Geschwister - 27

In his greatcoat pocket he carried a slip of yellowing paper, and written in a child’s tiny script on that slip of yellowing paper was the following: “I'm still standing at the door of life, knocking and knocking, though admittedly none too forcefully, and breathlessly listening to see whether someone will decide to open the bolt and let me in.” (Robert Walser, Geschwister Tanner). Never underestimate the power of digestion, his great great-grandfather said, his belly sagging fatly. His grandfather wore oatmeal gray trousers and blue flannel shirts with snap-buttons. On Saturdays he wore a reddish-purple (Borscht-red, his grandmamma called it) jacket and gray woollen trousers tapered from the knee to the top of his black boots. Flynn Odem plays checkers with his granddad on a upside down barn door placed between two sawhorses. ‘I hear that Chinese masseuse puts her back into it’. ‘Had her once. On the fallboards behind the woolshed. Rode me like a goddamn bronco. Still can’t lay on that side’. His granddad ate corn off the cob churned with peameal butter and riversalt. Would smack his buttery lips and poke with the end of his tongue for the pieces stuck in his beard. Made a god-awful noise. Could hear him smacking and chomping clear into the backyard. His grandmamma told him he was like that on account of he got kicked by a mule and couldn’t close his mouth proper. He liked to watch his granddad snap close the buttons on his shirt with his thumb and middle finger, like he was trying to shoo away the devil or call upon God.