Papa must have seen something I couldn’t see. He fixed his hat and turned on his heel. I followed him out into the parking lot, looking back to see if anyone noticed us wandering off. And, if I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought he was doing the same thing.
“Papa, where we you going?”
“Nowhere,” he mumbled.” Just checking out the grounds, is all.”
“Okay, but I still think—”
“Hey, have I ever told you the story of my Uncle Clyde’s harmonica?”
Right there, in the middle of the parking lot. Story time. But harmonica? Nope. I really hadn’t heard that one. “I don’t think so, no.”
Anytime Papa talked about Uncle Clyde, I was ready to listen. Family was scarce, and Papa never spoke much about my dad, being how the guy was such a dunce and all. And he never said much about Grandma because I think it hurt his heart. So that left Uncle Clyde. Papa loved to talk about Uncle Clyde.
Uncle Clyde was a mountain of a man from Arkansas who’d traveled lots and settled in Virginia, where he’d opened the Continental Diner way back in the fifties. Papa had worked for him as a kid in the kitchen, and he’d always spoke kindly about Uncle Clyde, though he never did say much about what drove Clyde to shut down the diner and drive back to Arkansas in the middle of the night. Something about a dishwasher who’d been accused of something terrible.
Papa refused to say much else about it. He’d shake his head and spit just to get the memory out of his mouth. Said it was an awful thing, what they’d done. But he was all sorts of worked up now, chewing and spitting and still going on about the blues. We’d crossed the lot and were headed for the garden toward the gazebo. They’d mowed earlier, and it smelled of fresh grass clippings, magnolia flowers, a faint minty smell I couldn’t place.
Papa kept talking as we walked. “When Clyde was a boy, he once met Robert Johnson.”
“Wait, you mean room 414?”
I was trying to get a rise out of him, but he didn’t take the bait. I was beginning to see how Papa drew himself inward for periods of time. Again, remembering things from ages ago but forgetting where he’d just set his own reading glasses.
The gazebo was clean and hardly used, probably because it had the makings of a wasps’ nest in the corner.
“That’s right, Robert Johnson,” Papa said, excited and yawning at the same time. “Mr. Johnson was passing through town, and Clyde’s daddy was a musician at the time, a piano man at one of the local joints; the name escapes me. Anyhow, Robert needed a place to hang his hat that night, so he stayed with the Tillmans. Next morning, he came out on the porch where little Clyde was sitting. Oh, Clyde must have been what, I don’t know, eight or nine maybe. No matter. Robert taught him how to play the harp.”
“The harp?”
“Yeah, the harp. The mouth organ.” He leaned down to me to spell it out for me. “The har-mon-i-ca. And when he left the next day, he left his harp with Clyde as a keepsake.”
“Wow.” I searched his face for a smile. As I said, Papa had a way of spinning a yarn, which was old people speak for lying through their teeth.
“Wow is right. I saw it, too. Those two summers I was down there, when he taught me to play guitar.”
I hadn’t known Clyde had been the one to teach Papa how to play. I’d always thought he was born playing guitar.
“And you know, later, when Clyde started the diner, he kept the harmonica in a box behind the cash register. He loved nothing more than telling people he’d played with the great Robert Johnson.”
The gleam was back in his eyes. He looked off as a car door shut, more visitors coming, moms and dads hushing little kids. It made me sad to think how Papa never got visitors besides me. I was still hoping to get Mom to suck it up and come with me one of these days, but my grandfather wasn’t the only stubborn one in my family tree.
Papa rubbed his legs, like he had dirt on his hands. “Caleb, I want to play that harmonica again.”
I wiped my brow. “So where is it—in a museum or something?”
He shook his head. “No, no. It’s back at Uncle Clyde’s. Fifteen Peachtree Drive, Mosby, Arkansas.”
I shot him a look, trying to crunch the numbers but it got jumbled up in my head. I’d come along in my math situation, but the way the old man was looking at me, clear as water, I had the makings of another lump in my throat. “Papa, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think Uncle Clyde is still around.”
He shook his head, “No, no, course not. But that harp’s got to be somewhere, and that would be the place to start.”
The lump in my throat doubled in size. Start. My voice was a whisper. “Papa, what are you cooking up?”
The sun had fallen behind the cypress trees in the courtyard, but the rays leaking through were still bright, matching the fire in his stare. It reminded me of when I was little and he’d play on the porch until dark while I’d try and catch fireflies. After a while he’d set the guitar down and pick up a beer. Then he’d tell me all sorts of tales.
And that’s the Papa who looked at me and said, “Just a little adventure, Caleb, that’s all.”
I zoomed down the driveway just as the sun was setting. I was super late, way later than I intended because Papa asked me to drop off his suit at the dry cleaners. I didn’t mind running errands for him, so long he was calling me by the right name. Besides, I figured he wanted to look sharp for his big poetry night with Mrs. Magnolia.
I skidded to a stop, admiring my own dust cloud when I saw Mom on the porch, sitting on the swing and reasonably calm. The katydids were giving it their best, and I could tell she’d just watered all the plants because the wood was wet where they’d leaked.
I held my breath, waiting for it, but she didn’t look upset with me. “Well, how is he?”
“Being a mule.” I laid my bike down and found a seat in Papa’s old wooden rocking chair, enjoying the creaks when it moved. I ran my palms down the arm rails, worn smooth from years of use, still waiting for Mom to get on me about the chores, but she didn’t. Maybe the katydids had hypnotized her, or maybe she could see the worry in my eyes.
“Mom, he’s acting really strange lately.”
“Well,” she said, between squeaks of the porch swing, “I suppose that’s why he’s at Autumn Springs, Caleb. They take really good care of him.”
“I don’t know. He’s…” I thought about him drifting off to the parking lot. “I hope so.”
“He can always come back home. Got plenty to do, and he was awfully handy.”
That much was true. Papa had left all his old tools in the basement, but I hadn’t a clue how to use them or what they did. I’d always thought there’d be time to learn, before a thief came and stole all that time away. I’d made Mom promise to keep them because they were family tools, and my dad had lost his place in the lineup. They were my tools now.
I traced a crack in the arm of the chair. “Is it the washer or dryer this time?”
“Dryer.” She motioned to the clothes hanging on the line out in the yard.
Traffic swept past, blurs of color through the thinning tree line. Traffic Papa had never known. The town was creeping up on his little house, and it was just as well he couldn’t stay around because it would probably make him all sorts of upset.