by
Clifford Royal Johns
When I inherited my paternal
grandfather’s railroad pocket watch, I worried about actually using it. It
meant a great deal to me, so I didn’t want to lose or break it. The watch is
one of those things I have where touching it, or even just seeing it, reminds
me of the person who owned it. For instance, when I bake in my friend Alvina’s
pan it reminds me of her. My grandfather wound that watch every morning and
wore it every day from the time he began working for the P&LE railroad in
the early 1930s. It was just part of his way, a way that affected my whole
outlook.
When I was a boy in the 1960s,
my grandfather would often drive down from Pittsburgh to our dairy farm in
southwestern Pennsylvania to spend the weekend, sometimes to hunt, sometimes to
fish, and other times just to help with repairs around the farm. I liked his
visits because he paid attention to me, even though I was the youngest of four
kids, and he seemed to genuinely like teaching me things. In retrospect, it’s
clear he taught me lessons that were often unrelated to the actual subject at
hand, for instance, instructing me about fishing might have really been about
the potential payoff of patience, or taking apart an engine and putting it back
together might have been about organization and the proper sequence of things—“So
you don’t have any parts left over when you’re done,” as he would say.
My grandfather was a short round
man who wore bib overalls, a hickory-striped railroad engineer’s cap and often
smoked a swooping calabash pipe. Sometimes he would bring a bottle of whisky
and sit in the living room stacking shoes from the kid’s shoebox on top one of
the snoozing English Setters who still liked him anyway.
My memories of childhood are
mostly just still photos, snapshots of the tractor parked on the barn bridge, the
field of sorghum above the house, or the whelping box we kept in the dining
room when one of our setters had puppies. For people important to me though, I retain
more of a photographic negative; I remember people by the shape of the hole in
my life they leave behind. My grandfather’s watch reminds me of that missing
piece, that hole, but I choose to wear it anyway, retaining a piece of the man
and his memory close at hand.
Once, when I was eight, my
father decided we should have some shooting practice. For this, my father, my two
brothers, and I would stand on the back porch and shoot at empty coffee cans set
on sawhorses or logs, using the hill just above the house as a backstop. This
time, rather than just watching then chuckling when we didn’t hit anything, my
grandfather decided to shoot at the makeshift targets too. He was a
knowledgeable man with a gun, a good hunter, especially of pheasant and grouse,
which were plentiful on the farm’s back hill. “Come on Skeezix,” he said, “let’s
go down to my car. I think I’ll shoot one of my own guns.”
We walked down the hill, me
trotting along, and him walking with his sailor’s rolling gait, past the smoke
bush and the pine tree to his car, which was parked on the gravel-covered barn
bridge.
My grandfather drove an
enormous, black, Cadillac Fleetwood Sedan Deville with fins, chrome everywhere,
and enough trunk space to carry supplies for a three-month arctic expedition.
The car was eighteen feet long. When he walked to his car to retrieve
something, I always went with him in hopes of seeing what he might have stashed
in that cavernous trunk.
He seemed to carry everything
a human could want in that trunk, and he organized things so carefully that if
he pulled anything out, the shape of the hole clearly identified what had been
removed, much like an intricate, French-fit box. In that car’s trunk he’d packed
boots, a cooler, a folding chair, some shotguns in gun cases, a suitcase full
of extra clothes, railroad flares, a glass gallon jug filled with gasoline, a
glass gallon jug full of water, an old blanket in case he had to crawl under
his car to fix it, enough tools to repair anything from a bicycle to our John
Deere 3010 tractor, and various, mysterious boxes and leather cases. That day I
found out his trunk also contained an enormous holstered 45-caliber Colt
revolver on an elaborately tooled leather belt—the kind with small leather
loops to hold individual bullets, just like the gunfighters wore in the movies.
When we returned to the back
porch, my father and brothers had brought out the 22, two 16-gauge shotguns and
the appropriate bullets and shells. My brothers and I fired off a few rounds, then
grandpa showed all three of us some improvements to our technique. Since I was
the youngest, I got most of the instruction. Until that day I’d only shot the relatively
light 22-caliber rifle, and even that was a bit much for me, I was eight, after
all. When my father went inside for something, Grandpa, leaned against the
porch’s corner post, smiled, took a puff on his pipe, and said, “You want to
shoot this?” He drew the 45-caliber revolver and showed it to me.
I said, “Sure,” staring in
awe, and a bit of fear, at the ancient gun.
When he handed it to me after
loading one shell in the cylinder, I suspected it weighed too much. I could
barely hold it up, yet I was a boy like any other, and I was determined I could
handle it. With both hands, I hoisted it up in line with a blue Maxwell House
coffee can. Grandpa cocked it for me. I pulled the trigger.
