Brady Alden

Michael Shorb

Old Glory

You may have heard about my grandfather, who I called Grandpa once. Well, right up and out of the blue he started shooting a rifle from his living room window and then got in a day long standoff with the police. Massachusetts. Danvers, Massachusetts. It's just outside of Boston. That's where I’m from. Danvers, not Boston.

I hadn't seen him in years but, as far as I knew, he was healthy. He was old, of course, and took some pills, but he wasn't crazy. He had routines, and he had habits. On Sundays, he went down to the VFW on Hudson Street and watched football on what I imagined was a tiny, dust-covered television in a poorly lit corner of a poorly lit room. He ate sardines in mustard, right out of the can. He shopped almost exclusively at Sears.

Nobody was actually killed except for him, at least that's what the news said. I don't think he was meaning to hurt people, but one of the cops was injured, grazed along the upper arm. I saw him on the news talking like he was a hero, acting like he had done his country a service. Maybe he had, but I don't think just being in the way of a bullet qualifies. It has to be more than that—just being in the way.

When I was young, maybe seven, maybe ten, my grandfather and I fixed up the traffic-beaten mailbox that stood outside his house. It was rusty and dinged, and leaned slightly to the left. More than likely, we wouldn't have done anything, but the homes surrounding his were multiplying. The neighbors, when there were enough to make noise, got together, signed a petition and took it to the town council. Nobody could tell him what to do with his "disruptive and unglamorous" yard, the council said, but he would have to fix the mailbox. That, being adjacent to the road, was on town property, and furthermore, was a reflection of the entire community.

"We'll show 'em," he said to me one slow Saturday afternoon. My mother and my sister and I lived on the south side of town, near the hospital where my mother worked, and my grandfather lived across the river, on Colonial Avenue, but we visited regularly. "They want a mailbox, we'll give 'em a mailbox. Get in the truck, Stevie, we're going down to Sears."

I expected to buy a new mailbox, maybe a few pieces of wood or a steel rod and some cement mix. Instead, all we bought were two new bristle brushes and two gallons of paint; red and blue. My grandfather didn't buy any white, I found out later, because there was already a half-full gallon in the basement. He went down to retrieve it, along with a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver, and I freed the matching pair of glossy brushes from their package. Each head was as sharp and crisp as the edges of a fresh bible. Together, we went to work at the end of the driveway.

With screwdriver in hand, my grandfather inspected his own mailbox like he was seeing it for the first time. He opened the loose door and pushed it hard to get it to close, lifted the battered flag and flicked it down. He doubled over to look at the underside of the box itself, its attachment to the thick wooden post, listing as it was, and then he walked back inside. After a few minutes he returned, carrying in his right hand a socket set, and in his left, both a pair of pliers and a crescent wrench.

When the box was detached and lying on the ground, my grandfather went at the dents, from inside and out, using the hammer, the screwdriver, the pliers, and his own bare hands. He pushed on it and pulled at it, and just about jumped up and down on it a few times. I wasn't convinced he knew what he was doing.

"I ever tell you I used to do metal work in the service?" he asked, hunched slightly away from me, his physical attention on the box.

"No, Grandpa." I was bored.

"Sure thing," he said. "In France. Fixed engines some, too, but I always liked doing body work. Most people don't even think about it, when they see those old slugs we were driving. Jeeps mostly, but some A.T.V.s, M-3 Scouts, M-18s, even a few Shermans. Those were a real mother to work on, let me tell you. Quarter inch of steel plating." As he spoke, his hands were working the mailbox into shape, his feet too, his elbows and knees, his whole body. I'd never seen him look so strong and sure.

"Did a lotta work on those old boys. We didn't worry about making 'em pretty. That wasn't the point." The metal rang out a symphony of repair, steel on steel on steel. The dents were getting smaller, and some were already gone. "Just had to patch 'em up once in awhile. Those things could go through hell and back, but they were some beat up on the other end of it."

