When I Was Young and In My Prime (14 page)

Peter read somewhere the other day that you've got to be careful about the sugar water in your hummingbird feeder
—it can ferment in the sun if you leave it too long, and then you've got a crew of drunken hummingbirds on your hands. Fancy that. I suppose you could even kill them. Now wouldn't that be a crying shame? A crying shame. Peter was reading an article in his gardening magazine the other day, and do you know what? They say that if you leave the sugar water in your hummingbird feeder too long it will ferment. Into alcohol. Think of it. You'd have a crew of drunken hummingbirds on your hands. A crying shame.

When Mom told me on the phone about them losing Grandma's teeth at the nursing home I remembered that someone once told me if you dream of your teeth falling out, it means you're feeling out of control.
 

When I said that to Mom, she hung up on me. Actually hung up on me.
 

It was bizarre, but I have to admit, for some reason I felt sort of proud of her.

I phoned her one Sunday

She phoned me the next

I phoned her one Sunday

Then
I don't know when

I just phoned every Sunday

For the life of me

I don't know when

the song of the

red-breasted,

white-throated

auctioneer

HEYANDwho'llgimme50forthewashboardhere
who'llgimmeandgo50andgo50Ihave50doIhear52
dollarabiddollarabiddollarabidnow52Ihear52
doIhear55,55who'llgimme55Ihave55,60overhere
HEYwillyabiddollarabiddollarabid60doIhear65
who'llgimme65forthewashboardfolksnicewashboard
makemusicwithyourlaundryfolks65,65doIhear65,62
okay62Ihave62overinthecorner here
 
once twice

65Ihave65hey'llyabiddollarabiddollarabidwhat'llya
bid65 once
 
twice
 
ma'am?no? once
 
twice

SOLD

to the lady with her husband's hand over her mouth

Dear Mr. Phipps,

Your letter was not addressed to me, it was addressed to my wife who I am sorry to say is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, which I am sure you probably have heard of. She's gotten to be so far gone she is not able to manage our letters and affairs anymore, so that is why I opened your letter that was addressed to her and read it. I am sure you won't mind.

My wife must have gotten her name on many a list over the last few years so that I am almost every day opening letters that are asking her for money, and I have just about reached my limit. I have taken to pitching most all of them now, although that can be a tricky business too because if you don't open them you never know if maybe it was a bill or some such important thing like that. I am writing to tell you that I will not be sending any more money because as I said I have reached my limit and have moved my wife to the Home, and that costs a pretty penny and leaves not too much left over. However one idea occurred to me the other day as I was turning the compost heap, a heavy job. I have always been a strong man but my body is not what it used to be as I am now eighty-seven years of age and I am finding it hard to keep up with the work around the place this spring, especially the garden. I was thinking about all the letters and about why should I be giving money to help all these other folks when I was giving all my life, a regular churchgoer and always ready to lend a hand, and now here I am in need of a bit of help these days myself. Not that I want to go around feeling sorry for myself, but all the same. Then I was recalling one of the letters had something to say about orphans and right then and there I dropped the shovel and went inside and went rooting around in the wastebasket until I found that letter and sure enough it turned out to be from yourself at the Covenant House, a home for runaways and homeless youths, as it states in your letter.

I guess you can see what I'm about here. It seems to me Mr. Phipps to make good sense instead of sending money I can't spare that I help by offering room and board to one of your young lads in exchange for some help around this place on his part. Even when my wife was able to cook I used to take a turn in the kitchen now and then, and being a male nurse after I sold the farm I have the nurse's training which includes a course on nutrition and all the women nurses were amazed at how I could make muffins from scratch, so I am a good cook and I could offer a small weekly sum of money, which I don't think he would find objectionable. It may not be precisely what a young man has in mind to live with an old man like myself and I am the first to admit I can be stubborn sometimes, but on the whole I don't think it would be all bad and as I said I have plenty of work to be done around here and it's always good for a man to work hard when he is young and in his prime, so I could probably teach him a thing or two and I expect we could get along tolerably well, two bachelors. Perhaps you should choose a quiet one, as I live a quiet life, especially now that my wife Mary Friesen is in the Home. When I owned the farm I used to get hired men every spring from the government employment office and they always were sending me the foreign ones as I speak German, Ukrainian, Russian and I can get by in Dutch as it is so similar to the Low German dialect of my Mennonite forefathers. So I am familiar with being a good boss, I was always fair, all the pickers always wanted to work the Friesen farm come harvest.
 

So if you will stop sending me your letters and send me instead one of your boys I would be much obliged. Please write soon as it would be nice to get the boy in time to help with the summer yard and garden work.

Thanking you, I am yours truly,

Peter Friesen
   

Grandpa fell up the stairs in July and down the stairs in August.
 

For several springs now he must have planted the sugar snap peas with the awareness that it could be the last time. He loves to get the timing right. Outwit the frosts. Get the buggers in there so they're high as his hip by early June, high as his shoulder by late June and bearing six-quart baskets every other day by the first week in July. He used to give baskets of peas to the nurses at the hospital. Now he gives them to the staff at the nursing home. He still gives them to the ladies who come to swim three times a week even though Grandma isn't there anymore.
Eat 'em raw,
he says,
sure! Sugarsnaps. They're sugarsnap peas not snow peas. Sugarsnap. Go ahead. Try one.

He orders the seeds early. I imagine he and Grandma used to sit down together with the seed catalogue on an afternoon in February, the sun coming in the back window, both of them with an utter and unconsidered faith in the coming of spring.
 

So for a while now he's probably planted knowing it could be the last time. I imagine this brings the focus up sharp—each pea poked into its hole with his thick forefinger, the meticulous stringing of the trellis, the knots harder to fashion each year.
 

This spring too. Each pea, each knot, sharp, noticed. But maybe this year there's also a new feeling—a heaviness, a background worry. Let's say by the second day of planting he's conscious of it and is trying to put his finger on the feeling. By afternoon he has it: at the same time that he's worried this will be the last time, he's also worried it won't be the last time.
 

He's always pictured himself dying on his own two feet—keeling over in his garden, falling back into the raspberry bushes with a hat on his head and a hoe in his hand. He's always assumed that's how it would be. Ever since the heart attack ten years ago. He's been almost proud of it, as if the heart attack was a pure expression of his personality. Now, suddenly, he's afraid he won't manage it. That he'll end up in the Home like the others. Not for me, he's always told himself. Now it strikes him for the first time that it's not for him to decide.

He leaves the hoe and packet of radish seeds in the middle of the row and walks to the back door of the house, takes off his hat and steps inside to lie down. It is the first time in his life he's laid down indoors in the middle of the afternoon for no good reason.
 

The next day he's up early, making himself a big bowl
of cream of wheat. He dresses himself, whistling all the
while, in his thick coveralls and work gloves and the heavy canvas jacket from Massey Ferguson. He walks out into the garden, walks right by the seed packet and hoe all wet
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.