grandfather, beloved
by Nicholas Russell
He came down as a wasp swarm in the beginning. The nest was spun and stuck together against our deck, hundreds of wings, stingers, eyes, and at night he spoke to us through the vibrations of the hive.
There was the bear in the shed. He made his home out of lawn chairs and camping things we rarely ever used. All of it eventually bent under his weight. He fed on leftovers and mice and underneath him lay an old shirt he wore to bed on cold nights. But the shed was warmer than the naked yard and there he slept for a whole season, one eye closed, one eye roving.
He came on his belly as a snake, long, slick with sunlight, straw yellow with dark spots on his crown. In the mornings, he passed us by like a train, like patrol, round and round the yard the same way as before, though this time his shoes sat abandoned in the grass. Things gathered in his beady eyes, disappeared with his body beneath the overgrown weeds and like this, we were often fooled into thinking he had finally left us.
He flies a crow, circling the house in huge feathered strokes. We hear him swooping above us, dropping rocks and bits of metal onto the roof, cawing, speaking of what lies beyond. His wings wrap round the sky like black hands, like a wilting flower, like double doors hinging shut but never closing, and still. Still, if we know anything, we know nothing. Hope hangs off the back of our heads and swings its weight down our spines. He passes by the window, wingtip brushing the glass, a clear trail left in the dust. We watch. We wait.
Nicholas Russell is a writer from Las Vegas. His work has appeared in The Believer, The Guardian, Defector, Columbia Journal, Reverse Shot, and NPR, among other publications. He's a columnist at Gawker, a contributing prose editor at Burrow Press Review, and a bookseller at the Writer's Block in Las Vegas.
