Pap was drunk the entire week after Gram died, right up to her funeral. He didn’t leave the cemetery shed for anything. He and Santiago Holmes sat there drinking Jack and Buds with Santiago leaving every now and then to tend to some piece of maintenance in the cemetery or to restock their supply.
“I’d go out to the store around 5pm and get us the necessary supplies to get through the night,” Santiago told me not too long after Pap passed, “we needed a bottle of Jack and two racks of Buds and maybe a package of hot dogs to heat up on the grill.
“I thought I knew from drinking, but Pap, man, he could pack it away. And it didn’t mess with him. He stayed steady. If anything, the steel in his eyes hardened, but he kept quiet, to himself. We didn’t say two words any of those nights. I think that’s why he let me hang around with him; I knew how to keep quiet.
“We’d sit in the shed, Pap in that beat up rocker he kept there and me on a bucket, and we’d put ‘em back and watch the sun go down over the trees. We’d sip ‘em slow letting the icy coldness of the beer cool the burn of the whiskey on our throats.
“Around 8pm, I’d grill up the dogs. I never had to force the food on Pap. I think he knew it’s what she would have wanted. That was the great thing about him: he did for himself, but he always took your Gram’s wishes into consideration. You could learn a lot from that.
“At some point, Pap would end up falling asleep in the rocker. It wasn’t much of a surprise as he’d been putting them away all day. I’d head up to the apartment and have a nightcap before turning in. When I came down in the mornings, Pap would be sitting in the rocker with a Bud, rocking back and forth nice and easy. We wouldn’t say anything, and I’d head out to get the early chores done.
“I wasn’t upset for a second about the extra work I had to do that week. Some men might’ve gotten a hair over their ass about having to put in the extra time, or effort, not me. Death is death, and everyone dies, and it isn’t worth getting yourself tied up in knots about, but your Gram, she was the wind in Pap’s sails. She kept him on course. A better woman hasn’t been placed on this earth, though your mama comes close. It does take time to grieve a woman like your Gram. I don’t know that your Pap ever came to terms with her passing. He was always a little off-balance, more ornery, a little meaner without enjoying it after she went.
“He was mad at the world and tried to fight the whole damn place to ease his rage at her passing. We all know how that battle turns out,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes going off somewhere only he could see.
I was so young at the time I interrupted with a question about how the battle turned out.
“You can’t fight the world,” he replied, “or at least, you can’t fight it and expect the outcome to be favorable. Life is going to move on as it moves on, and this world of people, places and things is not going to bend to the will of one individual.
“So you got dealt a bad hand, or you got hurt, or something didn’t go how you wanted it to go, maybe someone died, that is life, and this world doesn’t care. Some people in it, like your Gram, might try to lift you up, but the world is going to keep turning, whether you’re up or not. Life goes on. You can’t rage against the world. You’ll wear yourself and just make yourself angrier.
“Believe me, I’ve been fighting everything and everyone since I was 18. Pap was the one who gave me a chance, but I didn’t much listen, I just kept roaring at the world, pushing against it, resisting, and look at me now. I’ve got next to nothing. For all the fighting I’ve done, I’m still just a lousy drunk.
“You can put all this negative ‘woe is me’ energy out there into the world, and fight everything you think is a wrong or a slight, but it’s never going to fill that hole inside of you that you’re trying to tape over with the anger.”
Seeing the confusion on my face, Santiago tried to simplify his point.
“Would you run head first into a concrete wall?” he asked.
“No.”
“Well, saying you did, would you do it over and over again to try and bring the wall down?”
“No, that’s stupid. You’d knock yourself out.”
“Right, that’s what fighting the world is like.”
“And you’re saying Pap fought the world?”
“He tried to.”
“How?”
“He had been grumbling to me for years about how the Mt. Hope Cemetery Committee needed to stop people planting flags next to the stones of their loved ones on Memorial Day. They’d get caught up in the cord on the trimmers and were a real pain in the ass.
“Well, he had enough, and he started writing the committee every week about it. They’d didn’t write back, call or acknowledge him in any way, but he just kept on writing them.”
“He did not.”
“He did. Did you know that when your Gram got her first diagnosis, he wrote to her doctors each week, and to specialists across the country, asking what else could be done, and were they doing enough? He’d read about something in some old magazine and ask why they weren’t trying that. He’d call them on the phone and tell them they were failing and promise to write to the Board of Health to have their licenses taken away.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“That’s fine, you don’t have to, but it’s true. He raged against these things that either didn’t matter or were beyond his control. That’s why losing your Gram hurt him so much; she balanced him out.
“She also took pleasure in his getting worked up. When he’d go off on one of his rants, or do something to put a burr in the side of members of the community – such as hiring me – your Gram would smile and encourage him, because she knew it gave him some small sliver of joy.
“She loved him, and he loved her back somethin’ fierce. Pap knew just what she did and what she meant to him. You might have thought he was just some ornery old man, who didn’t love anyone, but he was whip smart. He knew had a good woman, and he loved her.
“When we got to the seventh day of drinking, the night before your Gram was to be buried, Pap set out to dig the plot. I went with him, but I was just along to carry tools and the cooler.
“Pap was as determined as I’ve ever seen a man. It was going on midnight when we set out. He’d been at it with the Buds since breakfast, but you couldn’t tell by looking at him. Most men would have been falling over themselves, but Pap seemed to have grown.
“I’d always known him to be powerful, but a little hunched in on himself. As we walked down to the plot, he stood straight and tall, even under the weight of the plywood stencil we used to mark the plot.
“You know this already, but he had picked out a beautiful spot for her, right in the shade of those pines, looking out on the river. The night had cleared and the sliver of moon cut a shimmering path across the water and up to her stone. You couldn’t have asked for a better place for a soul to rest and look out on the world, at least if you believe in the spirit looking on from the afterlife and that sort of nonsense.
“What you don’t know is Pap dug that hole himself. By hand. He edged around the stencil, cut the sod into squares and removed each one as gentle as thought it were an egg in his hand. Then he set to diggin’.
“It was a perfect night for the work, no so cool’s you needed a coat, but the heat not oppressive either. There was a nice breeze coming with the moonlight up from the river. I was worried there wouldn’t be enough light to dig, but the moon was giving off just enough. It didn’t matter, Pap had dug so many, he could have done the work blindfolded.
“He was a strong man your Pap. Country strong, the muscle built through good hard work. He didn’t say a word the entire time we were out there, just set to the job and worked like a machine, shovelful after shovelful flying from the hole landing in a perfect pile on the uphill side of the plot.
“I tried to help, but there was a sad firmness in his eyes that said ‘no,’ this was his job and he was the only one who could do it. It wasn’t worthy of the tractor and it certainly wasn’t worthy of a slob like me. I did what I do best and leaned on my shovel and made sure the beer didn’t get warm.
“I’m sure it sounds like what people expect of me when I sat I stood there drinking beer while Pap dug that hole, but there was nothin’ for it. I was in awe watching Pap assault that hole, sinking further into the earth with each shovelful of dirt.
“They don’t make ‘em like Pap anymore, that kind of hardness, that loves the work and embraces the challenge of doing something physical. The shovel looked so small in his hands, and the power, whether out of rage at your Gram’s passing or just from the years of working the cemetery, the dirt flew fast in an unwavering rhythm.“That’s the thing no one can find today, the rhythm of the work. They don’t see the music of it. Pap found it that night and the dirt sang from the hole. In no time, he was tamping down the sides, making the edges perfect for her.
