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According to everything I've ever heard about her, my grandma Jennie was a sweet, kind, and loving woman who treated Uncle Simon well, too well for Grandad's liking. It wasn't until after she had died of a heart attack that he moved Simon out of the house and into the barn. According to Uncle Peter, and even Daddy, she wouldn't have tolerated it, even though everyone who knew my grandmother said she was too meek and servile in every other way and permitted Grandad to work her to death. She was often seen beside him in the fields, despite a full day of house cleaning and cooking.
However, Grandad Forman had a religious philosophy that prevented him from ever taking responsibility for anything that had happened to his family or anyone else with whom he might have come into contact. He believed bad things happe
ned to people as a result of their own evil thoughts, evil deeds. God, he preached, punishes us on earth and rewards us on earth. If something terrible happens to someone we all thought was a good person, we must understand that we didn't know what was in his or her heart and in his or her past. God sees all. Grandad was so vehement about this that he often made me feel God was spying on me every moment of the day, and if I should stray so much as an iota from the Good Book or the Commandments. I would be struck down with the speed of a bolt of lightning.
Consequently, Grandad Forman did not cry at funerals, and when the horrible news about Uncle Peter was brought to our house. Grandad absorbed and accepted it, lowered his head, and went out to work in the field just as he had planned.
Mommy was nearly inconsolable. I believe she loved Uncle Peter almost as much as she loved Daddy, almost as much as I loved him. We cried and held each other. Daddy went off to mourn privately, I know, Uncle Simon raged like a wild beast in his barn. We could hear the metal tools being flung against the walls, and then he marched out and took hold of a good size sapling he had planted seven years before and put all of his sorrow into a gigantic effort to lift it, roots and all, out of the earth, which he did.
"Lunatic," Grandad said when he saw what he had done. "God will punish him for that."
That evening I sat on the porch steps and stared up at the stars. I had no appetite at dinner and couldn't pronounce a syllable of grace. I wasn't in the mood to thank God for anything, least of all food. but Grandad thought wasting food was one of the worst sins anyone could commit, so I forced myself to swallow, practically without chewing. Tommy, who cooked and cleaned and kept house for him as well as for Daddy and me, choked back her tears, but sniffled too often for Grandad's liking, He chastised her: "It's God's will, and His will be done. So stop your confounded sobbing at dinner."
I looked to Daddy to see if he would speak up in her defense, but he stared forward, muted by his sorrow. Unlike Uncle Peter. Daddy was a quiet man, strong and compassionate in his own way, but always, it seemed to me, caught in Grandad's shadow, Grandad Forman was still a powerful man, even in his early seventies. He was about six foot three himself, but walked with stooped shoulders. He reminded me of a closed fist-- tight, powerful, even lethal. He had a thick bull neck, was broad-shouldered with long, muscular arms and a small pouch of a stomach. His skin was always dark from working outdoors, and he always had a two-or three-day wire-brush beard because he didn't waste razor blades.
Once, he must have been fairly good-looking. Daddy had inherited his straight nose, dark, brooding eyes, and firm lips, but Daddy was slimmer in build, with well-proportioned shoulders. From the pictures we had of Grandma Jennie. I thought he had inherited her best qualities. too. Despite his quiet manner and his dedication to work. Daddy was nowhere near as hard as Grandad.
"Lift's got to go on," Grandad declared, lecturing to Mommy. "It's God's gift, and we don't turn our backs on it."
Almost for spite, to show us he practiced what he preached, he ate with just as much vigor and appetite as he had ever done, and looked to us to do the same.
I was glad when I could get away from him.
On my tenth birthday, Uncle Peter had bought me a Stradivarius violin. It was very expensive, and Grandad Forman complained for days about the "waste of so much money." But I had taken some lessons at school, and talked about how I had enjoyed playing a violin.
"That's what we need around here," Uncle Peter had decided. 'some good music. Honey's just the one to make it for us."
He even paid for my private lessons. My teacher. Clarence Wengrow, claimed I had a natural inclination for it, and early on recommended I think seriously about attending a school of performing arts somewhere. Grandad Forman thought that was pure nonsense, and would actually become angry if we discussed anything about my music at dinner, slapping the table so hard he would make the dishes dance. Uncle Peter tried to get him to appreciate music. but Grandad had a strict puritanical view of it as it being another vehicle upon which the devil rode into our hearts and souls. It took us away from hard work and prayer, and that was always dangerous.
Grandad could go on and on like a hell-anddamnation preacher. Daddy would sit with his head bowed, his eyes closed, like someone just trying to wait out some pain. Most of the time Mommy ignored Grandad, but Uncle Peter always wore a soft smile, as if he found his father quaint. amusing.
I couldn't get Uncle Peter's smile out of my eyes that first night of his death. I heard his laughter and heard him call my name. He loved teasing me about it. Mommy had named me Honey because of my naturally light-brown complexion and the honey color of my hair and my eyes. I understood Grandad Forman immediately let it be known that he didn't think it was proper. but Mommy was able to put up a strong wall of resistence and brush off his tirade of threats and commands.
Uncle Peter would sing, "We've got Honey. We've got sugar, but Honey is the sweet one for me."
He would laugh and throw his arm around my shoulders and kiss the top of my hair, pretending he had just swallowed the most delicious tablespoon of honey in the world.
How could someone with so much life and love in him be snuffed out like a candle in seconds? I wondered. Why would God let this happen? Could Grandad Forman be right? It made no sense to me. I wouldn't accept it. I would never permit myself to think the smallest bad thing about Uncle Peter. He had no secret evil, in his heart or otherwise. It was all simply a galactic mistake, a gross error. God had made a wrong decision or failed to catch it in time. However. I knew if I so much as suggested such a thing in front of Grandad, he would fly into a hurricane of rage.
"Oh. clear God," I prayed. "surely You can right the wrong, correct the error. Turn us back a day and make this day disappear forever," I begged.
Then I picked up my violin and played. My music flowed out into the night. It was an unusually warm spring, so we could enjoy an occasionally tepid evening when the approaching summer let it be known it was nearly at our doorstep.
Suddenly I saw a large shadow move near Uncle Simon's garden, and quickly realized it was he. I stopped playing and went to him. He was sitting an the ground like an Indian at a council meeting, his legs around a flower he had just planted. I could smell the freshly turned earth.
"What's that. Uncle Simon?" I asked.
"For Peter." he said. "He likes these.
Snapdragon," he said. "That's nice. Uncle Simon."
He nodded and pressed the earth around the tiny plant affectionately with his immense fingers, so full of strength and yet so full of Gentle kindness and love, too, especially for his precious flowers, his children.
"Play your violin," he said, "Flowers like to hear the music. too."
I knew he often talked to his flowers, which was something that Grandad pointed out as evidence of his being a simpleton. He was the simpleton. not Uncle Simon, as far as I was concerned.
I smiled, knelt beside Uncle Simon, and began to play.
