“That’s what it was like for a while. I was at the same job not making enough. I had two kids to take care of and your great-granddaddy was waiting for me to mess up.” “I know that,” I said. “What that got to do with anything?” My dialect was coming back. His slurp was louder this time. “I was aiming at a target I could never hit. So, I started drinking. For some time, it gave me something. I could aim right for the target even if it was for a moment.” I took a large gulp hoping to settle the heat rising in my body. “But we were broken long before that. We just never said anything. But once you were born we promised it would never get in the way of family.” I tapped my nails against the wet bottle. “You should have at least told me.” He laughed. I hadn’t heard him laugh since I was six. It was a throaty laugh, like the goats on Uncle Chuck’s farm. “So you could have hated me then the way you hate me now?” He drank from the bottle again. “Naw, Bean. You didn’t deserve that.” I scooted closer to Grandpa, my wet hands slipping against the truck. “I should have done right by her. I know I can’t change it now, but I don’t want you hating me as much.” I placed the bottle beside me. My hands were wet and covered in red sticker. Pieces of the label were rolled up and folded into each other. My response was folded up in there somewhere. I tried separating it, but that only made it worse. “That’s all I’m asking of you, Bean.” The silence took over for a while. I looked into my half-empty bottle. I poured the rest of it out into the dirt. “At least spell my middle name right,” I mumbled. His laugh rang against the metal on the trailers in front of us. “How is it spelled, Bean?” I spelled it out. “Well hell, why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have been spelled it with an ‘i’.” “You don’t exactly answer the phone for numbers you don’t know,” I replied, gripping the body of the bottle. “I might not get it right the first time, but I’ll try Bean. For your grandma.” The block of ice that kept us as distant strangers had begun to melt. His bony elbow gently nudged my lanky arm. “We pretty fucked up, ain’t we, Bean.” He titled his bottle towards me. I looked into the eyes that resembled mine. “We’re family, Grandpa.” The clink of our bottles rang out into the trailer park and harmonized with the crickets chirping below us.
78
OAR
RUSH