Trunk Stories

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.

Those Boys

by Susan Moldaw

          Despite my skepticism, about a year ago I went to see a medium at a mindfulness spa in Arizona. The medium met me in the hotel lobby and led me to a small, windowless room with two straight-backed chairs and a desk between them. We sat and faced one another across the wood divide. She had full cheeks, a snub nose, and a blond bouffant that fell blowzily past her shoulders.

           “You’re here because your father wants you to understand he’s with you all the time,” she said. Her clear voice conveyed authority. She tapped her high-heeled sandals against the concrete floor.

          I reached for the box of Kleenex on the desk, my rational mind already a muddle. My father died five years ago.

          “Is there a Bill in your life?” the medium continued, looking dreamily off to the side with a slight upward curve of her lips.

          “That’s one of my sons.” I drew in my breath.

          “He talks to your father. Out loud. So do you.” She smiled kindly. “Your father wants me to tell you that he hears you.” She cocked her head and looked away. “Bill is doing well. Your father says he’s proud of him.” She frowned. “Wait. There’s another son. You have others?”

          I nodded. “Triplets,” I said. “They’re twenty-four.” Bill, Jack, and Stuart.

          “He’s telling you not to worry about them. They’re going to be okay.”

          I dabbed my eyes with the Kleenex. My father hadn’t liked my sons’ father—my ex. We’d suffered years of family drama, divorce, and the aftermath, and all along my father reassured himself—and me—that his grandsons would be okay.

          The medium smiled. “He’s a funny man, your father,” she said. “Good looking too. Wait! He’s putting his hand over his heart.” She laughed softly and said, “He loves those boys.”

          I wiped my eyes and mumbled that I knew.

          I stumbled out of there towards my room, clutching Kleenex, but by the time I slid the electronic key card into its slot and had flung myself face down onto the quilted bedspread, I was furious at the medium’s presumption. I didn’t need her meddling. I’d felt my father’s presence many times since his death. Except, I wished I could tell him that, despite everything, the boys and I were doing fine.

Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, Hawaii, 1992

          From the patio adjoining our beachfront rooms, I saw my four-year-old sons curled up on their grandfather’s—my father’s—lounge chair, stationed by itself in the middle of a vast lawn that stretched from our rooms to the beach. He was leaning back, smoking a fat cigar, and the four of them were laughing. A breeze ruffled palm trees that lined the grass along the long, curving, fine white sandy beach. The pungent, noxious odor of the cigar wafted to my room. This was our family’s third Christmas vacation with my parents at the Mauna Kea.

          What the hell is he doing smoking in front of them? I thought.

          Inside the room, I took smoked salmon and a bagel from the minibar. Breakfast was included in the hotel’s costly charge and—following my father’s example— we’d order extra from room service, stashing salmon, kippers, cottage cheese, bagels, muffins, papaya, berries, shrimp, and tomatoes in the bulging minibar.

          “At least we’ll save on lunch!” my father would say.

          My mother, deferring to his humor and what she deemed his superior judgment about money, life and family, went along too, as she mostly did, though since his death she runs her own show.

          Back on the patio, I ate while watching the lawn scene. My father sat up and the boys jumped off the chair, sprawling at his feet. He leaned over and traced something in the air just above the lawn, using the cigar as pointer. His navy T-shirt hung loosely over red bathing trunks, his straw hat lay on a towel. He always brought the hat Hawaii-bound, stowing it in the airplane’s overhead bin on top of his neatly folded navy blazer, finally plopping it on when we disembarked.

          I stopped eating and walked over.

          “Dad, can I talk with you for a minute?” I said.

          We walked slightly away from my sons. My father smiled and familiar grooves appeared along his eyes and cheeks. His brown eyes were serious.

          “Yes?” he said.

          “I don’t want you to smoke in front of them,” I said. “It sets a bad example.”

          He held the cigar behind his back. “Is your mother around?” She hated his occasional cigars and for years he hid the evidence, until he finally stopped smoking.

          “She’s at the hair salon,” I said.

          He took another puff. “They know I’m not really a smoker,” he said, just loud enough so the boys might hear. “Besides—I’m telling them about the facts of life!”

          I looked at my sons. Jack and Stuart were giggling and rolling on the lawn, silly together, as they often were. Bill was sitting quietly, with his head turned, trying it seemed, to catch the conversation.

          “The facts of life?” I said.

          “Not that.” He spoke more loudly, so there was no mistaking they could hear. “Hard work and discipline! Good values! All the things that matter.” He gave me a kiss on the cheek. “They’re good boys,” he said. “They’re going to be okay.”

San Francisco, California 1997

          My husband, nine-year old sons, and my parents were eating dinner at the Matterhorn, a cozy, wood-paneled restaurant that reminded my husband and me of our vacations spent hiking in Switzerland, both alone and with our sons. Cheese fondue bubbled in a brass pot on the white linen tablecloth. Everyone’s plates were stacked with sourdough bread. One of our sons stood in front of my husband, his face white, his eyes wide and terrified, while my husband berated him for spilling water. The other two stared at their plates, knowing any one of them might next become the object of their father’s anger. My father watched briefly with a set expression, then looked away—unable to stomach the humiliation of anyone, least of all his grandsons.

