Part Two
Jimmy went on.
He told me about lining up for beatings administered by their grandfather – for disobedience, for failure to move quickly enough to do what he had told them to do, for mistakes made in their strawberry fields. It never mattered who had done what. Jimmy tried but could not describe the feeling of oppression that came with their never knowing whether it was best to be the first one in line or the last. Depending on how mad he was, granddad tended either to save his strength so that he could beat all of them with equal fervor or he held back a little on the first one so that the last in line could get the worst of his ire or he would wail on the first one and be tuckered out by the time he got to the last of them. Sometimes, the children bumped into one another in terror of just not knowing and that made granddad all the crazier.
“Mmmm hmmm,” came from the kitchen and “Granddaddy,” tiny voiced and plaintive from somewhere behind me.
“Come on,” said Leonie, turning from the sink, and three children – two boys and a girl – spilled out of a hidden doorway into the living room and stood, tense and bare legged, as Leonie moved towards them. She herded them across the room and through another door and followed them inside, closing the door behind them, switch in hand.
“That’s Jessie’s kids. My oldest boy’s kids,” Jimmy explained.
I would know them only by their cries from the bathroom.
“Ow!”
“Hurry up, then.”
“I gotta go bad, Grandma.”
“Wash them hands good.”
“Me, next.”
“Ow, Grandma!”
The toilet flushed but once. The bathroom door opened and three children came out, relieved. Leonie herded them into their room and closed the door and returned to her post in the kitchen.
“Heh,” came from the deeply shadowed kitchen corner. “Heh.”
Now, I had to go. At the very least, I had to turn over the tape which, by my reckoning, had but fifteen minutes or so left on side “A.” Going into the bathroom was unavoidable. Before I went, it occurred to me to inquire of the shadowed specter what was so damned funny.
I excused myself and headed for the door through which Leonie and her grandchildren had so recently emerged. I pushed open the door, closed it firmly behind me. I scanned the dimly lit room. There was a night light plugged into the baseboard next to the toilet. It gave off just enough light for me to seen hundreds of roaches scurrying along the seat and diving headlong into the toilet bowl. Dozens more crammed themselves out of sight beneath towels lying on the floor beside the tub. Still more climbed up and over the half closed shower curtain whose translucence did not hide them. Their sisters, brothers, parents, cousins crawled, scampered, ran for their lives; tried to make themselves invisible in those still murky corners along the floor and the walls. I let out a breath and stepped further into the room. I flipped the tape without removing the recorder from my pocket. I reached out and flushed the toilet with one finger. I turned on hot water in the sink and let it run for a moment. I stuck the offended finger into the now steaming stream and wiped it on my skirt. I turned the water off again, waited a beat and calmly left the room.
In the kitchen, Leonie let up a shade over the window in the back door. The dark that had inhabited that corner like a pet before the fire, diminished by degrees from bottom to top. Gnarled toes peaked out from beneath a length of blue sleeping bag, black in places with accumulated filth. The larger wheel of a dilapidated wheelchair, slightly askew, had been pushed back against the side of the chifferobe. Twisted fingers, bent wrists, the bare torso decorated by cross hatch and starburst scars, twisted, turkey gullet neck that forced the head sideways, the narrow jaw working a toothless, drooling mouth, cataract dimmed eyes, sporadic puffs of kinky, white hair, all hungry for a moment in the light. A man.
I returned to my place on the couch just as Jimmy, taking a last drag on a hand rolled smoke, came in through the front door. He resumed his seat, smiling.
“Who is that?” I whispered, pointing.
“Don’t worry. He can’t hear you. It’s granddad.”
Jimmy laughed and an echoing “heh heh” came from the kitchen.
“Granddad?”
“I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“His girlfriend didn’t kill him. She only crippled him. Hattie, that’s my sister, she moved in with him so he could stay in the old house. He liked to sit by the window all the time. Wasn’t no trouble. Then our Daddy got out of jail and come to visit, thinking we was all still there. Granddaddy shot him dead on the porch. Court said he was crazy, but Hattie wouldn’t have him no more and wouldn’t nobody else take him in, so me and Leonie brung him on home.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“He ain’t gonna talk to you.”
I had to try, but Jimmy was right. Granddaddy laughed and choked and coughed up phlegm, but he did not talk.
[previously published in The Writers Post Journal, April 2004]
Wood Shed Writers 
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