Autumn Light

“You’re my dad’s dad,” my grandson said to me.

He wasn’t looking for confirmation. He was just setting up the question he was about to ask. He’s nine, my grandson, and he loves asking questions.

I go over once or twice a month to watch him and his older brother, who is eleven, who doesn’t ask me any questions, while my son and his wife go out for “date night.” The “date night” thing sounds like it was prescribed by a couples therapist or is something they read in a self-help book about saving marriages, but that’s none of my business. Like my older grandson, I don’t ask many questions.

When I get settled and start flipping around on the television, just as I would do on a Friday night anyway, the younger one plants himself on the other end of the couch and stays there most of the evening. The minute his parents are gone, he’s got a million questions. Grandpa, what’s this? Grandpa, why that?

He has one of those pads that’s connected to the internet. There’s also a couple of laptops floating around the house, too. He could just use the Google to find out the answer to anything. But he doesn’t. He asks me.

“One day I’ll be a dad too, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I began to wonder where he was heading with this. The last thing I wanted to do that evening was field questions about the birds and the bees. But then my grandson steered the questioning in an unexpected direction.

“One day my dad will watch my kids too, right?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Did your dad watch my dad when he was my age?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Why not?”

“Yeah, why not?”

This wasn’t the type of question I could outsource to the Internet, so I had to answer it.

“Well, he wasn’t around.”

My grandson got all quiet for a moment and then asked, “Did he die?”

“Um. That’s hard to say.”

“What does that mean?”

“He wasn’t around. He left.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. He disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yup. Disappeared.”

“No one disappears.”

“For lack of a better word, yes, he disappeared.”

I couldn’t tell if the look on my grandson’s face meant he was still skeptical or now amazed by this discovery. Either way, I didn’t think he was going to let this line of questioning rest.

“How did he disappear?” he asked.

“It’s a long story.”

“I want to hear it.”

“Kids don’t want to hear long stories.”

“I do.”

Since there wasn’t anything on TV and my older grandson, the one who doesn’t like to ask any questions, was probably up in his room doing whatever he does while I’m there, I lowered the volume with the remote control and thought, what the hell? I’ll give it a shot.

“All right. So a long, long time ago when I was a kid, my father stopped talking.”

“Like he lost his voice?” my grandson asked.

“No. He just stopped wanting to talk to people. He never had too much to say. But one day he had even less to say. And soon after he stopped talking, he grabbed a shovel, went into the yard, and started digging.”

“Digging for what?” my grandson asked.

“Digging a hole.”

“Digging a hole for what?”

“If you let me tell the story, I’ll get to that.”

He apologized—he’s a polite kid in general, my question-asking grandson—and told me to keep going.

“So, with no explanation, my father went into the yard and started digging. Every day after work, he dug. On the weekends, he dug. I asked my mother, ‘What’s Pop digging for?’ But my mother, who also stopped wanting to talk around this time, didn’t say anything.

“My imagination ran wild. I thought, maybe it was a surprise. The hole could be for a pool! I got pretty excited. I didn’t know anyone who had an in-the-ground pool. This was going to be the greatest summer ever. But then I realized that if this hole was going to be for a pool, maybe everyone would have looked a little happier.”

My grandson had his hand up.

“Why are you raising your hand?”

“I have a question,” he said.

“We’re not in school.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“I appreciate that. What’s your question?”

“How old were you?”

“It was the summer before I started high school. Fourteen.”

“A teenager?”

“The last time I checked, fourteen was a teenager. I thought you were going to let me tell the story.”

“I am!”

“It was the summer of 1960, I had just finished eighth grade, I was fourteen, and as I said, my father was in the yard digging everyday. The hole got deeper and deeper and wider and wider. I didn’t get any answers, so I just went about my business. When you’re fourteen you have a lot of energy. You want to do a million things. I couldn’t sit around wondering why there was a big hole in the yard.

“I had a paper route. I had a part time job at the grocer as well. I had my own money. I thought I was a big deal. Unlike kids today, I was a working man at fourteen. I also played baseball. A lot of baseball. And when I wasn’t playing baseball, I was watching or listening to it. I probably made it to about a dozen Pirates games at Forbes Field that season. Oh, how I loved the Pirates. And what an incredible season! Dick Groat was my favorite player. When I played catch against the wall in the schoolyard, I’d pretend I was him. Groat to Mazeroski to Stuart. Double play! I’d pound the pocket of my glove and signal to Clemente that there were two outs. Or I’d pretend Stuart was yanked for Roscoe Nelson. Groat across the diamond to Nelson. Or, Maz to Groat to Nelson, another double play! I’d do it for hours.”

