Reuben Henry. My mother said when she first heard his name she thought he was a hillbilly. Reuben Henry Foreman. Sixty years since he died. I'm not sure who he was because he never said. He'd tell the occasional story about his life at the turn of the 20th century, although I doubt he gave that much thought. He was funny, but he wasn't a thinker. He told a good story, great characters, fine punchlines, a chuckle when he finished. It's my inheritance. In the eighth grade, Ruby's father barged into his classroom, took him by the neck, and apprenticed him to a plumber. He eventually went into the tire business when there still was one. Ruby also talked about the time when neighborhood boys had to fight their way from block to block. One day my father ran home with a stick in his ear. His father opened the door, pulled it out, and pointed his son back to the street. But, Ruby was a goodhearted guy who rarely got angry, rarely raised his voice. That was left to my mother, who rarely lowered hers. Ruby was not mean, and he wasn't angry, he was a cripple. Huh? My father a cripple? Where'd that come from? It came from Jamie Donnelly, my wife. We were visiting Baltimore for the first time. Jamie was looking at an old photo of my father when she said, "I didn't know your father was crippled." "What're you talking about?" "Look at him, Stephen," she said, "he's got two metal canes. His legs are bowed. Head too large. He's crippled, but you never told me." I could see sure enough that he was, but the odd truth is, we never thought of him as a cripple, and I never heard him complain or cry out with pain.The word was never mentioned in our house. No law against it. It just wasn't a word in the Foreman family lexicon. I was genuinely surprised to hear Jamie say it. Dad was dad. He wasn't a cripple. He was Dad.
His body had become so deformed and shrunken he had to have his suits custom made. Saul the tailor sat cross legs in the window of his shop sewing by hand. Ruby was a man who had been devilishly handsome, five foot ten, black hair, eyes always amused by what they saw. One day I glanced into his room while he was looking at himself in the mirror. He wore a new, blue suit complete with vest. He seemed so sad, seemed to be saying, "Where did I go?"
1940 something
He held my hand as we walked up the block to the first house in the neighborhood to have a television set. It was dusk. The short walk was illuminated by gas-lit street lamps gleaming from their glass bowls. So how old could I have been? Old enough to have spent hours chucking rocks at those glass bowls, old enough to watch Joe Louis fight on television. If I could remember how old I was, I could figure out his opponent. Whatever, whoever, it was Joe Louis, the Joe Louis. Mr. Land, the man who owned the television, gave me this tiny bowl of peanuts, no super bowl spread. Who knew and who cared? Joe Louis!
1961
My father was propped up against a pillow, eyes glazing and staring at nothing. I closed his eyes. My last memory. We had been in adjoining rooms, although he didn't know it. I had an emergency appendectomy and requested the arrangement. Sometime during the dark hours I heard a bedpan hit the floor in my father's room. I knew the dull clunk from having worked in a hospital as an orderly, and the next thing I remember was standing in the hall outside his room as the doctors and nurses filed out. I have no memory of pulling all the tubes out of my arm, only of standing outside his door in the hall while it was still dark out.
What of the years in between? Not much of a through line, only isolated incidents: John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man at the Pimlico theater followed by my first t-bone steak at the White Coffee Pot around the corner. A smoker where a wrestler in black tights wrestled with himself. A ball game at Memorial Stadium with my brother. I don't remember he said anything special when I enlisted in the Marine Corps, but then I came home. My first liberty. Stripes on my sleeves. Marksmanship medal on my chest, spit shine, all squared away. I had survived Parris Island intact and was now training at an outpost called Courthouse Bay. The train from North Carolina arrived in Baltimore's Penn Station, and I headed for the doors at a good clip. There was my father, entering the station, walking towards me, then right past me. Right past me! Didn't know me from the guy selling newspapers. The last time he'd seen me I was an overweight teen-ager with pimples and a string of bad news behind me. "Dad," I called out. He turned around, looked at me, saw me, saw his son, and cried. I hadn't seen him cry before or since. It wasn't that he burst out in wails and lamentations, beat his breast, tore his clothing, but he did lose it for a second, and that second has counted a lot.
I know things about my father, but not who my father was. However, Alaska taught me something fierce. Alaska's turf was much harder than I anticipated, starting off with swampy tussocks that had me praying for rocky climbs. I'd been trekking through the bush following a trapper's line. About 17 miles in, the line played out. Turn around. Head back. I couldn't go any further because all the skin on both my feet had rubbed off. The trapper I was with said he'd go on to the village and send a helicopter back for me. "No way," I said, "I'll get out of here on my own." "You sure?" he asked. "If you send a chopper I'll hide," I told him. I was serious. I was gonna get outta there myself. Why? What was I trying to prove? Anything? Not that I knew at the moment. I just wanted out of there, and I wanted out of there on my own. Seventeen miles back. Do it.
I did it. It was the most gruesome trek I've ever been on. The Bataan death march was worse. The trail of tears was worse. Jews marched to their deaths in freezing weather. Lotta stuff much worse. I'm not claiming to have topped the field by any stretch, but, what I can say, is this was grim, as painful as anything I'd yet experienced then or now. Whenever possible I walked in the river to freeze my feet enough to move. There were periods when I'm not certain I was conscious but plodding foot after foot. I never thought I wouldn't make it. I never thought I would. I never thought anything at all except "Move", and that wasn't thought but sheer reflex. Limbs moving on their own. At some point, I had to leave the river to follow the trail back to the village. No cold water to freeze my screaming feet. It took all I had to slowly shuffle forward. Remember, too, I carried a large pack on my back and a rifle. The trail to Eagle became the road to Damascus. At some point the doctor told the family that when Dad walked it was like a normal man running with a twenty-five pound pack on his back, and, there I was, a heavy pack on my back, painfully, step after step, making my way. If my father could do it, so could I.
2020
Sunday is father's day aka grandfather's day. I will begin to tell my grandson stories of his great grandfather who served in the navy during WW1, who laughed about fighting the Battle of Great Lakes, whose uniform is still in my closet, who bounced me on his leg singing,
"How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm,"
Just like I'm doing with you right now, boychik.
"After they've seen Paree -ee-ee".
END
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