Uncle Sean

by Ronald L Donaghe

  And Uncle Sean looked out the window as we passed over the bridge. Then, when we were on the westward road, we both looked around at the bare ground. He sighed. His left arm was on the back of the seat and he dropped his hand down onto my shoulder. I giggled a little, cause when he squeezed my shoulder I felt a twinge down in my pants.

  “It looks the same as when I was a kid,” he said. “You were too little to remember, but I’d stay for the summers with your daddy and Arlene” (Uncle Sean meant my mama).

  “Except it was greener. Right? In the summer?”

  “Just where the crops grow,” he said. “But the desert looks just the same.”

  I had my window down and the cold air blew through and Uncle Sean rolled his window down. He was wearing a camouflage jacket I bet he got from the army, and a ugly, green t-shirt underneath. All I had on was a t-shirt and my Levi jacket, but I wasn’t cold at all the way he squeezed my shoulder. It was most unconscious I think, cause he squeezed and looked out the windows, and I glanced at his face and sighed, quiet like, cause even from the side his lips were that pretty pink and his lashes seemed to droop, like he was sad.

  “Why were you in the hospital?” I asked, before I knew I was going to, but he didn’t answer, like he didn’t hear me.

  Then later, I asked him why, out of the whole wide world, he’d come back here. “Nobody stays,” I tell him, “except maybe boys like me who got to take over the farms and ranches when our daddies die.”

  We been all over the farm by now, a whole lot of nothing to see and we’re pulling into the drive next to the barn.

  “I came back here,” he says, looking over at me, his lashes so long they’re touching his cheeks, and his pink lips are kind of wet like, cause he’s been running his tongue over them. “Because I don’t have any place else in the world to go. At least not right now.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Uncle Sean,” I say. I want to say, “because I love you,” but I’m not sure if it’s that or if I’m kind of like afraid of him, he’s so pretty.

  ***

  Mama came from a big family like ours. She’s the oldest of six children. Uncle Sean is the youngest and I think he’s near twenty-two. Mama says he was drafted into the army straight out of high school, from down south, near Louisiana. That’s where they’re from. Shreveport or some place. I was asking her about her kin because I was wondering why Uncle Sean says he ain’t got no place else to go.

  She was making pies out of some peaches she put up in Mason jars she said she needed to use up. Uncle Sean and Daddy had went over to Luna County for some parts and Rita, May, and Trinket (that’s what we call my littlest sister, Shawna, because she’s so little even though she’s eight) went over to a birthday party and a sleep over at Julie Collins’ this afternoon. And Mama made me help her with the pies. The best ones are the fried pies dipped in powdered sugar, and we were eating one a piece, and I asked her why Uncle Sean says he ain’t got no place else to go.

  She’s smoking a cigarette and has flour on the side of her hand, where she smoothed out the flour on the rolling board for the crust. Mama’s pretty, too, so I see where Uncle Sean gets it. Only Mama’s old. At least forty-five, and her forehead’s got deep worry lines. And she’s got green eyes, not blue like Uncle Sean.

  “Well your granny and grandpa Martin are dead,” Mama says, “and Sean’s the baby of the family. Your other aunts and uncles are married and have kids and don’t have room. Besides, Sean used to come stay with me when he was about your age. He always came out from Louisiana in the summers, and it just seemed natural enough once he was discharged that he’d head out here.”

  “How come he ain’t married?” I asked Mama, and she got this funny look and wiped a strand of hair away from her face and got flour on her cheek.

  “Lord, give him time!” she says. “Honey, that war ain’t no good on those young boys they send over there. Sean was only nineteen and he was over there almost two years, before they sent him home to be laid up in a hospital.”

  “Was he shot or not?!” I say, then, because nobody will tell me. “How can you be in the hospital so long if you ain’t wounded!” I kind of raised my voice at that. “He don’t seem wounded,” I say. “He don’t limp or anything.”

  She takes a deep drag off her cigarette which is almost smoked to the filter. “I reckon you’re gonna pester me till I tell you,” she says, smashing out the butt in an ashtray on the table. Then she says, “he had a nervous breakdown, honey, but don’t you go tell him I said so.”

  I asked her what that was, but she wouldn’t tell me. “You just don’t say a word about that to your uncle, hear me?”

