Granta 125: After the War by John Freeman

her animation of other days. Why had she married Dad? Well, Dad was handsome and for thirty-one years held the Montana state record for the 440-yard dash. He looked like a sprinter until he died. His luck and happiness as a successful boy lasted all his life. Even Mother’s provocations bounced off his good humour when she attempted to elevate his general cultivation with highbrow events at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings. Dad liked Spike Jones, ‘the way he murders the classics’. I remember when he played ‘Cocktails for Two’ on the phonograph when Mother was at a school board meeting. I loved the hiccups, sneezes, gunshots, whistles and cowbells, but Kurt walked out of the house. I thought Dad held his own with Mother. Kurt thought she made him look like a bum.
    Kurt asked me to come over and help him get some things out of his garden, a jungle of organic vegetables that he plunderedthroughout the season as part of his health paranoia. He said that he intended to share some of this provender, as though to suggest that I would be suitably compensated. He was pouring with sweat when I got there, shirtless, his ample belly spilling over the top of his baggy shorts. He had on some kind of Japanese rocker shoes that had him teetering down the rows and doing something or other, strengthening his calves or his arches, I don’t know. He took me to a cucumber trellis that was sagging with green cylinders of all sizes and told me to take my pick. I had a big brown shopping bag and I started tossing cukes in there until he insisted on picking them himself, giving me the worst ones, ones with bug holes and brown blemishes.
    ‘Doozy has completely confused me with Wowser.’
    ‘I think you’re encouraging that, aren’t you?’
    ‘I’m learning way too much about Wowser, Earl. All their adventures. Roadhouses, et cetera. God-awful barn dances in the boonies. I imagine Dad is spinning in his grave.’
    Maybe Dad strayed too. I didn’t think so and it wouldn’t really fit for him. Dad was as plain as a pine board; but Mother, with her art and opera and shiny pumps – well, I could see it. Ambition is never simple. ‘Kurt, she has dementia. She could be making this all up.’
    Then he was right in my face. I could feel his breath as he rapped my elbow with a trowel. ‘How little you know. Dementia means she
can’t
make it up.’
    Kurt wanted me there to knock down his potato pyramid: he’d start his plants in an old car tyre, and as they grew he started stacking tyres and adding dirt until the whole assemblage reached eye level. Now was the pay-off and he wanted me there. ‘Ready?’ I said I was and he pushed over the stack of tyres, spilling dirt and hundreds of potatoes at our feet. He put his hands on his hips, panting, and smiled at the results. ‘Take all you want.’ I took a few. He’d be hiking up and down the street giving the damn things away.
    I had a sudden insight. ‘Kurt,’ I said, ‘you seem to be competing with Wowser.’
    He slugged me. The cucumbers and potatoes fell from my hand. He must have fetched me a good one because I could hardly find my way out to the street.
    I let it go. I can’t believe it but I did. I just wanted to keep these things at a distance. Kurt continued to press the staff at ‘Cloaca’ about whatever Mother might be saying that others would hear. He was obsessed by the unfamiliar nature of her coarse remarks which he said reflected the lowlife thrills she had experienced with Wowser. I had dinner with Kurt and his wife at the point that things seemed to be deteriorating. Their two boys were displeased to have me, their uncle, even in the house. These are two weird, pale boys. I don’t think they’ve ever been outdoors. I always ask if they’ve been hiking in the mountains. They hate me. Beverly was quite the little conversationalist, too. She asked why I didn’t have any girlfriends.
    ‘They just haven’t been coming along.’
    ‘They may find you drab. I