Chapter 2 post 2

His words were valiant, tender, even dutiful at times. He recited a host of changes he’d make, and recanted offenses whose nature he only hinted at, colored by the language families use to shade their actions. He called Gus Poppa, like some Kraut, and I imagined him writing it, shrinking into the child he was when Gus first came home, only difference was the words he tossed around, to sound old enough, and weathered like the patina on Gus’ badge, the edges of the star dulled to a nameless color halfway gone. Ellard tried to stand up in the letter. To everything Gus was and was not. To hear Ellard put it, the sun revolved around his dad. A bug landed on my knee, and without thinking I smooshed it with the letter. As the proteins and nutrients of the bug’s system leeched into the paper, and words like wrought, and stalked and ingrained ventured forth, the lag of their relationship took prominence. Ellard didn’t set this down to paper to change anyone’s mind, to kindle the fire between him and his Poppa. He wrote it down to remember, a time, a way of living, a place he might blot out himself. I reread the last line, I’ll take as much responsibility for the likes that we’ve seen as you’ll load onto me, his crude letters oddly capturing the unevenness of the bond between father and son. I read on, I’m trouble. I don’t blame you, or Mom. I don’t blame my childhood. Or yours. Believe it or not, Poppa, I idolized you, some times I still do. You gone all across the  world, little pin heads matched your progress on the globe in the den. You kilt men with your hands, sharpened your wits on their carcasses- the word carcass outlined a few times. The letter continued, when you came back, this giant I only recognized from photographs gathered me up in his arms, and for that instant, the very first time in my life, I felt like I knew the answers. When I stuck my four year old fingers into your hand, every single emotion a boy can have, I had. Some I understood, but most I didn’t. Eventually that safe feeling left, because the innocence wore off of you, and off of me, and our infatuation  lessened. You directed me, and your voice always demanded. You never suggested, let me figger out for myself. And certainly, you too fell prey to habit, and you forgot the first four years of my life, not because you didn’t care, but because you were trying not to think about what happened in your own world during that time. I won’t lie to you. Those first four years were rough. Fatherless children aren’t treated with much respect, or care. So when you came into my life, I migrated out of the degradation of being somehow lost. But I saw you like a thing, a flag to wave at the other kids, see I’m not as fucked up as you thought. I got a Dad, after all. So I rubbed you in the faces of the other kids whose fathers continued to be M.I.A. None of that’s your fault, I know that, but part of me can’t believe it. Our schism has been issued by fate, and our only crime was that we embraced it with nary a second thought. By the time of my tenth birthday you headed in a new direction. The tone of your voice changed. Oh, at night, or on weekends when Uncle Doyle come by with the guitar, then the man I knew, and loved showed up. Jolly. Remember? You used to call me that, all the time. Jolly come on over here. Jolly, fetch us a couple them canned beers out the fridge. Jolly. Jolly. Jolly.

Cub stalked over to me, and fidgeted until I looked up. He had a question. The world existed as one giant oracle for him. That’s what kids do. See through questions. A letter. Is it from Momma? No. Can I read it? No, Cub you can’t. I can read though. Yeah, I guess you can. Leave me be. Can you pour me a glass of lemonade. He brought me his favorite cup. Listen, Cub Koda, take this outside with you. I put an ice cube in his cup to keep it cold. Does Daddy want one too? No, he don’t. Get. Daddy was out there drinking beer, I could tell. And I knew then, what Momma sometimes felt, an strangled upset feeling that come out of the ground like a root and tangled me up inside of it. I lost track of the letter, and watched him out there, on a forgotten John Deere, the one he parted out last summer, so it was merely a skeleton remaining. Sipping from his can, luxuriating in the sun. He gave a couple of swift whacks at the emaciated machine. And then called out to Cub Koda. Come on back here. We got work to do. Leave your brother be.

I should have been happy to be free of pesty old Cub. But, the way Daddy called out to him, and not to me, tore it. He believed I leaned closer to Momma than to him.

She named me for her piety, after two long dead Popes. We weren’t Catholic, though. Momma supposed the Catholics rode in better circles, circles God frequented more often than the Baptist ones we traveled. She brought me to the library in Owingsville one time, just her and me. The dropped ceiling reflected their fluorescent lighting onto us, turning Momma’s lips blue, and my skin orange. She found what she wanted me to see, buried in an ancient history of the Popes. Clement was either the 4^th pope, or the 2^nd pope, after Peter, the apostle. Peter actually knew Jesus, and so according to Momma, wasn’t a bad act to follow. Sixtus became the sixth pope in the year 116 A.D.  You’re named for visionaries she dogmatically announced. And she read aloud how both men left legacies to the church, the trappings of which have become mainstays of the modern Catholic mass. Neither she nor I had experienced those legacies. The only service we witnessed were Reverend Judd’s. And Reverend Judd could not cloud his sermons with Latin if he tried, and dared not even if he could have, when there might be a few folks willing to come up and gargle some holy water and speak in tongues. Anyway, the Catholics tended to clutter the walls of their cathedrals with pictures and carvings and tapestries of Jesus every where you looked. Jesus with a crown of thorns. Jesus dragging his cross. Jesus with the iron nails run through his bloody palms. Who could blame Bobby Judd for adding a little bit of competitive pageantry to his service?

Daddy could.

He refferred to Judd as Reverend in such a way you knew he little revered the man. I scared that Reverend of yours off with the shotgun when he come by today, he would tease Momma. Y’all need to talk, then do it over the phone. I don’t want the boys ‘round that one anymore than they have to.

 

Momma’s body bulged with Cub that day she took me to the Owingsville library. She wanted a proper name for him, too. Something righteous. They didn’t work out, though, because Daddy told her a few minutes before Cub burst free of her uterus, he’d like to name the child, if it was a boy.  Momma exhausted, and right beat up from all that pushing, and all the contractions, demurred. Just give me a god darn ice chip, she barked, you can call this one anything you want.

And that’s how Cub Koda Graves got to be named for the man that wrote Smoking In the Boy’s Room.