Matthew Goering


     They sit solemnly together in a prepackaged lounge, not talking.  There's nothing left to say save announcing new aches and pains and sharing in their communal loss of purpose.  They are trapped in a prison of good intentions surrounded by the aroma of air-conditioned death, and I, the good grandson, sits with them, a flickering light of youth and health and an unexpected drop in guest in a world of endless routine.  I am a new conversation and a new conversationalist.  I am a blessing.
     Grandpa Clement is lost here, he is nothing.  He gave up who  he was, moved off the farm to be with his dying wife.  She left for a better place somewhere high above 2 years back and he remains, wandering the halls of widows and guiding the mindless back to their quarters.  We talk of who he was, of the wheat and the rain and the shitty food at the home.  He slips quietly into his past.  I just sit and listen
     A small boy helps his father and uncle's hitch horses for harvest.  He revels I family and the strongest bond of blood and love and is glad he no longer hikes miles tot he one room country school house, helping out on the farm now instead.  
A brown mare won't cooperate, won't take the bit and the boy's father, the man he models himself after, pulls out his knife in a whirling flash of rage and slits the horses cheek open wide and red.  The family is shocked.  One of the boys uncles, a compassionate and patient man, explodes at the cruelty.  Men's voices challenge, scream, cuss.  The boy stands behind the wagon, afraid of his relatives outrage, unaffected by his father's harsh outburst.  He's seen him do it before.  He will see him do it since.  He will lose control himself, at his daughters, his son, his wife.  But he will love the best he knows how.  He will provide, he will work, he will farm until he dies.
     Grandpa Clement offers me ice cream, Aunt Bert has a poppy seed roll.  I see in my Grandpa Clement's gaze a quiet flicker of worthlessness, a dry tear of loneliness, and then he is hitting on a nurse with the same old jokes and his wheezing laugh.  He is a delight.  I feel sorry for him.
     Grandpa Eass interrupts rudely, talking of the ball game and his brother's grandson who plays first base for the Detroit Tigers.  It's all entirely irrelevant to our prior conversation.  Everyone turns, looks at him for a moment, asks the score, and moves on.  Grandpa Eass slips back into his detached world.  He's deaf as a stump and his mind is slipping.  He doesn't know it.  He just sits in his recliner with he heat too high or the A/C too cold, reads papers and nods off in front of the T.V. every 20 minutes.  I watch him in turmoil, filled with disgust and love and reverence and a deep longing for the man who used to give me tractor rides and taught me how to shoot a rifle.  He's not here any-more.  He's lost forever.
     A small man in a new Sears suit walks proud and controlling through the halls of his high school.  Principle Eass, the title signifies his being.  He is competent, intelligent, has a head of chalk white hair at forty.  The students call him Captain Whitehead behind his back.  His 3 children all call him Daddy, his wife calls him Dear and John, but she will not leave him until the good Lord takes her away.  He is a learned man, a church man, full of wit and ambition, a farmer and a sculptor of young minds at the same time.
He is the first of his family to leave the farm.  He is the only one of 9 siblings to graduate from college.  He is history.  He is America.
     Here Grandpa Eass is simply a waste of space.  His eyes drift away again in front of me, delving into a foolish madness that makes one pity and laugh at the same time. It's hard to see him slip away so quickly.  I'm so glad I'm not him.  Not yet, anyway. Grandpa Eass reminds me next week will make 13 years since Grandma died, leaving him alone on the farm.  His bloodshot eyes, small and tired, fill with tears and pain.  He chokes them back, after all, he's still a man, even if everyone treats him like a child.  I want to cry for him, but instead I tell him to tell me how worried Grandma used to get that I'd wander out into the wheat during harvest when I was a child and get run over by the old Allis-Chamber combine.  Grandpa smiles and tells of how it used to be, of how it should be, taking himself back to better times, leaving his frail and failing body behind, lifting his spirit.  Grandpa Clement and Aunt Bert laugh and smile and go with him.  I try but it's hard, I can't escape from this place.  The mood, the smell, the plastic rustling, covering the couch beneath me.
     I talked to a black woman the other day who said she has seen angels.  I asked her to tell me more.  She said really she's just seen a couple, only a few.  She said they have a very distinctive smell.  I asked her what that might be.  She said old folk's homes.  She said that smell everyone describes as death, that acrid, bitter smell of wasting live and depression, that's what angels smell like.  That's why old folk's homes smell the way they do, because of the angels.
     I look for angels hiding behind the plastic rhododendron, peeking out from behind the painting of a blond haired Christ holding a lamb on the far wall.  I don't see any.   Grandpa Eass has nodded off with his mouth open in an utter look of helplessness, like a baby.  No one notices.  Grandpa Clement sits looking at his lap, twiddling his thumbs, still no idea of what to do with himself after 2 long years.  I look at my forefathers, filled with awe and respect and  in a burst of love and overwhelming sentimentality I think that just maybe they are the angels here that smell so bad, stuck between this hell and their bible's promised heaven and waiting for their earthly bodies to finally give up and die so their souls can enjoy an eternity of bliss with God.  I think this and hope that it is true when suddenly Grandpa Clement turns to me, a new angelic glow surrounding his wrinkled face, and he says
     "There's a lot of poor bastards I this place, Walt.  A lot of poor bastards." Grandpa Eass and Aunt Bert agree, slowly nodding their heads and I feel my newfound hope dragged back to reality and stifled by the pain and frustration that pervades.  I think to myself that the smell here is getting to be too much.  Angels or not, I've got to go home.