My grandson gave me a look.

“What?”

“Your dad? What about your dad?”

“He was digging. Everyday I’d give him an update. ‘Hey, Dad, the Pirates beat the Braves.’ Or, ‘Hey Dad, the Pirates are three games up.’ And whatever it was, a win or a loss, he’d just nod.”

“Because he was digging the hole.”

“Because he was digging the hole. But you don’t understand. All of Pittsburgh was talking about it.”

“The hole?”

“No, the Pirates! They were in first place at the start of the summer and were several games up by August. But my father didn’t care. He was always out in the yard working on the hole.”

“Even at night?”

“Why would he dig a hole at night?”

“You said he was always digging.”

“He’d eventually come in when it got dark. I guess that didn’t matter though because he stopped having supper with my mother, and my sister, Janie, and me. He even missed the evening news. Back then everyone watched the evening news. When I’d finally see him I’d ask, ‘Hey Dad, did you hear that son of bitch Khrushchev is at it again?’

“But he’d just nod and say, ‘Head to your room and start your homework.’

“It was summer, though! I didn’t have any homework. I’d try to make a joke out if it. ‘Pop, this ain’t Soviet Russia.’

“But he didn’t laugh. He’d just say, ‘Go to your room. Tomorrow could be a big day.’

“It didn’t bother me. I’d grab my glove and head to my room to read my comic books and magazines. I had even bought myself a transistor. Remember, I had my own money. I loved listening to Chubby Checker, The Everly Brothers, Dion—”

“What’s a transistor?”

“Look it up on the Google later.”

“Is it like a phone?”

“Not really. But it did the job.”

All the kid’s questions were making me lose track of the story.

“You made me forget where I was,” I said.

“He was digging a hole.”

“Right. So every so often I’d look out the window and think, wow, that hole is getting pretty damn deep. Then came the concrete and wood and all of the other stuff from the hardware store. Soon, he had a roof on it.”

“Like a room?”

“Yup.”

“He built a basement?”

“Not quite. When it’s detached from a house there’s a different word for it.”

“What?”

“A fallout shelter.”

“I never heard of that.”

“Because no one builds them nowadays. But they did back then.”

“Why?”

“People were afraid of nuclear bombs. I had heard the Kowalczyk’s a couple of blocks over had one. And at school, Doogie Dwyer said his father built one. They were around. I’d never been in one, though.”

“So your dad moved into the hole?”

“No. He still lived in the house. But we saw him less and less. If my mother tried to confront him about the fallout shelter, he’d take the radio out to the garage and spend the evening out there, listening to the big bands and jazz. My mother—she went into the bedroom and shut the door.”

“That must have made you sad.”

“No way! You have to remember, people weren’t walking around with portable TVs in their pockets like today. You just had one television. With my father in the garage and my mother in her room, the TV was all mine. I could watch Dobie Gillis, Ozzie and Harriet, Tab Hunter. I liked watching the funny stuff. My father didn’t. He watched shows like Have Gun - Will Travel and The Rifleman. Every other program was a western back then.”

Mentioning these shows made me a little nostalgic. I’d heard you could watch a lot of that old stuff on the YouTube, so I said to my grandson, “Hey, grab one of your mom and dad’s laptops.”

“After.”

“After what?”

“After you tell me how your dad disappeared.”

“Jeez, be patient. I’m getting to that,” I said.

But my grandson flopped back on the couch. “Grandpa!”

“All right, all right! So, it was a weekday in August. One of those swampy cream-skied days. I didn’t have to go into the grocer. The Pirates had the day off. None of my buddies—Skip Cooney, Gene Stankowski, Buddy Marino—none of them were around to play ball. With nothing to do, I decided to check out my father’s creation. Who wouldn’t be curious?

“I headed into the backyard thinking I would sneak a peek, but I heard hammering coming from the opening. I looked at the driveway. There was my father’s car. He hadn’t gone to work. I crouched down by the opening and yelled in, ‘Hey, Pop! You need a hand in there?’

