Hands

          I stood there trying to catch my breath, watching the crimson poison creep across the hardwood floor and onto the edge of the rug. It worked its way around unseen fissures and peaks in the old floorboards with the fluidity and speed of white-hot magma down a volcano.  The ameba-like feet crawl around each seam in the floor boards. With calculated effort, it draws its heft over the top of the each board before attacking the next seam. The glassy ooze reflects the overhead lights of the ceiling fan above my head dancing and swaying unevenly back and forth.  Half of the tepid fluid retreats under the sofa in its apparent shame of exposure; embarrassed of its escape. The more indignant fluid collects around the stark white cotton material cast in a tangled mess on the floor.  My foot slides back to avoid the advancing poison, careful of its touch, hoping to avoid its accusatory stare.

         The ceiling fan twists the blue smoke of cordite and the sweet acidic smell of whisky around my head diluting the oxygen in the room. My breathing is fast and out of control. I look at the warm steel in my hand. It is heavy with familiarity but a strange unknown fear is radiating from the hand carved hilt. My eyes trace the blue steel as I peel my fingers from the perfectly formed finger holds. My ears echo the metallic clunk as it falls to the floor.  An unknown confusion robs me of the intimacy I have with the piece of wood and iron. I know in my soul that I cut each finger hold and groove by hand. I know the measurements are sketched on a bedside tablet used to create its exact weight and thickness. I am disgusted by the knowledge and the pride I took in creating it.  Every grain of desert wood incites my hatred and self loathing.  An old dry twisted object on the floor draws my attention.

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          A memory of my grandmother’s hand flashes from my childhood. I remembered her sitting on a fallen tree in a field under our old oak.  The tree towers fifty feet in the air. The lower branches of the massive tree extend east and west and acted as protective arms defending her from the sun. The top branches seemed to stretch and pray for the sun. The sun was low in the sky and cast a golden web onto the small man-made pond behind her. Even then I noticed how small but rugged she was under that oak. She was only 5’2 but she was walked with the power of the land. She had worked our south Texas farm since she was six years old; it taught her to love and to fight. Both of which she excelled at.



         She was surrounded by cattle. Not by fence or rope, but by sheer will. Those were her cattle, and she was theirs. She moved freely among them and around them as if she too was a beast destined for a life of toil and habit. On her head she wore a black and white engineer’s hat with a red Purina logo over the faded and weathered brim. The hat is ill-fitted and held no shape other than the shape of the head it covered. The bill was twisted down and around in a semi-circle and protected her eyes from the harsh evening light.



         The old two tone Ford’s shocks squeaked as they supported the old frame.  Rusted wheel- wells collected the day’s dirt with dignity. I was riding in my grandfather’s lap, hands on the wheel and pretending to drive as a boy of eight would.  I was covered in my grandfather’s familiar smell of sweat and beechnut chewing tobacco. The smells of my south Texas ranch I grew to love and expect. Together we bounced and jostled down the dirt road ruts carved by age and use. I sneezed as the sun light cut into my eyes through the filthy windshield.



         Aggravated by our approach, the cattle secretly designated a leader to follow and began a slow retreat to the other side of the pond. Nana raised her tired hand above her head and gave a warm loving smile. Her worn hand told us she was glad to see us. I responded with an overzealous wail of the horn. Papa tickled my under arm with his free hand and told me to lay off the horn ‘fo I stir up d’em cattle. I leaned toward the door and squirmed out reach of the hand under my armpit.

Even now, I can still feel Papa’s hand under my arm as that memory played in my head. I remembered the harsh way that the sunlight glared through the windshield and hurt my eyes, as her hand had waved.

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         When I arrived two days ago, her hands were eighty-four years old. I had come to visit and give her a small storage cabinet that I built from fence wood. One of the few hobbies I learned at her hand on the ranch. A birthday gift for the frail woman whose shaped who I am.  I pulled around the back of the house in my truck and found her sitting on her porch. She was wrapped in a blanket under the overhang of her wooden farm house porch. She sat slumped-over on the old rocking chair she had built when she was a child. Three empty bottles of beer rested on the small iron table to her left.  She hadn’t notice that I had arrived.  Instead of an old smile and a tired wave, she was focused down the fence line with binoculars. I looked in the direction she faced, and saw nothing of interest. She watched a group of mesquite trees 250 yards to the east. The binoculars dwarfed her in size and scope. 22 years later, the sun had taken its toll on her skin. She had lost a lot of muscle weight; gravity bent her until she was only 4’11. Her paper thin hands shook from the weight of the glasses and she was forced to drop them for brief periods.  I stood there and watched her for a few minutes. Her movements were alien and angry. Her hands moved in sync with the near silent words she was muttering under her breath.

         I called to her as I got out of my truck and she turned with a start. Her eyes wide with fear. Her face was hard to read and the look was one I had never seen before. I could tell she knew I was familiar and maybe even family, but she was scared and couldn’t shake it.  Slowly recognition washed over her face and as she called my name. 

         Nana hands cupped mine and told me she was glad I had made it. But she was expecting me earlier and assumed I had gotten lost. I assured her that I knew the way like the back of my hand. She doubted that I cared that much to find my way back.  We made brief small talk.  But her eyes were drawn back to the mesquite trees; she raised her binoculars and cursed as the last of the evening sun had left us. I asked her what she was looking for, she turned to me and the hatred in her eyes flash boiled my soul. She told me she was looking for her neighbor who hung out at those trees. He stayed just out of rifle range but she knew he was gathering information so he could take her land. My smile never faded as I asked her if she had had dinner yet.

