Uncle Will by Janet Sarjeant

THIRD PLACE

Uncle Will by Janet Sarjeant

Bonaparte was a long way from France. The small town in Virginia was not even that old by the standards of other Virginia towns, only incorporated in 1904. When the railroad finally made its way into that part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the town started to grow along Chestnut Creek, and someone thought it was a satisfactory name. A Frenchman in the New World? An historian in those mountains? A lover of exotic names? Well, so be it — Bonaparte it is. I entered the town in the 1950s, born into an extended family of relatives because both my mother and father were born there. My Uncle Will lived there.

My people may have lived there, but I never did because my parents moved away ( but not very far away ) when they married in the 1940s. Visiting, however, happened frequently, and my brothers and I did not even mind that our parents packed us into the car and made the thirty- mile trip many times a year. My Granny Ada’s home on Main Street never failed to entice: Coca-Colas in the fridge, treats from the “filling station” sitting catty-cornered just across the street, cousins living nearby within walking distance, and an attic dark and mysterious to explore whenever we wished. And Uncle Will was there.

Hard to explain our feelings toward Uncle Will. We children knew he was different, but he was ours and we accepted him “as-is”. “As is” — that phrase for accepting something just the way it is, maybe fixable, maybe not. Anyway, Uncle Will was there when we visited. We children called him “uncle” as we did many adult relatives who were not really uncles. Uncle Will was first cousin to my father and just a few years younger. Will’s older brother and younger sister had their own lives by the time I was born, so Will was the only one of his generation in the house. His crutches leaned against the wall beside his rocking chair when he sat in the living room. They leaned against the wall in the kitchen when he sat at the table, or against the outside wall of the house when he sat on the porch, or against the wall in his bedroom when he went to bed at night. The crutches leaned close by not for Uncle Will to pick up and use, but because someone always had to pull Will upright from a chair and place them under his arms for him. His mother, my great-aunt we called Aunt Ruth, would pull him up out of the chair, hold on to one hand or arm, and reach for the crutches. The crutches needed to be near. Once he had them, he could walk, sort of; the braces on his legs that kept his knees locked and his legs straight helped support him so he would not fall. His heavy walking movements went like this: one crutch forward, then a leg, the other crutch forward, then the other leg. A rhythmic four-beat measure. As a child, I could not have lifted him from the chair. None of us children could have. But we would grab the crutches for the adult who raised him, never giving much thought to it. In my early years, a Black man named Clarence came morning and nighttime to help him dress and start the day and undress him and end the day. After Clarence left each morning, it fell to Uncle Will’s mother or to my Granny Ada to help him. Ruth and Ada. They were sisters who lived together with Will in the Main Street house in Bonaparte 24

that had been their parents’ house before them. The two women had returned to the homeplace after their divorces, looking after their mother and father until they died. Will came along, too.

“Mama!” Will would shout at any given time. Again, “Mama!”

“I’m coming, Will,” Aunt Ruth would holler.

It was only when I reached an age to think about such things that I pieced together what must have been the fabric of their lives. Will’s body had such limitations; enwrapped tightly in the womb by the birth cord, he was born in 1932 showing the effects of that binding. The cord had been wound around his head, around his torso, and around his legs, pinning his hands against his body and into their deformed shape, like a butterfly’s wings that, when they can’t open fully, solidify into a pleated shape forever. Will’s hands bent downward at the wrist and could not open. He was born misshapen and, therefore, entangled for the rest of his life in invisible cords. His restricted jaw would not let him word the language easily or eat food like others. His legs would not develop enough through the years to hold him. My Dad, his first cousin, told me that when they were young together, he would just pick up Will and carry him like a sack of flour under his arm and walk all around Bonaparte. Dad carried him to the movies and sat him down next to him in the theater. He carried him to the soda fountain in Martin’s Drug Store on Main and sat him on one of the little stools. He carried him to Round Hill Farm, Granny Ada and her husband’s dairy farm they had owned for some years before they divorced. “Bring Will when you come over,” Gertrude would offer when my father visited the Round Hill Farm. “He can sit right here on the porch while I snap beans or shuck corn,” she said. Gertrude, along with her husband Roland, were the couple who helped with the dairy and lived in a house on the property. There’s a picture of a young Will with Gertrude on her porch. Of course, I did not hear all these things until I was older and asked about some of those pictures in an old photograph album. Dad said Round Hill Farm gave Will a change of venue, much like the trips to Florida and Long Island for surgeries on Will’s legs and hands when there was more family money and more hope for some success that might lead to a more normal life for Will. The money and the hope must have run out eventually, just like Aunt Ruth’s marriage, and then the long years of living in the Main Street house began.

