Poppaw's Book of Answers

The strange part wasn’t that they didn’t want the book, but that they didn’t remember it.

“I would love his banjo. Some of my earliest memories are of him playing at Square Dancing,” Sherie insisted. My sister was many things. Smart, Ivy League smart, funny, “most likely to become a comedian” funny, successful, the sort that leads to an overheard conversation with her accountant over whether the inheritance would mess up her tax situation this year before we’ve even had a look at the will. One thing she wasn’t? Musically gifted.

I almost suggested she ask for a bucket, that being the only way she was going to carry a tune, but I resisted. The days when I was the family’s musician were over anyway. My last attempt at restarting the band had ended six years ago, just before Kari’s pregnancy, and then our marriage also ended. That might’ve been when it started to go off the rails. Everything went south after the Bogdogs and Slowfeet broke up. A banjo with a neck warped from a humid spell in the eighties wasn’t going to change that. I kept my mouth shut.

My brother was more practical. “I’d like the shed. We’d spend hours tinkering on the mower. I’ve been wanting one in the backyard, but Margo and I can’t agree. I want a hardwood floor, she wants, well. A free one.”

Margo would be getting her way. She hadn’t bothered to come for the wake. None of the spouses had. Only my Ex, and she’d arrived early and left early too. I suspected her schedule had something to do with the flights into town being delayed by the storm. She wouldn’t have bet on me having already been at Mom and Dad’s since the weekend. I have had few hard and fast rules over the course of my life, but one of them while we were together was that I never missed the Friday orchestra practice. I guess the joke was on her, I’d ended it with the cello too.

So I had come down to visit the old man in the hospital, and sit by his side until the end. Seemed fitting for all the football and baseball games he’d sat through for me. I’d even brought a deck of cards in case he wanted to play one more game of Spades. I was as certain that we could con a nurse or two into playing us as I was that our secret sign language would still work. I didn’t get a chance to test either hypothesis. It just never felt appropriate.

Kari had brought her boyfriend, Nate. She hadn’t remarried, even after six years together. I didn’t think that made up for them having begun dating a month before she told me she was leaving, but I kept my mouth shut again. See, Mom? I can learn.

I manned my station by stove while they were there, keeping the old percolator from burning the coffee. Couldn’t let that happen, even if Poppaw had refused to upgrade to one of those new electric coffee pots. Heaven knew what he’d have made of the fancy, single-cup rigs like the one Sherie got him for his birthday. It was in the unopened box, by the backdoor, under a few coats and a pair of boots. We all knew the spot; the Goodwill stash. Poppaw would gather things until he had enough to fill an egg crate, and then he’d load it up in the back of his 1959 Chevy pickup, the one with the wooden bed, and haul it over to the drop point where they took the things he didn’t want, and found them homes with someone who did.

Bret’s choice of shed wasn’t appreciated by everyone. “Marmomica! Marmomica!” came the refrain from one of his two children. I wasn’t sure which. I damned sure wasn’t going to ask. They were born a year apart, and the sort of man who dubs his children Addison and Madyson, is exactly the sort of monster that gets mad at his brother for not remembering which is which. I decided to slip them each one of Papaw’s harmonicas. A four and five year old providing the musical accompaniment to the eulogy would be exactly the sort of gag Poppaw would’ve liked.

It was my turn. As eldest, I went last. I didn’t have to think long. “I want the book.”

“The book?” Kari asked. Her posh, lived-in-the-Northeast-too-long, accent let her finish the question faster than my brother, with his haven’t-forgotten-Texas-yet twang, even if he started at the same time with his, “What book?”

“You know. The book.” Blank looks.

“His little notebook,” I described, and gestured with my hands to illustrate. It was about 4x6, with one of those elastic straps that kept your place, or kept the book closed, did neither once it was stretched out of proportion. In my memory, Poppaw’d kept the book on him always

I didn’t really blame them. When I’d first started thinking about the book a few years ago, I’d wondered if I had made it up. As time went on, the sheer number of appearances it made in my memories convinced me it was real. Whenever someone asked Poppaw a question he couldn’t answer, or he stumped by something, he’d whip out the book and flip through it for a while before producing an answer.

