you. I’ve always felt he made a mistake with that gall-bladder operation. They didn’t need to take out my gall bladder.’
I’m glad Dad can admit it. He begins cutting his veal cutlet. It’s wonderful to see his mechanic’s hands working.
‘It’s just the idea of ‘firing’ a doctor; I could never get the nerve to do a thing like that.’
‘Remember, Dad, they’re here to serve you; you’re paying them, just the way you’d pay somebody to fix your car.’
He waves his knife at me, shakes it.
‘Oh, no I’m not; it’s Douglas and the union pays.’
‘Sure you’re paying, Dad. The money they give to Perpetual comes from somewhere. It comes from the money you earned for Douglas, money they made off you and your work. It’s not charity, you earned every dime. They made a fortune off your work over the years, don’t forget that.’
‘OK, Johnny, OK. We’ll fire Ethridge, maybe take over this whole hospital. That’s just fine with me.’
I’m enjoying watching him eat. After all the feeding – trying to get his mouth open, then get the spoon out; catching the drivels – it seems like a miracle to watch him shove food in his mouth.
I’ve always liked watching Dad chew anyway. When he chews, there are tight muscles at the juncture of his jaws which flex with each bite in a way I’ve never seen on anybody else. They flex into a hard round nutlike muscle under his thin skin. It’s the same way when he bears down to tighten or loosen a bolt or nut. I remember as a kid trying to develop that chewing muscle; it never came. It’s like his hammering muscle.
‘Dad, let’s see if you still have that old hammering muscle of yours.’
He puts down the fork and looks at his withered, wrinkled right arm. It’s liver-spotted and the skin is somewhere between something a snake would discard and old parchment. Even most of the hair has rubbed off. But when he bends his wrist, it’s still there. A bump about the size of a marble rises in the middle of his lower arm. He pushes on it with the index finger of his left hand.
‘Soft as a lump of pig fat. I’d never get a job now with a hammering bump like that.’
He peers at me and smiles.
‘But you know what, Johnny; I don’t need a job. I’m retired. I own my own house, I’ve got money in the bank, a pension and Social Security. I don’t ever have to work again. Hot dawg!’
He picks up his spoon and starts scraping, cleaning the corners of the dishes. I think he could eat another whole meal.
Before he was married, Dad worked as an outside carpenter in Philadelphia. He and his brothers worked for their father, who did the basic contracting. Sometimes they’d get a big job and hire extra people. Dad told me his dad never asked about apprenticeship papers or recommendations. He’d only ask to see if the guy had a hammering bump. If it was there, he’d touch it the way Dad did just now and if it was hard the guy got the job.
My granddad refused to pay a salary. Everybody who worked with him was a free agent. He’d offer a job like sheeting a roof and promise a certain amount of money if it was done well in a certain amount of time. Dad said if you worked your tail off and were good, you could make a lot of money working for him but if you loafed on the job you’d wind up broke.
This way Granddad got the best carpenters in Philadelphia and was known for getting a job done quickly and well.
The trouble was he couldn’t expand with his ‘no salary’ system, so it was mostly job carpentry. Then too, just when he did get things rolling for him, building six houses on speculation, the Depression hit. He lost everything, worked ten years paying off his debts and died within the year.
I never developed a hammering muscle. I’ve rebuilt three houses, adding a total of six bedrooms and two baths as well as building a two-car garage, but that hammering muscle never came. Once when I was helping Dad build his place I asked about it. Then he was about my age now; I was maybe twenty-five, just finished my master’s.
‘You have to work years, Johnny; eight hours a day, hammering. Don’t worry about it; you’ve got your hammering bumps in your head.’
It was that same day we were putting shingles on his roof. Dad’d showed me how to fit the shingle and nail, working up. He started on the right half, and I’m working on the left. After about an hour, I look over and he’s done four times as much as I have. I stop and study to find what he’s doing I’m not.
He has his mouth full of roofing nails and works them out between his lips, point first, as he needs them. He fits the shingle with his right hand, still holding on to the hammer, reaches up to his mouth with his left, pulls the nail out, holds it in place and hits twice, once to settle it in, the second time, hard, to drive it home. He’s already working that new nail between his lips, without pausing, shifting and getting the new shingle. It’s sort of: pause – bang-BANG – pause – bang-BANG. My sound has been: long pause – pulling nail out of can, fitting shingle in place, starting nail – then bang-bang-bang-BANG-BANG; start over.
So I watch a few cycles, then fill my mouth with nails. I cheat by starting with three already in place between my lips. I work the shingle in with my hammer hand, then try to get the rhythm with him: bang-BANG – nail shingle – bang-BANG – nail shingle – bang-BANG. I’m trying to concentrate on hitting the nail hard enough and at the same time working a nail with my tongue into my lips. The nails have an electric, galvanized taste. Nail shingle – bang-BANG – nail shingle – bang-BANG – YOUUWWWWW!
I’ve hit my thumb with a full swing of the hammer! I stand up and almost fall off the slanted roof. Dad looks over at me. I’ve spit out the nails with my holler. Vron and Mom run from inside where they’ve been painting. I manage to get down the ladder and put my thumb in cold water but that thumbnail is smashed and already on its way out. I still have a bump in my left thumbnail. I didn’t develop a hammering bump but I developed a thumb bump in one fell swing; a twenty-seven-year-old reminder that I’ll always be an amateur carpenter.
Every day Dad grows stronger. He’s a big favorite with the nurses. The strike ends, the main crew comes back and I start sleeping at Mother’s. Billy, who’s been going stir-crazy, moves up onto the forty acres again.
But Billy does come down almost every other day to visit Dad at the hospital. Dad’s been moved to a regular ward and has a whole new set of nurses to play with. They’ve given him a walker and he’s getting up out of bed a little bit every day. He tells Billy he has the walker to keep the nurses from attacking him. Billy stays long times with Dad and tells me he can’t believe it’s the same man, his grandfather. Billy never knew my father like this; I can hardly remember him this way myself.
One day I’m sitting and joking along with Dad when he says:
‘You know, Johnny, I might not have to go to hell after all.’
I don’t know what he’s talking about. Maybe he’s slipping gears again.
‘Heck, Dad, if you’re not going, then I’m not going either.’
‘No, John, remember I was worried about going to hell ’cause I couldn’t work up any feelings of love for niggers? We were talking about it one day before I went into my tailspin. Remember?’
‘Yeah, I remember now, Dad.’
Oh boy, here we go again.
‘Well, John, I’ve been having some visits from one of the nicest people in the world and she’s almost black, a medium soft brown, but definitely a nigger for sure.’
‘You’ve got to admit, Dad, some of these nurses here have been awfully kind to you, no matter what color they are.’
‘Oh, this isn’t a nurse, Johnny. Well, actually she is, sort of. Sometimes she comes in her uniform, but she doesn’t work here.’
It still doesn’t