PawPaw

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

– Ephesians 6:1-3 NIV

I opened my eyes early in 1976 to the smell of PawPaw on Saturday mornings: Old Spice after shave, unfiltered Camel cigarettes, that oil he used to slick back his salt peppered black hair, and coffee. He was kneeling by my couch in the living room. From my perspective, PawPaw was tilted sideways.

“Hey, d’er, Lil’ Buddy,” he said with his sideways grin. “‘Bout time you woke up.”

I sat up and the world rightened itself. PawPaw’s smiling face was right next to mine. His good eye sparkled; it wasn’t bloodshot yet and it looked just like his glass eye, a dark brown pupil framed with a white.

I hopped off the couch and plopped my duck feet onto the faded peeling vinyl floor. MawMaw said I’d grow into them one day and be as big as my daddy. She was mistaken; I’m still the runt of the Partin men at only 5’11”, and I would limp out of the army wearing size 14-wide combat boots that looked like exaggerated shoes on a camouflage-wearing clown, and by my early 50’s age I’d wear a size 15 running show and have somehow shrunk a half inch so the difference is more pronounced; seeing me in running shoes is like watching Ronald McDonald go for a jog. But in 1976 I trusted MawMaw and was patient; and I knew my big feet were good for climbing, like PawPaw said.

He should know. Though only a wirey 5’4,” PawPaw was the most respected tree surgeon in all of southern Louisiana. Faster than you could say Spider Man, PawPaw could scurry up a tree to a partially broken branch, whip out his hand saw like Zorro withdrawing his sword when attacked by surprise, make three cuts near the healthy part of the branch so it would heal with a smooth face, cover that face with a splat of black tar to keep termites out while it healed, then drop by my side and tell me I would be able to do that one day, too. He said I had to grow just a bit more to reach the branches, and that my big feet would help me stay balanced. That’s why I felt pride from the sound my feet made when I plopped them down on the floor and prepared for my day with PawPaw.

“Go on now,” PawPaw said as he pulled away from me. “Get in d’er before MawMaw’s up.”

He nudged me out of his hug and pointed to the short hallway only a step away.

PawPaw grew up in the pine forests surrounding Woodville Mississippi and mostly spoke with their accent, but when he moved to Baton Rouge after the war he began trimming trees with a group of French Cajuns and picked up a bit of their accent; it was most obvious by how he dropped the diphthong “th” and replaced it with a d’, like the New Orleans Saints football fans chanting in the Superdome that we watched on our small TV near my couch and went like this:

“Who d’at! Who d’at! Who d’at talkin’ ’bout beatin’ d’em Saints? Who d’at!”

Of course the Saints were called the A’int’s back then because “the ain’t won a game in years,” and fans in the Superdome wore paper bags over their heads to hide their shame, but they still chanted Who d’at! before every game. But despite the paper bags on the screen, when they chanted you could feel the deep well of hope from which that drank all the way in to our living room with every chant of Who d’at, and d’at’s what PawPaw sounded like to me.

I followed PawPaw’s finger and flip flopped across the vinyl floor and past the big hallway mirror and into our house’s only bathroom. I peed and then stood on the step stool PawPaw had made me from a few 2X4’s so I could wash my own hands. I shoved aside the piles of hairspray and other smelly things MawMaw and Linda used, and gently nudged PawPaw’s Old Spice and hair oil. They were important to me. When I smelled them first thing in the morning, I knew I’d have a day with PawPaw and that also meant Saturday morning cartoons. I never saw him until late at night on weekdays. He left early to open the school and stayed late to clean toliets; he was like the Airborne Pathfinders in Vietnam whose motto was First in, Last out. When he came home he smelled like Camels and Pine Sol and his good eye was bloodshot from the fumes and I spent evenings with him. But on Saturdays and Sundays, PawPaw was my Pathfinder; the first to wake me up in the morning, and the last beside my bed at night.

I brushed my teeth and spit out the foam and hopped off the stool and landed with a satisfying splat on vinyl floor. MawMaw had laid out my clothes the night before and they were draped over the bathtub. I slipped them on and squeezed my feet into my walkin’-shoes. I wasn’t ready for tree-climbin’ shoes yet; those were the leather ones PawPaw wore and held his spikes like the giddy-up spurs on The Lone Ranger’s boots.

