Grandpa's Travail

GRANDPA'S TRAVAIL by Loyal Jones The minute I saw him I knew that Grandpa was in a dudgeon. His moods were not subtle things that came and went fleetingly. Grandpa was a mood swinger, and when he swung, everybody knew about it. He came down the stairs that morning in late May ready to raise hell. I could see that. His face was dark above his white beard, and his eyes had a red, mean look. At breakfast Grandpa kept quiet until he had finished his eggs. Mama proceeded gingerly, making no move nor saying anything that might irk him. Pa ate silently, cutting a wary eye every now and then toward Grandpa , and he soon made off for work. Uncle Clifton was late for breakfast. He dragged in sleepily, but he was not too drowsy ^ k s to read Grandpa's mood. He gave excessive attention to his eggs. Grandpa lit his old cob pipe and puffed noisily for a few minutes, scowling around at us. I saw it coming. "Them son-of-a-bitches has mint my poke patch!" We all looked at him, hoping for comprehension. "What poke patch?" Mama inquired carefully. "What poke patch, my eye!" Grandpa yelled. "Why the poke patch down there in the bottom by the creek where them crazy bastards built that infernal interstate. You mean to tell me that you ain't noticed yet that we ain't got no source of poke sallet this spring?" Mama said she hadn't thought about it. I remembered going down to the bottom with Grandpa in previous years to gather poke sallet. I couldn't recall seeing poke growing any other place. I saw that this was serious. Grandpa was in one of his moods for two months when he first heard that they were going to build the interstate highway through the lower part of our property. Then, he was absolutely unfit to live with the entire time they were building the thing. He said it was the most asinine project he'd ever heard tell of. He had always lived on this farm, and his daddy before him. Grandpa was not one who enjoyed a lot of people around. He coveted solitude. He said that all the interstate would do was to bring a passel of nitwit 21 tourists to stare at people like him. He said he would like to shoot the tail off of the first tourist that showed up on his land. He said that people ought to stay home where they belonged, that there wasn't one in a thousand that had any notion where he was going or why. N ? ? / ; * "They go flying by on that damned thing like bats out of hell," Grandpa was saying. "They make enough racket to raise our dead up there in the graveyard, and they kill theirselves like flies in them damned oversized cars, going faster than God'lmighty ever meant for folks to go. They ain't got no more sense than a addled goose! But they look sensible alongside them idiots from Raleigh and Washington that got the notion to build that damnable thing in the first place. I'll tell you one thing, if disease and old age don't git us, them crazy asses will! They ain't got a nit's notion about what kind of a world a man can live in and not go stark crazy. What they call progress, I call foolishness. That progress they talk about is a fickle bitch. I'd like to take my rifle gun and shoot the last silly one of them. Hit'd be a act of mercy!" "Well, don't get your bowels in an uproar over that again, Papa," Uncle Clifton said placatingly. "Hell fire, Clifton!" Grandpa yelled, purple in the face. "You don't understand nothing! My bowels is what's the problem. Why in the hell do you think I want that poke sallet for anyway?" He suffered Uncle Clifton , who was the one in our family who could never cut the mustard at anything. He came back from the war that way. "I need that poke sallet for a spring...