The Old Russian Bear (Short Story, 1973)

The Old Russian Bear
[The Old Russian Bear: 1973]


Old Grandpa Tony [Anton] swore more than most people prayed, and I’m talking about the clergy. He was all of five feet tall, complete, that’s all he stood, I always thought he was at least six foot tall myself, even when I went to high school and towered over him, but no, he was only five feet tall, period. It’s not the unpardonable sin, I know—to swear, but if you added them all up, all the cussing words he done in front of me, and then there is 24-hours to the day, it would top the Andes, and then some. But he was kind enough to allow my mother, brother and myself to live with him, in his house during my formative years. And back in the fifties, it was rough, so I suppose I can say, thanks gramps. But the Old Russian Bear, used to say:
“I tell you vhut you gottaa wtch dem boys Elsie (his daughter, my mother)—dhay make-too much noise!”
All the time we had to be quieter than mice in the house.
“Well,” I heard mom say once, “I can’t watch them boys every second of the day?” to grandpa.
Grandpa thought about that for a while, a minute or two, “I gonna throw dem out den!” he said.
I think he started telling mom that from my thirteenth birthday on, steadily. He liked my brother Mike for some odd reason: perhaps I didn’t pay him much attention, or for that matter any attention. I was very active, meaning: overactive, I could never seem to slow down, and that may have bothered him some. Nowadays, they give kids pills up the yen yang to slow them down: back then, mom would say: “Go run it off…” and out the door I went, and I’d run a mile here or there, and come back and eat up a storm, that seemed to do the trick.
“Yes,” mother would say, “I’ll tell him to play outside more…” (I was but ten, at the time).
I think it all started one day when I was in Earnest’s car, a 1950 Chevy (my mother’s boyfriend for forty-years), and mom was looking at me in the backseat, and I was about seven years old then, and I asked about this and that, many questions, too many questions, I never could be settled too long, and she noticed that, and would try to answer my numerous questions, and she’d get tired, and say:
“Stop! You’re wearing me out….”
So when I got older I bought an encyclopedia set and read it a few times from start to finish: a to z. One year I read 400-books, after all my other activities. I slept four to six hours all my life, until I got ill, and slept 10 to 14 hours; made up for all that lost sleep.

—Grandpa would put his pipe in his mouth, pace the kitchen, mumbling, “Them god…d…m..kids.”
He didn’t want us boys to stay with him in the house, but he didn’t want mom to leave, she did all the work, and bought the television and the furniture, and did his laundry, and bought the groceries: she was an economic asset for him, as he was for her (or us). He bought the meat for the Sunday meals, paid the heat and water bill, and phone bill. They had a good system going I suppose. I always prayed mom would take us kids out of that environment, but it was as it was, and it gave me a father figure I suppose, he had good work ethics, and I suppose I got that from him. In any case, mom, she’d reinforce, by telling me,
“Nobody’s going to kick you out.”
And he never did.
When I grew up: went to Vietnam, and came back home for a visit, Grandpa, being in WWI, was proud of me, but he still had that bear in him, and one day he said something, and I got mad, and I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I said:
“Grandpa, don’t swear at me, if you don’t want me here I’ll leave, but if you swear once more I’m going to knock your ass!” and I walked away angry. I had always felt bad about telling Grandpa that, even to this day, it really wasn’t called for, I could have walked away like always, I just wanted to let him know, I was not that little kid you could pull his ears, when you didn’t like what was happening. And I was sorry for that, as I had said—but I did make up for it, I think. When he was too old (meaning, 83-years old, he worked up to 78) and his children were coming over to count his money (he had several children living at the time), and was threaten by them, I heard about it, and made myself present when they were present, and told everyone: the threatening was over, that if I heard about it again, I’d throw them out, everyone out, one by one if need be. I think, Grandpa may have heard it from the dinning room, not sure what or how he felt, but I guess, if I made up for that bad remark, so be it. On the other hand, he asked me to make him eggs, and I did. But I guess if there is an insight to this story, let it be this: we are more than we think we are part of our environment. In other words, I had a little of that Russian Bear inside of me also, and sometimes two bears don’t mix.

Written 9-2005, St. Paul, Minnesota (reedited, 5-2008)