He’s gone now, but if I close my eyes I can still see him, sitting in his armchair by the fire, his briar wood pipe in his hand, fussing over the cleaning of it or the packing of it or the lighting. And he’d be talking, telling stories he’d told so often we knew the words by heart. And we knew that his stories were always a dance-step away from truth.
Mostly he’d tell us stories of the time before we were, a time when it was just papa and mama and everything was new. He said how they met one day, how she just up and walked into the space where he was, like a miracle, and in an instant he lost all his words and could only make sounds that were muffled and incomplete. Said he had to work two days digging ditches to get enough money he could buy special words for her, but even then he could only afford two and he laid them impatiently at her feet: ‘Will you.’
And mama understood and she said she would and so they were married in a pig shed with a curtain ring made of brass for mama’s finger and it left a green mark there when she took it off to wash. And they lived in a tent at first, made of the stitched together cloth of spiders, and mama didn’t mind. That’s how papa told it, but mama shook her head and said he was just speaking nonsense and we knew he was because mama hated spiders.
They were poor back then, poor as churchmice or moths. Poor in money, papa said, and he blew blue-grey smoke circles in the air and we watched them drift to the ceiling and thin to nothing. Poor in our pennies, but so rich in love, he said, and he pulled mama to him and it was like we weren’t there and he kissed her. Then, remembering we were watching, he said how they danced to no music every night and the stars dropped out of the sky and their feet lifted off the ground – and sitting in his chair he lifted his feet a little and moved them just so and it was like he was floating again and mama was sitting in his lap and she was floating too.
And papa said how they dug in the ground one day, down as far as the soil was black as coal or ink, and they planted a seed that they’d saved up for, something they’d bought from a white witch in Concord, and they watered that seed every day for near a year, and they tended it, sheltering it from the sun in summer and the frost in Winter, tended it till it sprouted and grew, a thin green shoot, sharp enough to cut a way through the black earth, and it reached for the sun, spreading its arms in greeting towards the sky. And the shoot became a tree one day and it bore fruit, walnuts in their shells, and in one shell was found me, curled up in one half, and my sister curled up in the other.
Of course they were just stories and we laughed when he told them, just as we laughed when he bragged that he could outrun the Night Owl passenger train on its way to Boston, and he made a hooting sound when he told us that; and we laughed, too, at his boast that he once threw a ball almost to the moon, and he could eat more pies than the Canterville Pie Company could bake in a day, and he once had a beer with the president, but it was a different president every time he told it.
He’s gone now, papa is, and mama gone too, and his stories are adrift in my head, and I should write them down one day, before they thin to nothing like those blue-grey smoke rings he once blew into the air and he said of those rings that his father had been a dragon and so there was fire in his blood and in ours. He’s gone now and I wish he wasn’t.
He’s gone now, but if I close my eyes I can still see him, sitting in his armchair by the fire, his briar wood pipe in his hand, fussing over the cleaning of it or the packing of it or the lighting. And he’d be talking, telling stories he’d told so often we knew the words by heart. And we knew that his stories were always a dance-step away from truth.
Mostly he’d tell us stories of the time before we were, a time when it was just papa and mama and everything was new. He said how they met one day, how she just up and walked into the space where he was, like a miracle, and in an instant he lost all his words and could only make sounds that were muffled and incomplete. Said he had to work two days digging ditches to get enough money he could buy special words for her, but even then he could only afford two and he laid them impatiently at her feet: ‘Will you.’
And mama understood and she said she would and so they were married in a pig shed with a curtain ring made of brass for mama’s finger and it left a green mark there when she took it off to wash. And they lived in a tent at first, made of the stitched together cloth of spiders, and mama didn’t mind. That’s how papa told it, but mama shook her head and said he was just speaking nonsense and we knew he was because mama hated spiders.
They were poor back then, poor as churchmice or moths. Poor in money, papa said, and he blew blue-grey smoke circles in the air and we watched them drift to the ceiling and thin to nothing. Poor in our pennies, but so rich in love, he said, and he pulled mama to him and it was like we weren’t there and he kissed her. Then, remembering we were watching, he said how they danced to no music every night and the stars dropped out of the sky and their feet lifted off the ground – and sitting in his chair he lifted his feet a little and moved them just so and it was like he was floating again and mama was sitting in his lap and she was floating too.
And papa said how they dug in the ground one day, down as far as the soil was black as coal or ink, and they planted a seed that they’d saved up for, something they’d bought from a white witch in Concord, and they watered that seed every day for near a year, and they tended it, sheltering it from the sun in summer and the frost in Winter, tended it till it sprouted and grew, a thin green shoot, sharp enough to cut a way through the black earth, and it reached for the sun, spreading its arms in greeting towards the sky. And the shoot became a tree one day and it bore fruit, walnuts in their shells, and in one shell was found me, curled up in one half, and my sister curled up in the other.
Of course they were just stories and we laughed when he told them, just as we laughed when he bragged that he could outrun the Night Owl passenger train on its way to Boston, and he made a hooting sound when he told us that; and we laughed, too, at his boast that he once threw a ball almost to the moon, and he could eat more pies than the Canterville Pie Company could bake in a day, and he once had a beer with the president, but it was a different president every time he told it.
He’s gone now, papa is, and mama gone too, and his stories are adrift in my head, and I should write them down one day, before they thin to nothing like those blue-grey smoke rings he once blew into the air and he said of those rings that his father had been a dragon and so there was fire in his blood and in ours. He’s gone now and I wish he wasn’t.