A portrait of a man long since gone

He wasn’t a big man in most ways. He didn’t have much in the way of worldly possessions. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t the kind of man you measured that way.

For the better part of his 70 years, he labored under the summer sun or in the winter cold to make his way. Most of the time it was for someone else. But all the while he lived on his place with a few acres, raised a garden, kept a few chickens and milked a cow and fed some cattle.

I don’t know when he first became a part of my life. It seems as though he was always there. But thinking back, it must have been before I started school. He looked no different than he did the last time I saw him years ago.

He always wore bib overalls to work. During the summer, he wore a khaki shirt with them; during the winter, he wore khaki trousers under them, too, with an overall waist jacket. When he went to town, he wore the khaki shirt and trousers with a pair of dress shoes, slightly oval-toed, plain brown low cuts, to replace the ankle high work shoes.

Rain or shine, winter or summer, he wore a cap on his head to cover his milk-white, baldhead that was ringed by short, curly gray-streaked hair. During a hot summer day, he’d pause, take the hat off to wipe the sweat that had popped out in tiny beads on his forehead and wipe it off with a big red-checkered handkerchief.

The milk-white forehead and baldhead covered by the cap would contrast with the deeply bronzed summer tan on the rest of his face and neck and make him look like an entirely different man. And had he ever worn any other clothes, he would have looked like an entirely different man.

When he wanted to go to town, he’d walk up the sidewalk in his work clothes, looking up now and then, stepping carefully on the grass-covered walk and keeping his hands in his pockets. Then he’d talk to my father and fidget awhile before getting around to what he wanted.

“Uh, huh, you ain’t goin’ to town today, are you?” he’d finally ask. “I got to do some tradin’ and pay my light bill. I don’t think we could make it ’til next week without doin’ some tradin’.”

After he found out about going to town, he’d leave and walk quickly down the street with his right hand out of his pocket, swinging it back and forth as he walked. A few minutes before time to go he’d walk back up the street.

This time he’d be wearing a new khaki outfit, have the cap cocked to the right side of his head and be walking up the middle of the road, swinging his hands back and forth. He’d sit on the edge of the seat on the way to town.

“Now I got to git back by feedin’ time,” he’d say.

But once in town he’d not always worry about feedin’ time and stop in the corner drugstore, he called it, after he’d done his tradin’. When he’d finally get ready to go, he’d stick a King Edward in the corner of his mouth and smoke the cigar as though he really liked it. He never smoked otherwise.

I remember helping him in the field time after time when we were farming for my father; the stoic look he had on his face then never changing from early in the morning until later in the evening. On the way home, he didn’t say much. And then he’d walk down the street to his waiting supper.

The next morning he’d appear out of the darkness, ready to go another day. I often wondered what he thought about during those times. He rarely said a word. I said quite a few.

It never mattered what I said. He’d smile or nod. When I needed a place to keep a 4-H or FFA project, a young Berkshire gilt, he let me have an acre or so with an old shed in one corner and wouldn’t take a penny for it.

He let me have a drink of beer one hot summer afternoon when I’d gone to town with my dad and him. I’ve only tasted beer a couple of times as good as that one, and I can vividly remember riding along that dusty gravel in a truck between the two of them and savor the taste of that first drink of beer.

There were times after I left home when I didn’t see him for a long time. But the fact that he’d always be there when I came back was comforting. I’d always stop by his house before I’d been home very long. He was still stoic most of the time, though sometimes he’d laugh and shake his head.

The last time I saw him was less than a week before he died. I’d come home for the weekend and was helping on the farm. We’d both been discing cornstalks that Saturday morning. And after I moved the tractor and disc to another field with him, I’d planned to got to town.

He stopped his outfit in front of me and walked back to where I had stopped mine. His face was a reddish blue from the cold north wind. He was shivering as he stopped beside the tractor, and I got down beside him.

“Will you get me a pint and a dozen?” he asked, unbuttoning his waist and taking his wallet out of his overall pocket.

“Sure, “ I told him and took the $20 bill he handed me.

For some reason, perhaps because of the crusading nature that is inherent in me, I decided to get him only a half pint and a half dozen. That evening I walked into the kitchen through the back door of his house. I walked through the dark kitchen into the semi-darkness of the living room before he saw me. He got up as soon as his wife spoke to me and motioned me to the kitchen.

I handed him the half pint, the half dozen and the change from the $20 bill. He took them and looked at me, his head tilted to the right.

“Why, that’s not what I told you to get,” he said.

“That’s what I thought you said,” I said, lying easily.

He knew and smiled. He deserved better. While discing stalks a few days later, he had a heart attack and fell from the tractor as he was turning at the end of the field.