I was older when I actually thought about Uncle Will having to call every time he needed to go to the bathroom. Will had to call every time he wanted to change rooms. He had to call if weather drove him from the porch. His internal thoughts stay hidden from me because I did not ask him what he thought. That interior space that we all have but take for granted as just one of our free spaces must have been different for Will, for he had so little freedom. He was not free to move unless someone got him started. He was not free to drive away or even walk “away.” Away — Where if anywhere did he want to go, I wonder. Would he have told me some of his thoughts if I had ever thought to ask him? Who knows. I didn’t ask him. Uncle Will remained “as-is” to my young self. We children did, however, fight over him. When I visited my Granny Ada and Aunt Ruth with my brothers and cousins, we raced each other to get to his kitchen chair and position that armless, red-vinyl, rolling chair so that when Aunt Ruth lowered him backwards onto it, his braced legs sticking straight out in front of him, the child who won the race got to roll him around on the linoleum kitchen floor and push him up to the table. Then a spoon or a fork was placed in his hand and he could feed himself the chopped-fine food on his plate. What did Uncle Will think about us,

the children, wanting Aunt Ruth or Granny Ada to cut up our ham or chicken into tiny little pieces, too? We begged for the cut-up food. The radio played the local news and the current hit songs, the children laughed at anything and everything, and the two sisters spoiled us. I can see Aunt Ruth stirring a pot on the stove, her whole body shaking because when she thought something was funny, she shook with laughter from stem to stern.

One of Uncle Will’s pleasures on any given day would be to ride with his mother around Bonaparte in the big blue Chevrolet Impala Aunt Ruth had in those days. On pretty days, Will would be lifted from his chair and told to head to the car parked out back under the carport. Crutch, leg, crutch, leg. Four-beat measure. It took him a while to get there. There were two ramps attached to the house: one from the front porch to the grass in the side yard and one from the kitchen door to the carport. When he arrived at the car, he would lean against it and wait. He was often — maybe always — waiting.

“Mama!” he would call. It was an effort to form the word, and his spittle often formed in the corners of his mouth. “Mama!”

“I’ll be there in a minute, Will!” she would holler back, trying to finish up whatever she was doing while Will had taken the long walk to the car.

“Can we come?” we begged when we visited. Ah, but we were savvy creatures. We knew the rides in the big blue car would often lead to The Dairy Bar, a drive-in on the outskirts of Bonaparte. Aunt Ruth let us ride in the backseat. Uncle Will always sat in the front, his legs rigid in front of him, his head and shoulders barely rising above the window ledge. And off we would go. It was fun. Ice cream or hotdogs or other treats awaited us at The Dairy Bar. The car radio would be playing songs that Aunt Ruth sang along to, particularly the ballads by Eddy Arnold, her favorite. “Make the world go away, and get it off my shoulders . . .” she sang with the radio. Sometimes Aunt Ruth, along with our grandmother Ada, took us all to the Drive-In Theater in the summertime. The Main Street theater in town was just too hard to get Uncle Will into anymore. You get the picture — anywhere one could just “drive in” and stop worked for Aunt Ruth and Uncle Will. The Dairy Bar, the Drive-In movies, the local football games where Aunt Ruth parked the car on a rise behind the field, and he could watch out the window.

Will was an ever-fixed mark in Bonaparte. He could be seen sitting for hours on the front porch of his house. He was recognized in his Mama’s car as they drove around town. He belonged to the town like the Old time Fiddlers’ Convention belonged, like the swinging bridge across Chestnut Creek belonged, like the 4th of July Parade stretching for blocks down Main Street with horses and riders prancing along at the end every year belonged. Main Street was busier in those days, and local people driving by, or walking by, would stop to say hello to Will. Or wave to Will. Or stare at Will. When my brothers and I visited, we witnessed this while we played in the front yard, laughing and running as we played Snake in the Gulley across the sidewalk leading to the porch, or games of tag or kick the can. Will was there, watching. What was he thinking as he sat there for hours? I see him sitting there on the porch smoking cigarettes . . . ah yes, I remember now. He could take a cigarette out of the pack and put it between his lips. He took the book of matches and bent one at a right angle, folding the cover over the rest. He wedged the matchbook between his legs and, using his thumb, dragged the match head across the striking surface. How long did it take him to master this technique, I wonder now? How many burns did he suffer? How many

ashes fell on him or the floor or the chair? Granny Ada smoked, too. Did they share packs of Pall Malls and Chesterfields, the filterless brands my grandmother smoked?

