O: Visiting Grandpa Sheppard

Chapter: Kid, Visiting Grandpa Sheppard

Today we are visiting Grandpa Sheppard, my mother's father. He lives in
Vider, which sounds to me like some sort of snake. My sister and I both
wear our ugly faces, as my mother calls them, though my sister has
managed to go back to sleep. Her head rolls from side to side as my
father weaves around cars he wants to pass. He is smoking hard,
flicking ashes out of the window. Some of them float into the back seat
and land on my shirt or in my lap. "Slow down," my mother sometimes
shouts, although the wind coming through the window drowns her out. Her
face looks ugly, too, her voice coming from what sounds like the end of
a tunnel.

At one point my father turns to face my mother, his upper lip curled
over his teeth. He looks like he might slap her, but he keeps his hands
on the wheel. The car picks up speed.

We go through Vider so quickly that all I notice is its resemblance to
all of the other small towns we've roared through: white clapboard
houses, drooping trees, laundry lines, and big American cars. I sit up,
resting my arms on the front seat of the car, and shout, "Wasn't that
the town? I saw a sign!" My father ignores me, and my mother stares
straight ahead. I fall back into my seat, working on my ugly face.
Maybe they couldn't hear me. But when I look up I see my father's eyes,
meeting mine in the rearview mirror. His eyes float in the little
rectangular space, neither angry or happy. Then they turn away.

My father turns onto a road covered in flesh-colored gravel. The ruts
in the road remind me of a rib cage, and cause the car to shake and
rattle so loudly that my sister wakes up. I hold onto the door handle
to keep from sliding around on the vinyl seat. My sister tries to lay
her head back down on the door, but we hit a big bump and her head
bounces crazily. She sits up, rubbing the side of her face.

"Where are we?" she mouths to me, since talking is impossible. I mouth
back, "Vider." My sister rolls her eyes and looks out her window. The
street is lined with trees that spread over the road like big
umbrellas. I see a squirrel and think of mosquitoes, the two somehow
related in my mind.

"Here!" my mother screams. My father slams on the brakes, throwing my
sister and me into the back of the front seat. Now both of us rub the
sides of our faces. My father puts the car in reverse and then peels
into a dirt driveway that disappears into a curve ahead. The inside of
the car is getting hot.

We pull up to a trailer that has painted squares of different shades of
white on the outside. Wood steps with no handrail lead up to the door.
A metal picnic bench, rusted through and sunken into the dirt yard,
sits out front next to a car that looks just like my father's, except
that it's cleaner. Sunlight coming through the trees shines off the
bumpers and door handles. There are no cracks in the windshield.

The door of the trailer opens and out steps an old man with no hair on
top of his head. What hair he does have is solid white and lays around
his head like a horseshoe. He raises his hand and beckons us in.

"Here we go," my mother says, her voice back to normal now that the
wind noise has stopped. She opens her door, but not before turning to
us and saying, "Remember what I told you. Behave."

We pile out of my father's car, my father the last to join us at the
bottom of the wood steps leading up to the trailer. The old man,
Grandpa Sheppard, shakes my hand and pats my sister on top of her head.
My mother is pushed into the trailer with just a nod. Finally, my
father comes up, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. "Mr. Sheppard,"
he says, and shakes the old man's hand.

"Hello," Grandpa Sheppard says to my father, "Looks like you've put on
some weight there on your middle." I hear my father laugh, the laugh he
uses for store clerks and neighbors who have come to complain. Grandpa
Sheppard is himself bone thin, with a skinny neck crisscrossed with
wrinkles and waddles that disappear into his plaid shirt. He looks
nothing like my mother.

Inside we meet Roxy, our grandfather's
wife-but-not-our-real-grandmother. We are to call her Roxy, if anything
at all, something my mother insisted on the night before. I am
suspicious of Roxy's hair, a giant cone of red that reminds me of
cotton candy, size large. It almost touches the ceiling of the trailer
and moves stiffly with her head. Roxy doesn't smile but reads my mind.
"Anybody need to use the potty?" she asks, and I nod yes.

Roxy points to the bathroom, down the short hall covered in spongy
carpet printed with sprawling flower that don't seem to have any
pattern. Inside the bathroom, which is the size of our kitchen pantry
at home, the floor gives way under my feet as I balance and aim for the
toilet. The bathroom smells like wet, dirty laundry. There are plastic
butterflies glued to the walls.

