by Larry Watson
Someone has to save his grandfather from that fate, and since no one else seems available for this duty, Will steps forward.
“Grandpa,” Will says, stepping alongside his grandfather and matching his stride to the old man’s. “Don’t, Grandpa.”
Calvin Sidey doesn’t acknowledge the boy but continues to stumble forward.
“Grandpa,” Will says again, tugging at the hem of his grandfather’s T-shirt.
His grandfather stops and looks down, “Go home, boy. You hear? Go home, God damn it.” Then the old man starts walking again.
Will has to stop his grandfather, he has to. If he doesn’t, the whole family will be destroyed. To be a Sidey will mean something shameful, and they’ll have to leave Gladstone and move to a place where no one knows that Will Sidey’s grandfather once walked into a bar and shot a man dead.
Will grabs the pistol and tries to pull it from his grandfather’s hand. After the briefest moment of resistance, it comes out with surprising ease, as though the blood has greased the way.
“Hey,” Calvin Sidey says, but by now Will has skipped a few feet away and out of his grandfather’s reach.
The gun’s grip is warm and wet from his grandfather’s blood. It is also surprisingly heavy, and Will raises and lowers his hand a few times to try to familiarize himself with its weight. Then the realization of what he’s holding—and that he really doesn’t know how to work it, or, even more startlingly, that he doesn’t know how to keep it from working—makes him lower the gun, keeping it close to his side.
“Give it here, boy,” Calvin Sidey says. “Before you hurt yourself.”
Will shakes his head and continues to back away from his grandfather.
Calvin Sidey tries to quicken his step in pursuit of his grandson, but the effort costs him. He winces and stops so abruptly you’d think he was pulled up short on a leash. His next move is not toward Will. He staggers toward the street and sits down heavily on the curb. With his feet in the gutter, he hangs his head and lets out a groan that frightens Will. Is his grandfather going to die?
That terrifying thought barely has time to form itself in Will’s brain when he hears someone call his grandfather’s name. Will looks in the direction of that anguished shout. Mrs. Lodge is running toward them, her cheeks flushed and glistening with tears.
When she reaches grandfather and grandson, her first question is to Will, spoken through her ragged, panting breaths. “Are you hurt, Will?”
He shakes his head.
Although she can’t know anything about what has happened, she must realize what might happen, so she says to Will, quietly but firmly, “Hand me the gun, please. Quickly.”
Will does as he’s told.
Once the pistol is in her hand, Beverly Lodge does not hesitate. She steps over to the sewer opening set in the curb and drops the gun through the hole. As the pistol’s steel bounces off iron and concrete in its clattering fall, an echo almost like a far-off bell rises to the street.
Only then does Beverly Lodge turn to Will’s grandfather, and her single word, “You,” sounds as though it could be the beginning of a scolding.
Will’s grandfather doesn’t say anything, but he lifts his lacerated hands toward her. At that moment Will believes that his grandfather is asking for help from the only person he’d ever ask.
Beverly Lodge’s “Oh!” is such a piercing cry, Will is surprised people don’t stop their cars or run from nearby buildings to see what’s wrong.
But Mrs. Lodge sees what must be done. She lifts her dress and enfolds those bleeding hands in the material. She’s standing right there on Northern Pacific Avenue, her dress raised so high anyone can see her legs and maybe even her underpants, but Mrs. Lodge doesn’t seem to care. She just stands close to his grandfather and holds his hands.
“Will,” she says, “go into that business there and ask them to please call an ambulance. Right away, Will. Right away.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Bill pauses at the top of the stairs, then bends down in order to see as far as he can into the basement. Yes, it looks as though his father’s light is on. Well, Bill might as well get on with it. He grasps the handrail and begins his slow descent. When he reaches the bottom step, he can see that, yes, his father is awake, awake and watching his son approach.
His father is lying on his bed and smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. Bill can’t understand how his father is able, with his heavily bandaged hands, to manage the delicate process of filling a paper with tobacco, rolling it, then striking a match and lighting it. As it is, Calvin must hold the cigarette with the tips of his fingers, the only part of his hands not wrapped tight with gauze and tape. And taking a drag from the cigarette is a delicate, awkward process since his lip is still split and swollen.
Bill walks over to the bed and looks down on his father. “How are you doing, Dad?” The white bristle of his father’s unshaven whiskers add to his ashen look. “Would you like me to shave you?”
Calvin scrapes up and down his cheek with his fingertips. “No need. I’ll just let it grow.”
“Well, you let me know. By the way, Mrs. Lodge is upstairs. She’d like to see you.”
“Tell her I’m sleeping.”
“I’m sure she’ll come back,” Bill says.
“Tell her I’m sleeping then too. Or on the toilet. I don’t give a damn. Or come right out and tell her I don’t want company. And especially not hers. That ought to do the job.”
“She seems to think there’s something between you.”
“Does she.”
“Well? Is she right about that?”
“Maybe you should be talking to her.”