I sat down on the grass and watched him work what was beginning to look like magic. The mailbox was taking shape, and in less than ten minutes my grandfather was done. With one final, reverberating twang, he flattened out the final flaw in the metal, set the box down in the grass, and sat next to it catching his breath.

"Wow," I said.

"Nice, huh?" he said through confident breaths. "Didn't think your old Grandpa had it in him, did you?" I didn't answer, and he said, "Ha," and then, "You want to finish her up for me?"

I nodded my head.

"Why don't you take that screwdriver and pop open that can of blue right there." As soon as I took hold of the screwdriver, he said, "No, wait."

The screwdriver landed on the grass and didn't make a sound until it rolled with a clink into the can of blue paint.

"That's not right," my grandfather said. "We should get all that goddamn rust off." I must have looked surprised, because he said, "Oops, sorry Stevie." Then he chuckled and added, "Don't tell your mother I said that."

As fine a shape as it had suddenly taken on, the mailbox was indeed covered in pockets and smears of rust. It was also semi-covered in broad, dirty flakes of the fine white it had once been. "Come on," he said, already walking to the house. "Let's see if I've got any sandpaper."

He did, and after we'd retrieved several pieces from the basement and gone back outside, he set me down in front of the box again. "There you are," he said. “Now just give it a light rub all over. You don't need to get all that mess off there, just some of it." He picked off one of the larger flakes of old paint. "Just the big stuff."

I went to work with the sandpaper, throwing a white and brown spray into the air, and my grandfather lit a cigarette and watched. After a few minutes, he pitched the smoking butt of it into the street and said, "Okay, Stevie, that's good. Now let's paint this sucker." He handed me the can of blue and took the white for himself, which he used for the slanted post, naked without the box attached. He didn't sand it or scrape it or clean it up in any way; he just put the brush to it and was finished with only a few sloppy strokes. I was barely finished dabbing one side of the metal box with glimmering, wet blue.

"Damn son, what are you doing?" I looked up, and he was lighting another cigarette. "It ain't a baby, you know." I didn't understand. "Ain't no need to nurse it."

I started painting furiously with an enormous grin on my face. I covered the mailbox in seconds, along with my shoes, my hands, my arms, and even my face. It was a light blue, almost the color of sky, and it was streaky and gathered itself quickly into thick rivulets that ran down the sides and dripped on the grass. "That's a boy," I heard. "Now let's go inside and get us some ice cream while that all dries."

We raced to the front door, and I won.

He let me finish painting the mailbox on my own because, he said, he was tired and also because, I deduced on my own, the Red Sox were playing the second game of a three game series against the Yankees, trying to gain ground in the division. He said to me when I asked, "You'll know what to do." And I did.

On the freshly white post I painted a thick, fairly even stripe of red, winding around it like a blocky, summertime candy cane. For the mailbox itself, I wanted to paint white stars on the pale blue background, naturally, but after several failed attempts, I settled for polka dots. And I didn’t stop at fifty; I covered that thing with white spots, top and bottom and all the way around.

I was a little disappointed with the final outcome, but when my grandfather saw it he said, "That is wonderful, Stevie. Good job with the dots."

"Well, I wanted to do stars, but—"

"No, no, this is even better. This is perfect."

Later that evening, I watched as my grandfather put the whole business back together, dirty, rusted bolts and all. I asked, "Aren't you going to fix the post?"

"What, this thing?" He set his hand on top of the old post, behind the newly reinstalled mailbox, and it wobbled under the weight of his hand. "Nah. It's got character like this." Then he stepped back and kicked it high, near the box, and it leaned over another inch or two. "Now it's art," he said. "Let's go inside."

In the years since leaving the east coast, I've hardly kept in touch with my family. I speak with my mother on occasion, but my sister I've only talked to a handful of times, and my grandfather only twice. Once he called me because he thought he'd seen me stocking shelves in a commercial for laundry soap, and almost a year later, I called him to find out a fair price for new wheel bearings in my Jetta, because I always think mechanics are trying to rip me off.