Back in the living room, my mother and father sit on the couch.
Everyone has a beer except my mother and sister. They are all listening
to Grandpa Sheppard talk. My mother has her crazy smile on, the one
that makes her look like she might jump up at any moment and start
yelling. I stay behind chair.

"Why don't y'all go on outside," Grandpa Sheppard says to my sister.
She looks at my mother, who keeps smiling, and then gets up. I follow
and wait while she fiddles with the handle on the front door, which is
really a latch that sticks out through a hole cut in the screen. With a
loud rattle my sister pushes the door open and we escape. Already it is
getting hotter. I hear a buzzing in my ear see that there are gnats all
over the place.

"It stinks in there," my sister tells me.

"She has funny hair," I add. My sister giggles. She is inspecting the
metal picnic table, brushing off one of the benches before sitting
down. I do the same, across from her, and we sit and look around us.
There are no other houses, or trailers, in sight. Grandpa Sheppard's
trailer seems to have been dropped off in the middle of the forest,
although I know of course that they must have pulled it in off the same
gravel road that we came in on. Still, the trailer doesn't look like
it's been moved in years. It sits in a yellowing bed of grass and
weeds. I stop myself from thinking too hard about what must be under
the trailer.

"What should we do?" I ask. My sister shrugs, resting her head in her
hands. There isn't much to look at, and we didn't think to bring any
games or even a stack of cards. I wish for a book, but as far as I
could tell when I was inside the trailer, there weren't any books in
sight.

My sister sighs loudly, blowing air through her lips. I copy her, and
we spend a few moments making farting noises. We are laughing when the
trailer door opens and Roxy appears behind the screen, her hair a muted
pink behind the wire mesh. Then she closes the door.

"Come on," my sister says, getting up and walking away from the table.
We go to the back of the trailer, which is a mass of pipes and wiring
right out in the open. A black, rubber-coated wire sticks out of the
trailer and disappears into the tall trees behind us. I kick at a white
plastic pip that sinks into the ground. There is nothing, really, to
see here either.

"Should we go back inside?" I ask. My sister has started kicking the
white pipe, too. I expect to look up and see Roxy watching us through
the window, her mouth a thin, bright red line. But so far the drapes on
the window in back of the trailer stay closed.

A grasshopper lands on my arm, its legs clinging tightly with their
peculiar grip. I got to brush it off but my sister smacks my arm first,
the grasshopper dropping to the ground and leaving a yellow smear on my
arm. I crouch down and stare at it; its hind legs are missing and one
wing is folded like an envelope. I watch it twitch until my sister
steps on it. It crunches under her shoe.

"What's over there?" she asks, pointing to a group of trees. When I
turn to look I can hear her running off, the dry pine needles giving
her away. It is already hot but I decide to give chase anyway.

I see her in front of the trailer, but she disappears quickly to the
other side. For a moment I worry that she will hide under the trailer,
forcing me to go in after her, but as I turn the corner I see the flash
of her foot. She's behind the trailer again, and I wonder if we will
run around in circles all day.

I slow down, and through the thin, metal walls of the trailer I can
hear my father's voice. My mother's laughter blends in, and I think I
hear Grandpa Sheppard say, "Hot damn." My father laughs.

I try looking under the trailer to see my sister's legs on the other
side, but there are too many weeds and dark, gray shapes underneath
that the other side is completely blocked. "Rat's nest," I say to
myself, and an image of Roxy's hair comes into my mind.

"Hey!" I call, already bored with this game.

"Over here!" my sister shouts. I find her sitting one the picnic table,
picking a scab on her knee. The tip of her tongue is sticking out of
her mouth as she concentrates on her task. I know that is she picks at
it long enough a tiny drop of red blood will form on the top. I myself
leave my scabs alone, satisfied with watching my sister pick
hers.

"Don't eat that," I say, standing in front of her.

"Shut up," she tells me. But I know I've hit a sore spot, because in
fact I did see her put a tiny bit of scab in her mouth once. I would
have thought it was a booger if I hadn't seen her peel it off her elbow
and in one smooth motion put it on the tip of her tongue, a confused
look on her face. She did spit it out, and I haven't seen her eat one
since, but I feel the need to remind her of when she did.

