See?
by David McGrath
Five days before Christmas, I shook my brother Kenneth awake to inform him that our oldest brother had been kidnaped. Kenneth sat upright, not in terror, but in excitement, with what were probably visions of the mafia or Richard Speck or the Jets and the Sharks holding our brother Charlie for ransom. It’s not that he hated Charlie, although we didn’t much like the way he punched us in the biceps whenever he was our baby sitter. It was just that we had eight kids in the family and could easily spare one to a kidnapper.
But when I told him it was Uncle Eddie who was drunk and in a rage and had Charlie hostage and was driving from one saloon to the next along Western Avenue on the far south side of Chicago, I could tell he was a little disappointed but not all that surprised.
That’s because we were used to Uncle Eddie doing crazy things. At the time, Eddie was around 40 years old, and we children were fascinated with, more than afraid of him, because he was not like other adults. He rough-housed with us, argued politics and race with us, gave us puffs of his cigarettes, let us take the wheel of his car.
We bragged about him to our friends, about his tirades, his binges, his colorful mixture of malapropisms and obscenities. He called hamburgers from Burger King "whoopers," and hippies on the TV news from Haight Ashbury, "syphilitic drips." He was hardly a stupid man. A man with intellect but not education. With curiosity, quick to certainty.
We bragged on him because he was different, and we celebrated the odd adult who didn’t fit the mold of authoritative, predictable, mundane behavior. In the fifties and sixties, adults were the enemy who set the rules and curtailed our freedom, so our daily goal was to get away from them. When we were playing baseball at Beverly Park on 103rd Street, it was among ourselves; fishing at Maple Lake west of the city, among ourselves; hanging at Prince Castle Drive-In, among ourselves. This pre-dated, of course, the modern era of adult saturation into all childhood activities, from pre-school soccer to the high school prom. Children then were one place—the basement, the yard, the park, the backseat, the little table, while adults were in another; and the only time they mixed was when children broke rules and the adults stepped in to adjudicate. So whenever Uncle Eddie showed up, reeking of whiskey, eager to show off and interact with us boys, and contemptuous of the other disapproving adults, he was our anti-hero.
Most exciting to us was when he would arrive drunk at family gatherings and misbehave. Like the time he had not done any Christmas shopping, but upstaged Santa who was passing out gifts at the time, by throwing fistfuls of five and ten dollar bills in the middle of the living room floor for us to fight over.
What intrigued us even more was that none of the boring adults seemed to like Uncle Eddie. He argued riotously with my other uncles and aunts, with my mother, with his parents—my grandparents. He fought with neighbors who forgot to fly the flag on Memorial Day, and once, famously, with the parish priest over the issue of welfare for the poor. He used profanities and words like whore and faggot that weren’t normally allowed in our houses; and, being single, he had money to buy things and go places that our parents and other relatives did not.
And when he fought with us kids, philosophically, contentiously, always loudly, we thought it was pretty cool. The deference required of us for other adults went out the window. We had the rare privilege of messing with a grownup. So we thought.
My father, married to Eddie’s big sister, had nothing but scorn for him. Eddie, who humored our ridiculous arguments, got down on the floor to beat us at leg wrestling, bet us cash money on sports and stormed through our house, searching the basements and closets for the losing bettors, would cast a sheepish glance at my father when he would enter our house.
"Hey, Mac," he would say.
My father would turn in his direction without meeting his eyes, and then turn back to the TV or the newspaper or his cup of coffee at the kitchen table. This killed us, because we thought Eddie was such a hoot, and couldn’t Dad see that too? And if he did, it would have so much more legitimized our enjoyment.
As long as I’ve known him, Uncle Eddie had but three speeds. His cruising speed was anger. Passing gear was blistering rage. And when in neutral, when he might politely ask a question, or even chuckle, though usually it was a derisive chuckle, his idling speed was a low but menacing rumble, for even then you knew that a sentence, a single word, might, at any moment, cause him to floor it.
Being teenagers and bored and brothers, quite naturally we took perverse pleasure in engineering his detonation. It could be anything at all: an innocent observation of news, weather, or sports, and he would construe it as some manifestation of the weakness of today’s youth, or some offense against patriotism, manhood—white manhood, that is—or against America, the work ethic, General Motors, honor, toughness, or anything else he thought that we failed to possess, respect, or deserve. He was Archie Bunker without the humor. Archie Bunker on steroids.
