Grandpa’s grafted yet dormant avocado trees negotiated smoke-flared air, stuck between incinerator, brick wall, and the room Grandma and I shared. He warm-waxed their graft sites, checked his gold pocket watch. I never heard him yell until that Santa Ana-winded night. He boomed, as winged, scorched trash lifted, collapsed to ash. Burn you next, you don’t grow right, butt of his Chesterfield cross-examined night. Quiet, old man! He snarled, unaware we heard. Vodka burns things clear, right? He toasted the wall. He’s gone, his monologue chugged on, circular as indented zeros tracking his arms. Marks I’d question one day. Zeros are nothing, he’d say, turning away, watering those trees.
We called his stories math survival. Learn enough odds to bet smart. Buy insurance, he said. Left NC at 16. Dad stopped hitting me, preferred Mom, and my sisters. Little money, this watch, he lifted it, one-way Union Pacific ticket. I was free. Took his scotch—Terrible stuff, he coughed, cancer forever chasing his lungs. Got a locksmith job. One lock’s good, two’s better. Got Mom and the girls here, fast as I could.
Cooking breakfast one morning, we asked if he looked like his dad. He said he didn’t, That was the problem. Nothing more. We turned the hi-fi up, played kitchen pan band, danced to Miles Davis’s So What until he left to see to the trees.
I hope he sees he timed things right. Guacamole overflows Grandma’s fiesta bowl. Maybe he sees us, weeding, seeding, rolling dice, laughing when we burn the toast, talking it over with his trees. I hope he rests assured; Magnolia Street’s secured. Every lock’s checked twice; the bar’s fully stocked. We don’t play kitchen pan band; the stereo’s broken. Odds are we’ll fix it. His pocket watch says it’s about time.
Jen Wyrauch Edson from Palm Desert, CA, studies with SmokeLong Fitness, has words in National Flash Fiction Day's FlashFlood 2023, Best MicroFiction, 2024. Short-listed: SmokeLong Summer 2024. Long-listed: SmokeLong MMM, 2025. Fiction MFA from Antioch University, LA. Once, she taught poetry. Serves as judge for Antioch’s Dorland Mountain Arts writing competition.
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