"Can we go inside now?" I ask, just as the air conditioner, an old gray
box sticking out of one of the trailer windows, comes on. This
convinces my sister to get up and climb and the wood steps to the door,
which is easier to open from the outside.

"That was quick," my mother says, a tight smile on her face. She speaks
in her company voice, her drawl forgotten and the words spoken quickly.
My father sits next to her, one hand on her knee. She looks
uncomfortable.

"It was hot outside," my sister says. This seems to satisfy the adults,
who stopped talking as soon as we came back inside. Their conversation
picks up again as my sister and I sit down, making faces at one
another. We sit right in the path of the air conditioner, and slowly my
forehead grows tighter as the sweat dries there. My sister pulls her
hair up and lets the air reach her neck. I try to do the same thing,
but my hair, although long, won't form a ponytail.

Grandpa Sheppard's voice grows louder. He says, "?mans, mans,
mans. They are everywhere." My mouth drops open as I look at my
sister. We are not allowed to use that word. And he has said it three
times. Over the back of her chair, I see Roxy's red beehive nodding. My
father laughs, but my mother shushes Grandpa Sheppard. I picture her
pointing in my sister's and my direction.

My sister looks right at me, her mouth hanging open, too, and her eyes
wide. I put a hand over my mouth, to keep from laughing out loud.

"You know what I'm talking about," Grandpa Sheppard says, "Yes, you do.
Don't deny it." His voice is still loud. I want to move closer to my
sister, to see if she knows what the old man is going on about, but
it's too risky. Any movement will remind my mother that we are hidden
behind the chairs, and we might find ourselves outside again. Grandpa
Sheppard's green chair rocks crazily.

"Well," Roxy says, standing up, "I'm hungry. How about you
folks?"

A table is pulled from behind the couch and set up in the area between
the living room and kitchen. We are fed tuna fish sandwiches on white
bread and saltines, with red Kook Aid to wash it down. My mother gives
us a warning look before she sits back on the couch next to my father,
who has torn his sandwich in two. A creamy white blob has fallen onto
the front of his T-shirt. I watch as he takes a cracker, scoops it up,
and puts it into his mouth. The smell of tuna fish is very strong. Soon
I feel sick, but manage to eat everything on my paper plate. Even after
a drink of the warm Kool Aid, my mouth tastes fishy.

"What do you know?" Grandpa Sheppard asks my sister and me as we sit at
the table. He talks as he eats, the chewed food sitting on his tongue.
I look away.

"Well?" he says. My sister looks down at her plate.

"Nothing," I say, hoping he will go back to talking with my mother and
father.

"Nothing?" That ain't right. Your mama tells me you're both artists.
That true?"

I shrug, but my sister nods. I nod, too, braving a look at Grandpa
Sheppard's face. It is blessedly free of food, his mouth closed in what
looks like a smile. He has fine white hairs all over his face, like the
hairs on my arms. I nod again.

"I dabble a bit in the arts. Yes, I do," he says. Roxy sighs heavily.
Grandpa Sheppard pushes himself up from the table, which tilts
dangerously.

"Watch it!" Roxy snarls, grabbing for cups. I grab my own.

"Shut up, woman," he says, making his way to a bookshelf up against the
wall. There are no books on the shelf, just some glass figurines that
look dusty and some black and white pictures of people I know must be
dead by now. Grandpa Sheppard grunts and bends over, producing a sketch
pad. A pencil is shoved into the wire binding. He holds it in front of
him with both hands and grins. It's the same type of sketch pad I have
at home, which surprises me because it is cheap, filled with paper so
thin that erasing is impossible. I think a grownup like Grandpa
Sheppard should have a nicer pad.

He sits back down at the table and opens the cover. The first picture
is of a deer, standing in the trees. It's almost perfectly centered on
the page, the leaves and grass growing fainter and finally disappearing
before they reach the edges of the page. The deer stands stiffly,
facing out. Its antlers are drawn so darkly that they look detached,
and its eyes are two dark circles, with no white spots to indicate
light, or life. The deer looks stuffed.

Grandpa Sheppard flips through page after page, each one a drawing of a
deer. Sometimes they stand staring out, sometimes they bend forward,
eating the grass. Some don't have antlers. There are never two deer in
the same picture, or any baby deer. He doesn't say anything but "How
about this one?" before going to a new page. All of the deer have the
same dull, dark eyes.