"What do you think of that Muhammad Ali winning in one round last night, Unk?"
This from my brother Pat, who, though the third youngest, was the family wise-ass. Having 4 older brothers insulated him, made him bold, so it was he who usually lit Uncle Eddie’s fuse. And the rest of us would hunker down to watch him blow.
Eddie leaned forward in the armchair, his forearms on his knees, his palms rubbing together with a sound like the crackle of a saddle, while a brew of anger and argument simmered in his kettle shaped head. Think of Mike Ditka without a moustache, six inches less in height, but with an even shorter temper.
"Ali?" said Eddie, his leathery hands crackling together. "Ali?" he’d repeat, now reaching for a Kent from his shirt pocket, tucking it in the side of his mouth, fishing for his matches, and then lighting the cigarette—his dark eyes, volatile puddles of oil shining back at us, as his hatred sought for words.
"Don’t give me any of that ‘Ali,’" he said, his voice volume mounting.
"You want to talk about a boxer, give me Rocky Marciano. There’s a man, see? Not a draft dodger like Clay. Ali—my ass."
"All right," said Pat, standing up and bearing his fists. "I’m Ali and you’re George Chuvalo—you kind of look like Chuvalo."
Eddie rose up, his cigarette clamped in his mouth, and he adopted a boxer’s stance, moving in to spar with my brother while towering over him. Pat was dancing, trying vainly to get his paw past Uncle Eddie’s huge fists. Eddie, grimacing, rocked from side to side, snorting and grunting, his forehead gleaming with beads of sweat and white rivulets of Wildroot Hair Cream.
Suddenly, he launched a jab to Pat’s chest that knocked him against the living room wall, rattling an eight by ten framed black and white portrait of my father’s parents posing in front of their brand new black Buick sedan.
Pat dropped his hands, frowned, and stomped into the kitchen, where in a moment we heard the opening of the silverware drawer. Kenneth gave me a panicked look that translated knife? And sure enough, Pat marched back into the living room, holding a serrated steak knife in the air over his head, like Tony Perkins in Psycho.
Oddly, this was something, finally, that caused Eddie to grin. He had his tongue stuck sideways in his mouth, making a bulge in his cheek, enjoying whatever the next move would be.
"Come on, Chuvalo," said Pat. "Come on, you fat bastard."
"Never hold a knife like that, Patty Boy," said Uncle Eddie, his own hands down now, his voice sing-songing with sarcasm. In a split second, he seized Pat’s forearm with his right hand and swiped the knife away with his left .
"Hold a knife like this," he said, grasping it as if shaking someone’s hand close to his own waist, "and nobody will ever take it from you. See?"
Eddie, or "Kayo," as he was called by his siblings for his childhood resemblance to the comics character originating in the 1940’s, went to St. Augustine’s Elementary in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. This was a residential section of mostly first and second generation Polish and Lithuanian immigrants who manned the tool and die factories and manufacturing plants close to the through-streets and the river between Western and Cicero Avenues. The Cichosewski family (Eddie’s parents) inhabited one of thousands of brick bungalows squeezed together like those little green Monopoly houses, with a patch of grass in the yard and barely three feet of "gangway" between the houses on both sides.. As congested as it may sound now, to be able to walk to work from a home that you owned, was the realization of a dream for many. We’d visit Grandma’s in the evening, and I still recall an odd, childhood euphoria from arriving under the watchful, interested eyes of people sitting, talking, smoking, relaxing on rocking chairs filling every single stone front porch on Winchester Avenue. It was a block party every night.
Eddie went to De LaSalle High School, and after graduation, he was drafted into the army and served during the last years of WWII. He was stationed in Germany where he had the misfortune of being wounded by an enemy sniper after the Germans had already surrendered, and he spent nearly four months in a London hospital. When he came back to the states, he worked at Drexel Screw Products on 63rd and Oakley on Chicago’s industrial south side, where he was eventually promoted to sole sales representative, and the only one in their employ who wore a suit and tie.