          A few days later, my father told me, “I can’t keep watching him tear those boys to shreds. Have dinners without us. We’ll visit when he’s not around.”

          We sat in our family room on a deep, red corduroy couch. My husband was out of town and my parents had dropped by. My mother was upstairs with my sons. I was struggling—privately— with my own decisions—leave the marriage, stay? What would do the boys the least harm? No options were good. My eyes fell to the white wool carpet. “I need you, Dad,” I said. “Please come with us, sometimes.”

          Wind rattled the old paned windows behind our heads. Bare tree branches tapped their code on the wavy, rippled glass. My father leaned into the softly textured pillows. Then he patted my hand.

          “I’ll be there,” he said. His voice was kind, his eyes, sad.

                    

          Five years later, I finally got out, in a contentious divorce that went to court, where a judge ordered my sons to attend Connecticut boarding schools for their first year of high school. They’d only applied to boarding schools to satisfy their father. My attorney asked for a stay, and a week later I brought the boys to testify. One by one they took the stand. They wore button down white shirts, khaki pants, and white athletic socks bulging out of their brown loafers. They looked impossibly young.

          Jack and Stuart said, no, they wanted to stay in San Francisco and didn’t want to go to boarding school. Bill said his father told him he’d bring him home on weekends, and if so, boarding school would be okay. Bill trusted his father’s promise; Stuart and Jack doubted.

          I rolled my eyes. Home to San Francisco from Connecticut on weekends. The judge and I locked glances. I felt certain she read my hollow-eyed plea for her not to send my sons away.

          A week later, determined to get them out of the marital fray, she upheld her prior order and sent them to three different high schools in Connecticut.

          I visited my sons midway through the first term in October for conferences and vacations. I walked into Stuart’s dorm room at dusk and found him ensconced on a bottom bunk, leaning against the Indian bedspread that covered the wall behind him.

“Well?” he said, looking at me from the darkness. Stuart had had enough of boarding school; they’d all had enough. My sons were counting on me to bring them home.

“I’ve changed my mind. Boarding school is the best option.” My voice cracked. “There’d be no peace in San Francisco.” Their father and I agreed on nothing.

Shadows darkened, obscuring Stuart’s expression. A door slammed, somebody turned up the volume on a stereo and Metallica blasted. Stuart got up and picked a gray hooded sweatshirt off the floor.

“Whatever,” he shrugged, pretending he didn’t care, though I knew he was angry. He pulled on the sweatshirt and we left for dinner.

Bill understood boarding school was for the best, when I told him; Jack was resigned. No one had come home on a weekend.

“You’re doing the right thing,” my father said later, in San Francisco. His encouragement loomed large for me. He was determined to step into the void left by my sons’ father. He and my mother were already making plans to fly East to visit each school in February on Grandparents’ Day.

          The four years of boarding school melded into one long visit East for me and my parents, punctuated by the boys’ school breaks and summers in San Francisco. My parents would meet the boys and me in Connecticut or New York; sometimes they met the boys without me, usually one son at a time because their school calendars differed. In New York, we always stayed at the Regency Hotel. I had stayed there years before with my parents during college, and later, on business. The Regency had morphed in style since those days, from Louis Quatorze to business sleek. Dinners were at Gino’s, one block over from the hotel. The Maître d’ greeted me and my mother and shook my father’s hand, calling him by name and bringing him a Grey Goose vodka, and the boys each a Roy Rogers. Breakfasts, my father and the boys ate around the corner at the Viand Coffee Shop, my father always having scorned the Regency breakfast as overpriced, though my mother and I ate there. My sons told me how they perched at the counter with its view of Greek cooks yelling orders, frying eggs, and making to-go bags at the register. On one of their trips they coined an expression, “LBTJ” (let’s blow this joint), a phrase they employ to this day in honor of their grandfather. Always, at the end of a visit, my father smiled and shook his head.

          “Those boys,” he’d say to me, “they’re going to be okay.”

          We were lucky that their high school graduations fell on separate days, during two consecutive weekends at the end of May. In April, my father and I took all three boys shopping for graduation suits at Paul Stuart in Manhattan, where years before my dad had shopped with my now ex-husband. The manager fitted their jackets and pinned their trousers. Afterward, we went to the shoe department, where my father insisted on buying the boys expensive dress shoes.

“They’ll last a lifetime,” he said, well pleased, as if a good pair of shoes could protect his grandsons from the vagaries of life.

 The summer after the boys’ graduations, my father called to tell me in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice that he had cancer. “It’s a question of attitude,” he asserted. “I’m going to beat it.”