  ***

  So there’s something wrong with Uncle Sean and it makes me sad. We had a school bus driver once that had a nervous breakdown, least that’s what people said. But I think she just up and quit because some of the high school boys were mean to her. One day they opened the emergency doors in the back, as we were rolling down the road, and shoved the spare tire out, and all of us got up and went to the back watching it hit the gravel and bounce off like a ball, and Mrs. Mack hits the brakes and goes into a skid on the gravel road, and we come to a stop half on the road and half into a shallow arroyo. It was a couple a hours before old man Hill comes along. Mrs. Mack screamed herself raw at us, even though it was only a couple of the mean guys that did it. And then we was there another couple a hours before Mr. Hill gets back with a tractor to pull the bus out of the arroyo. Next day we had a new driver. Dosier Duffus is what we called him, cause he was big and hefty, but had a tiny brain, only he could slap even the biggest high school guy around with one hand, and he says, “you give Mrs. Mack a nervous breakdown.”

  So I wondered if people in the army was mean to Uncle Sean.

  Well. That’s about it for when Uncle Sean got here at Christmas. I was real happy he was here. But I was kind of bothered, like would he like me? Was he crazy? And well…I don’t know how to say what it makes me feel like with him here.

  ***

  Uncle Sean says Americans don’t know what’s going on there in Vietnam, says we’re killing women and children. That’s all he says before he gets quiet. But that’s not what’s wrong with him. Things like that’d bother anybody.

  At supper one night, Daddy was talking about the war, and says how weak-minded them boys over in Vietnam are, cause they’re all hopped up on that devil’s weed like damn fools and when he was in the army in world war number two, men was men, and didn’t need no drugs and Uncle Sean was real quiet. This time, though, when he looked over at me with those eyes, they didn’t have that jokey kind of thing we share. Instead it was kind of like he was about to cry and his Revlon pink lips were pressed tight together.

  And I knew he was sad about something or mad at Daddy for talking like a damn fool, knowing Uncle Sean was in the hospital with a nervous breakdown, and that night that funny feeling got so sweet in my chest when Uncle Sean looked over at me and I saw the tears, I just said, “Daddy, shut up! You ain’t been over there. Uncle Sean ain’t no damn fool even if he was in the army.”

  I got slapped good for that, and Daddy finished eating in silence, only he looked mad and clamped his jaws shut, and Mama sent the girls off to the kitchen to start on the dishes. So it was just me and Mama and Daddy and Uncle Sean at the table, and Mama says, “Roy (my daddy), Will’s right. You ain’t been over there. It’s a different kind of war and you know it.”

  And Daddy says he knew it so everybody just think what they want. It’s his house and his farm and he’ll speak his mind if he’s a mind to.

  I felt sorry for Daddy, too, right then, even though my face felt all hot where he’d slapped me. But Daddy held back when he smacked me. I could tell. I give him that. He don’t hit us like I saw him hit old Bob Hill one day, right in the face with his fist over some cow that had got into the corn and trampled it to the ground.

  Then Uncle Sean says real quiet, head bowed, looking at Daddy, then sneaking a look at me, cause h
e knows I stood up for him, “you’re right, Roy. No hard feelings, here. Will didn’t mean to be disrespectful.” Then he turns to me and my chest is heaving, and I know tears are in my eyes, too, and he says, “Will, you’re too young to tell your daddy to shut up, but I know you thought Roy was after me.”

  But sometimes I know Daddy gets onto Uncle Sean for no good reason, cause he’s mad about him being here since Christmas.

  So everybody calmed down and later on, when Mama, Daddy, and May were watching television, and Rita and Trinket were put to bed, Uncle Sean left the house. He’s got a car, a real neat ’57 Chevy, but he don’t go no where much. Too far over to Luna County, and right now he says he ain’t got no money. So I saw him through the screen door in the kitchen head out to his car. Heard him slam the door shut, and I listened for the kick of the engine, but it stayed quiet. So later, I snuck out through the back door and came up behind the car, where I could see the back of Uncle Sean’s head behind the wheel, just sitting there, smoke curling out of the window on his side giving off a funny kind of smell, not like what Mama smokes.