His best friends were Joe and Stella K., a married couple a lot like his parents, whom he met years earlier when Stella started work as a receptionist at Drexel. Joe seldom spoke but smiled a lot, leaving all the talking to his outspoken, bombastic wife whose relationship with Eddie seemed purely platonic, as far as I could see.
I had met her after Eddie got me a summer job at Drexel when I was sixteen, a job grinding the ends of 12 foot steel, bronze, aluminum, and brass rods before loading them into Browne and Sharpe machines that were set up to cut and shape them into precision parts for various manufactured products.
Eddie was a punctual, responsible, successful salesman for the factory. He wore Sears suits and was a mentor to the factory workers in oily overalls, who’d eat out of their lunch boxes in the break room while listening to Eddie warn them against charge cards, foreign automobiles, Jane Fonda, Maxwell Street Jews, turtleneck sweaters, Jesse Jackson, California, and rock and roll.
Once or twice a week, I’d see him in some corner of the factory all red-faced, gesticulating wildly at the owner, the foreman, or one of the machine operators about a parts order that maybe was late in completion, or else did not meet tolerance standards. I thought myself lucky not being able to hear him above the deafening clatter of 9 automatic screw machines. Yet being a blood relative didn’t spare me from his wrath, since about a month after I had started, he personally arranged to have me fired after I was late for work three days in a row.
One who seemed to be exempt from his attacks was Stella, whom he treated with politeness, and whom he would listen to in rapt silence about her garden or her shopping trips. Eddie couldn’t possibly have been interested in her hobbies, but she smelled and looked nice, had a good sense of humor, and seemed to be the only female friend he had.
They also shared a keen interest in Florida real estate, and he and the married couple put money down on property in Marco Island where they would eventually retire.
When we kids were a little older, Eddie and his parents had moved from Winchester to a newer house across the street from ours, so that he was a daily presence, an outspoken and cantankerous bore. Whereas the aforementioned fictional Archie Bunker would have arguments with son-in-law Meathead that would devolve to stalemates in absurdity, our youthful arguments with Uncle Eddie were pitched in anger, verged on violence, and comprised of ignorance on both sides.
On a typical Sunday afternoon, we’d see him through the opaque picture window curtains, marching towards our front door. If the door weren’t locked, he’d come in without ringing and pull out his Kents.
"Hi-ya," he’d say.
He’d step into the room, eye us up and down, shake his head in mock disgust, and then light a cigarette.
"Hey, Unk," I said. "Did you see in the Daily News that a hurricane might be headed for Marco Island?"
He slitted his eyes at me and frowned in disgust, as if what I said were the most stupid thing in the world.
"You know what’s the matter with youse? Think you know so much, and so on and so forth," his voice rising.
Charlie, Jimmy, Kenneth, Kevin, Pat and I were in the living room watching the Bears game. My father, seeing Eddie through the window, would already have walked off into the kitchen or the basement. We smiled and gave each other knowing looks that a ‘rage’ was headed our way.
"You get some pansy on the idiot box saying, ‘Oh, hurricane this, and hurricane that,’ and all youse numb skulls start to panic. See?"
He used his "sissy" voice to mimic a weather man, and he’d directed his scolding less toward us than to some imagined audience on both ends of a path he’d started pacing in the living room.
"I survived a goddam hurricane aboard a navy sea transport, and now it’s all ‘evacuation, evacuation!’"
And then he stopped in the middle of his path to turn to us.
"Where the hell ya gonna evacuate from a ship? See?" And then he’d laugh, a deep staccato laugh empty of joy, edged with scorn for the cautious weatherman and for any of us naïve enough to heed him.
And so it would go. Anger about the weatherman, about the old versus new, about the establishment vs. the younger generation.
What made this man so angry, we wondered? Certainly, the absurd injustice of being wounded after the armistice must have left him with resentment. But the middle-child syndrome of discontent also seemed to come into play. His older sister produced those 8 children that the grandparents, his parents, doted over; and Uncle Don, the youngest, the seminarian-turned-successful attorney, was the family pride and joy. Further, he seemed incessantly in the grip of generation envy, his having experienced the Depression, World War II, and the Puritanical 1950’s, all from which he may have thought the rest of us were undeservedly spared.