I wasn’t worried. He was invincible. A few days later, my mother phoned, using the voice she reserved for emphatically stating her husband’s needs. “Your father must hear from his daughters every day,” she said. My sister, in Santa Fe, said she had called to tell her the same thing. I felt slightly more concerned about his health then, but thought this was just my mother’s usual overzealous protection.

Nonetheless, I began daily calls and weekly visits to their home in Atherton. One Sunday my father and I drove to a small strip center a few miles from his home for non-fat frozen yogurt. He wore his favorite navy-blue sweats and a baseball cap. Now that he was retired from a lifetime in the retail business, he had time to kibbutz, and he quizzed the manager about sales figures.

“Terrific!” he said, learning that business was outshining last year’s. We ate the yogurt in the car and rushed home to watch the start of his beloved Washington Week in Review. In his library office, he settled into the leather recliner, and after a few minutes, I looked over. He was snoring under his mohair blanket.

That winter, he announced he was cancer-free, and I was elated. My parents spent a joyous two weeks with my sister and her family in Hawaii. But soon after they got home, the cancer popped up in a new spot.

I asked the cancer surgeon why. We stood in a long hallway at Stanford Hospital. My father was getting radiation treatment.

“It’s an invasive cancer,” he said. “You knock off a few tumors and new ones take their place.”

It flashed through my mind that maybe he wasn’t going to beat this disease, but what I mostly thought was how discouraged my usually optimistic father would be—good news followed by bad, on and on. I must have looked dejected because the surgeon touched my arm and said, “It’s tough.” He had invented a cyberknife and had used it to remove tumors from my father just months before. “I’m going to invest!” my father had said, after the operation. He loved all things entrepreneurial.

In May, after their first year of college—Bill in LA, Stuart in Massachusetts, and Jack in Florida—my sons flew home. My father was spending most of his time in bed by then, worn out from his radiation treatments. I picked the boys up from the airport and drove to my parents’ home. I was worried about how my sons would react to seeing their gaunt and ailing grandfather, but they went straight to his bed and got under the covers with him. Later, after they left, I walked into my father’s room. He patted the bed. I sat down and leaned close. His expression was earnest, the way it always was when he spoke from the heart.

“Those boys,” he said. “They’re going to be okay.”

After a week of sleeping at my parents’, one night I went home to take a breather. The next morning, I returned to take my father for his radiation treatment, but when I got there I saw that he was sleeping heavily and knew I’d never get him up for the appointment. I went to find my mother. We stood uncertainly by the side of the bed. My father’s chest rose and fell. I grabbed the phone and called his doctor, and then a hospital transport service. I phoned my sister. “Come now,” I said.

A few hours later, three men with a gurney came into my parents’ bedroom. They went to the bed and lifted him. My father cried from the pain in his back. They put him in the ambulance and my mother went with him. I followed behind. Midway to the hospital, sirens started. Someone stuck a hand out the ambulance window and waved at me to follow. We sped to the hospital and they whisked my father into the emergency room. By now, my sister had arrived.

In the emergency room, my father perked up when the doctor asked him who the president was.

“George Bush, the bastard!” he said.

He spent three days in the hospital, hooked up to machines. My sister, mother, and I took turns staying overnight. My sons came and went. My father mostly slept, breathing through a plastic mask. One afternoon, I was standing in the hallway with my sons. A nurse rushed out. “He opened his eyes!” she said.

We filed into the room. One by one we went to his bedside to say good-bye.

“I love you, Dad,” I said. Tears streamed, though I knew he didn’t want to see me cry.

His eyes were warm and kind. “I love you,” he said, through the plastic mask.

The day of my father’s funeral, the sun shone and the air was cool. The boys wore their graduation suits and shoes. My mother, sister, sons and I each put a rose into my father’s grave and a shovelful of dirt. At the end of the service, as everyone was leaving, I looked at my sons. They stood in a group hug, their arms around each other, their heads and hearts close. They’d grown into loving young men—straight shooters, too— like their grandfather.

A few years before he died, my father walked into my home office in San Francisco. The bookshelves were filled with photos of my sons.

“There’s no photo of us!” he said, referring to himself and my mother.

He was wrong. There was one photo hidden behind my sons’ photos. How little I understood, then, that someday I’d long to see my father’s smile, his eyes, his face. There are many more photos of him now. There’s a picture I particularly like from Stuart’s high school graduation. He and my mother flank Stuart, who has a big unlit cigar stuck in his mouth. My mother’s pearl earrings and gold and ivory carnation pin sparkle. My father and Stuart are both wearing silk twill ties, my father’s an all-over pattern of yellow and white ovals on a red background, Stuart’s a red and white stripe. They’d bought them together at Paul Stuart. My father looks pale behind his oversize sunglasses. It was a broiling Connecticut day. He’d had cancer then, but we didn’t know it.

I woke in the middle of the night in tears two months after my father died. I had the start of a eulogy for his memorial service. On the small notepad by the side of my bed, I wrote, ‘When my heart broke, his heart broke.’

