Cal

My grandfather, known as Cal, was about 14 when his father died. Cal’s older brothers agreed to pool resources and support their mother, Charity Jane, but they told young Cal he had to leave home and fend for himself. 

Cal had a tough first winter alone in Sanger. He cleaned a pool hall and slept on one of the tables.  By December that was too cold, but a sex worker took pity on the boy and let him snuggle with her until spring. 

The next winter Cal joined a passing circus as a roustabout, helping erect the tent and so on, until he took up with the circus sharpshooter’s wife. He left that job in the middle of the night. 

I suppose he lived a typical American life. He worked as a driller in the oil fields of California and Venezuela, bought 100 acres of land near the headwaters of the Salinas River and lost his home when he refused to let some rich guys hunt deer on his property.  They took the place, using eminent domain. My grandparents moved to Atascadero and eventually to Clovis, their last stop. 

My mother would say now that I don’t know what Cal was like. That I spent about 30 days total in his presence. 

The Cal that I describe here, she would say, is not the real Cal—she would compare what I wrote to Rene Magritte’s oil on canvas, “The Treachery of Images.”