Grandpa’s Hands

By Zackary Miller

I’m awake. I’ve been awake for an hour now; it’s hard to sleep in your grandparents’ living room, especially when everyone else is awake and thriving. The clock is chiming and the sun is piercing my eyelids, and I can’t lie down anymore. Good morning, it’s about ten o’clock in Florida with a good chance of it being steaming hot all day long. I struggle to bring myself onto my legs, and frown when I see that my little sister is unhappy with breakfast, and as such, Grandma is unhappy with my little sister.

I examine the room through squinted eyelids, like a curious newborn, and I spy Grandpa. Not as if he’s easy to miss. Grandpa may be on his last leg, but he’s still very much alive. He studies his kingdom from atop his throne, the end of the dining room table, at the seat by the door to his room. He is tapping his mug of hot chocolate, and if I’m not mistaken, I think he is humming. He looks up, and his eyes light up as if he is seeing his grandchild for the first time. He stops tapping the cup, and his hands fall flat upon the table.

“Good morning! Good afternoon! Good night! Wow, that was a quick day!” It’s Grandpa’s usual morning one-liner. After already being in Florida for two weeks, I have grown used to most of my grandparents’ routines. But Grandpa’s morning greeting makes me giggle every time. I sit down at the table in the seat by the wall, the one closest to Grandpa. He begins conversation with a usual icebreaker, asking about school. He waits patiently for my reply, although he’ll have forgotten it in five minutes.

He then begins to talk about his life, starting at the end of school. “My uncle said, ‘It’s time you do something for your country, Join the Marines!” And so he did. They flew him from Alabama to Ohio for training, he says. It was his first flight, though it wouldn’t be his last. Despite having received a medal for remarkable marksmanship, they assigned him to a bomber plane.

Training seemed chaotic, the way he tells it. Grandpa likes to tell the story of the first spiraling dive he experienced. He reminisces: “’Captain Hollis,’ I said, ‘How come we spiral when we go down?’ ‘That’s how you stay on target!’”

By now I’ve finished with breakfast, and its vacation. I spend the latter half of my morning sitting on the couch reading, and I finish my book. I go out onto the patio to relax some more. Looks like Grandpa has beaten me to the punch; he’s already taken up residence in one of the lounge chairs. Snuggled up next to him is his pet Chihuahua, Cuppa. She barks a guard dog’s warning, but Grandpa is Dr. Doolittle; he pets her once, and her barking stops. I’m a friend, for now, anyways.

This time there is no introduction, no icebreaker. It’s as if I never left the kitchen table. Grandpa talks about some of his missions, like the one where they were flying on a crooked path in hostile territory. “How come we have to fly this way and that?” He asks Captain Hollis. Grandpa puts on his Captain Hollis voice. “Oh, you never know what’s out there.” He says. Grandpa nods, as if the words still carry the same meaning, the same paternal connotations.

Grandpa never talks about fighting, or killing. That’s who he is, I suppose. I never knew my grandfather to be a feisty man, he never gave anyone any scolding. Grandpa was relatively quiet, a soft-spoken man, even when he was younger. My mother talks about how Grandma and Grandpa would sometimes bicker because he was so indecisive. A lover, not a fighter.

The closest thing to dying my Grandpa ever mentions is the story of the foot soldiers on a Pacific Island. The plane had landed after a tremendous land battle had taken place, and Grandpa was confronted by a land-based marine. Grandpa puts on his foot soldier voice (slightly different then his Captain Hollis). “You mean to tell me you actually fly in that thing? If I’m gonna get it, I wanna get it on the ground!” Grandpa shrugs and I get the impression that was his response to this man. The story helps me put things in perspective; I had forgotten how new airplanes were in the 1940s, and how nerve-racking it must have been for him.

My favorite story is the about kangaroos. “We got a two-week vacation in Australia!” Grandpa says, just as excited as the day he heard it. “I looked down the road, and I said ‘What’s those things over there hopping?’ And they were kangaroos!” Grandpa would have made great host for an Animal Planet show today. In the bible, it talks about the way a man treats animals being a judgment of his character. If that’s the case, then my Grandpa was the Pope.

He always wraps up with his favorite. They were on the way to Japan, back when the Japanese had just shown themselves to be our nation’s greatest threat. Halfway between Australia and Japan, they got a call on the radio. Grandpa puts on his radio announcer voice, by far his best, and lets it ring out: “Dump you bombs anywhere, the war is over.”

“We were heading for the Japanese mainland,” he says, “If we didn’t get that radio, well, I might not be here right now.” He sighs in relief.

He smiles at me, and I smile back. I am thankful for that radio call; the world would have been robbed a great man without it. I sigh also. In just a few short days, I’ll be on my way home to California.

Grandpa slowly rises, and Cuppa jumps up to follow him. He slowly makes his way inside, and wanders over to his favorite recliner. It’s one o’clock, and Grandpa needs a nap.

The remainder of our trip is too short. In a flash and a blink we are back home. Blink twice, and a phone call comes in. Grandpa doesn’t have long to live.

Grandpa hangs in long enough to talk to his son, my uncle. My mom and I are back on a plane to Florida. Mom is keeping it together well, and I wish I could cry, but my tear ducts are empty.

The casket is open when we arrive at the ceremony. I look in, slowly examining his body. They’ve dressed him up nicely, and he looks just like he did napping on his recliner, so carefree and loving and alive. But then I see his hands.

These two hands sit folded on his lap, a tightly folded memorial to a life well lived. The hands that answered the radio call, the hands that grasped handles with white knuckles as the plane dodged death. The hands that never hurt a soul. The hands that tapped a coffee mug, and lay flat on the table as the old man waited for me to sit, anxious to pass on his story.

I have your story, Grandpa, and I wish I could place it in your hands. But all there is left to do is cry, as I gaze upon the empty shell that fills the casket. I check your flight book, Grandpa. It still has Captain Hollis’s signatures in it. I’m so excited to see your story in real life, Grandpa, and I wish you were here to recite it all to me one last time.

The ceremony is drawing to a close, but the preacher has one thing left to say. “Macon Cunningham held a special place in our hearts, but we should not mourn him. God has called him away. Macon got the radio message. It said, ‘Drop your burdens anywhere, the war is over.’”