On the porch in the summers (Grandpa and me)

On the porch in the summers
(Grandpa and me)


From a little after midmorning, until near twilight of a long still, anguish dead summer day, we’d be on the porch, old grandpa Anton, still swearing away, cussing as always, mom said it was his way of getting it out—on that fresh hot artless porch with a sofa on it, and screens all around it, with blinds half down, fastened with a string, feeling the blinds would keep the sun out and the porch would be fresher, but when it went down in the east, it slashed its full yellow rays into the side of the porch, almost blinding you, I thought of it as being no more than the eternal sun getting ready to meet the eternal night, and clash, vibrantly clash, with the condensed and hyper-distilled look on grandpa’s face, before going away, until sunrise, when it would wake him up again on the porch, he slept there in the summers, not in his bedroom: I was simple an idle boy, with no rank, young flesh with a long embattled vanishing old stream, vanishing in interval, running one space to the next until his bones dried up, and the ghost in him mused with his shadow docilely as if it were the voice of fate haunting him in his own house. Out of this calm thunderclap, he would change from man to animal, to demon. It seemed grandpa wore those eternal dark blue or black, suites and all, all the time, it suited him well.
Grandpa was sitting in the sofa so bolt upright, in the curved soft sofa, he slept on in the summer, although his bone structure was rigid as well as having iron shinbones and ankles—and an air of impotent, self-puzzlement, indomitable frustrated look, as if he was long dead. As if at any moment, outraged summarized could be called to mind, upon a peaceful scene, sulfur-reeking, from his lips like a beast, yet I knew for the most part he was harmless. Mother would say, “That’s just the way he is, you can’t change an old goat, or teach one new tricks,” wild and relaxed, he’d remain, with his air of bleak, fatigued and dilapidated gulp of air.
His voice didn’t stop, but somehow vanished in his mumbling, grumbling, complaining and rumble-jumble carrying on, in a bloodless face, paradoxical, then it vanished…as sudden and as quick as the way it started, just like nothing, a puff of smoke, it vanished and I seemed to watch the smoke suddenly float out of the porch and be soaked up by the earth.
Then there was this savage quiet he produced. Him sitting and me standing on the porch, as if there was a coffin—a smelly gloomy over rotting coffin, between us, and I was near fearful to move, immobile and pontific, creating in me my future garrulous, if not imitative, outraged baffled ghosts. Perhaps the one that is helping me write this epistle about him and me on the porch in those now far-off summers of my formative years.
We seldom talked to one another, just long silences usually, as if we were not people, in a land of no language. It seemed as if he had a demon—who came out of nowhere warning him he was in the land with a strange, violently strange creature, me. Without gentleness he’d destroy without regret something, yes, saved by this demon.
And when I left for the Army, and college, and for my travels, I am sure he said “I don’t imagine he will come back here, and settle down as a grandchild should, he’s a wild one, not like his brother, already working and making plans, this one he will leave, enter some literary profession, be married, but never remain married. Perhaps he will be out among young friends instead of the old family.”
I was only twelve then, standing on that porch, due to his astonishment, I did exactly all he knew I’d do, have exchanged no more than fifty-words in our whole lifetime, living in the same house, ten-years, he did not recognize me as he revealed a character worth noticing, indicating a cold, implacable and to a certain degree, callousness.
The dusty heat of the day, those summer days, he’d walk back and forth, pacing the floor in the house from the porch to the kitchen, as if it was a half mile between each, and its actual size—it was of fifty-feet—of rug and a shabby rug at that, yet it had the same air as the half mile would have had, same quality, his face would remain grim, for a grim endurance is what he had, created to fit into his little smaller world, the one he put into his pocket, took out in the hallway, as if it was in a tomb, in his slow and heated weighed down time. He’d look at his wrist, check his watch, the time, the dim face now looking at an expressionless grandson, urgent and intent to be more than he would ever expect.
“He wants to tell me something, I know he does,” my grandfather thought, staring at me: oh yes, I could read his mind, but if he had asked me what I was thinking, it would displease the demon that stayed with him, then he’d tell himself, “There is no reason to talk to him, he’s already mummified.”
And mother would say, “He’s seventy years old, going to be eighty soon…” as if he was already vanished from this earth, fled to none knew where, but he was right here, in front of me, breathing the same air, hearing the same talk going on in the house, just not talking to me. My childhood was full of this, him, echoing with sonorous defeat to make a friend out of a grandfather that was interchangeable and almost numberless. It would have seen, or does seem, did seem, he had a war going on with some personal ghosts.
“Ah,” said my mother, “But why tell me about it, what can I do, I can’t change him!”

No: 410/6-4-2009