There was also the matter of self-esteem.
"Your Uncle Eddie was always getting into fights," explained Uncle Don one day. "Back in the day, you had to fight when your parents spoke broken English, and dressed you funny for school. It pretty much stopped when nobody wanted to fight him anymore."
But being teenagers and sex-obsessed, we suspected he was embittered by the loneliness of bachelorhood. We inquired of our mother who verified Eddie’s having had intermittent dates, including one with a third cousin. He wasn’t an unattractive man, at least not physically. Once, when Eddie seemed to be in an only mildly ballistic mood, Pat ventured to find out more.
"Say, Unk, have you gotten any lately? From a woman, I mean?"
He laughed contemptuously and made the requisite machismo remark questioning Pat’s own lack of experience. But he’d also referred vaguely to getting all the "action" he wanted.
"You ever been to the Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami?"
We did not.
"Well, if you’re ever there, take a walk in the lobby and get a load of all the girls. I’m not talking about the rich Jew bitches, but the real working girls. You can have all you want there."
"So did you get some?" Pat persisted.
"Oh, did I get some?" he mimicked. He stopped rubbing his hands and clenched his fists. His eyes were elsewhere, fixed on some mind movie from the distant past, his shoulders trembling. "I got news for you. Anybody can get some. See? That’s the easy part."
He may have been thinking back to Rosemary Abrams. I could not know it then, because it was not until I attended a wake just a few years ago, for a great aunt on my mother’s side, that I heard that name. The wake was more like a reunion, and among the many aunts, uncles, and cousins I hadn’t seen in years was Joe Kajak , who lives in Oregon, but remembers playing football with Kayo and Don and Larry and the rest of the gang from DeLaSalle.
"How is Kayo doing," he asked.
"He’s getting up there," I said. "Still full of piss and vinegar, but slowing down."
"I always felt for him—I’ll never forget—after that Abrams thing."
"Abrams?"
"You never knew? He was going to marry Rosemary Abrams, and her old man made her give back the ring. He wouldn’t approve of his daughter marrying a Polish Catholic."
"I never heard that before."
"He went into the army and never saw her again."
My mother has since confirmed this story, as one they’d always been loath to divulge. Another family secret, one that left a scar we never saw but may have all been suffering the effects of for half a century.
So Eddie had more than his share of life’s poundings, like a lot of people. But his was often a unique way of pounding back
The kidnaping of my oldest brother seemed to us, essentially, the continuation of a tradition, for we were used to Eddie doing something outrageous at Christmas time. Each year he’d get his annual bonus from Drexel on Christmas Eve, and he would start pissing it away in a tavern just off of Western and on the border between Chicago and Evergreen Park, owned by a woman named Marie Shaw, for whom he seemed to have grudging respect. She was a "good business woman," he often said, who knew how to handle her customers. His assessment was likely influenced by the fact that she was one saloon keeper who never tossed him out. Instead, on the nights she went way past "over-serving" him so that he was on the precipice of an eruption with her or a patron, she would call his younger brother, Don, for retrieval.
Our Uncle Don was the only one who could handle him. Not to say that Eddie never butted heads with Don. In fact, the arguments which were so loud that we could hear them from inside our grandparents house across the street, were usually those between Eddie and his liberal minded little brother, whenever Don happened to stop by for coffee and a visit. Eddie disagreed with Don as much as he did with anyone; but ultimately he would not defy Don, whom he revered and was proud of for his accomplishments. And if Eddie loved anyone in the world, it was his big-little brother.
Don was an authoritative and charismatic attorney who was six-feet-three and 260 pounds. I heard stories of how he would stand in the entryway of Marie Shaw’s bar, his big hands in the pockets of his size 56 overcoat. He’d purposely leave the door ajar, either to signal to his brother that the two of them were not staying, or so that the customers could feel the savage winter wind that accompanied his arrival. Either way, it was effective, as his entrance had Eddie dutifully scooping up the small cash fortune he had spread tauntingly on the bar, after which he’d march quietly out the door to Don’s Chrysler. Marie Shaw would nod to Don, and the few other Christmas Eve revelers would turn back to their glasses in relief.