  He didn’t have the radio blaring, neither, because out here about the only station you can pick up is KOMA out of Oklahoma City. And like as not it comes and goes. So I figured if he looked into his rear-view mirror he could see me even if it was kind of dark out, though it don’t really get dark ’til around nine or so.

  So I make out like I’m just walking past the car heading out to the barn. As I pass by, I say, “Hi, Uncle Sean. What kind a smokes you got? They smell like burning tumbleweeds.”

  Funny, even though it’s near dark, his paler-than-blue eyes catch mine and hold me. He’s got his elbow out the window.

  “Roll my own,” he says, and kind of talks like he’s trying to suck his breath back in. I don’t smoke but I say, “let me try one.” He says “no, but come here.” Then I’m standing right up next to the car, and he’s not wearing a shirt and I can see sweat glistening off his chest and shining on his neck. He shows me the smoke.

  “I’m going to give you a ‘shotgun,’ though,” he says, grinning at me. “Get ready to suck in the smoke.” Then he purses his lips. “Do like that.” So I make a small “o” with my mouth and he sticks the burning end of his home-rolled in his mouth and pulls my face down to his lips. I let him pull my face to his, and just when I’m all ready to kiss him, because that’s what I think he wants, he blows smoke out and I breathe it in.

  I try to pull away because it’s near making me cough but he keeps my lips near his and keeps blowing smoke and I keep sucking it in.

  “Now hold it!” he says, taking the cigarette out of his mouth.

  A minute later, I felt like I was getting dizzy, and he’s still holding my face close to his, and I get that goosey twinge in my pants, feeling how hot his hand is on the back of my neck and his breath is right in my face. And even up close in the dark, like this, his face is all smooth and pretty.

  “Get in,” he says, and I go around and open the passenger side and get in. His whole car smells like burning tumbleweeds.

  So we’re sitting in the car and it’s still like ninety degrees out and I’m sweating and think it would be nice in the house at least with the swamp cooler running, but I wouldn’t trade places for nothing. And he says, “you don’t need to stand up for me like you did in there.” He cocks his head toward the house. “Your dad’s not a bad man, Will.”

  “Then how come you two fight all the time?” I say.

  He chuckles down in his throat, looking over at me in the dark, and where I’m sitting, I see the porch light reflecting in his eyes and they’re shiny with tears and I feel sorry for him.

  He says, “I don’t know, Will. Maybe he doesn’t like me being here. I’d leave if I could.”

  “I don’t want you to go, Uncle Sean!” I say. “You said you don’t have no where else in the whole wide world to go, and Mama says so, too.”

  “Arlene’s been talking to you about me?” Uncle Sean says. “Does she want me to go, too?”

  “No! Uncle Sean, she says you can’t go, cause all your other sisters and brothers are too busy, and since you been in the hospital”—I shut up quick, cause I was about to spill the beans about his nervous breakdown and Mama told me not to say so.

  He turns and looks at me, and it’s like no matter how dark, his face can find the light, cause I see real clear how sad he looks. My chest feels so funny, looking at him. I wisht he’d of kissed me a minute ago, instead of blow smoke in my face.

  “Did she tell you why I was in the hospital, Will?” His voice is so soft and gentle, I don’t know if it’s really a question for me, but maybe for him, like he maybe don’t know.

  “Mama says you had some kind a breakdown. Was people mean to you, Uncle Sean, down there in Vietnam?”

  He’s still looking at me and smiles. I can feel the heat from his body even though I’m sweating. “It is a country at war with itself,” he says. “People are mean to each other when that happens.”

  “Then how come you were in the hospital?” I asked, but I’m afraid he’ll be mad at me for asking again, cause last time he didn’t tell me.

  Uncle Sean don’t pay me no mind, just then, like maybe he hears things in his head too loud to hear me. I think he’s angry a lot and I know from how he puts things that it ain’t Daddy he’s mad at.

  Then Uncle Sean looks away, and I watch his chest rise and fall, like he’s taking a deep sigh, and I still feel funny in the chest on top of dizzy in my whole body from taking in that “shotgun” thing he did with his home-rolled. But I don’t think it has anything to do with the warm feelings I have for Uncle Sean. I hear him breathing, I watch his chest rise and fall, and watch a drip of sweat run down his neck. It’s all different colors, like a tiny glass bead reflecting light.

