Requiem [COMPLETED]

Sven and Grandpa Pick Up Where They Left Off: Badly

I remember Sven at eleven, right when we got back to the farm, the childhood potbelly thinning away and the reed-thin adolescent not yet there. He still had a child's loose-limbed grace. Around his mouth were muscles that would later result in deep frown and laugh lines, but now just displayed a curious tightness, as if he were having a charley horse on his face. It was his predominant expression, tight mouth and eyes that looked as if the blinds were half closed. You could rarely see the emotion in them, hidden in the darkly pooled irises and only daring to peer out when they thought no one was looking.

It was not long after our return at the start of a long weekend; Sven and I were forlorn about school being off for the next two days before the weekend. Sven's new-old friend from the first time we'd lived there, Chuck, had promised to get his dad to call and ask if we could come over one day to play. The phone rang, and expectantly we had sat like ground squirrels at attention, ramrod straight and cheeks full of food, watching to see if grandpa would allow it. It wasn't promising though; he half-grunted a few words here and there, and then said "No, can't," and hung up. Grandpa never cared for formal etiquette, though he expected us to use it.

"Was that Chuck's dad?" Sven asked.

"No." Grandpa continued eating.

"I don't believe you," said Sven, with solemn quietness.

Grandpa tossed his fork on his plate. "You're a silly little ass, " said Grandpa with brusque staccato, "a very rude little boy."

Sven flushed but kept his head up, his look that of someone who believes in being absolutely right. Sven was always stubborn—but then, looking at grandpa I could see where he got it.

"You ask for trouble, don't you?"

"I never ask you for anything," replied Sven quietly.

"Don't you think you're just an ungrateful child, to have nothing better to do than disagree with me just to infuriate me?" he was speaking calmly, but I still felt uncomfortable and a little afraid. Grandpa's outbursts could go up like an atomic bomb or never disturb the surface and I never knew what to expect. Regardless, it was just words said in anger or disapproval. And admittedly, both he and Sven were each other's best opponents, the most able to rile the other.

Sven's silence was deferral, but also a symbolic refusal to fully accede the point which grandpa picked up with his finely tuned obsession with obedience.

"Well, Sven," he said, throwing his napkin onto his plate, "your stubbornness is getting out of control." He finished his milk while Sven remained statuesque. "What point do you think you're trying to make? Other than that you're damned foolish sometimes--'Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.' As your family and guardian I know what's best. I have yet to ask for your opinion at all, yet you insist on giving it, which is irrespectful."

No response. A blink, maybe.

Is irrespectful a word? I thought.

"There isn't anyone to help you, in all the world you have me, and I take care with you both. You know why things are as they are." He moved forward, leaning slightly over the table. "Your behavior has gone far enough; I've been too lax, allowing too much to pass as the stress of change and having been under a different formal conduct with those other people." He never referred to the Hansens by name, as if refusing by to dignify their efforts to care for us in that mutli-year interim with acknowledgement, he could wipe clean any of their influence. "I will enforce my rules whether you fight me or not. I suggest you forget everything you're thinking in that little brain of yours before you get into real trouble. For the path and the wages of sin lead to exile and misery."