But the night of the kidnaping wasn’t even Christmas yet. It was December 20th, Little Charlie’s birthday. He was "Little" Charlie to distinguish him from my father, Big Charlie, and the plan had been that Uncle Eddie was going to treat Charlie to a night of bowling. When they were not yet back by 10pm, my mother was not initially worried, since Charlie was in 7th grade, and there was no school the next day because of holiday vacation.
At 10:30 the phone rang. It was Charlie. Scared. Uncle Eddie had left the bowling alley and driven them some place through the woods to another bar. Charlie had no idea where they were, wanted badly to go home, but Uncle Eddie—
"What the hell is the matter, Gertie?" Eddie had grabbed the phone from him.
"Where are you, Kayo? You bring Charlie home right away."
"I’ll bring him home, all right. But first he’s going to learn how to be a 13 year-old. See?"
My mother could hear Charlie crying, "Can’t we just go home?" in the background. And when in her sternest voice—one that had the not inconsiderable power of raising 8 children and growing up along side Eddie, she started to make uncompromising demands of her brother, he slammed down the phone.
I relate the events of the evening the way I might summarize a radio program, for all my recollections were the sounds I heard coming from the kitchen as my brother Kenneth and I lay in a twin bed in the darkness of our bedroom. I heard the rotary dial rotate 7 times as my mother made a call but did not speak: either no answer or line busy Next, she summoned my father in repeated whispers, each time slightly louder until he finally shut off Jack Paar on the television. Heard then my father refer to Uncle Eddie as a "goddam louse," and blame my mother for letting Charlie go out with him. Heard both of them talking in harsh whispers, with one clearly audible explosion: "He better never show his face in this goddam house again!"
The phone rang once more. My mother’s voice went soft.
"Are you okay, darling? Where are you, on Western…on Ashland? Where? Charlie? Charlie?"
Her voice suddenly shrill: "You take my son out of that rat hole."
I felt Kenneth stiffen next to me from something in my mother’s voice which we were not used to: terror. When the next voice we heard was our father’s demanding the phone, I could feel Kenneth doing involuntary sit-ups in his agitation.
"Hello," my father’s voice was grim but even. "Hello? Anyone there?"
I heard a chair scraping the Linoleum floor. A glass being set down on the Formica table. More whispers, indecipherable. The dialing of the rotary phone—vvt/kkkk; vvt/kkkkkk; vvt/kkkkkkkk.
Again, my mother’s voice, low and breaking: "It’s Kayo, Ma. He’s got Little Charlie and is real drunk, driving all around…"
I felt Kenneth shiver next to me, realized he was crying. I slid farther from him on the bed, mainly so he wouldn’t feel me in case I started.
"Yes. Okay," said my mother, more composed. "Okay. When? All right." She was taking instructions. I heard several more okays. There seemed to be assurances. Some kind of imminent action.
I leaned in to Kenneth. "Uncle Donny," I said in triumph. I felt my brother gather himself next to me in bed. My mother hung the phone on the metal hook. Uncle Donny was on the way.
There was more muffled conversation along with movement around the kitchen. The voices became more business like. Something clanged in the sink, and the kitchen faucet was running. I smelled the Chase and Sanborn and listened patiently to hear the first gurgle from the coffee percolator. It was after midnight, but my mother was making coffee; the world was right again.
And I’m sorry, but there is a gap when I must have fallen asleep, for what I heard next was the front door opening, when I felt a stream of frosted air that curled under the door and washed over my face. Heavy footsteps on the thin front room rug—at least two people, probably more—Uncle Don and my father and Little Charlie coming in. I could hear my father asking something of Little Charlie, but from his careful, clipped tones, I judged that Uncle Eddie was right there, was in the house with them; but he did not say a word. No one spoke to him. His head would have been down, his eyes glazed. But his typical aftermath countenance would not have manifested any pain or regret. There may have been remorse. For him, silence was the closest he’d come to concession.
The adults were in the kitchen. My mother was back and forth getting probably cream and sugar and coffee cake, and I could hear the door of Charlie and Jimmy’s room open and close. Later, Charlie would not talk about this night to us, less from trauma than from embarrassment. And we would never mention it again, less from loyalty, than from fear of getting punched in the arm.
