SOS Gab & Eti 1.16
“In the full Bonwit Teller shopping bags my grandmother used to carry
wherever she went, she kept a framed photograph of her mother, a serious
woman in a dark print dress who died before I was born. I used to laugh
at her for this, teasing her for dragging around a picture of an old
woman in the bottom of a tattered paper bag. My mother would hush me,
telling me to leave Grandma alone.“ Hope Edelman
Etidorpha walked around for months re-fusing to accept - was never able
to accept - the truth. She felt like a shithouse warmed over, but Buck
had been telling both her and Gab for the past twenty years that he was
going to die, “Any minute now and I will be gone.” In 1971 he ordered a
granite tombstone with the chiseled motto, “I Told You I Was Sick.”
Nobody could have a conversation with Buck without his voice dropping
slower, ever slower, then trundling upon the inevitable talk of his
imminent death, “Will you miss me?” Until nobody took the trouble to
come around visiting any more and it was left to Eti who thought, “I
love you Pop, but I can’t stand to be with you and not go nutso wango
bonkers! What will I miss? Oh, God, such an awful way to feel. I do not
want to return any more of his underwear to Walmart!”
Eti was acutely aware of returns and rebirths as she stood beside her
father's rocker listening to the gentle rain pattering on the Bilco door
to the cellar. The very same door that she and Buck had spent a weekend
installing not less than seven years ago. The wheezing old fart would
complain all day and still work circles around his offspring.
The house had been built by Buck’s grandmother, a gnarly Seneca. She had
previously married a useless thumper, Dr. Samuel Warholic, and quickly
moved off the Canawagus Reservation. When not pumping women’s breasts
for the benefit of Henry Ford, Dr. Warholic was a theoretical
mathematician of sorts who posthumorously became famous for calculating
the global population of Sea Gooseberry.
While still young and of bearing age she was widowed when Dr. Warholic
was mysteriously crushed by a falling Tulip Tree. At the time of the
collision Dr. Warholic was on his hands and knees and did not see or
hear the Lirodendron tulipfera approaching. He was concentrating his
attention on a small sampling of leaf covered ground immediately before
his nearsighted continence, assiduously involved in the collection of
bloodroot with which to make an herbal paste to remove some nasty warts
from the posterior of his mistress. She settled in on the farm that Dr.
Warholic had left her behind, to raise swine, pigmy jackasses, Nubian
goats, and grow hollyhocks. Eventually there were several children,
Buck’s mother among them, though Dr. Warholic, properly disposed in a
poplar casket at the First Bullamanka Baptist Church, was of no issue.
The house had withstood the ravages of the seasons, enduring the
remnants of at least one hurricane, and was not in too poor a shape.
This despite the fact that it stood out stark naked, except for the
quince, hawthorn, and lilac hedgerow, surrounded by timothy and alfalfa
fields on the top knob of a baldy old stonepile of a hill. Exquisite
view of the glacially carved valley to the West, but as for winter
warmth so poorly situated that the water froze in the kitchen at least
once each frigid winter. The style was rock farmer junk, nothing
elaborate. A pitched roof, with ridge running north to south, few
windows on the West, except for the kitchen. The parlor to the north,
right of the door. A stone fireplace located at north end of the ridge,
and one on the west elevation with a brick beehive oven for exotic
tarts.
Gab kept up the maintenance, repaired a few of the oak shingles on the
main roof when it leaked, repointed the rubble stone foundation, chased
squirrels and bats out of the attic, baited the coons.
In the basement Etidorpha continued to show loyalty to her desiccated
father despite the fact that at times he nearly drove her mad, even if
he was in an advanced stage of rigor mortis.
To be continued... tagua nut button factory.
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