A Simple Man

Grandpa Jones was a simple man. He was good at math. His teacher said he “showed promise.” At a time when hot dogs were ten for a dollar, Grandpa always charmed the vendor into selling eleven for the same price – one for each member of his family.

His daddy died when Grandpa was in eighth grade. Like many young men of his time, he quit school to work and support his mother and younger siblings. Grandpa was a Native American manual laborer in an Irish-Italian-Polish community. He sweated through sweltering fourteen-hour days in a bakery. Laid bricks. Supported his alcohol intake with winnings earned as a ham-fisted street fighter.

He viewed life in concrete terms: A person was good, or bad. Any unfamiliar situation was potentially dangerous until proven otherwise. His momma became a bad woman a year after his daddy passed away. She’d developed a taste for whiskey and the way it blurred her pain. She’d been married half her life, widowed since she was twenty-six, and her lonely flesh ached to feel a man’s touch. Between her carousing and her drinking, Grandpa slid the bead on his momma’s moral abacas to the bad column just a year after his daddy died.

There was no turning back once Grandpa labeled something as bad -- no forgiveness possible, no redemption achievable. He handled his loved ones with caution, knowing at any time they might turn bad and break his heart. Grandpa loved with intensity -- and fear. Unwilling to make such a painful choice again, he suspected men and protected women.

He met and wooed a woman with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. The simple man and his well-educated woman married in 1929. After a heart-rending series of miscarriages and stillbirths, Laura gave birth to my mother Martha by caesarian section.

The doctors told Laura she would bear no more children. Grandma and Grandpa sheltered Martha from every possible danger. She wasn’t allowed to play with other children because she might contract polio or tuberculosis or some other dreaded disease for which there was no cure. She wasn’t permitted to play on the river’s edge – she might slip in and drown. Grandpa and Grandma couldn’t stand to lose Martha. They couldn’t bear for Martha to become “bad.” She was never allowed to walk anywhere alone. Her purity and chastity was unquestionable. This girl born by caesarian section enjoyed a reputation above reproach like that of Caesar’s wife.

Martha was allowed to date once she turned sixteen. A boy wanting to court her first had to pass a grueling interview with her parents. One young man passed the gauntlet. He must have thought himself clever when he drove Martha to an isolated area and tried to force himself on her. Martha escaped. She remained a virgin, yet her innocent view of life was gone.

Martha arrived home, shocked and terrified, and told Grandma what the man had done. She was sent to bed. Through the thin wall of their tiny rented house she heard a few murmurs exchanged between her parents. Then Grandpa left the house.

Grandpa somehow found the offender and invited him into the nearby woods for a man-to-man talk. The story goes that Grandpa used his pocketknife and slit the boy’s scrotum – just a little. As the young man blubbered and begged to go to the hospital, Grandpa evenly explained Martha’s value to Grandpa. How she could never be replaced. How important it was to him that she remain a virgin until she married. His wife’s heart would break if anything bad happened to Martha. How Grandpa wouldn’t allow it to. If the sobbing youth uttered a negative word about Martha to anyone or even tried to speak to her again, he’d receive a final visit from Grandpa. No one would ever see or hear from the boy again. His body would never be found.

Grandpa wrung a devil’s pact from the teenager. The stipulations were unambiguous: If you don’t agree to these terms, I won’t leave you to die alone; that wouldn’t be human. I’ll stay till you draw your last breath. If you do agree, I’ll drive you to the hospital and take care of your bill. No one need ever know.

The sixteen-year-old chose to live. Grandpa drove him to the same hospital where Grandma worked. One of the doctors there stitched him up. This was a simpler time in history. No questions were asked, no bill was presented.

The simple man returned home, satisfied that the sanctity of his family was intact and all was well in his simple world.
* * *
Years after Martha met and married my Dad and I’d been born, Grandpa worked as a security guard for the local Catholic hospital. It was located in a section of town populated by the shadier citizens – prostitutes, gamblers, drug users. The good sisters found homes for unwanted babies and promised treatment for anyone who asked. The hospital’s doors remained unlocked at night.

One time while making his rounds in the early morning hours, Grandpa heard a strange noise and looked in a rarely used room. A large black man with his slacks down at his knees held a knife to the throat of a nun he had pinned to the tiled floor. The rumor passed by the Director of Nursing was the nun heard the door open and instantly her attacker fell away, as if God Himself had struck him down. The sister said a muffled voice assured her she was safe and that no one knew. Before she could straighten her habit or even sit up, her attacker was dragged from the room and the door closed.

That same night, the doctor on call treated a large black man for a fractured skull. The man said he’d been jumped in the alley outside the hospital and didn’t know who was responsible. He recovered from his injuries but died a year later when he lost a knife fight with two other men.

The nuns regarded Grandpa differently after that night. He was the best-treated security guard at St. Francis Hospital until his retirement. Grandpa said he didn’t know which sister it had been, and it didn’t matter. She represented Laura, or Martha, or me. She was a woman in trouble and he was there at the right time to help. It was his duty. He was a simple man.

When Grandpa died, I inherited his blackjack. Barely eight inches long, it weighed about two pounds. Just a handle and a lead-filled spring bound in braided black leather. It was a simple weapon for a simple man.
© 2004-5 Ginger Hamilton Caudill