“Do you think you’ll ever make a poet?” Cousin Sally asked Tom. Then, quickly- “I mean. Do you think you can earn a living writing poetry?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” The young man seemed stumped by the question. Why did people always ask him that? Frantic now he didn’t know how they’d got on the subject of him. “To be honest. I don’t know how I got started writing unless it’s in my genes.
“Genes? You’re sure?
“Why…why of course. I’m sure it’s in my genes. Look at Granddad Miller. For God’s sake, give me some slack.” This was the same ol’ guff that he always heard from his family “She’s the same,” he thought. “Doesn’t she know that I’m a published poet?”
Sally chuckled, obviously enjoying his discomfort. But he’d gone to see her to learn about his great grandfather. “Dispatches from the wild and wooly West. Does that interest you?”
Eagerly: “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be interested? I may be the only member of the family…”
“Now wait a minute. I’m just as proud of Granddad Miller as anyone, and maybe more so than… “ She stopped short before she asked, “What’s this about? You or Granddad Miller?”
“Secrets!” he thought. “The thing that spoiled Daddy Hayes for me…maybe…why yes…secrets. Most everything about Granddad Miller seemed to be lost.
“Granddad Miller.” He looked at both his Cousin Sally and his Uncle Henry. “Why don’t we know more about him?”
“There’s not much of his left. Everything was lost when a prairie fire burnt the house down. The only thing the fire department could do was standby and watch it go. There’s his grave in Shattuck Cemetery along with Grandma Miller’s.
Then Uncle Henry took him to the PBC Corporation plant to watch the grading and sizing of broomcorn. Was Tom that interested in broomcorn? But what else could he have shown him in Shattuck? What was left of Granddad Miller’s? What did Uncle Henry know and wouldn’t tell him? Where else besides where Granddad and Grandma Miller were buried could he show him?
Tom soon learned that broomcorn was a form of sorghum that was used in making brooms and whiskbrooms. As someone who had never lived on a farm and knew nothing about sorghum Tom’s interest perked up when he learned that Benjamin Franklin introduced broomcorn to the United States. As for the rest of the tour, Uncle Henry spent the time spouting off names of people that he knew in Shattuck. He’d lived around there most of his life so he knew almost everyone. Though many of them were dead, he still proceeded to talk about them, and yet he claimed that he didn’t know much about his own grandfather. As for Benjamin Barnett, who helped write the Oklahoma Constitution and who was a friend of William Jennings Bryan and certain knew Granddad Miller, the lawyer became a scout leader, and maybe that was why Uncle Henry knew everything about him.
As Uncle Henry pointed out the small frame building on Main Street that used to be Ida Barnett’s millinery shop, he couldn’t do the same for the SHATTUCK RECORD and as they drove north of town and crossed the Wolf Creek Bridge he expressed sadness about that. The man’s round face, which Tom had always known as cheerful and amiable, was downcast then. Indeed Benjamin Barnett and J.C. Miller were contemporaries. But for all Tom knew instead of friends they may have been rivals. Uncle Henry surely knew the story, as he knew the stories of so many people who lived and died in Shattuck, like Baysinger who was named after Ulysses S. Grant. God why! But whatever the reason was it seemed sad to Uncle Henry because there were tears in his eyes. Tom watched him wipe his eyes and blow his nose with the same checkered handkerchief.
“Well, son! You caught me this time, all right! A man oughtn’t cry. But I’m going to miss your grandmother.”
The same thing was true for Tom. He’d miss Mama Hayes, the stern/warm face, the long hugs, the give-away kindness of hers. He’d almost forgotten her in his search for Granddad Miller.
“Have you heard the stories that they tell about your Daddy Hayes?” Uncle Henry managed to smile then for Tom. “Oh, while growing up, he heard the call ‘Go west, young man, go west!’ Then sure enough! He ran away from Tennessee! Then became adept at many things. Became chief engineer for Railway Ice and Armor Company.”
Among all of them there was the same kind of pride when they talked about Daddy Hayes. “But in spite of that,” he told himself, “there were secrets.” His mother’s comments about his grandfather had caught Tom off guard, but did it really matter? Tom didn’t think so. But he sensed that behind the secrecy surrounding Granddad Miller there had to be the same sort-of sordid story, but he didn’t know, and it seemed as if he never would.
Randy Ford
