A Leaching Memory

(Warning: Story contains some references to war and death.)

I should’ve known better than to forget more than half of what you said to me, but I will never forget the way you made me feel. I remember studying your face as you sat quietly in your tufted swivel chair made of worn cream-colored corduroy as you rocked gently back and forth in the silence of you; my neighbor’s home. Your hands rested behind your head, and your weathered hazel eyes closed behind your thick, out-of-fashion glasses. With every exhale, you’d allow a breath to collect in the pocket of the space between your lips and broken teeth until it overfilled its capacity, and your lips would gently part and let out the slow exhale from the sliver-opening of the left side of your mouth. This, I thought, was the secret to a long and lasting life. It must be this subtle breathing technique that has gotten you here, to the age of seventy-five, chopping wood with an axe each morning, and shoveling snow in circles around my ten-year-old exhausted body as I was tasked by my parents to, “Go help Jimmy, he’s old and needs a hand digging his car out.” I am convinced that until your dying day of ninety-six years on earth, there was no physical task, or feat of strength you wouldn’t have annihilated my much younger competition. You had a quiet, unnerving strength that could have been used for all the evil its power could bestow. But, thank God, you had a mind of truth and a heart of the utmost honorable and quiet compassion.

“Which one? Do you remember which one was mine?” You’d ask.

You caught me looking at your coaster beside your chair on multiple occasions. Whatever family of yours that was nearby would grumble, roll their eyes, and protest my curiosity.

“Not again Liz, do we really need to hear about it again?” They’d moan.

I wondered, what was wrong with me? Why did I never tire of tales from long ago, told from the old man who lived next door. I should’ve known better. There was nothing wrong with me, perhaps them.

“This one!” I’d point proudly. On the five by five, cork-backed white coaster tile, was the detailed sketches of five World War II fighter planes. Jimmy’s was the biggest and most impressive, with the double engines and twin propellers. That’s how I always remembered. You’d smile with pride, and I always felt cheated in some way; this man I adore, had no relation to me. I wanted so badly to have his blood in my veins, to share his name, to have a better reason to adore him, and maybe then he would love me just as much.

“That’s right. You got it.” You’d quietly nod, like a proud professor who was happy I’d learned the lesson, but sad it meant their job was ending. “And where did I fly it? Do you remember where I flew?”

“Italy and Africa.” I remembered. I still remember, but I wish I remembered more.

On a late summer day when the heat was unbearable, I had spent the entire afternoon swimming in the lake that we shared as our front yard. I recall seeing you shuffle down the steps from the second story of the side of your house. You cruised down those stairs like you were floating on air; the greatest generation had joints of steel and petroleum jelly. You walked to the dock that I swam beside. The hot and heavy air was being cut with a west wind. A cold front was moving in and bringing black and ominous clouds on the horizon a mile across the pond. You stood above me on the dock, and pointed out to the sky beyond our cove, where the water’s reflection had begun to mirror the sky’s foreboding warning.

“Storm's blowing in, you best get outta the water soon and dry off.”

“I know, I’m coming.” I replied.

It was clear you’d been watching me for a while. It is more clear to me now, you were always watching over me more than I realized. I should’ve known better, I wish you were watching me still.

I climbed the lake-wall steps that you had built years before I was even born, and grabbed my towel from your wife Catherine’s white garden bench she placed by the shore every summer. The humid and heavy air was not much different from the warm water I’d risen from. I patted myself down with the towel as we both spotted my feet about the same time. The black shiny dots between four of my toes, one on each foot. You began to chuckle.

“What is that?” I asked, puzzled.

“Leeches, blood suckers.” You replied. And without hesitation, just as soon as you said it, you walked over, bent down, and grabbed a hold of them one by one and plucked them out from between my toes. I felt their slimy bodies churn in protest in the hallowed spaces they’d made home on my body, and the click of their jaws as they unhooked from beneath my skin. I felt the blood rush from my head, but I clenched my lower body to keep my wits and consciousness. I couldn’t show you I was nothing but a squeamish, cowardly girl.

You chucked them back into the lake with full bellies of my warm blood. I heard the plop and my face scrunched at the sight of the wake they made from the weight of my DNA within them. You walked down the white steel-planked dock to the bench at the end, and sat where you sat so often on long summer days. With your legs extended and stretched, hands behind your head, fingers interlaced and holding the weight of your thoughts behind you. You began the slow exhales through the side pouch of your mouth. I looked up at my parent’s house. My mother had not come to call me in yet. The storm was still rather far off, and the water was still blue within our cove. I turned and walked up the dock and sat down beside you. I should’ve known better, to remember every word.

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?” You asked.

“I don’t know, nothing to do with leeches, I know that now.”

