In All The Mundo

"Il mundo e fatta per te." My grandfather said this to me a few weeks before his death. The world was made for you. He said it with a laugh that made it seem more like a curse. Anyway, it felt like one. I wondered why? What exactly did he see that would make him say that? I certainly wasn't heading up any alumni associations in honor of my success. No, it couldn't be a good thing; it was already too late for that. I knew this, but how did he know? Did he really know who he was speaking to despite the usual delusions that are foisted upon grandparents about their children's children. I always thought so, and I tried to be honest with him, even as my parents communicated with mimetic faces and whispers behind his back.

Was this really all he was trying to tell me? That even though I'd been out of his life and everyone else's by three thousand miles and half a dozen years, that he knew? That he always knew? And that it was OK with him - OK with him in the same way that the rhubarb came up every year and he chopped it down? OK in the same way that he shrugged his shoulders and said "What can I do? Ride it out I guess?" OK with this man, my mother's father, who fought in a war on the foreign soil of his ancestors, who worked through the depression with the civilian corps building tunnels and houses, who provided for a blind son and a wife who degenerated for nearly twenty years. This man who wore fascist shrapnel forever embedded in his stiff knee and who took thirty medications a day for everything that ailed him. Ride it out? Ride what out? What was it between him and the earth after all that could still be ridden?

"They say my arteries will close. Soon. Anytime. And my heart will not stand another operation."

"I'm sorry grandpap."

"It's OK."

That again....it didn't seem OK to me somehow.

"I've had a long time and I miss your grandmother - she didn't know who I was for all those years."

All I could do was look over at him remembering her. My grandmother died from complications of cancers and Parkinson's at least ten years ago and he's been waiting ever since. It was a strange conversation but I knew it would be. I understood that he was long ready to be with her, but it was difficult to reconcile right there on his backyard patio in the full hum of spring. He seemed very much alive just then buttoning his bright red sweater over his pregnant belly, while over his shoulder the yellow irises bloomed in their mulchy borders, and the robins waited on white tipped branches for the sweet perfume of the cherry tree that he planted when my mother was born. Everything was alive, very much so. The new green carpet of bluegrasses and fescues had straightened up and would be cut soon - something I used to do for him as a young man. The red grapes were vining hard also, always just in time to make their good neighbor fence before the contest of spring planting between him and Frank next door. Even the brightening stalks of the rhubarb, before the leaves became coarse and overwhelming, were evidence against this. But there was a deeper harmony in that setting too. And there would be no contest this year of who got what in first and out last and how many bushels obtained. Everything came and went. Life. Light. Wonder. Abundance. And death. And it was OK, just as much as it wasn't OK, because it just was.

That night I flew back to California. I knew then that I would never see him again. That was how I wanted it - in the living, and that was the reason I made the trip. Of course, I still made the trip again, two months later. So much for that.

"It's up to you - If you want to come," My father said, giving me the news.

He had that tone he gets, or that people get, I guess, when they talk about it, almost like they had to whisper and be reverential, be polite about it, to it, lest it strike them down next.

I didn't want to go and I told myself, back then, when I made that trip and then later, week after week, that I was on firm footing. I had made my peace.

"I don't know dad - I wasn't planning on it, you know."

"I know, but I wanted to call. No one expects anything. It's just your mother mainly. All she has now are you kids."

How could I cut myself out of that? I needed to be there, in family. Of course. So I went the next day. I passed the time on the airplane trying to compose something to remember him by but nothing came. I gave up and lay my head into the wall of the plane and watched the empty rudder on the wing. It gave the illusion of being a delicate mechanism, lifting and lowering on nothing apparently while under the silent forces of gravity at 600 miles per hour. When we were kids he used to give us rides on his good knee and I always looked down at the other one, the one that didn't bend from the shrapnel, lying stiff in it's pant leg, and it too under it's own silent forces, relegating the whole leg to a kind of crutch or prop. He rubbed it a lot. It was a familiar twitch of his, to keep the circulation going.

The next afternoon I helped carry my grandfather to his grave. He was wearing a suit, which he never did, or not that I could remember, except in pictures of weddings and holy communions and the war. I wondered what happened to his red sweater. The more I thought about it the more I became obsessed with the idea that he had probably died in it and that it was somewhere rolled up in a bag, along with his hair clippings and toenails and soiled underpants and the blood they took out, or whatever, just whatever else was left.

Actually, this idea began before the funeral when my brother and I were going through his closet and drawers. I was looking for the red sweater then. I think we were encouraged by my father to pick something of his. I settled on some v-neck t-shirts of all things because he wore those too and they were already broken and cozy and felt like him. There was a drawer full of them. In fact, I would rotate them through my wardrobe for the next five years, and I still might have one or two, unwearabley worn thin somewhere at the bottom of a drawer, waiting for the day that I magically gain in the battle against my paunch, the same battle that he engaged in during the last half of his life.

