currently a student at Harvard
University.
Archives
Butch
Dyke Boy announces the launch of Transcriptions, our new on-line literary
magazine. Quarterly editions will feature three stories chosen from
submitted work. Stories printed in the online journal will also be selected
for publication in a print journal, planned to be published at least
once a year, along with featured poems and editorials as well as work
previously performed at the GenderCrash open mike.
Please
submit up to 12 page stories to transcriptions@butchdykeboy.com.
Selected work will be edited by Toni Amato. Deadline for submissions
will be the first day of the month prior to publication date: work due
by March 15, 2004 July 1, 2004 and November 1, 2004.
Feedback?
Please mail all comments to butchdykeboy
at aol.com, they will be forwarded to the author.
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