Back in the kitchen, in middle of some talk about carrot cake and the new bakery, Uncle Donny, who must have been shaking his head as he held his coffee cup, said, and I remember this clearly: "Kayo, you are a son of a bitch." There was no reply. I strained to hear a gasp, a cough, a sob. But there was nothing, and nor would there ever be. I never learned if it were an ethnic, Catholic, or tribal thing, but drunkenness and any other shameful acts seemed automatically deleted from our family history.
So Charlie’s kidnaping did not end in tragedy, and it did not make the news. The kidnapper was a loner, a binge drinker, and a troubled man; but he was a relative. He was family in an era when domestic abuse was handled domestically, and when the only thought ever given to calling a policeman was to ask for an escort for a funeral cortege.
Had this happened 40 years later, there would be police and possibly a hostage situation ending in bloodshed. But I also like to think that today, when parents are more wary of threats to their children not just from strangers, but from friends and relatives as well, that a dangerous Uncle Eddie type episode is less likely to occur.
As far as we could figure it out, Uncle Eddie had needed Charlie as a witness. Wanted Charlie to see bartenders taking his money, women looking at him, men listening to what he had to say. He wanted Charlie to see him as a man of the world, which is what we all want, after all.
Interestingly, Eddie was always asking us, "See?" Every day he must have thought, doesn’t anybody see? Doesn’t anyone see what I’ve done? See who I’ve become? See who I am? I’m not sure whether we did.
He survives to this day. He and the Khrusteks had purchased neighboring condominiums where they lived in retirement for nearly twenty years. After Stella died, Eddie and Joe moved in to the same house, where they spend their days watching the Weather Channel, playing pinochle, and once a week they go to Bonanza Steakhouse.
On Sundays, Eddie calls my mother with news of the latest fluctuations in his or Joe’s health, and my mother reciprocates. Sometimes they talk about the old days. Not the taboo subjects, but the good times. Yes, there were some good memories. Summers, for example, when my parents rented housekeeping cottages near Spooner, Wisconsin for two weeks, and Uncle Eddie would show up late Friday after driving straight from work. His arrival for a weekend meant something extraordinary, for he would rent an outboard motor to tow us on an inner tube all around the lake, or play "Moby Dick," diving at and dunking us in the swimming hole.
The following evening, he’d take the whole family out to dinner, where he’d lecture his captive audience about the wonderments of Florida. On these occasions, my father would be civil. The rest of us were magnanimous, unaccustomed to eating at restaurants, grateful and, for once, even polite to our eccentric uncle. And his generosity extended through the rest of the year at birthdays, Christmas, and, most appreciated, out of the clear blue when he’d hand my mother a wad of cash for yet another vacation that we would have otherwise skipped because of particularly hard year.
So maybe it wasn’t just silence but cash, too, that translated into remorse. Maybe cash was the closest currency he had to tenderness.
The last time I saw him, I had taken my family on a winter vacation to Florida, while Eddie still lived there. My children had heard the legends of Uncle Eddie, and I thought it would be a kick for them if we passed through Marco Island to meet him. He was in his seventies and must have certainly mellowed, I thought.
My wife and three children and I sat in the Florida room with him and Joe. It was clear that they company was rare, especially the children, whom they queried and praised and exclaimed over.
Eddie reminisced, asking about relatives back home, probing particularly for details about each of my brothers. He was the perfect host, getting potato chips and root beer for the kids, wine for my wife, a can of Key West lager for myself. He was pleased at our interest in Marco Island, and was even more pleased to give us an armchair travelogue of the Gulf coast.
The only shadow of the Kayo of yesteryear descended momentarily after he had inquired about my job and my salary as a college teacher. He received the answer with an ironic smile and a resigned shake of the head.
"I want to be reincarnated as a teacher," he said, as if that kind of good fortune were the same as for someone committing murder with impunity. In the old days, that would be his lead-in to a harangue about work and education that would accelerate into indecipherable outbursts vaguely condemning lazy people who unjustly got more than those who worked hard. But on this day, he moved on to another topic.
He invited us to have dinner, and I went to drop the bags at the nearby hotel where we were registered. When I got back, my wife was waiting out front, clearly distraught.
"Jackie is a wreck," she said. "Eddie went into one of his rages, and she’s locked herself in the bathroom.