After the funeral the family got together to eat and drink. Many of us carried this on elsewhere and into the early morning. Death was that one time you could get as drunk as you wanted and cry over the sentimental noise of crickets and no one would bring it up on you ever. By the time the family had split off, I was running with a friend of mine, Nagle, whose recently deceased pap knew my pap from the war regiment, and although they were never friends, it wasn't odd for people in a small town to pay their respects, even once removed. Besides which, Nagle had a joint on him. He said that when his pap died somebody came with a joint and got him high and he was figuring on repaying that kindness tonight. Later I found myself smoking it on a wooded hilltop overlooking town under a giant American flag that beat over our heads like a dark sail.

We were at a veterans memorial park, completely deserted at this hour, and hidden away from even the moon. It was a place where kids went to get high and finger each other. Kids like this one even, I said to myself, figuring that she's been here. I nudged Nagle because it was his fault. He brought her. He told her about the pot.

"This ain't free you know," I said, waving the joint out of her reach.

"Ok what do you want? I told yuns I was ready to party. Man I can out-drink all you alls and I'm not even old enough."

I gave her the joint. "Show us your tits then." I wasn't exactly threatening, but I wanted to see. It was almost too easy. Her shirt came off while she sucked on the joint, no bra. Nagle tried to put the brakes on: "I promised my wife when she heard you were in town." He must have told her about the stuff we'd done before, before her and the kid. His wavering only made me push harder.

"You should have brought her then," I said. I undid my pants and let them drop. "Just watch if that's what you want."

I leaned back against the bumper of the car and listened to that flapping memorial, amazed at where you might find yourself in the course of a few short hours.

"Quit trying to test me," he said, but his voice was weak.

I pulled the girl over and stood her in front of him. She teased him with the joint, trying to get him to reach after it.

"Hun-uh. Just give it to me. You're wasting it."

She gave in. Fun was fun, but she wanted to let us know that she took her partying seriously. That she was older that way. She stepped out of her jeans and walked over in her panties and socks to lean against me. Nagle stood there next to us as he smoked the roach down, still trying to be cool. I slid my fingers into the girls soft V. She was a little thing. I played with her for a while and then I grabbed her like bowling ball. She slid around on my hand until finally her weight collapsed against me. She was groping for me now. She pulled it against her and rubbed. It was like two metals touching. I pulled her soaking panties aside and pushed her down on my cock. Nagle and I could both have her now. But that said, I wasn't waiting for him either. She slid down and I gave her a few strokes using the rear suspension of the car for umpf. Then I pulled her off and pushed her head down. I still thought Nagle might put his dick in her. Maybe this would help, I thought, but he didn't budge.

"I'm impressed. You're out of it - I guess you're cured", I said.

"It's different now. I still think about it, but I can't. It's everything to be a father."

"I've heard that one. You all just love the company, is that it?"

"Don't worry, the wife will thank you later when I'm taking it out on her."

"Why don?t I just come by?"

"She's talked about it."

Nagle finally slid a hand down. I wasn't surprised - it was just a feel. He drew it back before he got burnt.

I was losing interest in the performance. The girl wasn't very good at head either. I pushed her all the way down and made her gag. There. That was fun. She seemed to perk up. Maybe she liked it rough. I pulled her hair and kept forcing her down. She was choking and drooling but she kept at it. When I was about to come I pulled it out and shot it up her nose. She had one of those cute little button noses that seemed to need defiling. Anyhow, I let her have it.

Nagle gave her the rest of the joint after that one and she lapped it up because that's everyone's image of a party slut, gleaming up to her eyeballs in cum and dismemberment. This one was the idiot poster child, the unfortunate case in point of those rallying against some of life's sweeter pleasures and all the while everyone knows they're the ones boffing the intern or the altar boy under some vile pretense of power or public trust. She was lucky it was us and not one of them. Hell, she might end up in pieces in a park.

I looked over at her burning her stupid lips on the roach, still gleaming.

"If that's all you guys have, why don't you let me watch and have some fun?"

"We don't do the fag stuff." Nagle seemed genuinely offended but glad too that the air was cleared - he only saw me every couple of years so what did he know?

"C'mon - You guys look like you take it both ways."

"First of all", I said, "there are more than two ways."

That shut her up for a minute while she tried to list them on her burnt fingertips.

"Don't forget sex with machines," I said, "and overripe fruit."

Nagle started baahhhing.

She stepped in and lowered her voice: "I know this girl - she lets her dog go down on her."

"That's an old one," I said. "Does she ever return the favor at least?"

"It's not like I know her. I just heard about it."

"Yeah. Me too. My girlfriend used to take on a great Dane every which way while her boyfriend watched. Personally, I draw the line at animals."

"Hey, tomatoes have rights too," Nagle added.

"Well - it depends on who you ask," I said, "but a vacuum on the other hand - I don't think anyone would argue."

"No rights."

"Exactly."

The girl bent her face down to the trunk of the car and wiggled her ass back at us.

"You guys sure talk a lot - me, I don't like to waste a good buzz."

Now there was some good sense. I looked at Nagle. He wasn't gonna go so I walked over. She was kissing metal. She was ready.

"Let me help you with that buzzing."

"What are you gonna do about it?" she asked, her skin squeaking against the car.

I took hold of her round hips, looked up at the flapping memorial over our heads, smelled the woods, looked down at my open shirt, saw the paunch, the v, closed my eyes and heard those words again - il mundo e fatta per te, the world is made for you - and I said to her, ride it out I guess. What else?