“Thirst”

Once, Great-grandpa teased that my home must be like a big swimming pool, it rained so much. I shook my head. 

“The ground keeps drinking it,” I said.

“So, it’s that kind of thirsty,” he answered. 

I’m not sure, but I think Great-grandpa disapproved of that thirst. He ate and drank sparingly. If water was left in his glass he’d set it aside where it magnified the glints in the countertop, and he’d drink it later. He never complained about the weather. He practiced satisfaction. 

Grandma and I didn’t say much last year in the weeks after he died. I suppose we talked in the way animals do, soft sounds of parting and greeting, syllables about the weather, small nods and brushes and blinks, murmurs regarding the food Grandma knew we still needed to eat. She and I looked around a lot, more bewildered than comforted by the world that hadn’t changed when a man who had been a solid fact for the entirety of both our lives became a figment supported only by memory and guesses roving between belief and superstition about what he had become. We sat on the back porch every night after dinner and stared. I don’t know what Grandma was hearing in her head, we didn’t talk about those things. But I kept hearing Great-grandpa saying “You’ll never be able to add them up, Claire.” He’d tell me that, it seemed like every summer, when he’d see me gazing at the blades of prairie grass growing right up to the walls of their house and out to the edge of the world where the sky came down. He said it softly though, and I knew he wasn’t mocking me.