Large Fierce Mammal

I was irrevocably estranged from my paternal grandfather by the time I was 16 years old.

Clem Whynacht was a Master Carpenter who could build, finish and mend anything made of wood to a degree of perfection that was marvelous to behold. He was also an exceptional wood carver with a gift for turning out highly detailed replica fishing schooners and dories that were detailed down to levels of minutiae that had to be seen to be believed. Every piece, however tiny, was entirely carved by hand.

When in his cups my grandfather was also violently abusive to my Grandmother, Almeta, his Wife who had given him seven strapping children. Abusive to the degree that his sons, my Father foremost among them, felt compelled to put him on notice that he henceforth raised a hand to her at peril of his life. He felt it in his best interests to comply, but not for long. My Grandmother, ever a nervous woman with a defective heart valve that was a legacy of childhood illness, released him from his compulsion by dying of congestive heart failure when she was 48 years old.

As a child, I became a voracious reader with wide ranging interests in all things scientific. I was the first member of the Whynacht Clan to ever finish high school, and go on to university, and it was my studious nature coupled with my academic success that piqued the interest of Clem’s nasty side. He viewed my pursuit of knowledge as evidence of effeminacy and homosexuality, notwithstanding any other supporting proofs to the contrary, and  began to openly and crudely insult me – again though, only when emboldened by the contents of a bottle.

When I was 16, he was diagnosed with cancer in the right side of his jaw, necessitating disfiguring surgery – the affected section of jaw bone had to be removed – and so as the man became physically lessened, so too did his bad side swell. I stayed away because I wanted nothing to do with him by this time, but one day when I was 17, just back from a summer in Montreal visiting my Maternal Grandmother and the saying of fond goodbyes to my virginity, I was asked by my Father to drop by my grandfather’s house and retrieve some item that he had lent to what was left of the pathetic “Old Man” as he had come to be called. I knew my Father needed the item, and because of the demands of his business wasn’t free to retrieve it himself. Also that he had called ahead to shorten my exposure by having the item ready for pickup.

It was an easy mission to run around the corner of our block to where Clem lived in the care of his only daughter, my Aunt Paulette, although not so much when I found him sitting and glowering on his usual perch; an ancient and ornately carved rocking chair adjacent to the kitchen wood stove, a bottle of rum near at hand and a rubber carpenter’s mallet standing handle up in the wooden newspaper rack next to him. My Aunt was also there making supper, but I don’t believe she was quite prepared for what transpired.

I greeted my Aunt and then turned to my grandfather and politely asked him for the item in question. His reply had nothing at all to do with the matter at hand, but included comparisons of my character with seed bearing produce, and even as he was speaking it I noticed the object of my mission – some sort of tool although for the life of me I can’t remember what – lying atop a small table in the hallway, just visible through the doorway behind him..

“Ah!” I said, “Never mind. I see it.”

As I stepped forward to pass him, he suddenly found it in himself to come to his feet with that mallet in hand, hurl another blast of insults, and bring the mallet down on the right arm rest of his rocking chair with sufficient force to splinter both it and the supporting structure beneath it.

I had come prepared for his mouth, but this was something else, and I could feel anger jump into my throat. I was very young you see, and not yet the Man I am  today, so I can’t say I actually knew where I was headed when stepping in, I grabbed the mallet and twisted it out of his hand with an ease that seemed to contradict his erstwhile ferocity. We stood there a while, eye to eye and but inches between us. He began to tremble. I put a hand on his shoulder and slowly, firmly, pushed him back into his chair before stepping to the wood stove, opening the door, and tossing the mallet into the fire. Not another word was spoken as I obtained the borrowed tool and departed.

It was only a few months before the cancer had him back in hospital waiting to die. I somehow ended up coming along with my parents to visit him there. My manner was cold, and he behaved himself. There were several visits, and on one of them he asked my Father if he would bring a few of his carving tools and a block of wood because he wanted to thank one of his Nurses by carving her a small boat model. My Father agreed, and in the following week I went off to a local lumber supplier to obtain a block of Pine of suitable dimensions.

That weekend, we visited again, so the tools and wood were delivered. I handed him the block myself, telling him I’d gotten Pine so it would be easier to carve and sand. He turned it over in his hands and informed me it wasn’t Pine at all, but Cedar. I disagreed in the spirit of here we fucking go again. I told him I didn’t think it unreasonable for a man who had worked wood all his life to be able to tell the difference.

Two weeks later, Clem Whynacht was dead, and we returned to the hospital to take care of his personal effects. He had left a note asking that I, personally, give the perfect little replica of a schooner hull to his favourite Nurse who had evidently been off duty since it was completed. I thought it an odd request until I looked it over and found a single word written in my grandfather’s semi-literate and, at the time, palsied hand.

It read, “Serter”, but I knew what he meant.