While I was gone, she explained, the conversation led to my teenage daughter’s efforts to earn money for college, one of which involved a very short stint at a fast food restaurant. She had quit after the first day, because while she wanted to work as a food preparer, the manager insisted she start out as a store maid by mopping floors, cleaning the bathroom, and washing windows.
Hearing of her refusal to do menial labor, Eddie went berserk, and according to my wife, his seizure at 75 was even more ghoulish than at 50. She even momentarily feared he was going to drag Jackie to clean the toilet in their house.
I extracted Jackie from the locked room. She was red-eyed but now more incredulous than frightened. She did not understand why this old man whom she barely knew attacked her. She was more used to adults lauding her for her school work, her industriousness, and her initiative. A thoughtful, independent minded 16 year-old, she had already determined she was going to be a college professor, and has firmly stuck to that resolve now that at age 25, she has a Ph.D. and teaches classes in folklore and remedial writing to college students.
She waited with her brother and sister and mother in the car while I went to tell Eddie we had to leave.
"What the hell were you thinking?" I said.
"Oh, I can see where she gets her habits."
"I thought—was hoping you had changed."
He glared at me.
"See?" he said, convinced, somehow, he had gotten in the last word. He sat back in his chair. He checked the contents of his shirt pocket, but he no longer smoked. He was still facing in my direction, but his eyes and attention were elsewhere.
I did not expect anything I could say would have an impact. Watching an old man in the worn chair, as he waited for the next impulse, the next surge of anger to grip his now feeble body and give him another reason to rant, I resisted the sympathy that offered itself. The sympathy indulged in by my mother, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, all of us, for all those years. The sympathy that enabled us to abide him. The sympathy that enabled us to enable him.
And in the face of an assault on my own daughter, to whom this man’s rage and cruelty were incomprehensible, I had an awakening: Jackie was the first to honestly react to the proverbial elephant in the room, which we had pretended for all those years was not there.
We left Marco Island, never to return. And I think it’s a good thing. Not strictly the passing of Uncle Eddie or of the world he inhabited. After all, his era, a time when someone could realize the material American dream through sheer will power and physical work, was an exalted epoch for the common man.
Unfortunately, that is becoming less true in the 21st century. The demise of unions and their influence, the phenomenon of outsourcing, and a host of other economic and political developments over the past 25 years have widened the income and cultural gaps between college educated professionals and workers like Eddie. This transformation, in fact, was ostensibly a major cause of his ever increasing consternation.
But what is good is that America, still a magnificent spawning bed for progress and ideas, rewards conformity and intolerance less than it does thinking, adapting, socializing, and learning. What is good is not that America needs Uncle Eddie less, but that it needs Jackie more.
He’s 80 years old, still down south. And I suspect there are a few Uncle Eddie clones throughout the land, adding excitement to family functions in every state. I’ve recently remarked to my grown children, that the red state phenomenon which surprised the media in the last national election, might well have been the uncle-eddie-syndrome rearing its ugly head.
But I also made sure to tell them that there were other, not so obvious reasons for Uncle Eddie’s rages, and that there was, in fact, another side to him.
Which led to my recalling for them a softball game at family picnic at Mays Lake, Illinois, many years ago, played by all the men, with us kids and the women watching from the sidelines.
Uncle Donny played first base because of his height, and Eddie was behind the plate. They were the stars on both defense and offense, and Eddie’s incredible energy translated into constant motion, incessant chatter, ribald laughter, and, most obvious of all, pure joy in being in the middle of the action.
I was also mesmerized by the seriousness and intrigue of the two of them as adults at play. In the middle of an opponents’ rally, Eddie came out to the mound and called all the infielders over. After they resumed play, Donnie suddenly tagged out the runner leading off of first, with the ball he had hidden after Eddie slipped it to him on the mound.
The two of them batted consecutively, and in the last inning, Donny called Eddie over to whisper a secret, after which Eddie got on first by pooching a slow grounder to a third baseman playing too deep to throw him out.. And then Donnie came up and hit a line drive home run down the first base line, to win the game.
It was Eddie and his brother leading the way in a game in which everyone followed their rules. What he had always thought life was supposed to be.