Ten

My Da lay helpless, attended to, moved about from side to side, cooed and chuckled at by this nurse and that, probed and poked at by a clutch of doctors as busy in their chesty importance as any kit of pouter pigeons.
I went with my mother to visit in the morning just before school. He was asleep, seemed to be, pretended to be perhaps. I went again at the noon hour and he was still lying there with his eyes closed, his mouth empty and twisted to the side. It frightened me terribly.
I was found by the nurse called Miss Pryor and shooed gently from the room. Dr. Sand was walking down the corridor. He was a kindly man, I suppose, though he seemed aloof and forbidding to me since I believed that my grandfather's fate was, somehow, in his hands. I looked at them. They were very smooth, the nails carefully trimmed and flawlessly clean. I expected that was a good sign, but I'd come to think that capable hands were those that were a bit grimy with use, a bit scarred, nicked, and abraded; worn by work and years. My grandfather's hands.
"What are you doing here, Hugh?"
"Come to see my Da."
"Who brought you? Is your mother here?" I shook my head, suddenly afraid that I would be forbidden the company of my grandfather hereafter because I'd broken some rule of which I'd been unaware.
"Your father?"
I shook my head.
"You walked all the way from school?" I nodded hesitantly. He saw that I was afraid and put his hand on my shoulder. It's a gesture grown-ups have to comfort and soothe the young.
"I'll drive you back," he said.
As we drove he chattered about my school, the end of lessons in a week or so, and the vacation that stretched before me. I was suddenly overwhelmed by the prospect of a summer without my grandfather to help me live it. I felt a panic that made my limbs grow rigid. For the first time in my life, I faced the idea of irreparable loss. I must have made some sound, for he put his hand on my knee.
"Is my grandfather going to die?" I asked in a rush.
Dr. Sand hesitated, wanting to comfort but not wanting to lie and destroy a child's faith in truth.
"He's an old man," he said. That wasn't enough and he knew it. "We can't be certain, Hugh. He's strong, but he's old. This accident will leave him diminished even if he makes a strong recovery. You understand that?"
"Yes."
But will he die? I wanted to shout. I didn't care if my Da and I couldn't walk the fields together, fly the pigeons from our hands, wait through the miracle of hatching eggs. I wanted my grandfather even if he were motionless but for his eyes. Even if he
My thoughts stopped all at once as though thrust against a barrier. I saw how selfish I'd become. I was willing to have a strong old man lie trapped in a useless body because of my refusal to give him up to some final comfort. I saw death differently in the moment.
"We have hope," Dr. Sand said.
And I nodded my head, meaning that my hopes were that my grandfather should pass on with all the dignity that he desired. I would help him in that in any way that I was able. I felt a certain calm fall over me like a cloak.

