On the Bank of the Illinois
I was ten years old when Mom and Dad battled the loss of their farm. They sent me to
live with my grandparents in a low slung house on the banks of the Illinois River. It
was there I went raccoon hunting for the first time.
“Sellin’ raccoon hides helped put pants on all the boys growin’ up,” Grandpa said as
we left the house.
When I asked why he wasn’t taking the gun he kept on the hooks above the back door,
he simply said. “My shootin’ days are over.”
Grandpa said few words, but when he did they stuck to a person like sorghum.
“We’ll wait here for a piece,” he said after we made camp, “and enjoy the stars.”
His weathered finger pointed to the heavens.
I sat with Grandpa in the forest night and
watched his profile through the twinkling fire at our feet. With deliberate slowness
inspired by age, he rolled a cigarette. Holding the thin fold of paper in one hand, while a
small, muslin bag of tobacco dangled from the other, he maneuver the tiny flecks into a perfect row.
When he inhaled, I watched the corners of his blue eyes crinkle as he looked through the lazy smoke.
I imagined he could see the future in the swirling mist.
On summer days we spent a lot of time in a flat bottom boat trolling the shores of
the river and easing into places where reaching branches provided soothing shade. Grandpa
sprinkled what he called his own special bait onto the gently lapping waves. Soon, the water
churned and rolled as fish gulped in the floating crumbs. Once in a while, a large one would
break through to the comforting river breeze.
“Did ya see that?” he would say. “That
devil winked at you.”
Grandpa played poker most Saturday nights in a small room behind the town’s only
drugstore. A handful of old men sat around a table under a low hanging lamp and talked about
the old days over cards. You could often find me leaning into his chair.
He didn’t mind, even when I got excited if he drew a good hand.
“The girl sure don’t have a poker face,” he’d say when everyone threw down their
cards.
“No,” someone usually chimed. “But she saves me a heap of money.”
Mom told me Grandpa was famous for knowing the Illinois River like the back of his
hand. I thought of that when he was on the porch deep in thought one evening.
He sat in the old stuffed chair he kept out there, his fingers kneading the frayed arms, as he watched the sun fall behind a saw
tooth line of trees that separated our yard from the river. The gnarled veins that crossed his
work-worn hands looked like a map of the serpentine waterway he’d spent his life traveling.
He wore dress pants, leftover from the suits he wore in his youth, with suspenders
to keep them attached to his thin frame. His shirts varied from white on Saturday night and
Sunday morning, to faded flannel during the week. The one thing that stayed consistent was the small, round Panama perched on his head.
“Helps a man be a gentleman,” he said.
“Just somethin’ about a hat that’ll make you think before you act.”
His hair was thin and silver, and it covered his tan scalp in long strands.
I often sat on the arm of his chair and ran a comb through it, parting it first on one side, then the other.
“Stop when you get to the brains,” he’d say.
Church caused heated discussions between my grandparents.
Grandma thought you had to be there every Sunday morning. Grandpa felt the Lord
understood if you worshiped on the river or deep in the woods.
“God didn’t make churches,” he argued.
“Man made churches. God made the sky and a world full of trees and rivers.
That’s where I do my prayin’.”
But Grandma usually won and Grandpa would sit with his arms folded around his narrow
chest come Sunday morning. The only time he’d unclamp his lips was when we sang.
He loved to sing and hymns were his specialty. His voice was strong and even as it led
us all to the end of a song. On the Sundays when he won and stayed home, the music didn’t
sound half so sweet.
When Grandpa wasn’t on the river or playing cards, he scoured auctions and musty
junk shops for books. I learned to read before I went to school because of my grandpa.
He always read a book before me, and then slipped in onto the shelf in my room.
“This is a good one,” he would say. Or,
“I found this a waste of paper. See what you think.”
He told me reading was a way to experience the world without ever leaving home.
“You can see the pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Rome from the pen of a good
writer. Better than bein’ there sometimes,” he said.
Books were what caused the only real fight my
grandparents ever had. They bickered back and forth from sunup to sundown, it was a comforting
sound most of the time, but one day Grandpa took his voice to a level I’d never heard.
“Woman, don’t you ever touch my books again!”
He held a new hardback in his hands.
He’d been to Peoria that day, to look at new Studebakers in the dealership there. I
heard later how he saw the book in the bookstore window and bought it. The only brand new book he’d ever bought in his seventy-eight years
on earth. He said he knew our library wouldn’t get it for awhile, and he wanted me to read it while I was still the same age as the girl
in the story.
“But those words aren’t fit for young eyes,” Grandma shouted back.
They were arguing over To Kill a Mockingbird.
He shook it in Grandma’s face.
“Words are words, woman.
It’s understandin’ those words that keeps them from bein’ dangerous. And you can’t
understand them if you don’t know them.”
Smudges of black dotted the crisp white pages
as they ruffled in his hand. Grandma had gone through the novel and blacked out all the words
she felt I shouldn’t read.
He spent the day in the shed with his dogs and she spent the day in front of her
stove. She always cooked when she was upset. We
sat silently over supper enough to feed twenty, and I went to bed early.
“This one’s an all-nighter,” Grandpa told me when he came in with the book they’d
argued over.
As soon as he left, I reached under the edge of the mattress for my flashlight and
made a tent with the blankets over my head. I read like that at night because Grandma usually
came in and turned off my light if she saw it shining between the curtains that served as my door.
Soon I heard familiar footsteps enter my room. I pulled the covers down and Grandma
stood beside me. She tugged the tiny chain that hung from my beside lamp.
“You’ll ruin your eyes.” Was all she said before she turned and left the room.
It wasn’t long before I came to the first of the black smudges.
Over it, in Grandma’s tiny crimped hand, she wrote the word she’d tried to hide from me. And Grandpa was right, it was an
all-nighter. In the morning I sat at the table, silent under their concerned looks.
“Well,” Grandpa said. “What do you think about the book?”
“I liked it,” I said. “But for some reason it made me sad.”
“What do you think about Atticus?” he asked.
“I liked him, and he was a good Dad. And I don’t think the people in town were
really all that bad. Were they?”
“Nope,” he said. “They were just like the people here in this little town. Sometimes
they’re just afraid of what they don’t understand.
I thought of the woman who lived next door to us. She was a black woman. Grandpa
rented a small cabin and a couple acres to her. She planted vegetables and strawberries and we never lacked for either. But I knew that
she was sometimes not allowed into the stores on Main Street. I didn’t know why and never asked. Suddenly it came to me.
“You know what, Grandpa? You’re a lot like Atticus.”
“Grandpa buried his head in the newspaper, but Grandma turned from her spot in front
of the sink and slowly dried her hands on her apron. I shoved food into my mouth with the energy of a beaver slapping mud on a dam.
Usually when my grandma was that deep in thought, I’d be sent to do one chore or another to “keep me out of mischief.”
“Little gal,” she said. “You are exactly right. Your grandpa is exactly like
Atticus. Thank you for reminding me of that.” She didn’t say a word as she passed behind the man she’d been married to for nearly 60
years, but I saw the squeeze of her fingers on his shoulder. I saw the smile that lifted just the corners of his mouth and softened his
eyes ever so slightly.
Over the years, I did learn about the pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Rome. But I
don’t think I ever learned as much about the world as I did in that tiny house on the banks of the Illinois.