“It might have been the fact that my father had taken off work, or the fact that a lot of the guys hadn’t been around lately because they were all off on vacation with their families, but it then occurred to me that the summer was almost over, and we never drove up to the lake. Which was fine with me. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped in a car with my kid sister or even stuck in a hot cabin with everyone.

“As I’m thinking this, out came my father, looking like he’d been in a mine shaft. He had dirt stuck to his sweat-glazed skin. And his eyes. He blinked a few times to adjust to the light but still had a distant gaze.

“Maybe he didn’t hear me, so I asked again. ‘You need a hand down there, Pop?’

"But all he said, and he said it real calmly, was, ‘Do you know how to stop the syncopated terror of autumn light?’”

“What’s that?” my grandson asked.

“I didn’t have a clue.”

“Why’d he say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wow.”

“Exactly.”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t know what to do so I grabbed my transistor and glove and ball and went to the wall at the school yard.”

“You didn’t say anything?”

“There was nothing I could say to that. Soon summer ended and high school started. And you won’t believe what happened next.”

“What?”

“Dick Groat broke his wrist!”

“Dick who?”

“Haven’t you been listening to me?”

“Of course I’m listening!”

“Groat and Mazeroski! The best middle infield of their day! The best double play combo in all of baseball.”

“Who cares?”

“The whole city of Pittsburgh cared! Everyone was on edge. The Pirates hadn’t won the pennant in over 30 years! And if they were heading to the series, they were probably going to face the Mantle-and-Maris Yankees!”

“But what about your dad?”

“He didn’t care.”

My grandson flopped back on the couch again. Kids. At this point I was hell-bent on finishing the story my way and continued.

“A couple of weeks into school, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my sister. My mother had just taken something out of the oven. To our surprise, my father walked in. He wasn’t there to have supper with us. He had an announcement. ‘This Friday, we are going to spend the night in the fallout shelter.’

“Immediately I was filled with dread at the thought of it. The awkward conversations between my parents. My mother’s pestering of me and my sister. And Janie! She was a time bomb. A broken Crayola could send her into uncontrollable sobs. Even worse was my father. Since the incident in the yard, I had kept my distance. We were going to spend the night with someone who had become a stranger to us.

“My mother understood what awaited. ‘Jack, we don’t do well camping. I’m not so sure about being stuck in an underground box.’

“My father’s response was unexpectedly flat. If anything, he sounded indifferent. ‘Does a box have a ventilation system, a toilet, and rations for several months?’

“‘I know,’ my mother said, ‘and we are very impressed by the whole thing. We can’t wait to see it. It’s just that—’

“‘Good,’ my father said, still with a tone of indifference. ‘This Friday night.’

“I didn’t dare object, and before my mother could put together a stronger argument, my father left the kitchen.

“By the time Friday came, I wasn’t dreading it as much. I always believed that you need to make the most out of a situation. I planned on playing stickball with the guys after school and then staying out as long as I could without being late for dinner. I also realized that the Pirates had a night game. I just bought a brand new glove. Treated myself with some of the money I saved during the summer. A Wilson infielder’s mitt. It was beautiful. I wanted to get it in the fall so I could break it in by the spring. At night I’d oil it up and pound it and massage it like I was kneading bread. And before bed, I’d put a ball in it and wrap it with a belt. I had plenty to do. Not a bad plan for a potentially bad night.

“My father ate dinner with us that evening for the first time in months. No one said a word the entire meal. At the end, my father stood up and wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, ‘Okay, I’ll meet everyone out there in fifteen minutes.’

“My mother did the dishes, placed a couple of her McCall’s and Red Book magazines on top of a basket with other stuff, and took Janie by the hand. I grabbed my mitt and transistor and folded a magazine into my back pocket. It’s not like it just feels weird in hindsight. It felt weird as it was happening.

“We walked down the steps to this thing—my father’s creation—where he had spent the entire summer. I have to admit, it was an impressive set up. Bigger than a tent, smaller than a normal-sized room. There was a table with a checkered tablecloth. There were four bunks, along with crates and cans, stacked high to a low ceiling, all pressed tight to the wall. There was a basin for a sink. Behind a curtained-area, a toilet. If cozy and claustrophobic was a style, my father nailed it.

“I assumed one of the top bunks was mine and I crawled up so quickly I almost whacked my head on a ceiling joist. I looked down at the table where my mother was setting up a board game with my sister and my father was reading either the Post-Gazette or the Press, turning the pages with ink-stained fingers.

