Beth Hendrickson
Roots and Wings
He lays out the knife, creamy peanut butter, sugar, and dates just so. The knife will cut the slit and smear the peanut butter. Fingers, even his arthritic ones, will be necessary for extracting the date pit, rolling in sugar, and licking. Extra fingers are coming to help. Waiting at the table, he fidgets with the white paper placemat.
“Hi, Granddad.”
“Hello, Grandson.” With the greeting, one of Granddad’s eyebrows sprouts yellow canary feathers and flutters off his face. Grandson’s eyes twist in concern, watching the eyebrow fly toward the door he’d just entered.
“It’s nothing,” Granddad reassures, waving a gnarled hand. “Don’t need two of those anyway. Here. Help me.” He nudges a knife to Grandson.
Reassured and conscripted, Grandson gets busy.
Grandson and Granddad slice, smear, and lick for the space of three (Grandson) and five (Granddad) peanut-butter stuffed dates. Christmas carols play from speakers, and a woman in a wheelchair by the muted TV hums along to “Sleigh Ride.” Next to her hangs a cross stitch from a forgotten resident. Orange and green yarn lettering: “There are two things we can give our children. One is roots. The other is wings.” A nurse appears silently at Granddad’s elbow, places a white paper cup with thirteen various colored pills (she’s counted, so he doesn’t), and retreats. Granddad’s right kneecap unfurls ravens wings, rises from his leg, and follows her.
“You’re falling apart Grandad,” Grandson observes as his tongue scrubs his finger, peanut butter and sugar being a tough job.
“And you’re growing up, kid,” Granddad counters.
A root, green and supple as an orchid’s, snakes out of Granddad’s little finger, undulates across the table, and attaches to Grandson’s pinky. If either notices, they do not comment.
“Your dad picks you up in an hour, right?” Granddad says. “That’s what your mom told the nurse.”
Grandson shrugs, not willing to commit on his father’s behalf.
Granddad nods, equally unwilling to trust his son who has recently proven to be better at leaving than coming.
Grandad’s left elbow unscrews, flexes albatross wings, and flaps elegantly to the ceiling. A root spools out of Granddad’s ear and navigates over to Grandson’s earlobe. There the root quivers, tightens, and burrows.
“What’s Santa getting you for Christmas?” Granddad wonders.
A skeptic growing into a cynic, Grandson raises a single, youthfully secured eyebrow.
“I see. No secret there. Well, did I ever tell you I played Santa for all the neighborhood kids when your dad was little?”
“You mean you grew a beard and got real fat?” Grandson licks his knife.
“Any Santa would, if he were making magic for his best son. His pal.” Grandad’s bushy white mustache quivers into the air with luna moth wings, leaving behind a naked lip.
“No one says pal, Granddad.”
“Buddy?”
A grimace.
“Well then, what do you kids these days call their best buds?”
“Gruzz,” Grandson nods.
“Gruzz,” Granddad repeats.
Monarch butterflies carry off Grandad’s thumbnail. A root twists from his palm to Grandson’s wrist and wraps.
There’s a scent of pine from the candle warmer on the nurse’s station. In the corner, the wire pole trunk of the Christmas tree shines behind bristled branches and red bulbs. The wheelchair lady hums “Last Christmas.” Grandson eats one sugary date. Granddad eats two. Four molars flit out of his mouth on bumblebee wings and take to the sky. A root twines up Grandson’s leg to secure his bouncing knee.
“In case I’m not around come Christmas morning, I’ve ordered Santa to bring you that video game computer you want.” Granddad spits a pit into his empty pill cup.
“I know you’re dying Granddad, you don’t have to pretend. Mom already told me.”
“And your dad? What’d he say?”
Seven of Granddad’s ribs splinter away on starlings’ wings. A grey root thick as a rolling pin wraps around Grandson’s waist.
Grandson shrugs, and his knife slices a date in half.
Granddad’s right shoulder detaches with red hawk wings. Roots knit into a lace shroud that drapes across the table and snarls in Grandson’s hair. He mashes an oozing date into the sugar dish. He grinds it around. Sugar crystals glitter. Five of Granddad’s toes hover suspended by hummingbird wings under the table.
“One thing I won’t pretend, Grandson—Gruzz?” He looks to confirm he’s said it correctly.
“Gruzz,” Grandson echoes. When his voice cracks, he doesn’t flinch.
“You can’t get away from me. We’re connected, me, you. You’ve got some places you have to go, and so do I, but I think I’ll stick with you, one way or another.”
A bouquet of sparrow wings erupts from the top of Grandad’s skull. A hairy root snaps around his ankle and then undulates under the table to shackle Grandson’s.
Granddad places his knife next to the empty plate. The blade sticks to the placemat the nurse set out. Granddad’s hip buckles, folds, then launches away with the waddling disgrace of a loon lifting from water. An old, gnarled, peanut-butter sugared hand rubs a young, smooth, peanut-butter sugared hand.
“I love you,” Grandad says.
“I love you too, Gruzz,” Grandson says.
A root, the biggest, sturdiest, thickest yet, swells from an old chest and dives to a young. It anchors right above Grandson’s heart which flaps, beats, and flutters within a cage of growing bones.
Beth has been a riverboat deckhand, violinist, rock climber, and substitute middle school Algebra teacher (in no particular order). She was long-listed for Jericho Writer’s 500 Novel contest, and her stories have appeared in Muleskinner Journal, The Quarter(ly) Journal, and The Fourth River. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband, two daughters, and a self-centered dachshund.
