The Only Man He’d Known From Iowa

I sit in the combined living and dining room of my grandfather’s apartment, where he’s lived since my grandmother died. He keeps the apartment very warm, such that my mother, when we visit, shakes the hair that falls on her neck as she brings his laundry back up from the basement.

“You should go see him,” my mother says the Saturday after Thanksgiving. “It means a lot to him.”

So I am there, with Ashley, who is meeting him for the first time. I don’t preface the visit with much; my mother has told Ashley about him already, all the back story she’d need for a quick visit to West Hartford.

When he expects company, the door is always left ajar. Still, I knock. I always do.

He tells us to come in, sing-songy. Whenever we visit, when he first sees us, it’s always, “Hey!” as though the announced visit were a total surprise.

I kiss his cheek and he kisses mine; he grabs my forearm, as though for support, even as he is seated in his overstuffed chair from which he watches television. Ashley takes a seat by my side on the couch.

He asks Ashley where she’s from. She says Iowa.

One of his shipmates on the USS Baltimore, the Heavy Cruiser which took FDR to Alaska, was from Iowa. He was teased quite a bit, for reasons I can’t quite remember, but it might have been the way he pronounced his A’s, something physical which invited attack, or, simply, some joke about corn gone a few iterations too far.

“Well, he got so frustrated he took out a knife,” he says. Ashley says wow, or oh my God.

He goes on to tell how he was the one that diffused the situation. He had settled them down. He didn’t get into great detail as to how it happened, but the shipmate from Iowa did not stab anyone.

“He’s the only man I knew from Iowa.”

Soon thereafter, I rise to leave, anxious to get on the road, Ashley rising in turn.

“See you soon, Gramps,” I say.
“Hey! Good to see you!”

His head turns to Ashley: “Come back soon, and we can talk more about Iowa!” He makes some reference to corn.

She smiles, and indicates she’ll see him soon.
The chance would never come, and the next time that Ashley would see my grandfather, his lips were sewed shut, and he was dressed in a suit that he hadn’t worn in years; we covered him with an American flag.