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Show cracked. A narrow man, who could fit in tight places, often upside down, where he would weld metal fittings well enough to keep the rig hauling gold from the ground. He learned to tolerate enormous amounts of heat, andpain, I suppose, and got to the point where he could work intimately with the blue flame from the welder. Inches away, no room to move, he would settle into the earth like an easy chair, the flame, hot and blue, the only source of light. There was no room for mistake. I know only enough to know that the rage does not begin and end with his father but rather metastasizes into other generations, diseasing the entire family tree, many of whom share not just the deep sorrow that manifests itself in anger and violence but the red hair that seems to accompany it. My grandfather was a monster, but this is not a story my father likes to tell. He would rather describe his mother beiore her stroke, a woman who could calm any baby by bringing it to her chest. Children loved her, he would say. He loved her, I imagine. But no amount of kindness can return the hammer to the tool shed. Somewhere inhis_youth,my father developed a way to cope with the loss that surrounded him. Be developed the idea of boxes, tiny compartments in his mind into which sad and terrifying memories could be safely locked away never to be seen again like so many pairs of outgrown trousers AHis mind became a dresser and into each drawer he placed the pig and the kittens, the belt, and the poverty. If you locked the box 24 |