Author: zpotter

Gram died when I was 11, almost 12. That’s a weird age for death. On the one hand, I understood she was dead and gone, and I felt sadness, but more because I’d lost something, or maybe because it’s what I thought was expected of me. 

On the other hand, I was too young to realize how much would be missing from my life because of her passing: the stories, the history, and the love. That’s what I should have been mourning. Santiago Holmes used to say, “you don’t know what you don’t know.” It took me a long time to understand what it meant.

From nowhere, Gram was diagnosed with lung cancer. She hadn’t smoked a cigarette in my lifetime, and when I asked Ma, she said she’d never known her to smoke. 

Gram did love to cook. Not too long ago I read an article saying smoke from cooking was now being linked to lung cancer. Sometimes it feels like there’s inherent risk in everything, no matter how mundane. Gram was an excellent cook. I can still taste her Bolognese.

Her death was a long drawn out affair. Eight months in, the diagnosis was terminal. Nine after that the cancer was in remission. Four months later it was back. Two months after that she was gone.

Watching her decline was more difficult than her actual death. She cooked until she could no longer hold her wooden spoon. It had eaten away at her figure. By then she was little more than a pale sheet stretched over tiny bones.

Pap couldn’t stand to see her this way, so he found frequent excuses to spend more time in the cemetery shed. Sometimes I would walk over hoping for a ride in the backhoe and I’d hear him talking to himself, pleading, “please don’t take her. I will do better. I’ll do anything you ask of me. I can change myself, but I can’t live without her.”

I’d turn as quiet as I could, somehow knowing this was not something I was supposed to see, and head back to the house where I’d find gram and give her a big hug. I didn’t say a word to her about what I’d seen.

Still, I think Gram knew Pap would struggle without her. Gram always knew. When I came in from the shed, she’d squeezed me even harder than normal, like she had before her strength was stolen.

Ma did what she always did when things were difficult, she turned in on herself and worked harder, as though the work could stop the inevitable. There was more determination in her movements and not a single one was wasted. She continued to work two jobs, but she also started cooking and dinner and she carved out time to take Gram to appointments and treatments. I never saw her shed a tear or ask why this was happening Ma just kept going.

Gram passed in the evening, while I was sleeping. When I woke the next day Ma came in to tell me the news. I can still see the sadness hanging about her face. For as much as she worked, she was smiling most of the time, but that morning, the hurt tugged at the corners of her eyes and tears pooled, but she wouldn’t let them fall. They made her eyes shine in the sunlight.

The night before we’d been to visit her in the hospital. Her condition had deteriorated, but the doctors were continuing to treat her as though she had some time left. I missed her around the cottage, so I was excited at the opportunity to see her.

Pap, who hated hospitals, hadn’t left her beside since she’d been admitted. He’d left Santiago in charge of the cemetery, hoping for the best. He was waiting in her room when we arrived.

“She’s been taken out for a procedure,” he said, with a glance at my mother that meant something I was too young to understand – they’d found a middle ground in Gram’s illness and were speaking in civil terms to one another, “she should be back soon.”

“How was she feeling?” Ma asked.

“No better, no worse. I think she’s ready.”

“They think she’s close.”

“They haven’t said it in so many words, but she has the look.”

“I can imagine. Are you?”

“Is anybody ever?”

“I suppose you’re right. Can we sit with you and wait? He wants to see her.”

“Yeah, that’ll be fine. It shouldn’t be long now.”

The normal harshness had left Pap’s voice, replaced by a heavy sadness. His chin quivered as he spoke to Ma, and I think he was fighting back tears. I wasn’t sure how to act, having never seen such vulnerability in Pap before.

I followed Ma’s lead and we sat in silence with Pap for half-an-hour, but Gram didn’t return. I had a queasy emptiness in my stomach making me feel hungry and sick at the same time. My stomach made a noise, and as it was close to dinnertime, Ma told Pap we’d head home to put dinner on.

We’d just exited the elevator and were headed towards the door when a set of swinging doors opened and Gram was wheeled through on a hospital bed.

The bed and the sheets were white as was the gown she wore. She was so pale from the toll the cancer was exacting it was tough to tell where she stopped and the bed began. 