I don’t think the Maxwell
House can had much to worry about, but I believe I did hit the side of the hill,
though maybe not. My father came running outside, and found me sitting on the
porch, the terrific boom still echoing in my ears, my arms akimbo. Grandpa reached
down and picked up the gun, holstered it, leaned against the porch post again
and took another puff on his pipe while looking down at me. “I think you
missed,” he said. Then out came that quiet chuckle that made me feel like he
was pleased to see me making mistakes, perhaps even proud of it, and perhaps a
little proud of how well his somewhat dangerous practical joke cum learning
experience had worked. His chuckle was accompanied by a grin, a twinkle in his
eye and a knowing nod. He was always willing to stop what he was doing and
teach, if I was willing to learn. He seemed to think that I would learn best by
making mistakes. I learned a lot.
My grandfather carried his
fishing gear in his car trunk too, including the extra rods he kept prepared
for me and my brothers. We could go fishing anytime. We went to Lake Somerset
and a few pay-lakes in the area, but I preferred just walking down the hill to
fish for bluegill in the pond on our farm. I think he liked fishing with us so
much because he liked to tell stories, and fishing is mostly sitting, and
waiting, and talking a lot. He would tell stories while he caught fish and I
stood there holding a rod doing, I swear, the same exact thing he was doing,
but somehow not catching anything at all. “It’s the way you hold your tongue,”
he said one day, “and I’m wearing a hat.”
At Lake Somerset on a warm,
clear summer evening he said, “I think this is the lake, yep, over there by the
dam, just beyond that tree, I once caught a fish that was twenty-eight inches
between the eyes.” I figured he was telling one of his embellished fish
stories. It wasn’t until later when my father said it was the absolute truth
that I started to believe it. Then my father added, “If you measure the
distance from one eye, down around the tail and back to the other eye,
twenty-eight inches isn’t all that big a fish.” My grandfather didn’t react to
my father’s explanation, but he did seem to enjoy my frustration at finding out
that the story was the truth and not the truth at the same time.
Once, down at the farm pond, grandpa
sitting on his lawn chair fishing and me sitting on the ground holding my
fishing rod and watching my unmoving bobber, we saw a ripple speeding across
the pond. I said, “I wonder what that could be?”
“That’s a muskrat,” he said.
I stood up, but all I could
see was a ripple. I thought it could have been a snake, or a fish swimming
close to the surface, or just about anything, but he said it with such calm indifference
that I believed him without question.
“How can you tell when it’s a
muskrat?” I asked.
He put some tobacco in his
low-swung Calabash pipe, tamped it thoughtfully with his thumb, then lit it. He
looked at me with that twinkle and grin he’d get when he was about to tell a
whopper, and said, “Because it was swimming backwards, and muskrats always swim
backwards to keep the water out of their eyes.” He said it as though he was
teaching me something important. He said it carefully in between puffs on his
pipe, yet his cheeks rose, and his eyes still twinkled, and his chest shook
just a little. I knew he had pulled my leg, though at the time I’m not sure I
knew which part of his answer was the leg puller. I believe he knew what it
was. I suspect it probably was a muskrat.
My grandfather always
carefully considered what I said. He didn’t answer quickly or offhandedly. At Lake
Somerset, he once pulled in the biggest fish I’d ever seen. I told him I
thought it was big enough to win a prize. After he put the fish on the
stringer, and lit his pipe, he sat down. This time, he pulled off his frayed Sherlock
Holmes style fishing hat, which was covered with tied flies he used when fly
fishing, then wiped his forehead with his shirt sleeve. He squinted at me to
make sure I was listening. “Well, now,” he said, “I once caught a fish that was
so big, that when I pulled it out of the water it took four minutes for the
hole in the lake to fill back up.”
Twinkle. Grin.
Many times in my life, I’ve
been told by a relative or family friend that I remind them of my grandfather.
I like the comparison and consider it a terrific compliment. He had a
work-hard-then-relax kind of attitude, and he was a pretty good craftsman in
wood and metal. Although I don’t drive a giant black Cadillac with fins and
chrome and an improbable trunk, when I pull out of my garage you can almost
tell what kind of car I drive by the shape of the hole it leaves. Yet, I doubt my
craftsmanship or my car is what my relatives think of when they compare me to
my grandfather. I suspect it’s more about other attributes we share, including
my sense of humor. Once a neighbor boy watched me plant a Japanese lilac. After
the hole was dug, he asked what I planned to do with the dirt piled up beside
the new tree. I leaned on my shovel and considered the question carefully. I
looked him in the eye. “Well, now,” I said, “I guess I’ll just have to dig
another hole and bury it, won’t I?”
My grandfather died when I was
thirty. Our farm was long since sold off, and he’d retired and moved to
Florida. Still, his departure left a hole in my life, and while holes tend to
erode at the edges, the hole he left will never fill. It is by the shape of
that hole that I recall the man. I still wear his watch.
Clifford Royal
Johns
grew up on a dairy farm in Southwestern Pennsylvania. He lives in the Chicago
area with his wife and his dog where he writes and builds furniture. He is the
author of Walking Shadow, a science
fiction/mystery novel. His short stories have appeared in Shimmer, Story Station, Crossed Genres, and many other
magazines and anthologies. He recently completed his MFA in creative
writing at The University of Southern Maine.
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