Authors: Kathy Reinhart
She had been on her way to the door when she suddenly stopped and spun on one heel to face me.
“I’m sorry child, didn’t I tell you? I’m not going to be able to make it today.” Shaking her head in thought, she mumbled, “I could have sworn I told you.”
Secretly grateful for the last minute cancellation, I said, “I hope everything’s alright.”
“Oh, everything’s fine. I have to be at the church for our annual fundraiser meeting.” Taking a drink from her flask, she shoved it into her purse as she heard Gramp’s footsteps coming up the porch stairs, and added, “Every year we do the same, tired cookbook, but this year I’m going to make sure we do something people will actually look forward to.”
As the screen door slammed behind him, Gramp nodded in my direction and said, “Hey, Sugar.” He leaned in to give Gram a kiss on the cheek then looked toward me again with concern in his eyes. “Ask her what her idea for the fundraiser is.”
Giving Gramp a playful slap on the arm, she said, “Stewart! Now I’ve told you, there’s nothing wrong with my idea. It’s high time we took our little church out of the dark ages.”
My curiosity piqued, I asked, “What is your idea, Gram?”
Excitement filled her eyes. “I was thinking maybe a calendar. You know… something useful and practical.”
Gramp looked at her sternly, and said, “Go ahead, Cybil, tell her the rest.”
Seemingly uncomfortable, Gram sighed and said, “Okay, I thought maybe if we could get some of the men from church to pose for the calendar… well, it might make the ladies more likely to buy them and more eager to try and sell them.”
“Now, now Cybil.” Pulling out a chair, Gramp sat and directed his attention toward me. “She wants them to pose wearing little more than a bible and rosary beads.”
“Gram!”
“Her other idea was an auction. You know, have the men standing for the women to ogle, while she sells them off to the highest bidder.” Giving her a loving wink, he added, “I personally think she’s been watching too much daytime television.” Unable to contain his laughter, Gramp lowered his head to avoid Gram’s stare.
Disbelief filled her eyes. “Well, if you aren’t just the dill in the pickle patch.” Throwing her hands in the air, she said, “What? I suppose you’d have us make hoagies or put up a chicken barbeque. People aren’t interested in those things anymore. It’s so no one shows up and we get stuck with forty or fifty chickens.” Picking up her purse and letting out a disgusted sigh, she said in defeat, “Well, some of the ladies thought my idea was ingenious and I think you’re just worried no one would bid on you.”
Gramp stood. Wrapping his arms around Gram, he chuckled and asked, “Would that have been the ladies of the fancy flask club?” Ignoring the annoyance that flickered in her eyes, he added, “You do keep it interesting, old girl.”
Placing an affectionate kiss on her forehead, he turned and headed out the same door he had come in only moments earlier, shaking his head.
Once he was out of earshot, Gram whispered, “Sugar and spice, dear, just sugar and spice. Making sure he gets his fill of both, otherwise, he’d get bored.”
With that said, she disappeared out the same door Gramp had just gone through, leaving me sitting alone at the table. My decision now was whether I would make the trip to Brickway—alone.
I had been sitting for some time when I realized, I was relaxed. For the first time in weeks, I was actually relaxed, enjoying a peaceful, serene feeling, free from all serious thoughts. I had forgotten how good this simple comfort felt, when the screen door let out its penetrating screech.
“Hey, Sugar. Didn’t realize you were still here.”
Strumming my fingers lightly on the table, I answered, “Yeah… I’m just trying to decide what I’m going to do today. I’m not in your way, am I? I mean, I don’t want to keep you from anything.”
I noted a slight sadness in his voice when he answered. “No, Sugar, I’ve had about all the alone time I can stand for one lifetime. Stay and keep me company.” He hesitated. “Unless you have other things to do.”
Something told me that I should accept his offer. Normally I would grasp for an excuse to leave, but today, in my relaxed state, I felt more at ease with him.
Finishing the glass of tea he had come in for, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and offered a devilish smile, saying, “C’mon, you can help me with little one.”
“Little one?”
Holding the door open and motioning with his free hand, he smiled as I stood and reluctantly headed for the door. “Little one needs a haircut,” was the only satisfaction he would give my curiosity.
A haircut—that didn’t sound so bad. It had to beat cleaning stalls and other disgusting farm related work, I thought, as I followed him to the barn.
Other than to tell me how to help him, Gramp remained rather quiet during the sheep’s haircut, or shearing, as he called it. He didn’t really need my help though. I did no more than stand at the fuzzy creature’s head while he ran the buzzing clippers across its body. If he found comfort in my standing there, then I was glad I stayed.
Giving the now-hairless animal a slap on the backend, he shooed it off once he had finished with his task. I looked myself over to make sure I wasn’t wearing little one’s hair.
Maybe because it had grown so quiet, maybe because I felt more at ease with him than I usually did, or maybe because I had a deep-seeded need to know, I found myself asking a question of a personal nature—one I normally wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask him.
“Gramp, was it always like this between you and Gram?”
“Like what... what are you asking, Sugar?”
I paused, deciding on the correct wording. “Was Gram always so… I mean, did she used to be like… how did the two of you make it so far, being so opposite?” I breathed heavily having gotten that out. Once said, I thought of a hundred better ways to ask the same thing.
“Was your grandmother always crazy? Is that what you’re asking?” His words came matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t say that!”
“Didn’t have to, Sugar. But yes, she’s always been one of a kind. If I were a pecan tree, she’d have to shake me every once in a while just to hear my nuts rattle.” He looked toward the sky as he pushed his sweat-dampened hair off his forehead. Shaking his head, he began, “Crazy, senile, eccentric, is there any difference really? Seems ones just a polite way of saying the other. But, who cares, right? It all boils down to the same thing in the end. Love—if you’re lucky enough to find it, you’ll die happy... crazy maybe, but happy. And if you never find it, well, you can be sane as sin or stupid as mud and you’ll die miserable just the same.”
