When I Was Young and In My Prime

by Alayna Munce

  with dew, and on into the raspberry patch. It’s a big patch, and recently it’s gotten so he hasn’t been able to keep

  up with the pruning. Damn canes haven’t been bearing

  worth beans last few years. A red-winged blackbird watches from the fence post. Used to be so as you couldn’t keep up

  with them, but last summer you’d have been lucky to fill the bottom of a pie plate. Should have cleared the

  things out last fall. Too damn sentimental. Well, their time’s come.

  He sets to work. First with the scythe but then with whatever he can put his hands on to do the job. The saw. The shovel. The axe in a couple of places. By noon he’s got the patch pretty well loosened up and is going at it mostly with his hands. Thorny bastards. Right through his gloves in a couple of places. And into his wrists all along the gap between his glove-ends and his jacket cuffs. He bleeds easily these days because of the heart pills. Doesn’t care. He’s breathing hard, sweating, his heart thumping so violently at one point he thinks it must be disturbing the rest of his insides. He stops every now and then to listen to his hoof-beat heart, but not long. Not too long. He keeps working, wrestling the raspberry canes. He stops at two for some warmed-up soup and toast. Then back at it. By twilight the raspberry patch is in irreparable disarray and he is tired, tired, so tired he’s close to weeping. He goes to bed that night without supper and with his coveralls on. The next day he calls Lois King and asks her to send her grandson over to finish the job. The grandson lives in town. High school student. Good kid. He doesn’t call Ruthie or Nick.

  It takes him over a week to recover, and even then he doesn’t fully. Not quite. Not ever. He trembles, can’t will his legs sometimes to stand him up and walk him to the kitchen, so he sits in his chair just thinking about tea, just thinking. That summer there is only a half a row of radishes and no one notices.

  In July he falls on his way up the stairs of the front porch to get the mail. He never uses the front door, always in and out by the side door near the back. Every couple of days he walks around the house up onto the front porch and fetches the mail from the mailbox. He trips and falls face-first, skins his knees and chin. He turns over, sits up and then sits there on the front porch, sobbing, his knees bleeding through his pants.

  He falls again in August. Down the stairs this time, the stairs to the basement. He’s carrying a jar of freshly pickled plum tomatoes, and all he can think as he’s falling is, I can’t let the jar break. He falls to the bottom. Nothing is broken, neither the jar nor his bones, but he is badly bruised and can barely breathe. He doesn’t call anyone to tell them about the fall. Ruth shows up on the weekend to visit, sees the bruises, hears the story. When she goes downstairs to use the basement bathroom, she notices the jar of pickled tomatoes off to the side on the floor at the foot of the stairs, like a stone marking a grave or a well.

  That autumn he gives in and decides to sell the house, his last crop of sugar snap peas already planted and harvested.

  Johnny Schritt had a scow he used for fishing so when the Red River flooded that year he figured he was king of the mountain for a while, and a generous king at that. It was my first season as a hired man on Henry Lytle’s farm but Johnny had been there for years. When the floods came he took us all for rides in his scow and didn’t even charge us, grateful, I suppose, to be centre of attention for once cause no one (least of all women) had ever looked twice at Johnny Schritt, at least not since he was born with his toes attached like that to one another. He was the sort of fellow who couldn’t follow a set of instructions to save his hide but who knew every type of useless trick you could think of. Like how to cheat at racehorse rummy or how to put a chicken to sleep by tucking her head under her wing and swinging her back and forth between your legs like a pendulum for a minute or two. Johnny would be on his way to feed the pigs and out of the blue he’d grab a chicken from the yard and put her to sleep like that, then climb up to the loft in the barn and set the chicken on the rafter beam so that when she woke up a minute later she’d find herself way up high there in the air. Jesus you should have heard the sounds those chickens made then.

  Anyhow, a whole lot of neighbours were camping out with us—the Lytle place was one of the farms on high ground there. Johnny and I gave up our beds in the bunkhouse for the women and kids, and the men all slept in the barn. All the farmers were worried sick about when the rain would stop, the waters go down, land dry up enough for spring planting. They’d be up half the night figuring—you could hear them making figures together about the cost of buying new seed and how late they could push it and still get in a harvest before frost. And even when they weren’t talking it over, it was on their minds. Round the clock. You could see it in their faces if you caught sight of one of them looking out over the fields of water—you could tell they were chewing it over inside their heads, figuring. You could almost hear them grinding their teeth, willing the water to disappear, wishing for a Moses to part it, or a Jesus to tame it, or wishing at the very least that a Noah had saved their livestock two by two.

  Johnny and I slept up in the hayloft and let them talk. Johnny was a little thick and didn’t give two hoots for anything but excitement, and to me nothing could be as bad as what I’d seen in the Old Country. Seemed to me hunger and blood were different when there was looting and bayonets to blame—unnatural you might say. So flood or no flood, this was the land of plenty to me and I wasn’t going to waste time worrying.