On one occasion I remembered him sitting at this very table, in the chair Bret had usurped. A neighbor asked for advice on what to do with a failed crop, and Poppaw had no answer. He took out the shiny silver pen he always carried in his pocket, the one with the arrow shaped clip that had so fascinated me, and wrote down a few words in the book. That was the summer Dad had the accident so I’d spent weeks on end at my grandparents while mom and dad were away. I was still with Poppaw a week later when we ran into the same neighbor, and the old man had produced the book, found the necessary page, and gave his answer. I can’t remember what that was, but the neighbor had taken it in, nodded a time or two, thanked the old man and shook his hand. It had seemed to me that the book must contain all the wisdom in the world.

It certainly contained some of Poppaw’s wisdom, and at this point in my life, I felt I might could use that more than anything else he’d left behind.. I’d taken to calling it “Poppaw’s Book of Answers”, which I didn’t share.

“Peter, what book are you talking about?” Sherie’s accent diminished when she was concerned, and the way her forehead wrinkled brought to mind the times she’d looked at me just like that after a breakup, or a tough loss in a football game, and asked if I was alright. Bret just watched me. He didn’t speak, or have to. They both thought I was losing it.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something else out.”

Sherie didn’t miss the chance to prod. “I know you’ve been through a lot this year. The wreck, and I know there is that trouble with the University. Bret and Mom and I, we talked about it. We think you should take his car. It’s got hardly any miles on it, and if it doesn’t suit, you can trade it on something you like?”

I shook my head and was saved from having to change the subject by the ringing doorbell. I looked at the clock. It was time, and I was grateful. I really didn’t want to talk about how I lost my tenured spot in K-State’s School of Philosophy, or the wreck and DUI that led to it. Not with the pair of budding harmonica players listening. I certainly didn’t want to hear them offer to pay my legal fees again. No, I didn’t have the 20k the cheapest lawyer in Manhattan, Kansas, quoted me, but I certainly didn’t want my kid sister and runt of a brother to bail me out, either.

We all stood. I got my jacket, and we went to the door to greet the pastor, then followed him out to the hearse after pleasantries. Sherie and Greg got in the towncar, while I went and slid into the well-worn seat of the ‘59. She fired up the first time I turned the key. Poppaw’s car, a newer vehicle, had a dead battery and two flat tires when I’d checked it earlier.

The procession started and I eased into my spot behind the hearse and the big black Lincoln. We pulled onto the road. They circled the muddy spot in the drive, but I steered right at it. Poppaw never kept his pickup this clean. He always used to say a little mud made it look like you knew where to find work. The hole was deeper than I expected, and the sunvisor flopped down. A bundle of papers that had been tucked in above it fell, half landing on the dash, and about half ending up at my feet.

The trip to the cemetery was stressful. It was likely nothing consequential, but his papers were getting ruined, I was sure. Driven into the dirty floor by my inconsiderate heels. What if they were important? Clandestine letters to a secret love he hadn’t sent, or even mundane bills we needed to settle, and now they’d look like they were pulled out of the trash? I can always find something to fret when I need to.

I parked behind the two cars when we got to the cemetery, stepped out, then looked back into the pickup. It took bending all the way down and wedging myself under the steering wheel before I could reach under the seat far enough to find what I’d lost. Time got away from me there, I guess. Bret gave my arm a tug. “Come on, it’s time to- oh. Is that it?” I held up the book, and the pen clipped to it, with what I hoped was a triumphant look and, a bit bleary eyed, turned to follow him. It was real.

I didn’t have a chance to study the book until we were seated under the collapsible awning, facing a closed casket and open grave, but as the reverend droned on, I flipped through the pages.

I don’t really know what I expected to find. There were scores from Cowboys games on the first page, then there was nothing. The rest of the book was just empty pages. I skipped through them again to be certain, then flipped the book over and went back the other way. It made me miss most of the sermon but I rallied to mumble along during the call-and-response bible reading that followed. The Baptist Choir started to sing as we stood and endured an avalanche of teary hugs and best wishes. Half an hour had passed before we could escape, and then another quarter before we made it out of the cemetery and back to the highway. It was dark when I eased into his garage, and parked alongside the neglected Oldsmobile.

I pulled the book out of my pocket. I flipped through it’s pages absently, and stopped somewhere near the middle. The words were clear as day; “Legal Fees”, handwritten, not printed, in the precise manner none of our students were taught these days. Underneath them, “Glovebox.” I leaned over to the passenger side of the bench seat and pushed the button. There was a bank envelope inside, and even in the dim light of the door opener, I could see it was full of hundreds.

I didn’t bother to count them.