He called me ‘Jessie’ once. I was trying to tell him about Moses and the cave. I even showed him the rattlesnake skull. “You see it, don’t you, Granpaw?”
“Jessie,” he said. “What you doing with that gun?”
I was holding up the pan of water. Granny scraped the beard off Granpaw’s neck with a straight razor she held up like a wing. Every now and then she’d splash the pan-water with the blade. Silvery soapy water now, water mixed with old beard.
All of a sudden, Granpaw got up out of the wheelchair and started grumbling about his hat. No drooling. No retard sounds. Just crabby old Granpaw-words, like before.
I was glad.
“You’ll fall, Strode,” Granny said.
“I had it on just this morning!” Granpaw said.
“You ain’t had nothin’ on that head except what little hairs you got. Hat’s where it usually is, on that nail by the door.”
Granpaw put his hawk eye on me. He put it on my chickens, Elvis and Johnny, both half asleep on the front porch steps. He put it on Willis, who sat with his back against a post drawing on a pad. Granny had tied a towel around his neck. Foamy white shaving cream hung off the end of his chin. It was spread like cake icing up one side of his jaw.
Granny gave him a hard look. “Strode? You back?”
“I’m tired of sitting around here.” Granpaw ditch-walked over to Willis and put his hand out. “What you doing there, boy? Let me see.”
“Praise God, he is back,” Granny said.
Willis smiled and handed his paper up to Granpaw.
Granpaw wiped off his chin with the towel and looked at the paper. “Sumbitch.”
“Don’t be saying that,” Granny said.
“This here’s good as one a them camry pictures, Mattie! Just you look!” Granpaw turned with the picture and showed it to Granny and me. It was a picture of Granny shaving Granpaw — of me standing next to her with the pan of water. Granpaw had a dumb look on his face, mouth half open.
“We always knowed Willis could draw,” Granny said. “You best sit down now.”
“Time I was gettin’ back to the fields,” Granpaw said.
“Not while I’m alive,” Granny said.
Granpaw put his hand up to the back of his neck. “I feel like I been asleep a long time. I had a bad dream Mattie. I dreamed we was about to lose our place and they wasn’t nothing I could do about it. Have I been?”
“Have you been what?”
“Sleepin’, by grabs!”
“You can see where you’ve been. Look at that picture Willis made.”
Granpaw looked again at the picture then let it go down by his side. “I remember Ruby. I remember her face. It was all beat up.”
“You had a stroke,” Granny said.
“A stroke? Hell!”
“Don’t be saying that. You was up Glascow the better part of a week.” Granny took the water pan from me and dumped it in the yard. She wiped the razor on her dress. “That Glasgow Doctor said you’d never talk normal again.”
“Get me my hat, Orbie,” Granpaw said. “I got to go see about my crops.”
“No now,” Granny said. “If you was to have another stroke, that’d be it. ‘Sides, the farm’s took care of, for now anyway.”
“Hell it is,” Granpaw said.
Granny put her foot down when it came to working in the tobacco. You couldn’t keep Granpaw in his wheelchair though. He always had to be off doing something. Always somebody had to watch him too. Momma, Granny, Miss Alma. Sometimes Willis and me. Sometimes just me by myself. Granpaw didn’t seem to mind or even to notice very much — just went along being his crabby old self, doing small things here and there around the house.
Sometimes he’d get started on something, forget what he was doing, then remember again. Sometimes he’d go like before, all zombie-eyed and still. The day after he got up from his wheelchair, I saw him in the middle of the pigs with a slop bucket; just standing there, looking off at the hills back of the barn. The pigs were humping and shoving themselves around the bucket, waiting to be fed. I yelled from the yard, “Granpaw! What you doin’?” He just stood there, frozen. Granny and Miss Alma had to go bring him in.
While they were walking him back to his wheelchair, he came back to himself. “What you two hussies doing with an old man like me?”
“Lawd, Lawd, Brotha Wood!” Miss Alma laughed. “You the devil, sho ‘nuff!”
“I’m serious,” Granpaw said. “Ya’ll was takin’ advantage of me, wasn’t you? Helpless as I am.”
“You the sorriest excuse for a preacher I ever seen,” Granny said. Her and Miss Alma helped him to sit down in the wheelchair.
Granpaw looked up at Granny. “If you all wanted to be loved on, you could have asked.”
“Hush that sorry talk,” Granny said.
Granpaw got loud. “Well, you could have! I would have give you some!” His eyes went over to Miss Alma. “Would have give you some too, girl! White sugar on brown!”
Miss Alma laughed so hard her titties shook.
Granny looked disgusted. “And you call yourself a man of God.”
“I never said no sich a thing,” Granpaw said.
Granpaw sat on a stool beside the cow. He got hold of one of its teats. “Come here boy. Feel this. Grab ‘at other stool there.”
I pulled the other stool over and sat down.
“Take a hold of her, right there,” Granpaw said.
I reached under where Granpaw’s hand was and got a hold on the teat. I was surprised how warm it was — warm and squishy like a sponge.
“Now squeeze her,” Granpaw said.
I squeezed but no milk came out.
“Let me show you.” Granpaw got a hold of the teat and squeezed in a way to make the milk whistle in the bucket.
“See? Squeeze and pull. Pretend that little hand of yours is a calf’s mouth. Suck it right out of there.”
I tried again, got a little bit to come, then nothing.
“It’s a wonder any milk comes at all, it’s been so dry,” Granpaw said. “Ain’t had a drop of rain in weeks.”
Granpaw was right. All we had were thunderheads in the afternoons that would flash and boom a while — then blow away. We hadn’t had a real rain since I chased after Moses in the woods. That was almost two weeks ago.
“Can it rain on one side of a hill and not on the other?” I asked.
“I reckon it could,” Granpaw said. “Don’t rain everywhere all at once. It ain’t likely though.”
“It did when I was following Moses,” I said. “It rained. It rained hard. But when I got back on the other side of the dragon, it was dry.”
“Dragon?”
“A hill Granpaw. It looked like a dragon on one side. I was inside its belly. Inside a pool of water. Green water that went all silvery like a mirror.”
Granpaw looked at me flat on. “You was with Moses then?”
“Willis took me,” I said before I could catch myself.
“Willis did?”
“Yeah Granpaw,” I said. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but he did. Don’t tell Granny.”
Granpaw shook his head.
“I was scared, Granpaw. I thought Moses might could help me. I dreamed Victor poured fire on Daddy. Remember I told you?”
Granpaw shook his head. “A dream’s one thing. What’s real is another.” He got up from the stool with the milk bucket. I got up too. He set the bucket on a shelf, and then undid the rope holding the cow. The cow walked out to the middle of the open barn door and stood.
“Get out now!” Granpaw yelled. But the cow lifted its tail and pooped a big pile of soupy green poop right there on the barn’s dirt floor. Granpaw got mad and bounced a corncob off the cow’s rear end. The cow knocked against a milk can and leaped out the door.