I ran out of the bathroom and into MawMaw fluffing her hair in front of the hallway mirror. She was wearing her fuzzy light blue slippers and shaggy grey-white bathrobe the exact color of her disheveled hair. She turned and knelt down and locked her gaze on my eyes and smiled mischievously and said: “Gimme some shugga!”

I giggled and brought my arms up to my chest and ready to defend my face.

She shuffled along the vinyl floor in her fuzzy slippers and got about a foot from my face and said again: “Gimme some shugga!”

I giggled and bring my fists closer to just below my cheeks; it was my modified crawfish defense, like how a crawfish holds up both pinchers and keeps them pointed at you so you can’t grab their whiskers, but closer to my cheeks because I knew MawMaw was aiming there.

MawMaw’s held up her own pinchers and scooched closer and closer and snapped her thumb and fingers together like a crawfish about to get me.

“I’m gonna steal me some shugga,” she said.

She thrust out her pinchers out but ducked them down and tickled my exposed ribs. I erupted in giggles and my defense dropped down and she shot some shugga on my cheeks like a shugga sniper with rapid fire reflexes. I squealed and raised my pinchers back to my cheeks; MawMaw tickled me again and I squirmed and she snuck in a few more shots of shugga.

I laughed loudly and she said: “Shhh… You’ll wake the baby.”

The baby was asleep in my old room. She was MawMaw and PawPaw’s first granddaughter. Their daughter was Linda White and Wendy’s best friend in high school. She married Craig Black and moved back in a few weeks before. They slept in on Saturdays and let PawPaw and me watch cartoons and The Lone Ranger and Zorro on our little black and white TV, but would join us for the A’ints games at the beginning of hurricane season and Craig would joke that we lived in a Black and White house. The baby was new and I wasn’t used to her yet.

I shush so I don’t wake the baby but I made the mistake of lowering my hands; MawMaw is a shugga’ sniper who saw the opening and swooped in for some more shugga. I squealed again and she shushed me again. As soon as I calmed down, she swooped in again and smacked me on the cheek and I squealed and she shushed me again.

“Get in there and help PawPaw make breakfast,” she said.

She rotated me toward the kitchen and gently nudged me away and stepped into the bathroom for her long ritual of getting made up for the day. I took a plop towards the kitchen but stopped in front of the mirror and turned and scooted toes up to the scuff mark from PawPaw’s tree-climbing shoes. I looked at my reflection and the bright red smudge of MawMaw’s lipstick that grazed the top of my reflected head. Nothing had changed; my head still only kissed the smudge instead of bursting above it.

I stood up more straight and put more weight on my tippie-toes, and because of my big feet I gained an inch and saw the top of my head poke above the smudge; I held my stance as if practicing being taller will make it happen faster.

“You not gonna’ grow by lookin’ at yourself,” PawPaw said. “Come in here and eat some pancakes with your PawPaw.”

I trotted over and stepped up on the wooden stool by the stove so I could see. A few loose eggs were on the counter and PawPaw was mixing Bisquick from a box with Blue Bonnet milk from a plastic gallon jug and eggs he had beaten while I was in the bathroom. His stained empty coffee cup was beside the half-full Mr. Coffee machine and had probably stopped being even remotely white since before I was born.

I asked PawPaw if we were going to climb trees after we watched cartoons. I sounded more like MawMaw than PawPaw because I grew up spending all day weekdays with just her and me, and then MawMaw, Linda, Craig and me. MawMaw was educated in the finest private schools of Baton Rouge, because she was from the rich Lamar family. They owned all the roadside billboards in Louisiana, and we’d see the little green rectangle with the name Lamar at the bottom every time we got on I-110 to head south to Baton Rouge or north to Saint Francisville to cut trees. Lamar Advertising is now publicly traded and they own something like 80% of billboards in America; if you see one that says Lamar, it’s a sign of how we’re connected through this story. Craig was also articulate like MawMaw; I never learned where he went to school, but he studied theater and knew how to pronounce things the long way and knew elaborate words like diphthong.

