A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) Read Online Free Page A
Author: Terence M. Green
blow them both out. The blue one stands apart, unknowable. I look first at Ma's face, which is smiling, proud, then at Gramma's. Behind the wisps of smoke, Gramma's face is blank, as ever. But her eyes, I see with certainty and astonishment, are filled with water, staring into the smoke.
"Martin. Can you give me a hand?" Ma's voice, unusually abrupt, is coming from Gramma's room.
When I enter, my eyes scan the bedpan, the commode chair, the tubes, clean diapers piled high. The deadened air smells of talcum, of age. Gramma has slipped between the wall and the bed, wedged herself, and Ma is trying to wrest her loose. I lean across them, mother and daughter, and insert myself, holding Gramma's hand in assurance. Ma backs away, and I lift Gramma free, noting her weightlessness, feeling her frailty.
Gramma watches me, not taking her eyes from mine, a kind of wonder on her face. Fleetingly, I see my mother's face there, see Rose's, Bridget's, Kate's—then my own. The spine beneath my hand is a hollow keel, the breath, close to my face, castor oil. I touch her shoulder, feeling the bone beneath papery skin, beneath flannel. Gramma, I think. Gramma. I have never touched you before.
Suddenly, she is mine.
Da does not come home until past nine o'clock. Exhausted, he eats his dinner in silence.
I look at his shoes, covered with mud and cement, the heels worn down. He does not know it is my birthday, but I am not offended. He has never known any of our birthdays. And I never find out if he knows that I have his father's grandfather's shaving equipment, or if he really wanted me to have it, or if he even cares, because I never summon the courage to ask him.
He takes a Carter's Little Liver Pill, then lights his pipe. The blue smoke, strong with the smell of the life left in his lungs, fills the kitchen. None of us have any way of knowing that he will be dead within two years.
I remember the smell of the soot and fire, see the Grand River flowing wildly beneath us on the bridge, feel my hand tighten once again in the hair at the back of his head, watch him smile at the pleasure of holding me in his arms.
For unlike Gramma, I have touched him. But not for a long time. He has not been mine for a very long time. And soon, of course, it will be too late.
SIX
The night ... is a time of freedom. You have seen the morning and the night, and the night was better. In the night all things began, and in the night the end of all things has come before me.
—Thomas Merton
The Sign of Jonas
Even here, outside of time, there is the sudden, the un-known, the dangerous. Without warning, plummeting like a stone from the clouds that scudded above us, a hawk—is it the same one I observed before?—fell to the top of the maple in which we were resting and plucked one of us from the uppermost branch.
Like an explosion, the sound of hundreds of wings beating. We lifted off in unison, a fleet of black specks of which I was a part, and swept across the city, heading blindly out over the lake, away from the clouds that could conceal such random fate.
My tiny heart was pumping fear, something I did not know I would feel again. And the questions flowed with it: who did the hawk take? Why? Will I ever know who these creatures about me are—or if they are anyone at all?
And it was real. In fact, it was surreal. I could feel it. There was no chance of a dream here, nothing of delusion.
We soared high, the blue waves far below us, finally arcing west, back toward the city. I saw the shoreline approaching, then Front Street, Dundas. We headed farther west, toward the Junction, exhilarated, and settled once again, a sinking black cloud, into a giant maple, where the sounds of relief, exhaustion, and the shrill chirps and squawks of life surfaced anew from the flock.
But we were one less. And I was uncertain why.
Life surrounded me. Yet in death, there was death still, a further echo.
I looked about, sifted
"Martin. Can you give me a hand?" Ma's voice, unusually abrupt, is coming from Gramma's room.
When I enter, my eyes scan the bedpan, the commode chair, the tubes, clean diapers piled high. The deadened air smells of talcum, of age. Gramma has slipped between the wall and the bed, wedged herself, and Ma is trying to wrest her loose. I lean across them, mother and daughter, and insert myself, holding Gramma's hand in assurance. Ma backs away, and I lift Gramma free, noting her weightlessness, feeling her frailty.
Gramma watches me, not taking her eyes from mine, a kind of wonder on her face. Fleetingly, I see my mother's face there, see Rose's, Bridget's, Kate's—then my own. The spine beneath my hand is a hollow keel, the breath, close to my face, castor oil. I touch her shoulder, feeling the bone beneath papery skin, beneath flannel. Gramma, I think. Gramma. I have never touched you before.
Suddenly, she is mine.
Da does not come home until past nine o'clock. Exhausted, he eats his dinner in silence.
I look at his shoes, covered with mud and cement, the heels worn down. He does not know it is my birthday, but I am not offended. He has never known any of our birthdays. And I never find out if he knows that I have his father's grandfather's shaving equipment, or if he really wanted me to have it, or if he even cares, because I never summon the courage to ask him.
He takes a Carter's Little Liver Pill, then lights his pipe. The blue smoke, strong with the smell of the life left in his lungs, fills the kitchen. None of us have any way of knowing that he will be dead within two years.
I remember the smell of the soot and fire, see the Grand River flowing wildly beneath us on the bridge, feel my hand tighten once again in the hair at the back of his head, watch him smile at the pleasure of holding me in his arms.
For unlike Gramma, I have touched him. But not for a long time. He has not been mine for a very long time. And soon, of course, it will be too late.
SIX
The night ... is a time of freedom. You have seen the morning and the night, and the night was better. In the night all things began, and in the night the end of all things has come before me.
—Thomas Merton
The Sign of Jonas
Even here, outside of time, there is the sudden, the un-known, the dangerous. Without warning, plummeting like a stone from the clouds that scudded above us, a hawk—is it the same one I observed before?—fell to the top of the maple in which we were resting and plucked one of us from the uppermost branch.
Like an explosion, the sound of hundreds of wings beating. We lifted off in unison, a fleet of black specks of which I was a part, and swept across the city, heading blindly out over the lake, away from the clouds that could conceal such random fate.
My tiny heart was pumping fear, something I did not know I would feel again. And the questions flowed with it: who did the hawk take? Why? Will I ever know who these creatures about me are—or if they are anyone at all?
And it was real. In fact, it was surreal. I could feel it. There was no chance of a dream here, nothing of delusion.
We soared high, the blue waves far below us, finally arcing west, back toward the city. I saw the shoreline approaching, then Front Street, Dundas. We headed farther west, toward the Junction, exhilarated, and settled once again, a sinking black cloud, into a giant maple, where the sounds of relief, exhaustion, and the shrill chirps and squawks of life surfaced anew from the flock.
But we were one less. And I was uncertain why.
Life surrounded me. Yet in death, there was death still, a further echo.
I looked about, sifted
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