          I sometimes stay at the Regency on visits to New York. One time, I took Jack, who transferred to a college there, to see the musical, The Book of Mormon. Afterward at the hotel, Jack did homework sprawled on the enormous bed. He talked about his friends and life in the city. Listening to him, I realized he was only a few years older than I’d been on my first stay at the Regency with my parents. If my father were with Jack and me, he would shake his head and complain about my breakfast bill, then scrounge around the mini-bar for shelled peanuts. He would quiz Jack about his homework, and want to know what exactly did he plan to do when he finally got that college degree, knowing that—whatever Jack decided—he, and his brothers, were going to be okay.

          I’d like to tell him he was right—not that I ever doubted. Each of my sons inherited their grandfather’s entrepreneurial spirit and desire to live a purposeful life. He’d be proud.

          At the end of my visit with the medium she told me to watch for hawks—they were messengers from my father, a sign that he was around.

          A simple Internet search reveals that hawks are believed to be messengers from the divine, with powers of awareness and enlightenment. Any medium worth her salt could have said it, to anyone.

          And yet—a few years ago I noticed hawks flying at the place north of San Francisco where my husband—I’m happily remarried now—and I spend summers. I like to sit outside and watch them soar.

          “How do they do that?” I asked my husband. He’s a pilot; he knows these things.

          “They’re carried by rising air currents,” he said.

 I watched the hawks, thought of my father, and knew our boys would be just fine.

Susan Moldaw works as a chaplain in San Francisco. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Brain, Child Magazine, Broad Street, Lilith, Literary Mama, Narrative, Ruminate, and others. 

What Doesn't Kill You

by Helen Coats

On June 16, 1944, a pack of cigarettes saved my life.

          My grandfather, only twenty-one years old at the time, lost his squadron just outside Budapest after his fortieth mission as a P-38 Lightning fighter pilot. He dipped several hundred feet above a lake to search for his friends—low enough to remove his oxygen mask. He stuck his hand into his flight suit pocket and fished around for something—maybe a stick of Juicy Fruit. He accidentally dislodged his box of Lucky Strikes. It fell to the cockpit floor. As my grandfather leaned down to retrieve his smokes, two Messerschmitts ambushed him from above, shooting directly at the acrylic bubble canopy where his head had been just a second before. The gas tank exploded. Flames engulfed my grandfather’s arm. The plane shuddered and groaned as its nose tipped toward the lake.

When pilots ejected from P-38s, they often snapped their backs, struck by the plane’s twin booms. Not my grandfather. He launched above the wreckage and cleared the water below. His parachute barely had time to slow his descent. So many things should have killed him—the sulfurous rain of debris, the bone-jarring impact, the thicket of wooden spikes bristling not fifty feet away. But he survived.

          The Nazis sent him to Stalag Luft III, the air force prison camp featured in the movie, The Great Escape. There was no escape for my grandfather. Instead, there were gray days. Days when disease settled on the camp like falling ash. Days that smelled of earth and mildew and ten thousand unwashed men, their ears tuned for news, any news, of rescue.

          None came.

          I only see my grandfather once a year. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, about eleven hours from my house. Shadows of his imprisonment cling to the walls. A Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross and other medals I cannot name glimmer from a hanging display case in the basement. The last piece of his P-38 Lightning’s ruptured engine greets visitors in the foyer. But my grandfather rarely talks about these in front of me. He’s quick to peer over the top of his morning game of solitaire or daily crossword puzzle and dismiss his time in Stalag Luft III as little more than an episode of Hogan’s Heroes.

          And in a few, small ways, this is true. Since the guards at Stalag Luft III were all former pilots, they held a grudging respect for their captive counterparts, an attitude not found in countless other prisoner-of-war camps. The security was just lax enough that my grandfather and his friends managed to smuggle in a radio to listen to BBC news. But I do not believe for one second that his situation was as comfortable as he claims.

         

My grandfather spent his first few weeks as a prisoner-of-war in solitary confinement. He kept his mind busy reliving lessons the nuns taught him at Catholic school. His dry tongue rasped over Bible verses and prayers and Shakespeare. Later, when the food ran out, my grandfather learned to stomach spiders. I wonder if he preferred to swallow them whole, or pick their legs off one by one, counting the days since his last meal.

          One time, the Nazis stripped my grandfather naked in an interrogation chamber and saw that he was circumcised. The room rippled with their cries of “Jew, Jew.” They raised their guns. He raised his hands. He said, “No, Roman Catholic.” A translator repeated his words. The Germans didn’t believe him, but a priest convinced an officer to check his dog tags. He confirmed his Christian faith. The Nazis backed away and lowered their weapons. Little did any of them know his mother was half-Polish, half-Jewish.