“Mama!” Will would yell when he needed something. “Mama!” A couple of times, when things probably got to be too much for Aunt Ruth, when she was older and had back trouble and had beaten breast cancer into submission, when she tried to balance all the finances with her sister and balance a life for herself with the ever-ness of taking care of Will, I witnessed a harsh exchange, an argument between mother and son. About what I can’t remember. What I do remember? Aunt Ruth coming into the living room where Will sat in his rocking chair in front of one of those boxy wooden radios from the 1920s and 30s. She is exasperated about something. Will is, too. There is a back-and-forth argument, and then Aunt Ruth sputters out, “Will, you’re killing me!”

That’s what I remember. That’s the truth that just hung in the air for a moment, through the Pall Mall smoke or the radio’s voice, or through our voices playing marbles on the floor. “Will, you’re killing me.”

The 1960s turned into the 1970s and 1980s for me and my brothers. We visited less in that Main Street house because we were off getting married, teaching school, working, living in other towns. Will kept sitting there in front of the radio, kept rocking in the wicker chair on the porch, kept riding around in his mother’s car until she died and Granny Ada died, and his sister took him in. His sister built a ramp from her side door down to the driveway. She drove him around Bonaparte like his mother had, and she cared for him until his own death in 1995. My brothers and I saw him rarely at his sister’s house, for our family and Will’s sister’s family were not close, familiarity undone by some estate-settling dispute over the Main Street house.

All those years of my early life, Uncle Will was there in Bonaparte. My brothers and I still talk about how his presence touched our lives, and these talks usually lead to more questions than anything. What did Uncle Will think about his situation and that misshapen body of his? What feelings did he have about Clarence and Roland and Gertrude, who were paid to help keep him going? Did Will feel close to our Granny Ada, his aunt? Did our father do enough for his cousin, staying close to Will like he did growing up? Did Will have desires for women? For a career? Were my brothers and I kind enough? On and on go the questions. There is no one alive now who can answer most of these questions, so we search our memories for clues that help us unravel the mystery of Uncle Will’s internal life. I somehow sense that I have witnessed something important, that something about being human is revealed if I can remember enough, see enough in my memories.

“Mama!”

“I’m coming, Will!”

“Mama!”

“You’re killing me, Will.”

I am at the age that Will was when he died. I think of him quite often and still talk to my brothers about our lives with Granny Ada, Aunt Ruth — and Will. That family of ours that came “as-is” because children usually accept the family that is theirs with few questions. Now I have

questions with few answers. But I can summon their faces, their bodies, their words anytime I want and bring them into the present. They are here with me. I remember a night in Bonaparte when I was about twelve years old. My older brother and I were on one of those rides in the big blue Impala, the Dairy Bar our destination. A waitress walks outside and up to our window to take our order. Will takes in the deep breath he needs in order to utter the words “Mama, ask her.” Aunt Ruth asks; “Is Gloria working tonight?”

“No, she’s off tonight. What can I get for you?”

We get our ice cream cones, licking them quickly before they melt in the warm air of summertime in Bonaparte. My brother and I are happy. We leave the drive-in and ride for a bit before turning onto a road that climbs a hill. Houses line the hillside. Darkness has descended, and we drive on, starting down the hill on the other side. Aunt Ruth is whispering to Will in the front seat. Something feels different, quiet and different. No Eddy Arnold on the radio, no laughing and talking. Suddenly, Aunt Ruth turns off the car lights. Down the hill we glide, slowly, slowly past the modest houses. The Impala makes almost no sound at all. We in the car make no sound. The night air comes in through the windows, and it seems the world of Bonaparte has slowed down. I lean forward from the back seat until my head is in-between Aunt Ruth and Will. Their heads are looking to the right as we glide past houses and then hesitate oh-so-briefly in front of one. Just a modest house with a front porch and a light behind the shade in the front room. Then a shadow of a person moves behind the shade. Uncle Will’s turned head is between me and the lighted window of the house, that house that held, well, what? Perhaps a kind waitress from the Dairy Bar named Gloria? What is Uncle Will thinking? Is it a house that perhaps holds dreams and desires only? For he must know, surely he must know that they will never be requited? Or perhaps it signifies something else — invisible cords, binding a mother and son as they watch a lighted window together?