"You should put some of these on the walls," my mother says. She has
gotten up to stand behind Grandpa Sheppard, looking over his
shoulder.

"Roxy don't like them," he says. Roxy crosses her arms over her chest
and huffs loudly. My mother doesn't suggest hanging them up again, and
I see my father looking at Roxy, a smile on his face like they are
sharing a secret. Roxy huffs again and shakes her head.

"You want to try your hand at this?" Grandpa Sheppard asks me. He
ignores my sister, but she doesn't seem mind. She is the better drawer,
anyway. I nod and decide I will ask for my sister's help so she won't
feel left out.

But once the sketch pad is in front of me an one of Grandpa Sheppard's
drawings is propped up on a coffee mug for me to copy, I forget about
my sister. I'm worried because I've never drawn something like a deer,
but I know how to draw cars, and people's faces (the trick is to keep
the eyes in the middle of the head, not up on the forehead). I picture
the deer on Grandpa Sheppard's drawing as different shapes, a circle
here, a thick line there. I try to remember what real fur looks like. I
don't erase.

No one checks on me as I bend over the paper, unlike my teacher at
school who gets mad at us if we don't draw a box on our paper first,
and then keep our drawings inside the box. I'm not sure what the box is
for, but I like the way the teacher makes a frame out of colored paper
for the drawings before she puts them on the wall or, even better, out
in the hallway, where only the good ones go. Mine usually go out in the
hallway.

Before long I ignore Grandpa Sheppard's drawing completely. I work on
my deer's eyes, leaving little white spaces to show the light around
the deer. I decide the nose should look wet, like a dog's, and run the
pencil smoothly around the outline of the deer. I make shadows in the
horns, and around its feet. The deer starts to stand out from the page,
and even though it's drawn in the same position as Grandpa Sheppard's,
it looks like it might really be able to run, not just stand and wait
for whatever's gotten its attention.

When I'm ready to start drawing the forest, Grandpa Sheppard gets up
from his chair and stands behind me. He clucks his tongue and says,
"Well, well, well." Next my mother gets up to look, and then my sister.
Roxy and my father stay in their seats.

"Isn't that nice? I told you they were little artists," my mother says.
I can't see my sister's face, but I know she's itching to tell me what
I did wrong. Still, I think it looks good. Better than Grandpa
Sheppard's. He sits down next to me, not smiling, and taps one finger
on the table top.

"You should look at this," he says to Roxy.

"I'll see it later," she answers. This makes me mad. I consider taking
the drawing and holding it up in front of her, making her see it, but
before I can, Grandpa Sheppard asks me if he can keep the
drawing.

"I guess," I say, although I already have plans to hang it in my room,
maybe even take it to my teacher.

"Good boy," he says, then gets up. He opens some drawers in the
kitchen, cussing and mumbling until he finds what he wants. He comes
back to the table with a roll of tape, taking the drawing and taping it
to the wall between the living room and kitchen. The wall is made out
of something that looks like wood but feels like plastic, and I can see
the tape Grandpa Sheppard has used on the corners of the drawing to
hold it up. I would have made circles out of the tape and put them on
the back of the paper so the tape wouldn't show, or made a frame out of
colored paper like my teacher. But I guess Grandpa Sheppard doesn't
know about those things.

My mother says it's time to go. "We have a long drive," she says, and
in seconds my father is up and trying to open the front door. He has
trouble with the screen, like my sister did when we went outside to
play, and my mother rolls her eyes. Grandpa Sheppard tells us to come
back soon, and Roxy stays in her chair, craning her neck to say
goodbye. She winks at my father when she tells him to drive safely, but
I don't think my father sees it. Roxy winks like I do, with one eye
shutting all the way while the other goes halfway down like it's
thinking about closing, too. I thought all grownups could wink, a trick
I've been practicing but, like whistling, can't manage to do
right.

When we start to drive down the road, I turn around and look out of
the car's back window. The trailer looks lonely, sitting by itself, and
hot under the sun. I wish I had not given the drawing to Grandpa
Sheppard. I should have made up a story to take it with me. Because I
can see in my head, as clearly as if I were still standing in the
trailer, Roxy ripping it off the wall while Grandpa Sheppard sits in
his chair, doing nothing to stop her.