The nutty sweet aroma of his father’s tobacco fills the basement. It’s a smell that not only does not belong in this place that’s usually redolent of damp earth and mildew but seems also reminiscent of another time, not summer but fall or winter and fallen leaves and wood fires. But Bill knows that now he’s allowing a pleasant odor to make him nostalgic for a time that never was. He reminds himself of what he must do.
“Dr. Ellingsrud called. He thinks you still belong in the hospital. Hematuria can be a serious matter. When was the last time you urinated, Dad? Is there still blood?”
Calvin waves off this concern. “I’ve pissed blood before. A horse once threw me and I hit a fence post on the way down. Took damn near a month before my water cleared.”
“All right, Dad.” Bill sighs and the fog of cigarette smoke wavers. “All right. But let me know if it doesn’t get better. Would you do that?”
“I’ll let you know if there’s something to worry about.”
“He’s concerned about infection too. He wants you to watch for—”
“I remember. I was there, you know. I heard everything he had to say.”
Bill nods slowly, trying to hold on to his patience. His father has been through an ordeal, and the evidence—the cuts and bruises, the bandages and the antiseptic—is there for anyone to see. But Bill knows that the psychological damage is probably worse, though that’s invisible, unless you know, as Bill does, to look at—and beyond—the curt responses and the averted gaze, the body not just prone but its energy all but vanished. “There’s something else we need to talk about.”
Calvin finally looks at him. “Then let’s get to it.”
Bill starts to sit down on the edge of the bed but then thinks better of it. He clears off the chair beside the bed and situates the chair so that he and his father are facing each other. He places the ashtray on the bed beside his father, and only after all these preliminaries are out of the way does Bill finally say, “You’ll have to leave here.”
His father shifts as if he’s determined to rise right at that moment. “No, no,” says Bill, and reaches out a hand to hold his father down if need be. “No. Not now. Not until you’re healed. Not until the bruises fade and the stitches are out. But when that day comes, you’ll have to go.”
“You don’t have to worry
on that account. I packed light for this trip. I’ll head back as soon as I can wrap my hands around the steering wheel.”
“I don’t mean leave town, Dad. I mean you can’t stay here. In the house. Though I suppose since it’s still in your name, if you wanted to, you could send us on our way.”
“Jesus, that again? I told you: I make no claim on this place.”
Bill looks down at the basement floor. “All right, Dad. I remember.”
“So you’re kicking me out,” Calvin says. “Good for you.”
Still staring at the floor, and the cracked, curling linoleum, Bill thinks, What shabby surroundings. But he won’t allow himself to be deterred. “Not out of Gladstone, Dad. I want you to stay in town. I’ll help you find an apartment, or even a house if you’d rather. But some place close enough that Marjorie or I can look in on you. Or Mrs. Lodge.”
“I can take care of myself. Besides, town life doesn’t suit me.”
Bill can’t help himself. “Any town or this one?” He immediately shakes off his own question. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t.”
Bill takes a deep breath. “You didn’t ask, but I need to tell you why I don’t want you living here, under this roof.”
“Fire away. I reckon this is what you made the trip down here for.”
“I don’t want you around the kids. I don’t want them seeing how you handle life. Or don’t handle it. I don’t want them getting the wrong ideas about how we’re supposed to get through our troubles, with bluster and threats and fists. Or worse. You go charging off all on your own without making sure of the facts, without seeing if you need reinforcements, without even checking to see if someone else should be brought in on the matter. You just assume you’re the one who’s supposed to take care of whatever needs taking care of. Ann and Will look at you and your life, and they’re liable to learn the wrong lessons. What’s more—”
Calvin Sidey makes a slashing motion with his hand to stop his son from going on. “That’s enough,” he says. “I might have fucked up six ways to Sunday, but that doesn’t mean I have to lie here and listen to a lecture. You made your point. I’ll be moving on as soon as I’m able. Now why don’t you go on back upstairs? I’m tired, and you’ve got a message you need to deliver to Mrs. Lodge before she comes charging down here. From what I can tell, she’s not a woman easily put off.”
Bill hasn’t said all he hoped to say to his father, but that, he realizes, is a feeling he’ll always carry with him.
He stands and backs away toward the stairs. “Do you need anything else tonight?”
Calvin Sidey reaches across and stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Not a damn thing.”
The cigarette is extinguished. Bill’s foot is on the stair. His speech is delivered. But with his back to his father, Bill Sidey says, “And I don’t want you smoking in bed. Not under my roof.”
BEVERLY LODGE IS SITTING quietly at the kitchen table, but when she sees Bill Sidey come up from the basement, she gasps. He’s wearing a look so stricken he might have discovered his father’s dead body down there. “Is he—” the words are out before she can stop them.
“I think,” says Bill, “he needs to sleep. He’s done in.”
“If I could just see him for a minute . . .” Beverly hears the pleading in her voice, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Furthermore, she no longer cares. If Calvin has done anything to her, it has been to render unimportant what once might have mattered so much to her. And what is that something? Only her pride and all that goes with it.
Bill shakes his head slowly.
“He doesn’t want to see me.”
