I helped my father work on his van many nights:
he shouted directions from his wheelchair
to me underneath, squawk grunts and
short bursts of silence between long bouts of
helplessness.
He was uncontrollably unaware, yet
angry at most things, including me, as if he sensed
the
incompetence in things and people, their failures,
like
a sculptor seeing shape in a block of marble, carving
rage
out of only the most malleable.
One night I forgot to close the garage door and
left the dim light on over the workbench,
sallow metal parts cold to the touch and
tools laid hopefully arranged.
Things worked as best they could,
suspended reconstructions of machinery,
a tool for each of his hands and the promise of his
legs
connected to the gears in his eyes, his screw-like
focus.
To either side of the open door was
the darkness of well-cut lawns, and the possum
scurried
quietly inside and hid in the tin green shelves,
a dumb suburban animal as common as bicycles
urgently abandoned to fathers’ voices
shouting through picture window curtains.
It realized it was trapped.
It locked itself in to feel safe.
I called my father out and we watched
its yellow eyes pace back and forth along
the car parts, paint cans and obsolete mechanics of
repairs long forgotten. It settled for a while, hidden.
And my father’s face gaunt in garage light,
the cancer already beginning to nest in his stomach,
menacing swallows in a thicket on a sill, or an
opossum
bringing chaos to a surface of order slowly gathering
dust.
We tried to sweep this new disturbance into the light
and
it fell into a lump, feigning death.
He tapped its back with the broom and it seemed
willing to take a beating.
I knew the feeling, the surrender, the lost
orientation, looking
for an exit through half open eyes.
And then we turned out the lights,
leaving it to suffocate or snag itself before more
drastic measures were taken.
But I still left the door open and sat outside,
waiting for it to leave,
wondering if it sensed this second chance for
escape from this museum of broken and
remembering how my little brother imagined our
father’s death:
a fiery traffic accident, no witnesses, and how I
sometimes hoped
one morning he’d be gone,
having left all the lights in the house on.
Copyright © 2002 Kurt Lindemann