A Good Pine

Every afternoon he waited on the porch for his grand-daughter to walk home from school, following a path he’d forged through the woods surrounding their house. The trail ended at the yard, like a creek feeding a pond, and he watched the treeline for the faded yellow of her coat. Five years ago, a coal truck had nudged his daughter’s car over a cliff. The car landed upside down in a dry creek. She and her husband had departed life in less time than it took for a leaf to drop from a tree. Lucy had lived with him ever since.

He was a father at fifteen, a combat veteran at twenty, and a grandfather by thirty-five. At age fifty he was widowed. The seasons had carved furrows in his face, turning his limbs to muscled tools covered by leather. His hair never turned gray or fell away, but remained thick and black, as if his genes had bred a permanent hat. He’d never really learned to live, but was adept at getting by, standing fast, holding ground. He rarely changed expression. The infrequent visitor to his small house at the head of the hollow often mistook the old man’s countenance for inattention or stupidity—but they were wrong. He simply wore an armor of his own creation.

Lucy emerged from the woods, followed by her dog. The coat she wore was too big but protected her against the December chill. Something vague inside the old man glowed briefly like the final ember of a dwindled fire. Lucy trudged toward the house, followed by her dog. Behind them the trees were empty of leaves. The bare branches were like a fur trim on the blue sweater of sky.

At twelve she was still mostly girl, suddenly running thin and exuberant across the patchy grass. She raced past him into the house to turn on the tv. It was an old television that got one channel, and the old man prevailed with an antenna atop a steel pole lashed to a hickory post. He gripped the pole and waited.

“It’s on,” Lucy called. “But fuzzy!”

He turned the pole in tiny increments to improve the tv’s picture.

“Wait,” she yelled. “No, back up!”

He gave the pole a slight reverse.

“Okay, Papaw,” she said. “That’s good.”

He released the metal pole and blew into his palms. Gloves he reserved for serious work, not this daily ritual of drawing television reception for her favorite show, Mr. Cartoon. They’d begun this when her parents were still alive. He believed that maintaining simple traditions would help her accept the terrible loss. As Lucy grew, she had abandoned his lap to sit beside him, then gradually migrated toward the other end of the couch, where she now sprawled with her shoes off. He joined her, sitting heavily on the worn cushion.

“I saw him today,” she said. “We had a field trip to town and saw Mister Cartoon for real. He did some magic tricks and showed Road Runner. I liked it a lot. Mr. Cartoon looked short but it was really him, I could tell. He wore the striped coat and sunglasses like he always does. Then he asked for questions—and guess what Papaw—he picked me! So I asked him why he always wore sunglasses. He said it was because if he didn’t wear them, someone would ask why he never wore them. That didn’t make sense to me, but then he gave me an autographed picture of himself. Want to see it?”

She withdrew the photo from a math book for his nodding admiration. Mister Cartoon came on the screen, and Lucy stared intently as if seeing a lost relative returning for a holiday visit. She laughed at the cartoons, and he arranged on his face an expression he knew from long experience would pass for a smile. Television was a habit that had never adequately fastened to him. It reminded him of a campfire—steady motion that never got anywhere. He’d learned not to look directly at a...