by Autumn Duckworth
My grandfather’s hands had always been a running joke within the family.
Once, upon meeting an NFL player, the athlete had told him that the championship
rings would never fit on sausage fingers like his. He proceeded to place the same
rings on my grandmother’s slender hands instead. Our family used to laugh and
compare our hands by placing them side by side to see the noticeable size
difference. This was before. His hands became a sore subject, and the
topic was avoided with reverence.
One minute the world was as it had always been. I had been spending
time with my grandparents in their kitchen/dining room area, laughing about one
of my many high school dramas. The next minute a loud bang echoed from the
kitchen where my grandfather had collapsed backwards on the floor, hands
slipping from the refrigerator handle. It was not the first time this had happened,
but it was the first time I had been in the room to witness it.
As a young man in 1965, he, among many others, was packed into buses
and involuntarily shipped off to another country to fight a war that wasn’t
asked for they had not asked for. Out of a sense of duty and patriotism, they served the
time the draft assigned them. He sat at one of the seats of the door gunners with
his hands pointing and firing the weapon he was assigned. The machinery rattled his
body as his hands shot endless rounds from the barrel. Strong arms guided the deadly
force while his fingers pressed down on the trigger for a succession of rapid fire.
In more serene moments, he worked on the maintenance of the Hhueys. His hands
meticulously worked on the rotors and engines of the carrier that would hover above
the battlegrounds. One mistake on his part could have sent the entire helicopter
to the ground. One step at a time, he worked his way through the bloodshed and
unpredictability of war in hopes to leave the effects behind him.
When he was a middle- aged man, his large, calloused hands worked dutifully
under the hood of a jet- black ‘68 Camaro. His steady grip held onto the wrench
that deliberately worked on the loosened parts within the compartment. They were
blackened with the grease from the car and moved with a practiced purpose.
Until motor vehicles became overrun with computers, his hands fixed them with ease.
Together, he and my father had built multiple cars from the ground up.
He had always seemed a jack-of-all-trades. His hands fixed vehicles,
hung pictures, switched light bulbs, trimmed trees, laid bricks, and poured concrete.
More than the simple labors, they cared for sons and a gaggle of granddaughters,
holding them when it was needed most. They wrapped around and cared for
a pair of hands that wrinkled with age in time with his own.
Presently, a tremble worked its way through the right hand up through the arm.
Tools sat in dusty boxes, and trees were torn out. He would sit in the corner of the
garage space, on a chair brought down specifically for him, as those more capable
than he worked on the vehicles housed inside. He was reduced to an opinion giver
instead of an active participant in the restorative process. His shaking would not
stop, it couldn’t stop. Instead, one hand sat perfectly still while the other
dangled dejectedly in his lap, quivering.
While Vietnam had never been a fight he had entered willingly, he had once
held onto the idea that it was all behind him. He was able to disguise many of the
after-effects of the war, but Agent Orange had left its marks that were unconcealable.
Nearly fifty years after he had left the war, his physical capabilities had started to
slowly deteriorate. It all started with those hands that had accomplished so much,
hands once capable of many skills now grasping onto door frames and countertops
to keep him from falling. To keep him standing, still.