In winter, 1945, the Germans and their prisoners marched away from Stalag Luft III and the approaching Soviet forces. Rumors flickered down the line. Some of the prisoners believed that the Nazis were taking them to death camps as a last-ditch attempt to wound the unstoppable Allies. Angered voices rose from the crowd in English, French, and other languages, but the Germans pressed them onward. In all the commotion, no one noticed as my grandfather and his friend slipped away and hid in a ditch by the side of the road. One row of Germans passed by. Then another. The two watched as the captives and prisoners slid away into the distance. Thousands of men melted into a single column– a dark snake winding its way north.

          I often wonder what would have happened if my grandfather had tried to escape earlier, if he would have been shot. In March of 1944, just three months before my grandfather’s initial capture, seventy-six men fled Stalag Luft III. Seventy-three were recaptured. And of those seventy-three, fifty were executed. The more I think about it, the more I am astounded by the sheer number of times my grandfather could have died and didn’t. He could have crashed in that lake and drowned. And what if he hadn’t crashed at all? What if he had flown on, only to be killed later in some air battle over Berlin?

          But he hadn’t. He made it home, his burns faded, a Purple Heart in his pocket. He returned to his wife. To raise a family. To name and feed and teach a little girl, who, in 1998, became my mother. My mother, who passed down my grandfather’s eyes to me. His eyes that never needed glasses, so that even at ninety-three he can read the timer on the kitchen stove a room away.

         

Now, when I stand in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, I look at the shelves of cigarettes behind the counter. Marlboros and Winstons, Camels and Newports. I will never smoke them. I know they are deadly, like the fire my grandfather faced on June 16, 1944. But when I see them, I feel only gratitude.

          Gunfire and smoke and cigarettes. In spite of this—because of this—here I am.

          We all survived.

Helen Coats is currently enrolled as a Liberal Arts major at Purdue University. Her fiction is forthcoming in One Teen Story and Toasted Cheese. In her spare time, she keeps a research blog on film scores and storytelling (www.thecreditsconductor.wordpress.com) and tweets at @HelenJackets.

Fanning the Flames

by Shira Sebban

“How are you, Saba?”

“I? I am old.”

This question and answer routine would be repeated each morning like a familiar ritual when we would ring to check on the “Old Boy” as he was affectionately known, who still lived alone in a flat nearby.

I assume he appreciated our concern, although he never said so. Still we need not have worried … not then. Relishing the solitude that enabled him to read, think and write—so long as it was interspersed with alternate dinners at his son’s and daughter’s homes each evening—he was keen to preserve his autonomy for as long as possible.

Until well into his eighties, Saba (Hebrew for grandfather) would continue his exercise and diet regime, doing daily sit-ups and stretches, taking afternoon naps, munching on carrot and celery sticks, and preserving prunes in jars, which took up almost all-available bench space in his kitchen, be it at home in Melbourne, Australia, or wherever he was living overseas. I can still recall our family kitchen in London, filled to overflowing with my grandfather’s preserves, his snores emanating from the tiny bedroom next to the one I shared with my sister.

Not to say, however, that he lacked a sweet tooth. He could whip up a mean trifle and revelled in long smorgasbord lunches at fancy hotels, where he would indulge in chocolate éclairs and other treats, acknowledging his diabetes by popping a sweetener into the habitual tea with lemon he drank after every meal.

Lemons were so important to him that when he was asked to look after us as teenagers while our parents were overseas, he would dutifully arrive each evening for dinner and promptly disappear outside to water the lemon tree, which he believed would prevent the fruit’s skin from thickening. In the morning, he would depart for the peace and quiet of his apartment again, where he could spend the day in undisturbed contemplation.

Classical music was his constant companion, be it tapes he had made himself or the local classical music public radio station, with which he had a love-hate relationship, railing against the “moaning and groaning of illiterate so-called contemporary composers.” In one letter to the station, he urged such composers to test their claim to have popular support within the open market rather than “bludge on the public purse and coerce the people to listen to their incompetent noise-making.”

He was also partial to international melodramas, often joining the family in front of the television after dinner, when he would walk around jangling keys and loose change in his pockets during particularly tense moments. Keen to avoid confrontation whenever possible, he would burst into song—usually the old Russian folk tune Ochi chyomye (“Dark Eyes”)—whenever a family disagreement arose, which did not involve him.

Every so often, craving intellectual companionship, Saba would pack a bag, sling it over his shoulder, and head off overseas to Europe, his old home in Israel, or the United States, where cousins, who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust, were scattered. He would visit each in turn, and they would host family dinners in his honor and write him letters in English, Hebrew, Yiddish or Polish when he was back in Melbourne, sharing how they had delighted in his company.

During these trips, which could last several months or sometimes even years, he would commune with philosophers and historians at academic institutions in London, Boston, or Tel Aviv or on long walks through the Austrian Alps, even though he himself had not had a formal secular education and, to the envy of his grandchildren, had never even sat an exam.

