One by one, his friends stopped coming around.
He was popular at church—always with a story or joke ready. With his huge frame and bushy white beard, he was perfect to play Santa Claus at the annual Christmas potluck, a role he performed with gusto, telling kids he was going to bring them a hickory switch or a lump of coal instead of a “video-game doodad.” So for a while he still had the church crowd on his side.
But that didn’t last either. He’d always taken a live-and-let-live and God-made-us-all attitude toward gay people, not much different from his general policy of nonjudgment and kindness toward others. This put him at odds with his fellow churchgoers, but not irreconcilably so.
Then his sister Betsy’s grandson, Blake—his grandnephew—died in a car accident in Nashville. Aunt Betsy later learned from one of Blake’s friends that Blake was gay. And that changed everything for Papaw. Not three weeks after Papaw found out, the preacher started going off on how homosexuality is destroying America and how gay people are to blame for school shootings and terrorist attacks, because America’s acceptance of them has called God’s wrath down upon us.
I was sitting next to him. I could feel his sides pumping like a bellows as he breathed harder and harder. His face reddened. The anger radiated from him, a perilous warmth a few inches from his skin. If he could have jumped up, he would have. Instead, he pulled himself laboriously to his feet, knees cracking, easing up as fast as a back stiffened from a life of hard work would allow. And he walked out. Mamaw and I followed.
Papaw didn’t hardly speak on the drive home. Finally said, “I been going to Bible study my whole life. Jesus talked about casting the first stone, not about who people loved.” He was silent for a few minutes before he shook his head and murmured, “Blake never hurt nobody. Didn’t do nothing but make this world a better place.” We’ve never been back. People from church don’t bring by casseroles when you leave like that.
Still, he sits and waits for someone to talk to.
I get out of my truck, and Papaw hails me with a lazy wave. The sort resulting from a constant state of exhaustion. Punkin bays in excitement and tries to lunge off the porch. Papaw catches him with his free hand.
“Lemme square away the mower,” I call up to him. Lawn care equipment left out tends to disappear and get sold for pills where we live.
“I ain’t going nowhere. Punkin, shush.” The vocal exertion sends him into a red-faced coughing fit.
I lock up the mower in the shed and pass the chain-saw sculpture of a black bear Papaw carved out of a tree stump. Every time I pass it, I can’t help but think about how his disease has sawn away at him, lessened him, transformed him. I ascend the porch steps to where he sits.
Papaw gives me a look.
“What?”
“You forget something?”
“Did I?”
“Where’s my Tess at? No Longmire tonight?” Tess is short for Tesla, which is what he started calling Delaney after she told him that Nikola Tesla was her favorite scientist. Before that, he called her Einstein.
“Tending her half brothers.”
“Y’all are like to have ruint my Saturday night.”
“I’ll watch with you.” I sit in one of the rockers. Its weathered wood is worn so smooth it feels like touching someone’s arm. I lean over to scratch Punkin.
Papaw reaches over with a rough hand, his nail beds blue from oxygen deprivation, and grabs my upper arm. “Get over here, Mickey Mouse.” He pulls me out of the chair to him. He was always affectionate, but he never misses a chance anymore to hug me. Delaney studied up on emphysema, said it wasn’t a terminal diagnosis. Papaw’s doctor said the same. Papaw doesn’t act so sure.
His former strength is faded, but he still finds enough to give me a powerful embrace, kissing the top of my head. He smells medicinal, like salves rubbed on aching muscles, with the sharp menthol whine of Vicks VapoRub to open constricted breathing passages. Beneath it is the dense aroma of pine oil and the vague spice of unsmoked tobacco, even though he hasn’t been able to work with wood for some time and hasn’t smoked in years. His plastic oxygen tube is artificial and cold against my cheek. I hear his wheezing, the deep rattle in his lungs.
“How was mowing?” he asks.
I sit down and push my ball cap back on my head. “Hot. But fine. Mamaw working?”
“Yep.”
Mamaw manages the Little Caesars. She usually works Saturday nights to allow as many as possible of her mostly teenage staff to be young and free.
We sit quietly for a while. Our chairs creak and chirp as we rock gently. There’s the periodic puff of Papaw’s oxygen tank, the idling diesel-engine rumble of his breathing, and Punkin’s own snuffly breathing as he dozes at Papaw’s feet.
I’ve spent much of my life feeling unsafe, unsteady, and insecure. Sitting on Papaw’s porch with him was always my fortress against the world.
Three deer step out of the woods onto our lawn, nibbling at the ground. We keep stone-still and watch until they move on.
“Speaking of Delaney,” I say finally, my voice hushed as if the deer were still there. “She told me something interesting today.”
“Girl’s a damn encyclopedia.” Whenever Delaney comes over to watch Longmire with him—one of their traditions—Papaw says, Tess! Tell me something I don’t know! And she always does.
“This was different. She got into this fancy prep school up north with this millionaire gonna pay her way.”
Papaw takes in the news and chuckles softly. “Tell you what. That girl wasn’t long for this town. Always knew.”
“Yeah.”
“She gonna go? She best.”
“Looks like.” I rock for a couple of seconds, then say, “But that ain’t the funniest part.”
“What is?”
I squirm. I’m losing my nerve to tell him.
“Go on,” he presses.
I sigh, raise my hands, and drop them in my lap. “Apparently she told this millionaire lady that she’d only accept if I got a scholarship too.” I laugh to myself.
Papaw doesn’t laugh. He leans toward me and shakes his head like he’s trying to get water out of his ears. “Do what, now?” he asks softly.
“And the lady and the school both said yes.”
Papaw squints. “The two of you have a scholarship offer to—”
“Middle-something. Middleton? Middleford Academy? Can’t remember. It’s in Connecticut.”