  In the days after the rain finally stopped but before the water started back to where it belonged, Johnny ran himself ragged taking us all for excursions in his leaky little scow. He and I went on our own the first trip. Had to take turns rowing and bailing. Took us a while to get there at first. We tried to follow the road to town but kept getting either lost or beached, so after a spell I talked Johnny into giving the current a go and we followed the river. Didn’t have to row at all, all the way to town, just lean back and drift. I remember putting my hands up on either side of my face like horse blinkers, turning around until at one particular angle I got a glimpse of pure water almost as far as you could see, flat as a field of wheat only silver instead of gold and I tell you I was in my glory.

  Sure was a funny feeling floating over the town bridge instead of under. The water was murky as hell, but I can still remember to this day looking down over the edge of Johnny Schritt’s scow that first trip into town after the rain stopped and seeing a row of automobiles like great big stones just under the surface of the water, parked all along Main Street as if nothing at all was amiss, just minding their own business. The dogwood had already turned red in front of the credit union and you could just barely make it out as you passed over, a red blur, waving like in the wind. ’Course downtown there were plenty of tall two-storey brick buildings so it was no problem to get your bearings there. On the way home it was hard going—upstream, you know. You had to take care not to get disoriented ’cause in some places for long stretches there were only rooftops showing by the river and one rooftop tends to look a hell of a lot like another whether you’re rich or poor.

  Johnny and I were tight friends so he took me on almost every excursion as first mate to his skipper. Wasn’t so much fun after that first trip though. The water started to go down quickly so it wasn’t as grand and we got beached more and more often and everyone was worrying over their houses, wanting to go visit their property, figure the damage. At the time I remember being impatient and all full of scorn, but looking back, who can blame them?

  I never forgot that time. I slept at night in the Lytles’ barn with my arms and back aching from rowing upstream and my dreams all fast and blurred and turned around. When I went to sleep I’d be caught right up in a current again, right where it left off. I remember the dreams went on for a spell even after the water was gone. They were full of things showing up in places they shouldn’t be. The milking bucket turning up in Mrs. Lytle’s china cabinet. The pipe organ from the church standing in the back pasture amo
ng the cattle. My sister Anne in the bow of the boat leaning back like Cleopatra even though she’d already gone east by then. And in one dream the pine box we made to bury Father—it was perched on the beams of the Lytle barn for all the world like one of Johnny Schritt’s sleeping chickens.

  This morning two workmen come to fix the plumbing in the apartment downstairs. One of them knocks on my door, wants to come up and turn on the water. I let him up, but I’m instantly aware that his nose won’t be adjusted to the stink of out-of-control sauerkraut in the pantry where the sink is. So I go in and turn on the tap for him. He listens, says thanks, goes back downstairs. Of course when he leaves I’m finally motivated to deal with the stink, though James has been bugging me to deal with it for days. So I’m kneeling on the floor scooping scum off the sauerkraut with a teaspoon into a blue plastic cup, and through the floorboards I hear the one workman telling the other how my place stinks, how disgusting it is, how there’s definitely something rotting up there. Hurry up so we can get out of here, the other one says.

  So I start pacing and, even though I half-know they’ll be gone before I get to them, I’m working up my courage to go down, knock on the door and explain that I heard them through the floorboards, up through the pipes—explain about the sauerkraut, how I hate the stink too, how I wish I could just dump the whole fucking crock into the compost except I don’t have a compost so it would have to be the garbage, but that I can’t, because, you see, because of my grandfather.

  Because—how to explain—because of the small messages he leaves to himself on scraps of paper all over his house (veterinarian appointment Tues 1 pm, that cat will be the death of me), and because of the shaky hand he writes them in.

  Because his house is for sale and I’m guessing this was the last time we’ll ever make sauerkraut together. Because his old cat Tigger died the day before I went over there to make the sauerkraut. Because Tigger is buried with an upside-down washbasin to mark his grave under the apple tree that Grandpa tried to splice with pear.

  Because the man poured pickle juice on his fried rice when we ordered Chinese after making the sauerkraut. Because I tried it too. And it was good.

  Because the first year I made sauerkraut with him I told everyone, Did you know there’s no vinegar in sauerkraut—only cabbage and salt, fermented. Because no one knew. It was always news.

  Because we have the same taste for vinegar. Because I don’t speak Low German or German or Ukrainian or Russian or Dutch.

  Because the lantern that used to light his way to the barn for morning chores now hangs unlit in my living room.

  Because he bought thirty cabbages and bragged to the Mennonite woman who sold them that his granddaughter wanted to learn sauerkraut.

  Because she was impressed.

  Because he wouldn’t tell me when I’d stomped enough juices out of the cabbage with the wooden cudgel. I had to guess for myself. Because he used to have Polish farmhands who made huge wooden kegs of sauerkraut. Because they’d walk on it in their bare feet. Like Mediterraneans walk on grapes. For wine.