He strove to cultivate a personal relationship with us from a young age too, asking for letters from each of his six grandchildren while he was overseas. If we were remiss in writing, he would remind our parents that we owed him a letter, and he liked nothing better than to respond to our questions, the more philosophical the better. I revelled in his attention—especially on the rare occasions when I was fortunate enough to join him on his travels—and placed him on a pedestal: my wise Saba could do no wrong.

Blessed with an inquiring and incisive mind, an insatiable desire for knowledge, and a photographic memory, he would peruse erudite tomes on a wealth of subjects in second-hand bookstores, sending crates of books back home, where he would autograph and catalogue them as part of his own library or distribute them as gifts to family and friends. As he explained in a letter to his daughter, “I will at least leave an inheritance, not in diamonds and jade, but in books, which were costly to me not only in money but in time and effort.”

I treasure that inheritance today, my study’s shelves arrayed with books my Saba gave me. The one I value most is his personal copy of The Book of Jewish Knowledge, an encyclopaedia of Jewish learning from the 1960s, which he presented to my husband and me during his last visit to our home, scraps of paper still marking the pages most important to him.

When bestowing a book as a gift, he would always include an inscription, ranging from a birthday wish or expression of love to an elaborate desire for social cohesion. The dedication on our last gift reads: “Wishing you success and a humane understanding of the kindness and social variety of others. Best wishes from an old octogenarian. Saba.” For he strongly believed that everyday human relations should be conducted with empathy, truth, and love.

During his travels, he would occasionally purchase a work of art for himself or as a gift. He thought that while art appreciation is subject to individual taste and values, “striving to enjoy art in all its forms” helps “a civilized person to cultivate a taste for aesthetics and so foster an understanding of beauty.”

As he wrote to my parents after buying them an antique Tibetan Buddha in Spain, “Art objects should serve as a means to inspire the most lofty thoughts. But should a collection serve only as an accumulation of wealth or to show off, to my mind it is wrong.”

The patriarch of the family, Saba would preside over gatherings, regaling the table with such passions as the problems of justice and of individual freedom within the rule of law. I recall many festive dinners where the extended family would gather around the long dining room table with my grandfather at the head expounding his views. No two dinners were alike, as he could be relied upon to present his

arguments from multiple angles.

Fundamentally, he believed we all face a personal choice between leading an autonomous life of rationality, integrity, and dignity in the human world of ideas or a life of emotion, imitation, and subservience in what he termed “the domesticated animal kingdom.” As he wrote to a friend, “Does a man act out of rational argument or is man an animal whose elected shepherds know best what is good for him?”

Alternatively, he might have been keen to discuss what he had read that particular day which, given his eclectic interests, could range from a biography of Galileo Galilei, or the writings of Bertrand Russell, to biblical commentaries on Abraham, Moses, or Samuel, various newspaper articles, which he would mark for others to read, or even an account of the Shakers, a utopian Christian sect, some of whose former American settlements he visited and whose virtual demise fascinated him. Even while on an otherwise disappointing holiday in Tahiti, he derived enjoyment from reading daily doses from a volume of Albert Einstein’s essays, which he had happened to pick up at the Sydney airport.

Anyone brave enough to attempt an answer to what Saba meant as a rhetorical question would usually be met with a resounding “no” or, far less frequently, an “oh” in agreement (both words pronounced with a short ‘o’ sound) and a lengthy, passionate exposition of his views. Yet he did not lack for sparring partners.

“How do you know that you know?” “What do you mean by God?” Influenced by the late eminent philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, whose seminars Saba attended at the London School of Economics in the 1960s and who later became a life-long friend, Saba emphasized the importance of having a skeptical outlook on life and of continuously questioning one’s premises.

In contrast to his own childhood experience within an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, he argued that parents do not have the right to impose religious beliefs on their children, as such convictions are open to doubt and “It is up to parents to guide the young ones with unquestionable honesty.” At the same time, he believed that an agnostic is still free to maintain traditions as an expression of cultural and communal adherence. He continued to attend synagogue fairly regularly into old age, always ensuring he had a book to read discretely during the rabbi’s sermons.

He vigorously opposed the use of force in disciplining children, arguing that physical punishment may “influence the child to look at the world as a society where reason is not a way of life, only force is the language of grownups. The child does not accept the beating as a consequence of being wrong, but rather reflects that grownups beat children because children are weak and cannot fend for themselves.” He was speaking from personal experience, his own father having used force against him. I never recall Saba raising a hand against anyone. For him, the power of persuasion depended on one’s choice of words.

Self-deprecating and able to converse with young and old alike, he cultivated a multitude of friends around the world. Academics and thinkers enjoyed the free exchange of ideas in his company, while students wrote him letters of appreciation for helping to clarify their thinking or correct their theses. People generously opened their homes to him and upon his departure, would write, requesting another visit. He maintained a rich correspondence with many who broadly admired his values and ideas, as well as the freedom of his chosen lifestyle, which he described as that of “a man divorced of daily responsibilities.”

