Papaw Jeff
2003-02-24, 6:45 p.m.
Interstate 35... Highway 82... Highway 75 to 69... to Interstate 40... and then home... passing through towns with names that taste funny rolling about in my mouth - Okalona, Atoka, Checotah... Names that Cherokee natives laid upon their lands...
I want to drop camp and sleep here tonight - lay my head where my full Cherokee great-grandmother first lay hers 97 years ago... My Nona married a full-blooded, able-bodied, red-headed drunkard of an Irishman by the name of Jeffrey McDaid... Papaw Jeff...
Papaw Jeff loved moonshine more than he loved Little Debbies... The man subsisted on Little Debbies and corn whiskey he made in a still in the shed behind our house on 17th street alone... it was 1987... liquor stores abundant... my great-grandfather still living back somewhere around prohibition... before abolition...
Papaw Jeff was a raging drunk... Nona locked him out at least once a week... he would clamber up on the roof above their double bed and stomp about.... she would open the window and drag him off... It was a weekly event... the cops stopped coming after a while... they hated those fucking "paddies"... and "injuns"...
Papaw Jeff died a few years back... before I knew about domestic violence... before I knew that I could have stopped him from knocking her around with his corn whiskey breath and fiery Irish accent... and fists. and knees. and feet. She's 97 now... so riddled with Alzheimer's, locked up in some nursing home on the Oklahoma/Arkansas border, that I don't think she remembers much anymore... like... my name... or my mom's name... or the name of the old black octogenarian lady, clapping and wailing gospel all. night. long. on the other side of the curtain...
But I do think that my Nona remembers Papaw Jeff... I see a fiery flash sear her face when I mention his name... but she just goes on wringing her hands and pulling her hair... staring at the ceiling... softball sized tumor in her abdomen apparent under the bed covering... but I always think... I can feel the fear... and the anger... emanating from her for just. one. second.
I wish I would have known... back then... how to stop it... and even though my Nona has forgotten, I'll never forget the powerlessness of that little 6 year old girl... stealthily sneaking the Little Debbies out of the back bedroom...
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