words,” Grandfather says with some derision. “In time, all they will do is trade one master for many, and Nunshetu and your new son will one day sit here and speak the same words we say this night. A dog chasing its tail.” Grandfather swirls his finger in front of James’s face, which he quickly swats away.
“Only the spirit knows true freedom,” growls Grandfathers.
“I must wait till I am dead, you say,” James bellows.
Louise shushes James as she reaches across the work-worn oak and takes Grandfather’s wrinkled hand in hers. “You think the Good Lord above is sending me another boy, Katu?”
“Yuh, you will have a strong boy, Louise, and I tell you he will live to be an old man like me.”
“Oh, you can believe it,” Mina says as she bobs in her chair like a bird caught in a strong wind. She steadies herself and reaches for the bottle, clearly not in attendance for the conversation alone. “Katu is a medicine man, you know. If he say it, it will be.”
James looks between Grandfather, Louise, and Mina. I can feel his hot breath coming in rhythmic bursts even from the distance at which I am sitting.
“You hear that,” Louise says, beaming as she turns to James, “he believes this child is to be a boy too. Moses is coming back to us.”
James has had quite enough, and with the speed of an Egyptian viper, he rips Louise’s hand from Grandfather’s, seizes her up by the arm, and storms out without a word.
James and Louise stay away for the remainder of the month, and our bellies suffer their absence greatly as Mina’s inconsolable loneliness for her friend is exacted against our meals.
It is now the third of March, and, with the grace of Providence, the last severe storm of the season has blanketed the land in white. Our house is coated in a skin of ice and topped with a bonnet of snow and all the remote lay of the house is dark and silent but for the dining room, a mere dim excepting the warm glow coming as much from the blazing logs as the contentedness of a family gathered together on a cold winter’s night for a delicious meal. The table has been laid for supper, and it twinkles like a bed of stars as the flames in the hearth beside us dance across the glass, china, and silver.
My mouth eagerly awaits the stewed beef that’s been perfuming the house for hours and my eyes are on Mina as she approaches the table.
From the corner of my sight, I see Grandfather abruptly stand.
Presently too intent on satisfying my hunger, I neglect to look his way. That is, until he speaks.
“My time is upon me,” he says, quietly and as unadorned in ceremony as if announcing his day’s retire.
But the gravity of his statement has the effect of the pa-dunk of a pebble hitting the water and rippling to cannon shot as the room erupts into chaos as if the house is under siege.
Mina gasps, nearly dropping the dish of turnips she’s begun to serve Father as Mother reaches out, nearly tumbling from her chair, but Grandfather is already beyond her reach and entering the parlor hall.
Father leaps to his feet, but goes no farther. He just stands there, speechless and befuddled, until finally he tells Mina to leave the dish and go fix Grandfather a hot cider.
I watch Grandfather fade into the darkness of the hall, and I listen as he pads across the wide pine planks in his moccasins, the wood protesting with his every step, then the soft, hollow creaks as he slowly climbs the stairs to our second floor.
I find it strange that, like an animal, a man might know when his time has come. But if any man ever could know, it is him. Over the past months, more so increasing since the cold set in, he’s been making forthright declarations of his looming death; few but more numerous have been the allusions. We dismissed it all as the fears of an old man with too much time on his hands, limited by age and season.
But now I wonder: Did he truly know he’d never make it until spring; that he would never again clutch his father’s net in his leathery hands alongside James and I; that he would soon be gone like all that came before him?
After a quick and silent meal, of which, after the last swallow, I could not have relayed the flavor, I too climb the stairs.
Mother installed a new tallow candle on the nightstand and is reading to her father from the Bible. He isn’t protesting. I find this matter the most alarming. As the night wanes, Mother grows tired, and her vigil falters as she keeps snapping her head up from sleep. I offer to take her place by his side, and this pleases her.