Nevertheless, Saba always considered himself an outsider, and although his vocabulary was highly sophisticated, he was particularly unsure of his written English expression, writing drafts of important letters and texts, which were often corrected by his daughter.

He advised those around him to do our best to enrich our lives with, what he termed, “mental-spiritual interests.” As he wrote to my teenage sister and me: “Very soon, your holidays start and you have a swimming pool, books, a piano, cello and violin, what a rich life in front of you!” Whenever his children or grandchildren would ask his advice on our future studies, he would steer us in the direction of a great body of thought such as Science or Philosophy and encourage us to be creative and aim for excellence. He set an example by striving to learn mathematics at the University of Illinois in his fifties.

Yet, he remained highly critical of academia, which he considered to have largely degenerated into “coercive systems of education,” staffed by incompetent “charlatans” who felt immune from scrutiny. Careers were not as important to him as the sheer love of learning, although he certainly emphasized the need to work, which he averred to have learned from his father. In later life, he would often tell stories of his father—the last Jew to have a full religious burial in the central Polish town of Zdunska Wola—acknowledging that he had instilled in his children a love of Jewish learning, as well as an appreciation for the importance of being responsible for oneself and one’s actions. As Saba explained, “self-reliance and self-respect are important for self-fulfilment, which is the difference between man as a person and man as a domesticated animal.”

My grandfather always remained true to his principles—until, as he put it, he lost his “I”, Alzheimer’s disease ultimately robbing him of whom he was as a person. In my mind’s eye, I can still see him sitting in the middle of his room, endlessly twisting a Rubik’s Cube around in his hands. Up to that time, however, he lived as if he was on an insatiable intellectual quest. As he wrote to me, “Life is full of exciting curiosities, joy, and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries.” Integrity, autonomy, and family were among the values he held dear and are now those I strive to instil in my children.

Saba was my mentor and anchor, who showed me that I could do anything to which I set my mind. He encouraged me to stand up for what I believe in and not be afraid to admit I had made a mistake, learn from it, and move on. My children may not have the privilege of growing up in his company, but they can still benefit from the rich and courageous legacy he left behind.

Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, who is passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She has served on the board of her children’s school for the past 12 years, including two terms as vice-president. Her work has appeared in online and print publications, including Eureka Street, Jewish Literary Journal, The Forward, Australian Jewish News, Alzheimer’s Reading Room, and Online Opinion. She is currently working on a series of creative nonfiction stories based on her mother’s diary, which the family only discovered after her death. You can read more of her work at: shirasebban.wordpress.com.

The Shop

by Robert Maynor

The Shop sits on a road called Farm. It’s a cinderblock building on a concrete slab that is divided in half by a thin wall. One half is offices, the other is a warehouse full of tools and steel pipe, an old Murray lawnmower without a hood, a white 1994 Ford F-250, tubs of Gojo, motor-oil, two tall wooden shelves full of pipe fittings, an ice-machine, a STIHL calendar with bikini models on it, five-gallon buckets, a cardboard cutout of Bill Elliot, a big monkey stuffed with beans, ladders, one hundred empty cans of Kodiak, a scissor lift. Across the street is a transmission shop. To the left is an empty lot where a VW bus is parked with sweet-gums growing out of the windows.

My grandfather bought the Shop sometime in the early eighties after telling the bigwigs at Grinnell to suck his ass and after working for a little while from my grandmother’s kitchen table.

My grandfather will be turning seventy soon. He likes to talk about retiring. I think if he really does retire, he’ll die, despite his health. Good health can only take a man so far. 

        His secretary, Nance, is at least as old as he is. She still uses a typewriter and a rolodex and sticks post-it notes all over the Shop like they’re wallpaper. She was always kind of fat, but these days it’s gotten to where it’s almost fascinating. Normally my grandfather hates fat people, even though he’s growing a little liquor gut himself. He yells at Nance like he’s married to her.

        My dad started working for my grandfather when he was seventeen, as a helper. After he graduated, he went to school in Sumter for two years and got an Associate’s degree in Forest Management, then went to work full-time fitting pipe. He is forty-seven now. He hates his job. I think he hates his life. He haunts the Shop like a ghost.

        When my dad goes to the gas station for a drink or a can of chew, he brings Nance back a snack-cake or a pack of Jolly Ranchers. He always picks on her about Jesus. She thinks he’s the funniest man in the world. She probably loves him more than she loves Jesus.

        When I was sixteen, I started cleaning the Shop. They paid me fifty dollars a week to scrub the commodes and vacuum the floors inside. My grandfather gave me a key. It was the first key I ever had to anything. My dad gave me an apron.

        “Don’t pay no attention to that dickhead,” my grandfather said, grinning beneath his thin little mustache.

        “I don’t,” I said.

        My grandfather keeps a lot of pictures in his office of me and my cousins; my dad and my aunt and uncle; my grandmother. There’s a stuffed pheasant on the wall and a piece of paper with a cartoon buzzard that says: “Patience, my ass. I’m going out and kill something.” I’ve never known what that means. There’s also about fifty copies of handprints tacked over the window from biggest to smallest, with the owner’s name written on the bottom of each one.