She was moving fast as the nurse pushing the bed appeared to be racing to catch the elevator we had just left. Time slowed down for a moment as Gram raised a weak hand to us, and attempted a smile, though it was difficult to see with the oxygen mask covering her face.And then she was gone. Whisked away down the hall towards the elevators. Ma handed me the keys and told me to wait in the car before running down the hall after her. It was the last I saw Gram. It is burned into my brain forever

Ma raised me on her own. She had some help from Gram and Pap. More Gram than Pap. Pap didn’t much interest in me until I could work. In fact, he told me on my first of work, “Now, you’re interesting.” That was also the year Gram died.

Ma was tough like Pap. She refused to take charity from anyone, so when she was 19 and I was born, she gave up her plans for college and took a job as a teller at the Berwick Trust. She was already a bartender at the Berwick Tavern. She’d been a server for three years before the promotion. After I was born she continued to work three to four nights a week as she felt she couldn’t give up the money. Some nights when she left for the Tavern I’d see Gram shake her head and mutter, “That’s where it all started” as the door closed behind Ma.

I’d ask Ma why she kept working the two jobs, even after she’d been promoted to head teller and was making enough to care for both of us and chip in quite a bit to Gram and Pap.

“You never know what might happen. There may be an emergency of some sort; Pap or Gram might get sick and we might need the extra money. It’s always good to have a back-up plan.”

If Pap was around he’d pipe up with disdain, “or any plan at all. Remember the Five Ps.” This was one of Pap’s favorite slogans: preparation prevents piss poor performance.

Gram would shush him, but not before a look of anger would flash across Ma’s face. “I also do it because I enjoy it,” Ma said.

I think she did like the job, and I know we needed the money, but I think she also liked the attention she received behind the bar and the escape it provided from Gram and Pap’s house. 

It was never spoken of in my presence, but you could feel the rooms of the small house were thick with it in the early years of my life. My birth was a cause of some contention between Ma and Pap. Gram loved me, but the tension between Ma and Pap sat heavy in the air. 

Pap thought I was a parasite or some sort of infectious disease. Whenever possible, he would steer clear of me. If by some chance we were in the same room together, he might upgrade my status to that of a dog by asking me to “fetch a Bud from the fridge” for him. When I’d left the room, I could hear him talking to himself about “the planet’s overcrowded enough without another mouth that can’t feed or do for itself.”

I suspect another reason Ma worked two jobs was so she wouldn’t have to accept anything from my grandparents, who didn’t have much. They lived in the caretaker’s cottage next to the cemetery. That was the biggest part of Pap’s pay: the rent-free housing. Gram didn’t work. She volunteered at the library and the church.

Ma also had a point to prove. Neither one of my grandparents was pleased when I came along – Ma being just 19 at the time – though Gram got over it the fastest, telling Ma, “this is a great thing, we will get through it together.” Pap, harder to please and more upright in his sense of what was proper – despite his rebellious streak – was a different story.

He’d take any opportunity to poke at Ma about my birth. Pap was irate when he found out Ma was pregnant, his anger increasing when she wouldn’t tell him who the father was. Over the years I heard the hint of rumors throughout town, but by the time I understood what they were, Ma had squashed most of them.

She worked two jobs to prove to Pap we could make it without his help. I think she succeeded. By the time I went to work for him in the cemetery, Ma was paying all the utility bills, car payments for both her and Gram and Pap’s cars, all the groceries and whatever other upkeep was required around the house.

It’s easy to see now how much like him she was, though she’d never admit it. Her stubbornness came from him, as did her rigidity and sense of what was proper. I’ve tried to point it out to her, now that I’m older, but she always steers the conversation in a different direction.

Because she worked the two jobs and was caring for me the rest of the time, Ma never had time to go out with friends or go out on dates. I think that’s why she liked the attention working at the bar brought. She needed to interact outside of the stuffy environment of the bank and the cottage. The bar kept her feeling young and in touch with her friends. Everyone in Berwick spent a night or two at the Tavern, unless they were regulars at the Tortoise. 

