From Dust

The summer dusk was soft, and the mourning dove wooed my mind with reminders of youth, when my grandfather—decades dead—sat down opposite me. We were at the back porch table facing the darkening lawn. For a moment we watched the sky turn purple-orange behind the three trees in my yard and then I finally said,

“This is where I live now. We are in Tennessee.”

Grandpa looked at me, his eyes squinting from the resurrection of light recently endured.

“Johnny?”

“Yes, I know. I still sound like a Yankee.” His laugh was rough with graveyard dust.

I didn’t cry or get upset or really notice the anomaly because I created it with words and wishes. I went inside to get him a glass of water. Suddenly nervous that I was pouring water for my fantasies, I spilled some on the ground when exiting the house. I set it on the table in front of him. He stared into the yard, wide-eyed and confused.

“Sorry about that,” I spilled more water on the table. He smelled of earth, of memory, and lost summer days. I sat in my seat. Questioning my resolve I said,

“I came by the graveyard when I graduated college. I was about forty but still. I finished. I remember when you shook my hand when I told you I signed up in the Army to go to school. And I thought that I should tell you and Grandma. Did you know I was there? Did you see me? Hear me? How does that work?”

“I don’t know how it works. I was asleep. Nobody tells you much after you leave. I was at the squad house, my chest hurt, and then I wasn’t there anymore.”

“I was at work that day and then I wasn’t. But it’s not the same, I guess.” I smiled, wondering why he was wearing a suit on such a warm night.

“Still good with words. You always had that for you. I told Verdi you were funny and smart, but you wouldn’t do your schoolwork. Not lazy, cause you’d work. Just trifling.”

“She told me after you died.”

“Can we say, left?”

“After you left.”

“What happened to your mom?” He asked, his middle daughter was my mom.

“She died three years ago. She was 76 and had been married to a nice guy

for over twenty years. He died before her.”

“Was she alone?”

“No sir.” I lied. Do the dead know our lies, see through those deceptions with the penetration of eternity?

“Good. I wasn’t alone. That made it better. Somehow. I can’t remember.”

But all this, I realize is pride’s facade. I wanted him to be proud, to know I had made “it.” Nice house, good job, a nuclear family free from, if not coarse language, coarse behavior. I wanted to download each and every time I wished he were there. Or my grandmother. We were a polytheistic family; we had three gods. The regular one that hung out where people dressed nice, smelled nice, and despised themselves for it, and Grandpa and Grandma. I wanted the funny, piano playing, storytelling Gods to know that whatever hopes and dreams they had for me, weren’t far off the mark of how it turned out. I wanted him to know my wife, my children, and my grandchildren. I told him,

“You’re not here, I know. I just wanted you to see what has happened and to be proud that I turned out somewhat okay.” He sipped the water.

“There’s that imagination, too. You ever done anything with that imagination and those words?” I wondered what a therapist would say, and how soon I could find one. I laughed.

“I write stories. No one reads them. I try to get people to read them, but they don’t. So, yes and no.”

“What did you mean, to be proud?” He took another gulp of water.

“Well, I was a fuc—messed up kid. Flunking school, going nowhere.”

“Do you remember that time you stole candy bars from the rescue squad?” He turned and stared at me from across the table. The same look he had the day he learned of my larceny.

“Yes sir. I’m still sorry.”

“Do you remember that time you stole chewing tobacco just to throw it away because it didn’t taste like bubblegum?”

“Well, come on now. That was a long time ago.”

“And when you failed tenth grade? And when you broke your mom’s washing machine? And when you wrecked her car? And how you kept getting hurt and going to the hospital so much that she got sued? When your business failed? When the lights were cut off?”

“Wow, okay.”

“Each time those things happened; you admitted it. You owned what you did. You messed up and you fixed it. Tried to at least. You got all A’s your last year of school, you worked to help pay bills, you went to the laundromat because it embarrassed your mom to do it.”

“I can see that.”

“I was always proud of you. Hell, I knew how the man would turn out from the boy I saw.”

I began to cry. I tried a nervous laugh to stop the flow, but it only brought more tears.

“No need for that. You’ve gotten old and forgot to forgive yourself. You aren’t the kid who made those mistakes. You’re just the one who remembers them best. What are you now, forty?”

“Fifty-three.”

“You’ve aged well. No smoking?”

“No sir.”

“Good, but you might want to eat a salad here n’ there.” He tapped his waifish stomach. It felt good to laugh with him again.

The mourning dove cooed as the sky faded to black. The back porch lights cut on as cicadas tuned up their instruments. A thin humidity swirled in the breeze causing the porch lights to shake and cast bizarre shadows across the yard.

“I love you and miss seeing you.” Grandpa said, looking away. “All of you. You tell all of them, I love them. But this ain’t my place or time. It’s yours now.”

“But there’s so much I need to tell.”

“And little I need to hear.”

“That was a pretty good turn of phrase.”

“Thought you’d like it.” He chuckled, some of the dryness gone. It was closer to his old laugh, what I remember of it at least.

“Well, I suppose you need to go.”

When I looked over to gauge his response, I saw the vacant chair. The water glass was where I left it. Empty.