I asked my grandfather once where he was born and he replied “In Wedlock”, which for years I took to be the name of a town. “Where did our family come from?” I asked and he bawled over my head, “You haven’t taught her the birds and bees yet?”
Even as a kid I understood that he was a tramp. A man who wilfully wandered. We wouldn’t see him for years at a time until he’d unexpectedly turn up on our doorstep, shaggy browed and - jawed, eyes the same spit grey as my dad’s. “Look at this,” he’d invite, yanking at his long hair to expose the parting. Nestled down at the roots, golden grains of sand, “…all the way from Cornwall!” A black inky clump on his forearm: “Dundee”. He’d talk about the trees in the New Forest, a lady friend in Llandudno. My parents would find reasons to be elsewhere, Dad suddenly deciding to check the roof slates before the weather turned. My mother would dawdle in the doorway, scratching the carpet with the toe of her shoe before remembering to go and hold the ladder for him. It was as though my grandfather’s brick red skin had stored too much sun on the roads and he might just bake them alive if they didn’t distance themselves, quick as they could.
Three such visits, when I was seven, eleven and sixteen. Five years on, he’s back and we’re sticking him in the ground. Mum and I stand in the shade, her arms around me, rocking me against me her chest. A still, green, sunny afternoon. I’ve argued against this, that Grandpa would want to be cremated and scattered to the wind, to which my dad had pursed his lips and said “I know.”
Nick Black's writing has been published in lit mags including Okay Donkey, Splonk, Lost Balloon, Ellipsis Zine and Jellyfish Review. His debut collection Positive and Negative is published by Ad Hoc Fiction.
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