“Nope,” PawPaw said. “Today is your day wit’ Wendy and Denise.”

I said that sounded fun. Denise did magic tricks and Wendy always bought me a Slushie from the 7-11 near the park where we play and I climbed the squeaky jungle gym.

PawPaw listened and then looked down at me on my stool and stared straight into my eyes with his good one. His smile broadened and his good eye twinkled mischievously. Craig said PawPaw looked like Puck when he did that, a prankster woodland elf from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream whose mischief moved stories into motion. Craig painted a lot of paintings with one of Puck’s eyes peering from behind a bunch of moss in a swampy forests. When PawPaw smiled like Puck, something was about to happen.

He pulled the last unfiltered Camel from the crushed pack in his pocket and crumbled the pack and dropped it in a trash can by the kitchen sink. He slipped out a dented silver Zippo from the little pocket in his blue jeans and brought the white Camel cigarette to a foot from his lips with the little black printed camel facing me.

Wait PawPaw! I exclaimed. You’re about to light the wrong end, I said. It’s backwards again.

I said that the little black camel goes in his mouth and that he should light the other end.

PawPaw chuckled and said: “You right, Lil’ Buddy. You smarter d’an your PawPaw.”

He flipped the cigarette around and lit it and I smelled the Zippo fuel that’s not unlike the JP-4 jet fuel that blasts paratroopers in the face as they board a plane on a one-way trip. He snapped the Zippo shut and put it back in the little pocket in his blue jeans made for pocket watches and Zippos. He let the Camel dangle from his lips and flipped pancakes and smoked from the corner of his mouth like Popeye the sailor. (PawPaw looked a lot like Popeye, the little guy who squinted with one eye and smoked a pipe and mumbled on Saturday morning TV. I had never seen Puck; he must not have had a cartoon of his own back then.)

PawPaw smoked and cooked pancakes and I stared out the window and through the dusty spiderwebs on the outside towards the fishing pond. There was a tall rusted metal gate leaning against the fence from when a previous owner tried to raise cows, but we had no animals other than bullfrogs we’d sometimes gig for dinner so there was no need to fix the gate; they lived in the pond and weren’t going anywhere, PawPaw had said.

PawPaw turned to the kitchen table and shoved the pile of his old tools and my Lone Ranger pistol and bullet belt aside. He put a jug of Aunt Jemima syrup on the table and a roll of paper towels to use as napkins. He poured both of us a glass of Blue Bell and we drown our pancakes in Aunt Jemima and took big bites and washed them down with swigs from the glasses. We finished and I stepped up to the sink and helped PawPaw wash dishes. We finished washing and he said: “How ’bout we go to d’ store and get some milk an’ cookie dough? D’at way MawMaw can have cookies waiting for you when Wendy brings you home.”

My eyebrows shot up and I asked if we could climb the tree; there was only one tree I called the tree, and it was the really big sprawling stately oak tree across from the convenience store on the corner of Hooper and Plank that didn’t have Slushies but had those elf in the tree cookies.

I told PawPaw I bet I could climb into the saddle all by myself. He chuckled and said: “Of course, Lil’ Buddy. D’at’s what made me think of it. We’ll go after MawMaw done in d’ john.”

Just then MawMaw walked into the kitchen as if PawPaw words manifested her. She had done her hair in a towering beehive held aloft with copious amounts of hair spray and it towered over PawPaw and me. She tore a paper towel from the roll on the table and pressed it to her lips and showed me the red kiss mark; she handed me the napkin and said it was my breakfast shugga.

I giggled and set the breakfast shugga by my Lone Ranger pistol. She gave PawPaw some shugga on his cheek and he told her we were going to the store. She glanced at the mostly empty jug of Blue Bell and asked for more milk for her coffee. She looked at me and told me to hurry and brush my teeth because Wendy’s coming and I didn’t want to be late.

I return from the john and PawPaw told MawMaw we’ll be back soon. He opened the door to the carport and I stepped outside by the cricket cage. PawPaw paused inside to grab a potato from a bag laying atop the washing machine then stepped into the carport with me. He opened the bigger blade of his Old Henry two-blade folding knife to cut the potato into chunks and opened a hatch in the refrigerator-sized cricket cage and dropped the potatoe pieces inside. He returned the Old Henry to the same pocket that had the little Zippo pocket and took my hand.

