Mowing Normandy

I remember the smell of grandfather’s beard, the smell of his polyester shirts. I remember how his skin folded in creases on his forehead, the liver spots. I remember he was a great man, survived the invasion of Normandy,

“Hey Grandpa, tell me about the War. Tell me about the Invasion. Did you have to kill anyone?”

Grandpa didn’t look at you when he told stories, as if he was recalling the event straight from a vision only he could see. He would rest his head on his hand, with his index finger aside his nose, and his thumb below his chin, and then he would start talking,

“There isn’t much to say, I was just trying to stay alive. Bullets were flying everywhere. Men were falling like rag dolls. There was lots of blood and flashes, and screaming. I just kept running, running away from the bullets.”

He paused to adjust his black, horn-rimmed glasses, as if replacing the first memory with the next.

“Did you have to kill anyone?”

He looked up at me, “Who knows? Not then. Why are you so interested in killing?”

I felt guilty but didn’t know why. I thought about it for a minute, my grandfather’s steely grey eyes still upon me, waiting with infinite patience.

I shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess I wonder what it feels like …to…to kill a man.”

I waited for him to respond, and waited. He took off his glasses and pulled a dingy hanky from his pant pocket and began wiping the lenses.

“What benefit is it to you to know what I felt? You’re not me.”

He put his glasses back on and again rested his head on his hand and stared at me. A soft breeze came through the window behind us and blew the curtain gently inward. I looked outside. It was a brilliant summer day in the Bay Area.

I watched the neighbor mowing his lawn. For a moment, I fantasized, he and I were locked in mortal combat on the TURF PRO sod outside his house. I snapped out of it.

“Still, I want to know what you felt, whether it applies or not.”

He pursed his lips and took a deep breath through both nostrils, and then exhaled. He sat up,

“I felt nothing, except fear. Fear of dying, fear of living, fear of killing.”

Then he walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, pulled out a beer, and went out back to sit by the pool. While I watched our neighbor mowing our lawn.