Our family was always big; we were farmers in the old country, and we were farmers here, up until a couple generations ago. You know how it is. Local farmers can’t compete, they sell their land, move to the city. Go from working plants in the earth to metal manufacturing plants. (Ha ha.) Have less kids, because you don’t need them. Anyhow, when you have a lot of family, especially when you have so many more old folks than young folks, you have a lot of funerals.
I never met my grandfather. He was older when he got married, not to mention a smoker. My mother still talks about him often. She revered that man some kind of way. He was a marine, fought in World War II. A union man (General Motors assembly line for 40 years, and he worked with his UAW chapter long after he retired). He had the sight. ‘The curse,’ as he called it.
He’d had a bit of it all his life, but the war was when it came into its own. He could see things that other people couldn’t (and obviously this troubled him greatly in the middle of a warzone). But his real talent, the real curse, was what he could see from the living. If he looked someone in the eye, he could tell things about them without even trying. Sometimes it was just innocent: he could tell you all about a childhood dog you had, what church you went to, where you worked and how you liked your boss, which part of fucking Sweden or whatever your great-grandparents emigrated from. But just as often he could tell if your brother had drowned when you were a kid and what his body looked like after; he could tell if you’d hit someone with your car on the back roads at night and never told anybody. You can imagine it was a burden.
And now, he wasn’t the first person in my family to be cursed. He’d heard things in turn from his own aunt Dolores, from his grandfather. It’s why everybody in the family knows you don’t go straight back home after a funeral. That’s a rule I don’t suppose y’all keep, but I would suggest you do because of what my mother told me and what I am about to tell you. Even most of my relatives just took it as an excuse to go out drinking in someone’s honor. They didn’t know much better themselves. To be perfectly honest, I think that was all my grandfather had in mind after they buried Dolly.
This was in 1960, when my mother was still a little girl. When she told me the story, she said she remembered the funeral, then going to the bar after with her dad. It was some dive he would frequent specifically because his coworkers didn’t. With the curse, it would hurt him sometimes even to be around other people. He probably shouldn’t have been taking his 7 year old to the bar, (the past really is another country, man) but if she behaved she would get a pop, which he normally didn’t let her have, so she didn’t mind hanging out at a table and drawing while he had his beers. Every now and then she’d get up and wander outside for a while, but all the regulars knew her so my grandfather felt safe letting her.
My mother made her way outside while he made grunted small talk with the bartender. (He hadn’t even looked the man in the eyes, but he’d still gotten a wave of the curse, saw that he’d been cheating on his taxes for the bar. It distracted him somewhat.) He was barely started in on his first beer when he got this prickling feeling on his arms and realized he hadn’t seen her in a minute. His usual table was near-ish to a window, so he got himself up and looked out to check on her.
She was out there, standing by his truck. But she wasn’t alone.
He’d never seen the guy before, but he was hunkered low to the ground to talk to her. Normally, he wouldn’t worry too much, but something about him was really off. He brought his beer with him outside.
On the steps of the bar he shouted, “Marnie!”
My mother turned back to him and, like a mischievous little sprite, ran to the truck bed to try and pull herself in. She wasn’t quite tall enough, leaving her legs scrambling in the air. He swore and stormed across the parking lot to scoop her up, one-armed, and stick her back on the ground.
“What has gotten into you, you little animal?”
“I wanna ride in the back!”
He figured she was just being a brat, and jerked her along behind him. The guy followed him with his gaze as they passed, still crouching. Feeling it, he stopped long enough to size him up. That prickling on his arms had gone to his neck now, and down his spine.
“And just who the hell are you?” he barked.
The man stood up slowly, like his knees needed a long time to unfold. He was pale and sallow, and he smelled like heavy machinery. Couldn’t have been over 25, but the bruises under his eyes made him look older. The big dark coat over his shoulders sagged, like he didn’t have the mass to fill it. There was something wrong with his eyes, but my grandfather couldn’t place what. They were big, wet, sunken, and bright blue.
“It’s awful cold. Might I come inside?
”My grandfather puffed up. “Mister, I don’t really give a shit what you do,” he said. “But if I see you talking to my daughter again, I’ll break your fucking arm. Come on, Marnie.”
He dragged her back towards the bar, and the man in the coat didn’t follow them. When they were back inside, he glanced through the window, and he was still staring.
One beer down. He made my mother sit quietly at the table the whole time. He looked out the window. The man was still there.
Two beers down. He let my mother go to the toilet, but only because he stood guard outside and waited for her. Back at the table, he checked the window again. Was he getting closer?
Three beers down. He was absolutely closer, and his eyes were so pale you could see them across the dark parking lot when the moonlight struck. My grandfather started to get itchy fingers.
Four beers down. My grandfather looked out the window and there was nobody outside.
Relief. He asked the bartender to watch my mother while he went for a piss, and then when he’d finished his business, took her hand and led her towards the truck.The door swung open with a rush of cold air. He hadn’t expected the night to get so chilly.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
He whipped his head around, stopping so fast my mother almost tumbled over. The man was right beside the door, out of sight from within, in a half crouch that brought him less than a foot from my grandfather. He moved my mother to stand behind him and retreated a few steps. Up close, the skin of his lips was blackened and bluish. “What did you just say?”
The man searched for his words and then said, “Dolly.”
He kept backing away with her, holding too tightly to her hand for her to squirm. If he hadn’t been so worried for her sake, he might have been throwing punches. But it didn’t seem like a good idea to touch this man, either. The lights from the bar were reflecting on his skin now, and it was waxy and thin. (Have you ever seen corpse skin? My grandfather had, of course, seen plenty.)
“What is it you want from me, boy?”
The man in the coat smiled with helpless eyes, like he didn’t understand what my grandfather was saying. That was when he realized.
“It’s awful cold. Might I come inside?”
For the first time since the end of his service, my grandfather looked into someone’s eyes and saw nothing.He hauled my mother into the truck and took off. As he glanced up in the rearview, he saw the man in the coat slip in through the open door of the bar as another patron left. Then he was down the road, out of sight.
“Ain’t he coming home with us?” my mother asked.
Already edgy, my grandfather asked what she meant by that. Kids say lots of weird shit, but what really spooked him (or so he told her later, when she was grown and could understand) was how disappointed she sounded.
Instead of explaining, she just asked again, “Does he wanna stay at the bar? Is he gonna have a beer for great-aunt ‘Lores too? They ain’t gonna let him in looking like that. Is he–”
“God dammit, Marnie!” He thumped the steering wheel and made her jump. They didn’t even have seatbelts, so she was just squirming all over the bench seat in the back.
“Daddy, don’t yell at me! Mom says don’t yell!” she yelled back, at the top of her 7 year old lungs.
“Your mother ain’t here, is she? Now keep your voice down back there, or I’ll–”
And at this moment, he turned around in his seat to scold her, blurt out some threats he could probably make good on. Entirely without meaning to, he met her eyes.
My mother had been playing on the steps of the bar, getting out her jitters from sitting still at a funeral. This part, she remembers. What she no longer remembers, what her father saw in her eyes, was how that stranger in the long, oversized, ratty trench coat poked his head up over the top of the truck bed and looked at her. How he had slunk out over the side and crouched down so he was of a height with her. And beckoned.
She watched my grandfather’s face turn white. He turned back to face the road.
It was years later when he saw him again. Family reunion, all the old folks with their albums and their family trees laid out on the table. He was a lot less skinny in the photograph; they took it before he shipped out. There was nothing to compare it to except the picture in my grandfather’s mind, that cousin he’d never known. But he was certain. He knew what it was like to long towards home.