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June 8, 2002 butchered My paternal grandfather was a Harvard-educated man who smoked unfiltered Camels both before and after his malignant maw was surgically butchered.  The resulting disfigurement and profound speech impediment forced him inside where he lived with my ragtime-piano-playing grandmother.  Occasionally, he would travel to Alaska.  Kodiak bears neither point nor stare. I have many siblings and cousins, but my grandfather liked me best.  His preference was grounded in our common name--the same name he gave to my father, the name I gave to my son.  That a name should trump merit is patently unfair.  But I understood at an early age that fairness occurs randomly, not by design. My cousins were well-behaved, industrious, and smart.  While my aunts' boys were becoming Eagle Scouts, I was reading Ian Fleming and honing my masturbation skills.  Nevertheless, if I was in the room, my grandfather looked right through the others and fixed his eyes on me, like a sailor peers through fog toward land.  I was his lighthouse and neither of us cared who knew. Although he was scarred and troubled, I sat close to him at the far end of a couch where we listened to radio for hours.  The art deco radio was made of brown plastic, its speaker covered with brown faux tweed.  We listened to sports and news, never music. My grandfather had no mood for music.  I think he was afraid it would soothe him. We didn't speak much during these times.  We listened.  If a sports play or news story warranted it, we might glance at each other and smile.  Sometimes I would close my eyes to sharpen his scent--hair oil, Camel smoke, and sweet decay.  I liked the smell though it made me ache with sadness.

©  2002 by the beastmaster