“Once he gets rested up, once he gets his strength back . . .”
Beverly almost laughs at the moment’s irony—the son is intent on sparing the feelings that the father doesn’t give a damn about. “Please. You don’t have to say any more. He doesn’t want to see me. I understand.” She stands and straightens the strap of her sundress that keeps slipping from her shoulder.
“I don’t know what to say,” Bill says, and smiles weakly. “He’s not worth it, you know.”
Beverly turns up her palms. “Yet here we are.”
And then Bill Sidey must feel remorse for what he’s said about his father. “I think he’s still feeling a little embarrassed about everything,” he adds. “He’s not a man who’s accustomed to—”
“I understand,” Beverly says again. “I may have only known your father for a few days, but I’ve come to understand him very well.” What she doesn’t say however is that since Calvin came to town and turned his gaze on her, Beverly Lodge’s own being has become incomprehensible to her.
This brings a wider smile to Bill’s face. “Really? I’ve known him a long time, and I can’t say I’ve come close to understanding him.”
“Well, parents always keep a part of themselves away from their children. You know that.”
“I do,” Bill says. “I do indeed. And then the kids return the favor tenfold. If Ann had only said something to me or her mother about what was going on. Though I did think it strange that we hadn’t met this boyfriend. And what the hell set Will off on his wild thinking I’ll never understand.”
Beverly shrugs, and even that little motion causes the strap of the sundress to slip from her shoulder again. What a fool Bill Sidey must think she is, coming over with her lipstick and rouge and flirty dress to see an old man with his hands bound up like a child’s so he can’t get into any more trouble, an old man who doesn’t even want her in his presence.
“Little boys’ minds,” she says. “I’ve watched them operate in my classroom for years, but I can’t say I begin to comprehend them.”
“But a prowler? He thought there was a prowler in the neighborhood, someone who was hiding every night in our garage? If he’d only said something about his fear, we could have told him there was nothing out there.”
“And maybe he liked scaring himself with his made-up fears.”
“Yes, maybe he did.”
Dirty dishes are stacked in the sink, and Beverly has to resist the impulse to go over there, run some hot water, and start in on them. “When did you say Marjorie’s coming home?”
“Day after tomorrow. Carole and her husband are bringing her.”
“She’s still recuperating, I’m sure. I’ll be happy to come over any time to help out. When you have to go to work, for instance. And you can tell your father I’ll stay upstairs if he’s worried we’ll accidentally bump into each other.”
“I appreciate the offer. But Carole’s going to stay for a few weeks. She seems to be looking forward to the opportunity to baby her little sister.”
“Well, you know where I am,” Beverly says. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, don’t hesitate to knock on my door.” She’s about to open the screen door and walk out of the Sidey home, but she pauses to say, “And tell that stubborn father of yours . . . Oh, never mind. There’s no telling that man anything.” And she pushes through the door before a hot rush of tears can add yet another measure to her humiliation.
CALVIN SIDEY IS CONDUCTING an experiment. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed and holding a copy of the poems of Catullus. He has flexed his fingers often enough that the tape and gauze wrapped around his hands has become pliable. He wants to see if he can turn the pages, and because this collection is printed on Bible paper he finds he can. As he swipes one thin, silky page after another, he stops, as he so often does, on the death of Lesbia’s sparrow.
His concentration is so complete that he doesn’t notice that his granddaughter has come down the stairs.
From across the room, she says, “Grandpa?”
He closes the book. “You’re up mighty late tonight, aren’t you?”
“I slept pretty late this morning,” she says. She hunches forward and squints as if she has trouble seeing through the basement murk, but she keeps her distance.
“Good to be
out of that hospital, isn’t it?” He wants to encourage her to come closer, but he doesn’t know how. “How’s that arm doing?”
“It doesn’t hurt much.” She takes a few steps toward him. “How about your hands?”
“No, not much.” He holds up his bandaged hands. “Just feeling a little clumsy.”
She takes a few cautious steps forward. Calvin tries not to move, as if his granddaughter were an animal easily spooked.
She smiles and asks, “Are you growing a beard?”
He raises his chin and pretends as though he’s grooming his whiskers. “I might do just that. Maybe by Christmas time I’ll be able to play Santy Claus.”
“Are you staying in Gladstone? I heard Dad talking to Mom earlier and he said he asked you to stay.”
“We’ll see.”
“I hope you do,” she says. “Will does too. He won’t say so, but I know he does.”
“Well, that’s nice of you to say. I appreciate that.” What if he motioned for her to come over and sit down? Would the gesture seem frightening, coming as it does from someone who looks as though he has paws for hands?
“And no matter what,” she says, “I wanted to say thank you. For what you did. For how you helped me with, you know, with him.”
“You have any more trouble with that fellow, you tell your father. Hear me? He’ll know what to do.” He hadn’t meant to sound like a scold.
She nods and steps back. “I better go back up,” she says. “Good night.”
As she heads up the stairs and disappears into darkness, the words that Calvin Sidey would never speak come to him at last: And don’t you stop until you find someone who’ll write poems for you.
