The chair was not a rocker, but it rocked, a victim of long time lean backs and porch drags.
The wood was worn and faded in a way that made it seem as though it was returning to the tree it came from.
Eekie claimed the chair was special, not just because it was an antique, but because the person who made it was someone special.
He wasn’t a famous chair maker or anything, he was famous for something else, like inventing a new kind of chewing tobacco, or saving some kids from drowning, or finding the image of Jesus in a tin of breath mints.
Eekie couldn’t remember, but she couldn’t remember hardly anything, even why Martina Colovich Gebber’s grandchildren started calling her Eekie.
Tad Gebber sat in the chair most of his life, leaning back, telling stories, drinking this warm tea moonshine that Bulb Winston called Smile Soup.
Tad was known to slap the grandkids hands when they got confused and reached for Packy’s soup.
Eekie couldn’t remember why the grandkids started calling Theodore Russell Gebber Packy, but they did, and they liked listening to Packy’s stories.
Michael had three kids, Eekie couldn’t remember their names, but they were all E’s, Emily maybe and Eathan maybe and something else that wasn’t a name, really, and they hung around until it was dark listening to Packy’s stories when they came down from…wherever they lived near Portsville or Tartan Falls, or…Eekie just remembers them leaving after dark, she’s pretty sure anyway and Packy decided to read by candlelight, out on the porch.
He had been drinking Smile Soup all day and Eekie was afraid he was gonna fall asleep in the chair and get all mosquito bit, but Packy managed to do worse than that.
He fell asleep with the candle lit, between his legs, on his old chair, and burned himself something crazy between the legs, screamin’ and hollerin’ that Eekie damn sure remembers and won’t ever forget.
Packy came home with bandages and medicines and more appointments, and something about that trip to that hospital way over there by…way over there somewhere made Packy quit drinking Smile Soup, and any other damn thing besides Red Towne Club pop, the same color of that candle that melted down on that chair.
Eekie told Packy that he had to get that candle wax off that chair, because the man who made it invented the blimp or saved Governor Ruttman from getting hit by a train, but Packy told her that the wax was staying to remind him not to drink no Smile Soup no more.
So Packy sat in that chair, with the wax, and he didn’t feel like telling stories so much no more, but when the grandkids came over he’d get up in the yard and throw a ball with them, bandages still on his legs.
Packy didn’t fall asleep in the wax chair anymore, he fell asleep in bed, and one of them sleeps didn’t end.
Eekie remembered 911 and they came, but Packy was gone.
They told stories at Packy’s funeral, and Eekie didn’t remember most of that stuff happening, but people laughed and Eekie remembered the Theodore she met outside the Brighton Theater, tough and handsome and drunk.
Some time after the funeral, her son…Martin or Michael or Mitch, something like that and his kids had a big old yard sale for her, and she told them not to sell the chair with the red wax on it, because it wouldn’t be proper, it was damaged.
People she didn’t know called her by her name, and called her Eekie and she said hello to everyone, people she knew she met and people she didn’t.
The sun was dropping behind the garage like it was playing hide and seek with Eekie when a man sat in the chair with the wax.
He rocked back and smiled, and Eekie heard him ask how much.
Before her son could answer, her oldest son, she was pretty sure, the man set his beer down between his legs right onto that red wax.
He said “Well look at that, it fits,” and Eekie wasn’t sure if he meant his rear end or his beer, then the man rocked back and his beer didn’t spill.
The man handed her son some money, and carried the chair off smiling and sipping a beer.
Eekie wanted to call out to him and tell him there was something special about that chair, but she couldn’t remember exactly what.
***
Really enjoyed this. This line was lovely: “The wood was worn and faded in a way that made it seem as though it was returning to the tree it came from.”
Oh my heart. A story about a story teller and more. Thank you Jimmy.
"Eekie couldn’t remember, but she couldn’t remember hardly anything, even why Martina Colovich Gebber’s grandchildren started calling her Eekie.
Tad Gebber sat in the chair most of his life, leaning back, telling stories, drinking this warm tea moonshine that Bulb Winston called Smile Soup.
Tad was known to slap the grandkids hands when they got confused and reached for Packy’s soup."