Listening Long and Late

they lost the grandfather

48 they lost the grandfather They lost the grandfather, Barba Giovan’, somewhere between West Virginia and Florida. The family didn’t notice he had disappeared from the train; they hadn’t paid him any mind in a long time. His son Joe had been promised a job managing a second-rate motel in north Miami and his wife and kids were so used to failure they no longer cared where it took place. They figured he must have gotten off at a stop sometime during the night and he couldn’t speak English. They never found him. I think of Barba Giovan’, bewildered and turnedaround in some piney woods or suck-hole swamp, waiting for someone to call him home. ...