  And I’m crying now because I’m such a sad sorry sap and I’m about to get my period and I’m behind on my rent and I’m back in the pantry kneeling in front of the sauerkraut scooping the scum into a blue plastic cup holding my breath in the stink and my nose is running and I’m wiping it on my sleeve and trying not to sob too loudly as the plumbers gather up their tools below.

  things buried with us

  1

  The clicking sound

  her knees made

  whenever she bent

  or straightened.

  2

  One Saturday afternoon

  in front of the general store

  a starling swooped close,

  and she was not startled.

  3

  When pregnant with her first child, she had

  a womb-name for it which she never told anyone

  (though once quite near her

  time she wrote it down in pencil

  on the back of a recipe card

  as she waited

  for her pie to set).

  4

  He bought an old violin once because he had

  a certain idea of himself. It buckles

  slowly, stringless

  in its black-lacquered case in my closet.

  5

  Long ago a secret formed

  a lump in his throat that gradually

  became part of his profile. She also

  had a secret—who knows

  if it was the same as his or

  different or somehow

  both. Whatever the case, over the years

  it was incorporated into how she held her face

  so when you see her in her coffin you will barely

  recognize her—forehead, cheeks and jaw

  unclenched; face slack, loose, almost

  universal; the secret

  gone before her into the earth.

  6

  There was a certain teacup, a tallish lily of the valley cup, its silhouette like a fleshy neck smoothed out by the chin held high.

  It was the one she was drinking from when the hospital phoned with the news of her father’s death.

  She placed the cup at the back of the buffet, behind the gravy boat, Christmas platter and crystal pickle tray.

  Years later, when the house was sold, the contents auctioned off, the buffet and china cabinet cleared out, the auctioneer’s assistant picked up the cup,

  wondered ever-so-briefly why

  it was separate,

  then put it together

  with the rest.

  7

  Almost everything

  is buried with us:

  once she ate a shallow bowl full of wild

  strawberries that took her the better part

  of the morning to pick.

  She was eating them all

  by herself

  with a spoon on the side stoop and,

  looking up at the oak in the yard,

  said aloud, Fancy

  meeting you

  here.

  High Park, a walk on my way to work.

  Leaves at their absolute peak, sunlight pouring profligate from bluest sky. Luminous oranges, rusts and yellows on all sides as I walk, scuba diver among vibrant reefs.

  In the off-leash area of the park somebody’s whippet has a squirrel in its jaws. The squirrel, still alive, clawing at the dog’s cheeks. The dog’s tail wagging.

  What kind of world is this?

  Lately the smallest thing—one firm section of an orange, say, with its thin translucent skin and, when you break it open, its grain of crowded nodules, each slim nodule a pocket of juice contained within an even thinner skin, all of it bright orange but somehow pale at the same time, variable, as if an emissary of the sun itself, not to mention the white pith just bitter enough to make the sweetness sing—the smallest thing

  can hold me firmly, perfectly in place for a whole afternoon, like a paperweight.

  That we are here at all (even the words we and here—even

  words) seems fantastical. On my way to work, to bathe old people like babies. Washcloth between their toes, luxury of warm water over their backs. They stare at me, amazed that these wrinkled folds—these bent, knobby, unreliable limbs—are their very own.

  There is nothing that is not exotic.

  We’re all, all of us, just visiting.

  The youngster who finally buys the house offers a figure way under the listing price—under even Grandpa’s bottom line—and won’t negotiate about buying the appliances. It’s the first offer he’s had for six weeks but Grandpa, stubborn and insulted, refuses to counter-offer. The real estate agent calls Mom and Uncle Nick, and they intervene.

  There are four lists:

  things to be moved to Grandpa’s new apartment

  things to be taken by family

  things to be auctioned off

  things to be sold privately />
  (And the items that don’t make any of the lists. An anti-list: things to be loaded into the back of the auctioneer’s pickup truck for the dump.)

  When I get there the weekend before the auction, he’s in the driveway with the red wagon behind him—full of houseplants to take to his new apartment in the seniors’ building attached to the nursing home a block and a half away. It’s one of those crisp, late fall mornings, and we can see our breath as we hug.

  Mom said the auctioneer came during the week to box and categorize but I can’t really tell the difference; his workshop is still a colossal clutter: boxes of soil-caked teacup saucers mixed with wrenches and screwdrivers, stacks of six-quart baskets stuffed with steel wool and seed packets. In a copper boiler, coils of garden hose. I point out the boiler to Grandpa. “You might as well take it,” he says. “It’ll just go in the auction for two bits.”

  Lifting out the hoses, Grandpa says he once met a Baptist who had a theory—said he’d figured out the reason why ropes and hoses and necklaces inevitably tangle even if they’re left coiled neatly. It’s because of the Fall, he said.

  All fall Uncle Nick has been taking home carpentry tools, Grandpa has been salvaging what he’ll need in his small apartment, I’ve been picking things out for my apartment. I’d pick something up, and Grandpa would look at it, snort. “What’re you taking that old thing for?”