Santiago Holmes was reviled throughout Berwick. The Holmes family had been the most prominent in the small town for generations but had fallen on harder times toward the end of the 20^thCentury as the desire for the textiles created in their mills dried up and became automated. As the business’ finances deteriorated, Santiago’s father made multiple poor investments in a desperate effort to save the business.

The family’s fall from prominence was rapid and without grace. Santiago’s father died in a fire town lore said he set in one of the mills in an ill-conceived scheme to reap an insurance windfall.

Santiago’s mother, who had a reputation for illicit behavior in Berwick before marrying his father, had left before the funeral with one of Mr. Holmes’ business acquaintances. 

This same acquaintance had convinced the elder Holmes to invest in a start-up technology company – in the infancy of start-up technology companies – he was a silent partner in. Being desperate for any type of innovation that might save the mills, Mr. Holmes ignored the misgivings he felt and pumped money into the tech company even as it faltered. He wore the same blinders into his relationship with his wife.

The business acquaintance and his two partners’ were taking all the money Holmes was investing and paying themselves without producing any product. They had concocted a few income statements showing positive returns and high costs, which they attributed to the start-up nature of the business. They kept telling Mr. Holmes a larger payday was a mere six months down the road.

He was so desperate for any sort of income to help meet his payroll requirements; he took their word as the gospel right up until his end.

Mrs. Holmes and businessman moved across the country and were never heard from again. She took with her what money was left at the time of Mr. Holmes’ passing, leaving Santiago with nothing.

With both of his parents gone the just turned 18-years-old Santiago was left to fend for himself in a town that blamed him as the only remaining Holmes for the failure of the mills and the loss of hundreds of jobs.

The anger of the people of Berwick ran deep. Where once they had given Santiago the benefit of his youthfulness, now their rage blinded them. With his father’s death, they saw him as the cause of their misfortune.

Scorned by the town, not only for the failure of the mills but also because they would no longer look past the air of superiority he had adopted from his mother and lorded over them since he was old enough to take on airs, and with both parents gone, he had nowhere to turn.

Had his father still lived, someone might have taken him in. Despite the failing mills and his arrogance, the town had loved him just a few years before as he had pitched the high school and Legion baseball teams to state championships.

Beyond the amount of Pabst you could handle on a Saturday night, athletic achievement was the next greatest currency in Berwick. It kept Santiago and his loose mouth from trouble on more than one occasion.

The currency gained on the athletic fields had dried up at the time of his father’s death. He had no other skills, having not been required by either of his parents to apply himself in school or in life. On his best days he was an indifferent student whose teachers had done everything in their power to ensure he would pass on to the next grade so as not to have his disruptions in their classrooms.

Though there were a few other people in attendance, he stood alone in the rain at his father’s burial. Pap was waiting in the backhoe to give Mr. Holmes his Last Rites. He sat under the cover of the tractor’s roof, listening to the rain drum it’s beat, waiting for the last of the mourners to leave.

This was the part Pap hated, seeing there was a job to do, and not being able to get it done because of other people. There were always stragglers and he hated waiting on them.

When I was working for him, sometimes I’d sit in the truck with him and he’d complain about having to wait:

“Why don’t they get on with it?” he’d ask.

I would try to stammer together an answer, but I knew nothing would please him.

“We’re going back where we came from, back into the ground. This and taxes,” he’d mutter.

“What and taxes?”

“Death.”

“What about death and taxes?”

“They’re the two things that are inevitable in this world, the two things we can’t run away from, no matter how hard some people try.” Pap had never once paid taxes. “I don’t know why these people come out here and snivel and sniff and make such a fuss about the inevitable.

“I wasn’t a puddle when your gram passed. She’d had a heck of a run, but her time was up. I missed her for a minute, I still do, but I kept on going. You hear stores about these people who can’t get off the couch after a family member dies.

“I mean don’t all these people believer they’re going to a better place? Isn’t that why this bone orchard is here? Shouldn’t these people be happy for those who aren’t down here in this dump anymore?

“And if they need to snivel about it, why can’t they do it at home? Don’t they know we have work to do?”

There weren’t many people in attendance at Mr. Holmes’ graveside service. A couple of town historians showed up out of respect for the family name. They were joined by a couple of regulars from the Tavern and one of the bartenders; about all the family he had remaining in Berwick.