It's not that I don’t love my family, it’s just that Danvers is a long way from Los Angeles, and I’m always so busy not working. Besides, thinking about home takes a lot of energy.

I don't remember what I'd been doing for most of the day, probably looking for work, or leads, or a free lunch. Nothing happened to make it memorable until I got home. The sun, I do remember, was still high in the sky. Most likely, I was planning on a nap with the television on, because that's what I do a lot. I can hardly pay my rent, but I spend fifty-three dollars a month for cable TV, because I can't think of anything else to do when I'm not out trying to find work.

The remote control for my television is broken, or the batteries are dead, so when I got home I had to turn it on by hand, and then I had to stand there in front of it pushing up, up, up on the channel button, hoping to stumble on something good. I stumbled on something, but it took awhile, and it wasn't good. It was the life I used to live, my childhood, my family. It was all the things I'd left behind, all the things I missed, and all the things it exhausted me to remember. It was Danvers, Colonial Avenue, my grandfather's house reflecting the red and blue pulses of emergency lights even in the sunshine of a clear morning.

It was the mailbox I noticed first, that tilted, candy-striped, polka dotted, patriotic, crazy person’s mailbox, leaning to the left, braced against a wind that wasn't there. It had faded over the years, but was still energetic and wild, still one of a kind. Just under the box, tied to the red and white post, was a bright yellow and black bow. A tight line of police emergency tape ran back toward the house and to the front porch, where there was an identical bow tied to the underside of the handrail.

CNN was covering the incident and I actually went right on by the first time and had to switch back to see if my eyes had deceived me. There it was. I only saw the final ten or twelve seconds of the piece, some graphics, a five-second clip of the injured cop telling his tragic tale, and the one static shot of the house, that goddamn mailbox in the foreground, and then the station had moved on to some other catastrophe in some other town, another death between commercial breaks.

What did my grandfather do? Something. Others told me about it: nameless newscasters, blank and beautiful faces, strong-jawed policemen I would never meet. The proof is out there; the story is out there; the man is dead. But I never saw things as they happened, so I'll never know the absolutes. Some things cannot be described, and some things cannot be understood. Some things have to be seen to be believed.

I wasn't sure I believed it at first, but I did. In my mind, I pictured it happening, but that wasn't until hours later, the next day even. I could have assumed something happened to set him off, something that deserved such a drastic response. I could have assumed that something had just gone wrong in his brain, a glitch somewhere along the line that made such action seem reasonable. I could have assumed it was all some kind of enormous mistake, the police's fault. I could have thought about an apology, and a settlement from the state. Instead I pictured him with a gun I never knew he owned, in the darkness of his living room, making a decision that just doesn't seem possible.

It's been a couple days now, since I saw the news. I meant to call my mother right away, or my sister, or somebody, but I never did. I didn't want to think I had a reason to call. I wanted to speak with them and be happy. I wanted to tell them that life is good, all is well, I just called to say I love you. I didn't, though; I didn't do anything, because things like that are hard to do. Some things are hard to do.

Today, this morning, my mother called me. The phone rang and I knew it was her. The handset was cold and immediately uncomfortable against my ear, an accusation of the things I hadn't done.

"Hello?" I said.

"Steven," she said. "Your grandfather has died." After a pause she said, "I'm sorry."

When I talk to my mother, I tell her I'm doing well out here, but that's not exactly true. I mean, I make good tips working nights at King Murray's. and I pick up a little extra cash leading the occasional weekend tour at MGM, but it's not the work I'm looking for, and it sure doesn't help me sleep at night; it doesn't make me want to write a whole lot of letters or make a whole lot of phone calls.

"Well," I said, once I'd realized my mother was waiting for me to say something. "He was old."

Brady Alden is a long time resident of Portland, Maine, where he works for a living and writes whenever he can. He is a graduate of Noble High School, the University of Southern Maine and the Stonecoast Writer's Program.