        When I was seventeen, I had sex with a girl named July in that office, on a drafting table, at a kind of weird angle. Afterwards, cleaning the toilets, my back was sore as hell. Driving her home, the whole car stunk like bleach.

        At the Shop, trucks cling to the parking lot like the shed skins of men. My dad drives a tan colored Chevrolet with a broken tailgate. My grandfather drives a Ford Sport-Trac: it’s green. It used to have two gold racing stripes down the middle, but it doesn’t anymore. My uncle drives a two-wheel drive F-150; clean and well-oiled, like him. The workers drive dirty, faceless trucks that cough when you crank them.

        In the mornings they gather, these working men, in the lot like dogs. They are every color. They stand in a broken circle, wearing short-sleeves, even in winter—thankful for the cold. One of them has a mustache and one of them has an eyelid that sags half-way over his eyeball. They don’t drink coffee. My father stands before them like a priest. He lays blueprints out on the hood of some truck and draws on them with a square pencil sharpened with a knife. He brings home a little over eight-hundred dollars a week.

        My uncle moved to the Shop from Texas. He is my dad’s younger brother. He lived in Texas for my entire life with his wife and two poodles, one black and one white. They knew how to do tricks, like play dead. When he moved here, my grandmother said he was coming home. The floor of his office is covered in the shells of sunflower seeds. Sometimes he leaves his radio on over the weekend. He tries to teach Nance how to email.

        My own brother loves to go to the Shop. He’s eleven now. He climbs up in the lift and grabs the joystick like it’s his own dick and drives the thing around like a madman. He hooks the safety chain onto one of his belt loops, but he never goes up. He says he’s never going to college. He says he’s going to own a Shop that sells and works on lifts.

        “There’s only one problem,” my dad says. “You’re scared to go up without me.”

        My dad’s office is outside, in the warehouse. It has a cracked tile floor and a desk and a metal folding chair that I’ve never seen him sit in. He wears boots every day until the leather begins to peel off of the steel toes and then he throws them away and buys another pair.

        I quit cleaning the shop when I went to college and they hired a woman to do it. I took up working odd hours for a plumber.

        “School comes first,” my grandfather said.

        “I should’ve know you’d turn full queer,” my dad said. He calls plumbers hockey jockeys. “There’s only three things you need to know to be a plumber,” he says. “Shit flows downhill, payday is on Friday, and knockoff time is at 3:30.”

        I quit that job too.

        There’s a squirrel that lives in a pine tree that rises up over the Shop like a steeple. It jumps from its tree onto a power-line and then from there onto the roof. My grandfather wants it to be killed because he says it’s getting into the Shop through the roof vents and eating the insulation. My uncle bought a pellet gun and spends at least two hours every day trying to shoot the squirrel. If he ever kills it, I think he’ll cut the tail off and zip it up in his fly and walk around with it hanging out like that until it rots.

        “You know,” my dad says, eating a gas station hotdog off the hood of his truck, his shirt soaked through with sweat, his knuckles black and scabbed; he is smiling with the thought in the corner of his head that in a few hours he will drive home and have the opportunity to run his truck headfirst into an oak tree, but won’t; will go home instead to my mother and that crumbling yellow shack and count the hours until he can go back to the Shop; leave his family behind for a little while; further break his gnarled back. “That ain’t the only squirrel that can climb.”

        Someone painted the front door of the Shop red. It looks like lipstick on an old woman. It shows her age: her tits are sagging, there’s cobwebs in her eyes, her carpet has grown moldy and is starting to stink. She could use a new set of shingles.

        My grandfather will be turning seventy soon. My dad will be fifty, half dead. Nance goes home at 4:30, and my uncle knocks off at five. When the men come back from their jobs, they get in their emphysematous vehicles and leave. My grandfather goes out into the warehouse and runs a push-broom over every inch of the cement floor. My father sits on an upturned bucket, reading the paper and spitting into a bottle of motor oil.

        “Go home, boy,” my grandfather says. “Go home.”

        “I will.”

        “There’s nothing left to do here.” He leans his broom against the wall and stands in an open bay-door and looks out. The sun is beginning to set over the top of the transmission shop. He is nothing but a shadow.

        He reaches up and grabs a string, pulls the door shut, and the whole warehouse is dark. My dad folds his paper and stands. “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he says.

        “I’ll be right here.” They go inside to my grandfather’s office together. They look silently at the photographs strewn about the room like dust—vestiges of another life outside of the Shop. They turn off all of the lights, lock the doors, and go out to the parking lot. They nod their heads and get into their trucks and drive towards home.

Robert Maynor is from the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He has worked as a commercial plumber, dishwasher, cook, landscaper, and musician. His stories and essays have previously been published in Bartleby Snopes and Lander University’s New Voices. He is twenty-two years old.