         Dinner that evening was a can of green beans and a ham sandwich.  Papa had always been the cook, and she hadn’t picked up much of his slack. He passed away almost ten Christmases ago, and Nana survived on can vegetables and a hand full of mail order meals. After dinner we sat and watched the local news. The poison started after her fifth glass of box wine.

She asked me if I knew that Mr. Stevens, the owner of next property over, had offered her two million for her land.  I forced my attention on the evening news trying to change the subject with my disinterest. I told her that I didn’t know that little fact. I lied; he had made that offer six years ago and she told me about it the last fifteen or twenty times I had visited. She said that he sat in her brush with special listening devices gathering information. She hadn’t yet figured out the way that he was going to do it. But Mr. Stevens was a user, and he got everything that he wanted.  She started in on the Hanks that lived to the west. I stood up as she paused to wet her lips on her drink, told her I was going for a drive.   

         Broken, her train of thought shifted back to its normal tracks. She asked if I had a gun, this land is rough and you better have a little fire power. I opened my jacket and showed my 1911 colt .45 resting in a hand stitched leather holster. Satisfied she took a drink and told me she was heading to bed soon, and to take a house key or sleep in my truck because the door would be locked.  As I walked to the front door I saw her snub-nosed .38 sitting on the entry table. It was well oiled; even in passing I could smell the strong odor of fresh oil and gunpowder. She had always been a good shot, and it looked as if she was still in practice. Whisky was my friend as I road in a rusty truck rolling at a snail’s pace across my homeland. The stars smiled and twinkled as I fell asleep in the bed of an old ford pickup.

         Daybreak brought me home, the back bedroom called me back to sleep. I dreamt of my child hood on the Lazy “S” ranch. At nine she woke me cheery as a song bird. She made coffee; I made breakfast with some burnt toast, ham and eggs I rescued from the fridge. I prayed the eggs hadn’t yet turned or we both may be in trouble. She disclosed the chores she needed done and the errands in town she was planning.  At eighty-four, she drives to town two times weekly. She makes stops at the post office, feed store, and the pharmacy. In a small country town, her standing merchandise orders await delivery to the back of her truck.

         I cherish the pain of ranch work. Nothing feels better in your hand than your grandfather’s shovel as you dig out an old fence post. Blisters scream your heritage as they scar your future. Around five thirty she made it home. I unloaded the groceries from her truck. When I was done sorting groceries, I found her on the porch. She was in her rocker, her hand holding a beer, staring toward the same bunch of mesquites trees. The concentration on her face burned with anger and fear. Again I checked the trees and saw nothing.

         I asked if she was hungry. She turned to face me and her scowl froze me in my tracks. She asked me what I was doing here. Dumbfounded, I asked her what she was meant. She said that I hadn’t visited in ten months, why now a visit. I told her I lost my job and needed to find my way. I needed to visit the only place I ever considered home. She laughed a coarse disbelieving chuckle. Her eyes never faltered. Daggers of accusation pierced my soul. Her eyes told me the very fear that her hatred had conceived. This was her home, her land and no one was ever going to take it. Her eyes aflame with anger and her lips bent for violence. Hatred coursed through her veins like poison. I left her on the porch, checked my pistol on my hip and went for an evening drive.  Whisky mixed lightly with my thoughts as I bounced lightly down the road.

         I came home after dark, hoping that with dinner behind her and that with no distraction, she had gone to bed. I hardly noticed that the pistol wasn’t in its original spot in the entry way. I made my way toward the kitchen and polished off the last of the ham. I came from the kitchen one hand holding my sandwich, the other lightly sloshing the last mixed drink of my life. I looked across the living room as she stood hunched over in her bedroom doorway. She was dressed for bed in a white night gown that stretched down faintly covering her bony legs. 

         Her condition was worse and more poisoned than when I had left.  Her white hot glare instantly put me on guard. She held her left hand across her right arm as if her right shoulder was sore. The look of hatred again burned my soul. Her lips where pursed in a snarl I will never wipe from memory. She told me that if Stevens wanted her land he would have to come kill her himself instead of sending her grandson. Hers eyes were cold and harsh as a spittle hung on her lip.

         Her right hand came up and I dropped my sandwich. I was thankful that her draw had slowed with eighty years of hard work. My whisky did me no favors as it splashed off the hardwood and onto the back of the couch. Her first shot missed my left ear by a hairs breadth. Her second shot caught my left shoulder. The pain was far away as my right hand dropped the safety on my colt. Three hammer strikes sprayed her poison on the walls and covered the open door jamb. Her third and final shot struck the ceiling fan knocking it out of alignment forever. She fell in slow motion first to her knees, I heard an audible crack as those old hinges shattered under their own weight. She fell forward and bounced off her TV chair. She rolled folded into a heap on her side. Her right hand laid twisted and mangled into a horrific piece sign.  My first shot had hit her gun hand, the second dislocated her right arm and the third hit her direct in the chest.

         I had shot a bullet through my grandmother’s hand. The hand that bathed me, disciplined me, greeted me, raised me, made me. An old dry twisted object that had drawn my attention. Poison covered the floor.