The Tracts Returning

You were the grizzled man in a hat, leaning back in the faded green recliner where you'd eat dinner during the news, football or Jeopardy, feet propped up with your boots on. Quietly those snores would come, somehow sneaking up on us every night, making us smile.

You smelled of hay, sometimes of cattle or beer, sometimes of the Old Spice you'd receive each Christmas from your children. But the smell of hay was always there, spreading out around and before you, especially when you returned from the fields. Did that smell surround you in the hospital? I must imagine it did.

You drove that Scout almost every day to check on the cows. In the months the grass didn't grow, you'd drive that beat-up metal box on wheels to carry bales to the feeders, the front seat strewn with hay stems that'd stick to your overalls and need to be brushed off before entering the house. In the early spring, when snow lay in thick patches across the hillsides, that Scout would lumber through mud and iced-over pools, the floorboards tracked by your boots, mine, and grandma's.

After the hospital, they dressed you in a suit with polished, black shoes and then put you in a coffin. You wore no hat. At the private viewing before the funeral, some of the younger cousins touched your face and said, "Wake up, grandpa. Wake up." They weren't sad, I think, just confused that you weren't snoring. I remember them all that young, more of them suddenly turning up at the holidays and racing with me through the house. There are so many now, I can't remember all their names. Before them, it seemed there was only you and grandma and me out at that house in the Cottonwood hills, alone on those winter nights. During the funeral, I tried to remember you as we--your children and your children's children--sat in the middle of church, and it felt like everyone was staring at me, that wild-haired kid from university.

I want you to know that of your boots, your nightmares of the war, and your drinking, I remember your boots best. You used to come back late at night and offer me twenty dollars to take off your boots. Young as I was, I would believe you, kneel in front of you, and wrestle two-handed with one as you sat in that recliner, smiling down at me, smelling of beer. I never succeeded, not with you arching your toes. The next morning, your boots would be warming by the kitchen radiator and you'd be sitting in your overalls reading the paper while grandma fixed breakfast. You were there every morning. I cannot remember, but I suppose you wore a suit and polished shoes when we sat among the pews at church; later, at home, when grandma would hand me a rosary so that we three could kneel and pray together in the living room, the overalls and boots would have returned and I would have hid behind the couch, not knowing the words.

It's winter again and everything's covered in snow. The hills around Cottonwood . . . you know, they really do seem to stretch on forever. It's been a long time. Grandma told me the cows are doing fine. There are no other footsteps leading here. On your stone there is a name I didn't recognize. I am sorry. Finding you has been difficult.