Wondering if there was a point to his rambling, I giggled as I asked, “Gramp, what does love and being crazy have to do with each other?”
“If you have love, you can tolerate and even overlook someone’s flaws and shortcomings, if you don’t have love, those same things will grate on your nerves until you begin to question your own sanity.” Affection danced in his eyes, as he added, “I truly love that woman.”
I couldn’t help but smile. I suddenly found myself envious of the relationship they obviously shared.
“Did you always know that Gram was the only one for you?”
“Oh, your grandmother is the love of my life, but she wasn’t the only one for me—or my first love.”
Tilting my head to one side, eyes open wide, I asked, “Does Gram know that?”
“Sure she does. It’s not something we discuss over Sunday morning breakfast, but she knows.”
I thought about what he said. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of my past wasn’t at all what I thought it to be. The thought of either him or her with anyone else rocked the memory of my stable childhood. It had always been my assumption that during the period in which they married, you either picked the one you wanted, if you were lucky, or stepped into an arranged marriage and stuck with them from the start, for better or worse and so on. I thought of married-until-it-doesn’t-suit as a novel idea, something born to a new generation.
“How long were you married to the other woman?”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Hell Sugar, I never said I married her.”
I suddenly felt embarrassed. By assuming, I had created an awkward situation and didn’t know how to get out of it tactfully.
“I’m sorry, Gramp. When you said she was your first love, I thought you meant that you and she… were married.”
In an unexpected gesture, he took hold of my hand, as he began to walk toward the house.
“You like watermelon, Sugar?” His expression showed no emotion, as he looked straight-ahead, taking long strides, quickly closing the gap between the house and us.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He glanced at me briefly. “Let’s go have us some with our talk.”
Eight
...Until-death-do-us-part meant a future filled with dread and regrets. All that remained between us was the admittance of failure and the formality of a spoken goodbye...
As Gramp sliced watermelon, I poured tea, feeling intimidated in his presence. My feelings for him had gone through so many changes over the years. Although I remember little of him from my childhood, I do remember that I loved him. As a teenager, I felt deserted and even embarrassed by him while he was in prison, and as an adult, I felt distanced and uncomfortable around him. Now, standing in the same room where I sense an important conversation about to take place between us in a matter of minutes, I feel intimidated.
When he sat at the table, he began to speak as if he had never left off. “Gayle Crenshaw—that was her name—she was about the prettiest girl in Willoughby. A real looker. She came from old money and had the voice of a songbird to boot. She sang in the church choir and let me tell you; she’d hit those high notes and ooh... she’d have us guys melting in our pews and praying to the Gods.” His eyes seemed to flicker as he spoke of her. “There wasn’t a fellow in town that didn’t want her for his bride.” He hesitated. “But, she wanted me.” His chest swelled with pride, as he smirked, adding, “I’ll tell you, I held my head a little higher, I walked a little straighter and I smiled a little broader knowing I was her first pick.”
Listening to Gramp boast brought a smile to my face. The last two decades of his life had held little reason to smile and I was grateful he had memories worth smiling about.
“What happened? Why didn’t the two of you ever marry?”
He shook his head, his disheartened expression telling me the happy part of his memory was over.
“She left me for love.”
Five little words. I had been expecting a long, sad story about how in a cruel twist of fate, love had been yanked from their grasp. His last sentence left me without words.
Without prodding, he continued. “I worked for the railroad in those days. Right out of high school there wasn’t much around as far as work went. There was the mine, which would kill a man before his fortieth birthday, stone quarries, which didn’t pay enough to support a family, or the railroad. Only a handful of us were lucky enough to hook up with the railroad.”
Tipping his head back to finish the last of his tea, he took a moment before continuing.
“My father owned the press that put out the only newspaper in Willoughby. Times were tough all over, but especially in small towns it seemed. Some bigger company down south started buying up all the paper, right from the mills. Without that paper, my father would have been put out of business.”
“What happened? What did he do?”
He shook his head. “He didn’t do anything. I did. Back then, everything was shipped by train. I used my job to keep my father in business.” His face colored in shame, as he continued. “When the mills began shipping the paper that once went to my father, to the big companies down south, I started re-routing it back to my father with the help of a few of the guys at work… it just sort of disappeared without a trace.”
“Gramp, that’s stealing! You could have gone to jail for that.”
“I knew that. But I couldn’t sit back and watch my father lose everything he’d worked all his life for. Besides, a lot of the guys that helped me had family that worked for my father. It meant a lot of jobs for a lot of people.”
I suddenly felt a pang of sentiment creeping through me. There were two very different sides to the man sitting across from me. There was the dark, secretive side that spent over twenty years in prison, and the loyal, loving side that held family in the highest regard.
Wondering how this story was going to make its way back to Gayle, I asked, “Gramp, did she leave you because of what you were doing for your father?”
“So to speak.” With one leg crossed over the other, he picked at the hem of his pant leg, as he continued, “Joker found out about the stolen loads of paper and threatened to turn us in. He’d always had a thing for Gayle and she knew it, so she sacrificed her own happiness to spare me from going to prison.”
Confused, I asked, “Wait, who’s Joker?”
Gramp’s eyes seemed to darken as he spoke of the man with the unusual name. “Joker... Joker’s the man who’s been my nemesis since before I was born. His father started a feud with my father many, many years ago over a piece of property that they each claimed they owned and it’s been our birthright to keep it going.”