“You’re smart, you could be a teacher. You’re caring too, I’ve seen. You could be a nurse like your mum, you’re beautiful enough to be a model. You could be anything you wanted to, ya know that?”

I didn’t know that. But, I believed it because you said it.

“When I was a little older than you, I started my first job as a serviceman at a gas station, pumping gas, in those days, the gas tanks had cranks, and we had to hand crank the gallons out of the pump. Ya know how much gas cost then?”

“No, sir.”

“Twenty cents, twenty cents a gallon.”

The storm was coming closer. The winds began to pick up and the black water line reflecting the sky above was within our cove now. It cut the lake in half with the glistening warm blue-gray of the clear skies above, and the black-ink water that lay beneath the storm. A lightning bolt flashed down from the sky in the distant coal-colored clouds and a crack of thunder was mother nature’s warning to seek shelter.

“You want to see something?” You asked.

I looked up to the second deck of my parent’s A-frame and saw the screen door slide open as my mother came to the railing and gave me a wave. She had heard the thunder and knew my swim time was up. Now both mother nature and my natural mother had given me the warning.

“I’m coming!” I yelled.

“It’ll only take a minute,” you said.

I should’ve known better, a minute with you would last a lifetime.

You walked me to your bottom floor surrounded by a screened in porch and held the door for me. I’d been there many times and shared cold Kool-aid and lemonade with your older grandkids. I wore my towel like a shawl, my bathing suit still dripping at my feet. You brought me to the door that led beyond the porch to the back cellar room. It was dark and musty, as basements should be. All your chopped cord wood lined the back wall nearly six feet up to the back cellar window. You walked to the pull switch of a lone lightbulb that hung from between the rafters of the old dusty foundation. You pulled the switch and it illuminated nearly nothing but dust moving through the thick humid air that was creeping in from the blazing summer outside. You walked to your work bench scattered with tools and small yellowed boxes of nuts and bolts, rusty hacksaws of different sizes and sharpness lay about. From between the wall and your bench you pulled a 36 by 36 sheet of metal from seemingly nowhere, and presented it in front of me. Instantly I knew. At the ripe age of eleven, I knew. My eyes widened in the silence that stood between us. It began to pour outside and the lightning flashed from the tiny cobweb-covered window above the wood pile. A crack of thunder shook through my body which shivered at the weight of the sight in front of me. I was speechless. I should’ve known better, to remember every word.

“My copilot and I shot it down, not far from where we landed. We walked over to the plane, it was all on fire, the pilots were dead. I said to my buddy, ‘I’m taking it. I’m sending it home to my dad, to show him who’s winning this war.’ He helped me peel it from the plane. I had it packaged between two wood pallets and sent home from Italy and addressed to my dad in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. He worked for the highway department and they had a storefront on Main Street and I wrote a letter to him, telling him to display it, for the town, for all to see, we got ‘em and we got ‘em good. So I sent it home. The war ended, and I was sent home. When I got there, and saw the window where my dad proudly displayed my souvenir. I said ‘Dad, what the hell is this?’ He says, ‘It’s what you sent me, I did what you asked me to.’ Can you believe, the old man never opened the crate! For two years, he had this simple wooden box displayed to the whole town in honor of his son. And he didn’t have a clue as to why, but did it because I asked him to. I pulled the crate out of the shop window and cracked it open and showed it to him, like I just did to you.”

You started to choke up, and so did I.

“Anyway we won, and I wondered if we hadn’t, if I never made it home, where would it be? Sometimes gifts are like that, left unopened, never appreciated, but it doesn’t take away from their worth, their value.”

I reached out to touch it. I’ll never forget the feeling of the cold steel on that hot summer day. I don’t remember what it felt like when my husband placed my engagement ring on my finger, I barely remember the first time my child grabbed hold of any of my fingers, but I remember exactly what it felt like putting my pointer finger through the bullet holes of a thirty-six by thirty-six steel swastika, shot down by my neighbor, my unsuspecting elderly friend, my hero. I should have known better. I should have written down every word, every memory, every story and every feeling. Sometimes the true meaning of a gift isn’t realized until it’s too late.

I read about you now only in history books and antiquated articles posted online. I have your picture in my memory and when the world feels too much, I close my eyes and let the breath collect in the corner of my mouth and slowly blow it out through a tiny part on the side of my lips. I should’ve known better, that our time together would end. For decades past, I’ve watched the millions upon millions of people immerse themselves in Spielberg cinema and the seventh of December is no longer a day that lives in infamy, but rather a day that lives in residual black Friday deals. We all should know better, that the Private Ryan’s and an entire generation, the greatest generation, who may only live next door, are leaving this earth for good. An earth they made better. This was their gift to us, and whether we choose to unpack it or not, it doesn’t lessen its value or their worth. I should have known better.

ReplyForward