They stood to one side of the hole, feet shuffling in cold discomfort, while Santiago stood alone, hunched in on himself next to the priest. Pap thought the whole scene was ridiculous considering the weather, but figured it would move them along quicker, if the bag of hot air would move his sermon along.

When he finished speaking, he gave Santiago a pat on the back and moved off toward his car. The group from the Tavern left before his door closed. The two historians lingered long enough to give Santiago limp handshakes, leaving the boy by himself, umbrella-less, as the sky opened further.

Another five minutes passed as Pap watched the boy standing alone, not looking at the grave, but instead out through the pines at the river. Starting to feel the dampness in his bones and not wanting to stand out in the wet talking to the police if the boy did throw himself into the Melanski, Pap turned the key in the ignition and set the backhoe in the direction of Santiago.

“Well,” Pap said to the boy whose tears mixed with the rivulets of rain running down his face.

“Well, what?” asked Santiago, defeat taking the place of the aristocratic defiance in his voice.

“You gonna grab a shovel and help or stand there while I do all the work myself? Ground’s too soft for the tractor, so it’s gotta be the shovel.”

Santiago stared at him in disbelief.

“He’s your father.”

“I didn’t have a father.”

“Whatever you say. Go grab a shovel.”

The rain increased in pace as the two bent to their shovels, tossing the muddy earth back into the hole. They worked in silence, each prisoner to his own thoughts.

When they finished laying the last piece of sod Pap took a final walk over the area and spat in the middle of the grave mound. “Better him then me,” he muttered under his breath.” He moved off toward the backhoe, “you coming,” he called to Santiago.

Having nowhere to go and no plan, Santiago followed Pap to the backhoe then walked beside it on the way back to the garage.

While they were tossing dirt back in the hole, Pap had been thinking about what to do with the boy. He had heard the stories at the Tavern, about how the boy’s mother had left and the family was ruined, no money left to their name.

He knew how angry everyone was because of the mill closings, not that it mattered too much to him. He’d made sure to stay out of those death factories, where they broke your back for nickels. 

He also knew how the town could carry a grudge. The week before Roy Doty and Mark Carlisle from the bank had giggled over wine coolers about how they would be foreclosing on the Holmes estate the day after the funeral. They had said nothing about the boy, or what would become of him when the house was gone.

He’d also heard Roy and Mark laugh about how the boy had no job prospects and how no one in the town would hire him because of what his family had done to the people of Berwick.

Pap had no lover lost for the Holmes family. Mr. Holmes had tried to have him fired multiple times because of insults Pap flung his way during his heavier drinking days at the Tavern. To Pap there was right and wrong, and it wasn’t right to attack the boy for something his father had done.

Pap never liked to be on the side of the majority, another reason he had stayed out of the mills. He also hated bankers and comments of Roy and Mark had lived down to his view that all bankers were criminals looking to squeeze every last nickel out of you – Ma was not excluded from this view.

Knowing it would keep with his rebellious nature in Berwick, Pap invited Santiago in to the shop for a beer and to hear his proposition. He pulled two frosty Buds from the fridge and handed one to Santiago. It was the first time anyone had offered Santiago a beer.

Pap watched him take a first uncertain sip, the bitterness of the beer crossing his face before the first swig hit his stomach and filled the hole created by his loss. The boy smiled.

“We start work at 7am,” said Pap.

A look of confusion flashed over Santiago’s face.

“You better get whatever things you have moved over from your house tonight. The apartment above the shop is available. Rent’s $400 a month. I expect three things from you: you show up on time, which shouldn’t be a problem since you’ll be right upstairs, you give me everything you got, even when you don’t have anything, every day, and you make sure your work is perfect. Close enough won’t cut it here.

“Do you have work boots? I imagine not. Take this, and yourself a pair tonight,” Pap said handing him a sheaf of bills, “I’ll take it out of your pay.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Santiago’s mouth, as he understood what Pap’s words meant.

“Quit grinning like an idiot. Odds are I’ll fire you within a week. Even more likely, you’ll quit. Drink your beer and go get your shit.”

And like that, Santiago had the job he would work for the next 40 years.