We had to turn sideways to squeeze between his rusted brown Ford pickup truck and the piles of Yellow Pages phone books lined along the carport to keep them out of the rain. We reached the driveway and walked side-by-side along the crunchy gravel carport and turned left onto the blacktop of Hooper Road. PawPaw stood between me the road in case a car speed by.

“D’ey go fast,” he once said, “because d’ey in a hurry to get to d’ airport.”

I walked off the blacktop and along the gravel and weeds with PawPaw between the road and me. I slapped the thistles that grew taller than I was and watched them weeble-wobble back upright. I don’t think any cars drove by quickly; hardly anyone drove down Hooper road that early in the morning.

I saw the stately oak tree at the empty corner of Hooper and Plank Road. Its sprawling undulating branches make it seem like a giant octopus with sprawling tentacles draped in grey Spanish moss and one of those tentacles hoovers a few feet above the ground about 40 feet from the trunk and forms a perfect saddle that beckons me to climb into it. I let go of PawPaw’s hand and rush to the tree and reach up and grab the to of the saddle and my fingers slip into grooves in the old bark that are as deep and sprawly as the wrinkles on the back of PawPaw’s weathered neck when I hug him goodnight.

I grasped that gnarled bark with both hands and heaved with all my might but could not pull myself up. I stood on my tippie toes like in front of the hallway mirror and pulled again and again but could not pull myself higher. But then I felt PawPaw’s hands under my arms and I got stronger and pulled myself onto the branch and swung my big left foot over the curved branch and raised a hand in the air as if waving goodbye.

Hi Ho Silver! I said.

The branch swayed gently up and down and I was riding in my saddle like the Lone Ranger on Silver.

I was quick to celebrate and faster to forget. I eyed the branch above me and began to reach. I stretched and grunted but could not touch the bark. Today was not my day. Instead, I grabbed some of the gray Spanish moss dangling by my hands and yanked off a tuff and held it on my chin and looked straight into PawPaw’s good eye.

I look Craig now! I said.

PawPaw chuckled like Puck and reached up and grabbed his own beard and put it on. We laughed with each other like two old men who were best friends and had already knew all the good jokes and didn’t need words to laugh.

He put his beard back on the tree and reminded me we have to get cookie dough and get back home before Wendy and Denise showed up. I kept my beard and reached out my arms. PawPaw swung me over the saddle and onto the ground. We held hands and turned to the store and paused at the Plank Road red light until it turned green. Across the street, PawPaw pushed the big glass door open and I put on my moss as a disguise just like The Lone Ranger would wear a fake beard so he could take off his mask and look like just another old man in town. The Christmas bell tied to a string above the door rang; the man behind the counter looked up to see who came in.

“Well hello there, Mr. Ed,” he said. “Who got with you today?”

It’s me! I exclaimed as I lowered my disguise.

“Wow!” he said. “I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Jason.”

I put the beard back on and he gasped and told me it was a good disguise. I revealed myself again myself again told him that The Lone Ranger was a master of disguise and that I was too.

The man and I chatted while PawPaw shopped. He walked up to the counter with a tube of cookie dough with elves in a tree on the wrapper, a half gallon carton of Blue Bell milk, and a six pack of Miller pony bottles. Without being asked the man reached up and brought down a pack of Camels and put it on the counter by the beer. He gave us two plastic bags to carry things home, one for PawPaw and one for me.

“Bye, Mr. Ed.” the man said. He then looked down at me and said, “You make sure your PawPaw gets home safely, okay Mr. Jason?”

I told him I would.

PawPaw carried the milk and ponies and I carried the cookie dough made by elves that looked like the paintings Craig made at home but without moss and without Puck peering from behind a branch and no Lone Ranger saddle like my tree had.

As I promised the man, we made it home safely. I don’t recall if I saw cars flying down Hooper Road on the walk home. All I remember about that walk were the weeds weeble wobbling and a feeling that it was the best day of my life, and that the day had only just begun and my whole life was ahead of me with PawPaw by my side.

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