  We sit for awhile longer, quiet, and I can hear the crickets start up in the dark. They’re real loud, like they suddenly got real big. Out near the barn, I hear an owl hoot hoot, like I’m Superman with super hearing. And I keep watching Uncle Sean’s face and want to move up next to him, put my arm around his shoulder or something, he’s so sad.

  ***

  Weren’t long after Daddy said those mean things at the dinner table that him and Uncle Sean had a big fight, and Uncle Sean packed up his car, and was just about to drive off, when Mama comes out and says no he’s got to stay, that Roy didn’t mean it. I was off in the field and when I came back the fight was over, but I seen Uncle Sean was standing next to his car, and I knew right away that he was mad.

  This time, I seen Uncle Sean a different kind of mad than I ever seen. He weren’t crying no tears, and he didn’t look sad, neither. Mama was, though. She was crying a lot, and I never seen her like that, cause Mama and Daddy, they don’t fight much except to raise their voices ever once in a while.

  I was really a kid, this time, cause nobody even paid me the least mind. Even Uncle Sean never even glanced at me when I pulled up and seen that Mama was crying, bawling really, hanging onto one of Uncle Sean’s hands, and he was standing all straight, looking right past Mama like a pointer dog, back at the house. So I looked over there, but there weren’t nothing on the porch.

  So real quiet like I went to the house, cause no one paid me no mind and I saw that Daddy was in the kitchen, looking out the window. I seen from the way he was hunched over that he was mad too. But I knew I better not get caught looking at him, so I went down the hall to Uncle Sean’s room and, sure enough, it was clean as a whistle.

  Then I went to the girls’ room and they was all in there looking scared, and so I asked May what happened. And this is what she said.

  It seems like Daddy got some strange notion to go into Uncle Sean’s room when Uncle Sean was outside. It being June, it really is hot, and maybe Daddy was in there fiddling with the cooler vents or something is all May can figure out. Then he comes out of there, May says, with that picture Uncle Sean has on his dresser, and May and the girls and Mama’s in the kitchen making coo
kies.

  But Daddy says he’s going to have a talk with Sean, about what’s the meaning of that picture. He don’t like it, May says, though she don’t know why.

  Then, when Uncle Sean comes in to wash up, Daddy sends the girls out of the room, but they can hear Daddy start to yell, and May sneaks out in the hall and stands in the living room door, so she can see into the kitchen and Daddy’s shaking the picture in Uncle Sean’s face.

  So I asked her what he was saying, and when she told me that Daddy was saying they looked liked faggots, I got this horrible stomped on feeling down in my guts, cause when guys at school say that, they mean something terrible, though I never knew exactly what, cause the Webster’s only says it’s firewood. And when I ask May what that means, she looks at me funny and says, “You don’t know?” And I say, no, and then she just looks like a imp with her freckles and green eyes and says, “you’ll figure it out,” but I’m not sure I want to know.

  And May says that Uncle Sean stands right up to Daddy, saying how Daddy can put any thought on it he wants but it’s his room and to stay the hell out and mind his own business, and Daddy says no it ain’t, it’s his house and if Uncle Sean don’t want to live under his rules then to get out.

  By the time I left the girls’ room, I was angry, like Uncle Sean, cause it weren’t fair what Daddy said.

  So, anyway, Uncle Sean didn’t leave, but everybody was hurt and mad and quiet. It took Daddy a couple a days to tell Uncle Sean that maybe that picture didn’t mean what he thought it did. And that was about as close to apologizing as Daddy got.

  Now I don’t know how Mama got Uncle Sean to stay, cause he was all packed up, but he didn’t leave and I let out a big breath about that. But the night of the fight, Uncle Sean stayed in his room and didn’t come out for supper, and Mama and Daddy being so old didn’t think it was none of us kids’ business, like when you ask them questions where they’re going and if they don’t want you to know they just say to see a man about a dog.

  For almost a week, like I just wrote, it took everybody awhile to calm down and for us all to get back to normal, though I don’t think it will ever be quite the same. Cause for a few days, Daddy sends Uncle Sean off by hisself to do work, and keeps me around the barn to help him.