Dickens had been aloft since first light. The night predators were gone to nest and den, the peregrine was not in the sky. He'd tested his wings and cried out in pain, but the discomfort was bearable and he'd risen into the air from the shadowed wood and set his path for home again.
Far away frigid winds had swept down the broad reaches of Quebec, smashed into the juvenile storm spawned over Lake Winnepeg and drove it southwest across Green Bay and La Crosse. Then the northern mass lost some of its thrust. Its energy became caught up in the storm's eddy. Direction was changed again and the storm grew in ferocity as it picked up speed and smashed southeast. Rain fell across eastern Michigan and northern Ohio. It was cold and hard.
Dickens flew into it over Lima when the wind had changed direction once more and was blowing powerfully at half-gale strength toward the south.
He fought against it but, even had he lost none of his power in the encounter with the peregrine, he'd never have been able to withstand the fury of the winds. He didn't give up. Neither was he afraid.
My own fears were in control.
I left school at noon and didn't return. I don't think anyone would have said anything to me even if it weren't the last week and nothing much going on except class parties and summer good-byes to schoolmates, some of whom would not be seen again till autumn.
I hung around the lofts, cleaning the porches and pens, changing the water and flying the birds. I scanned the sky quite often, hoping for a sight of Dickens, Moonbeam, or Jenny, not so much because I believed they'd have flown so far so fast but because I wanted some news to take to my grandfather when my parents and I went to visit him that evening. There was no sign of them.
I called up the pigeon club and was told a storm had cut across the flight path. Most all the birds had been past the edges of it in time, but some might have been caught up in the trailing edge of it as it spiraled across the land.
"Stragglers, maybe," I said to the secretary, "but that wouldn't be Dickens, even if Jenny and Moonbeam had been caught in the smash. "
"How's your grandfather?" the secretary, Mr. Englund, asked.
"Better," I said, not really knowing if that was true or not but expecting it's what my Da would want me to say so as not to make him seem pitiable.
"We'll be to see him this evening. Will that be all right?"
I hesitated. Some instinct told me my grandfather would rather not have a bunch of people, even friends, hovering about and clucking their tongues over him or, worse, making all sorts of two-faced remarks about how well he looked. Simple politeness had to be considered, however; Da put much stock in that.
"Well, we'll call up and ask at the reception. Just a few might come. Not a whole mob of us, Hugh."
"That would be fine."
"Shall I call you if the birds start homing?" Mr. Englund asked. "Will you be at Henri's house?"
I said that I would and found, even as restless as I felt, that I'd trapped myself into staying inside by the phone. At three twenty-six
Mr. Englund did call. Mr Fouquet's racer, Windhill, had trapped in good time. The winner couldn't be known until all the leaders were in and their time computed into the air-line distances, but one thing was sure no bird of ours would win since none was home and our loft was closest to Hillsboro.
Tears came up in my eyes. I scolded myself for even caring about such things when my grandfather was threatened the way he was.
Moonbeam came home an hour later and Jenny just a few minutes after that, but Dickens was nowhere in sight. I cried then because I feared I'd lost the bird and was afraid that was a terrible sign that I would lose my grandfather as well.
I had that bad news to give to my grandfather when we went to visit him that evening. He was awake, freshly bathed. His hair was combed. He looked less fragile against the pillows that propped him up. His eyes were on the door as we walked in and he smiled, showing his teeth. The smile was distorted but I realized, with a start, that I was already becoming used to it and found comfort in the greater strength I believed I now saw in it.
He surprised us further by lifting up his right arm almost to the level of his shoulder. Miss Pryor stood by, beaming at his accomplishment as though she'd taught a baby to walk. Da glanced at her in a wicked way as she made little approving sounds with her lips. My father smiled, greatly relieved at this sign of improvement, taking a great breath as though sharing the effort. I wondered in the moment what he must be feeling. How different might the quality of his love for Da be than mine? He was more intimately flesh of Da's flesh. Were his father's pains more surely felt in his own body?
He'd brought an electric razor. My grandfather's beard had grown in the three days since he'd been stricken. My father plugged it in and began to shave my grandfather, who tried to raise his chin a bit to make it easier and looked at my father from the corner of his eyes with deep affection. It was almost as though he were making a gift of his helplessness.
I don't believe I've ever since seen an activity so full of love. It startled and shook me. I was seeing life and something of its meaning in nearly every act and motion, acutely, through the lens of my own emotions
It touched my father, I know, because be hurried at the end, unplugged the razor, and made the poor excuse that he wanted to put it back in the glove compartment of the car for fear he'd forget it and fail to have it for himself in the morning, just so that he might leave the room.
My mother left as well to have some conference with Miss Pryor about my grandfather's comfort, and Da and I were left alone.
He patted the bed and I went to sit on it. He took my hand and I nearly cried out at the power with which he gripped it. It pleased me. He let my hand go, and I reached in my pocket for the gift I'd brought to him to tell him that he and I mustn't be impatient with the waiting that might face us both.

It always amazes me when I count the many ways in which a moment can be vividly recalled; so vividly that it is somehow more real in the memory than it was in the living. Questions arise about whether or not we live so much as relive life. Do we know where we've been only after we we've returned? Do we feel the pressure of lips and hands, soft and plump, only after they've grown dry and thin with age? All this is idle speculation. What really matters is the fact that the sound of a distant bell can awaken in the heart the moment when one walked along the path to the church on one's wedding day; the faintest flavor of mint recalls iced tea and a hundred marvelous picnics, the sight of a curl of blue smoke beyond a hill brings back the memory of a single rare day that is all autumn days, and the touch of a small homemade lucky piece makes one a child again.