Mother stands as if she doesn’t know what to do next and paces by the window deeply vexed. Then, as if to avoid any further torment from her heredity, she gives in to her thoughts, and with some effort raises the swollen sash just enough for a spirit to escape.
Cold air drifts into the room like water sinking a boat. She leans down and kisses her father’s cheek as he reaches up and cups the side of her face. She bites her lip and then whispers something in his language, and he responds. Mother insisted I never learn his language, for I was to live the English way. But now how I wish I knew their words. What is being said, I don’t know, but their words bring peace between them.
On her way out of the room, mother drapes a blanket over my shoulders and kisses my head. “Wake me if need be.”
“Yes, Mother,” I assure her.
Grandfather reaches under his pillow, producing his father’s watch that he then shakily puts in my hand. I hesitate at first, knowing the momentous gesture it is. But I finally take it, studying the fine cobwebbed scratches by the candle’s flickering light, and say, “I’ll hold it for you until you are well.”
In turn, he pauses as if about to say something, but then instead nods before closing his eyes. Feeling a bit discomforted by the awkwardness of the affair, and as is my nervous prerogative, I am shifting my stance when my foot hits against something under the bed. Curious, I bend to look at the obstruction. Books?
I pull the stack from under Grandfather’s bed.
“Grandfather?”
“Eh?”
“Are these yours?”
“They are yours now,” he whispers.
“You can read English?”
He doesn’t answer. I think he has fallen asleep until he again nods.
“You never told me you could read books.”
“Why else have them?”
I place the stack on the floor next to his night table and take up the first and hold it toward the candlelight, reading the title: DISCOURSE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY.
“Rousseau, Grandfather? This interests you?”
He opens his eyes. “Have you read it?”
“No, I have only heard of the author. He is a great thinker. I heard Father speak of him.”
“Sit now and read it.”
I can’t help but wonder how much he actually understands of these books. Or rather, how little I understand of him.
After a coarse eruption of coughing, he says with some effort, “In a fortnight, no more, when there are new shoots on the trees, call on James. You know where to find the net. It is as strong now as are you. Eh, it will be good this time. The men have to eat. They will need great strength for what is to come.”
“By men, you mean to say our soldiers?”
He rallies a quick, stern nod and then falls away to another fit of cough that produces blood on the hem of his blanket. He settles out, and I can see his heart beating against his nightshirt, charging and irregular.
I take a kerchief from my pocket and wipe his lips clean. “I didn’t think you cared much for the Cause, Grandfather.”
“I do not,” he says in a rasp. “I care for you. This is all a different time now, Joshua, your time, not mine. The past and future meets in you, with my blood and their blood too. Eh, they wanted this land. Go, have a hand in what they make of it.”
Sitting by his bedside as he drifts into a deep sleep, I remember the stories he’s told me, trying to patch together his story, of which I have precious little to weave it from. Grandfather, it turns out, is so full of surprises and con
tradictions; I don’t think five lifetimes would be sufficient to know him fully.
At some point I doze off, realizing this as I am abruptly awakened by what I think is a hand upon my shoulder, shaking me conscious.
I swiftly survey my surroundings only to find no one in the room but Grandfather and me.
In a drowsed state, I am scratching my head, puzzled by the sensation, when Grandfather makes a gurgling sound, and it startles my eyes wide. The drowning sound is followed by a slow hiss of breath. I can call it nothing other than a note of relief.
I grab for his hand. He is still with a stillness unlike any a living person could attain, and so, curious and afraid, I look around the room, wondering where he might now be. Then, from the corner of my eye, I see a cold gust lift the curtains.
I lay Grandfather’s hand on his chest and dash for the window. He is gone, gone I am certain, out the open window and headed back to the fields of long ago to again roll laughing down Great Eagle Hill with Grandmother.
I throw the window wide and gaze out into the last of the night. The skeletal oaks stand patiently amongst the snow-tipped pines swaying with his spirit.
I shout after him: “Grandfather, I too will remember you.”
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