An American Uncle
Steven Huff
Most Americans I know had an uncle like yours who
drove a red car with a leaky gas tank that burned up
one afternoon when some woman leaned on it and lit her
cigarette. He played poker and screwed, this uncle.
You had other uncles who screwed and nothing much
happened, but locusts rose from the abyss when this uncle
screwed and the bells in town went clunk. You found him
lying on the couch one morning, his face a raincloud-blue,
and you asked your mom as you dressed for school,
Is he dead? And she said, Why, no, no, though you could tell
she wasn’t too sure. This uncle wrestled the devil away
from the door of your house—he was the only one around
who could do such a thing, and when they tumbled over
the grass they threw off jagged splinters of light. He was
named for a Civil War general, but he didn’t care. When he
wasn’t lying deathly on the couch he was pouring cement
for a dam in Ecuador or Idaho. He coaxed you into
reading Ulysses and he called you up from Bora-Bora to ask
if you’d finished it yet, and he knew you were lying. In the war
he was shot down over France, and he parachuted into
a whorehouse. He taught you to love Billy Holliday
and Roosevelt. Unhappy women took turns marrying him
and each of them knew all the others. Your uncle who
never lived anywhere in particular as far as you knew,
he never loved anyone but your mother and you
and somebody else who probably never was born.
Which is what made him an American uncle, I suppose.