“‘What’s in the news, Pop?’ I said to him.

“‘Nothing.’

“‘Schofield has been playing really well,’ I said. ‘Maybe they can pull it off without ole Groat.’

“As I mentioned, my father wasn’t much of a talker. Every now and then he might talk about the news. At times he might talk about sports. He rarely mentioned his childhood, and when it came to the war he dodged those questions. I remember when I was learning about World War II in school. I tried pretty hard to get some details out of him so I could compare what he did with what the others kids said their dads did, but he barely divulged a thing. Anyway, I didn’t think the evening’s conversation was going any further, so I pulled out my transistor.

“‘Come play Chutes and Ladders, John,’ my mother said to me.

“I wasn’t in the mood for it and said, ‘Thanks, but I’ll pass.’

“Boy, she gave me a look I’ll never forget. I’d never seen her look so cross at me in my life. So, for the whole night we played board games. Every few minutes my mother would ask me to lower the radio or say to Janie, stop this, stop that. Janie wasn’t even doing anything wrong. She was just being nine years old.”

I looked at my grandson. “No offense to you nine-year-olds. Janie just wanted out the same way I did. The night was miserable. And I even had to listen to the Pirates lose with the transistor pressed against my ear. Eventually my mother decided we had played enough games, and we turned in for the night.

“I laid there for hours. I couldn’t sleep. My ears swelled with silence. Disturbing silence. With the ceiling so close to my head, I thought I was in a coffin. I held my mitt waiting to either fall asleep or for morning to come. Then it happened.

“It may have been one or two o’clock. I didn’t know. I could tell by their breathing that my mother and sister had finally fallen asleep. When I heard my father get up, I felt him move around even though it was pitch dark. It was as if he had special vision, because I don’t know how he wasn’t knocking things over.

“He stopped moving for a minute. Maybe he tied his shoes. I don’t know. I’ll never know. And then he moved toward the door that opened to the steps and turned the knob as quietly as possible.

“The moonlight came in. It must have been a clear night. He closed the door as quietly as he opened it.

“It was pitch dark again. I waited a few minutes. I didn’t hear anything. I got up and went to the door and tried to open it as quietly as my father did.

“‘Jack,’ my mother said. She thought I was him.

“I didn’t say anything. I looked up the stairs and didn’t see him. I thought about going up the stairs but didn’t. I closed the door over but left it ajar so a panel of light came in. I climbed back up the bunk, mad as hell. Sleeping in a bomb shelter! What a stupid idea! I didn’t care how crazy Khrushchev was or whether the person who was going to replace Eisenhower was going to keep us safe. No bombs were going to be dropped on us that night. There was no use practicing something that wasn’t going to matter. I laid there while the light in the crack of the door got brighter and brighter, watching until I dozed off.”

“When did your dad come back in?”

“He didn’t. He disappeared.”

“He disappeared?"

“What did you think this story was about?”

“I know. But he never came back?”

“Nope.”

“He didn’t say goodbye?”

“Were you not listening?”

“I listened to the whole story. It’s just that…”

My grandson’s nine-year-old brain couldn’t handle it. He was quiet for a bit, and as I was about to pick up the remote control he said, “What did you do?”

“What could I have done? Initially, I was confused. I wasn’t even going to try to figure out what was in his head. Life moved on. The Pirates clinched the pennant in the next couple of days. They were in the series with the Yanks. I went with Buddy and his dad to Game One. A week later Mazeroski hit the greatest homerun ever, a walk off to win it in Game Seven. Kennedy won the White House the following month. Things began to change not only for me but for everyone else in the 1960s. Boy, did they change.”

“How did they change?” my grandson, of course, asked.

“That’s a story for another day.”

“For when I’m older?”

“Yup.”

“Like when you’re going to tell me why you don’t live with Grandma.”

“Sort of.”

I hear my friends say their grandkids have their heads in computers or phones twenty-four-seven. That their grandkids don’t talk to them. Not this one. He’s got a million questions. I’m not sure I got a million answers, though. The story took a lot out of me and I wanted to wrap things up. Before he asked another question. He didn’t need to know what happened to us in the years that followed. I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Instead I told him his grandpa was tired. It was late and he should be tired, too. And other stuff like that.