By Irene Westcott

This Story Won First Prize in Our Contest

Learn More About Our Contest Here

SEPTEMBER 2005

“He’s at it again,” my grandmother tells me when I pick up the phone. 

“The holes?”

“The holes.” She blows out a breath that’s part anxiety and part resignation. I know she’s at the front window of the small condo she shares with my grandfather, yellow phone cord stretched taut from the kitchen. 

“I’m leaving now.”

The drive to the fifty-five-and-over community where my grandparents live should take thirty-five minutes; I do it in just under thirty. As always, my heart aches a bit when I turn onto their street, crammed with beige duplexes. Blandly uniform, forcibly coupled. Attached for better or worse.

I find my grandfather where I expect him: in the front yard, paint-chipped shovel in hand, a mound of once-tidy turf at his feet. At eighty-one, his body remains stubbornly fit, strong back still able to snap to attention should an officer happen by.

Two doors down, a neighbor waters her begonias. Sixtyish and prim, dressed in a crisp white blouse. We make accidental eye contact as I pull into my grandparents’ driveway. I raise my hand in a greeting she pretends not to see.

“Dani!” My grandfather breaks into a wide grin that promptly falters. “Do I have the doctor today?”

“You look thirsty, Grandpa. How about we go inside, get some water?”

“Thirsty?” He considers this. “They rationed our water in ’45. Make it last, you see.”

“I see.” I reach for the shovel and—today—he relinquishes it. I guide him to the front door, which my grandmother has open before we even reach the stoop. 

“Get inside, Frank. You need a shower.”

He nods, but glances back at the yard, eyes lingering on his hole.

“It has to stop,” my grandmother says, once she hears the shower start. “Those homeowners association people—they’re going to fine us again. And you know how tight things are.”

I do know. Since my parents divorced and left for opposite coasts, much of my grandparents’ care has fallen to me. I run errands, decipher bills, even help a bit with expenses. But I can’t stop the digging. I’ve tried printing out the HOA rules, highlighting the landscaping restrictions. Each time I explain, my grandfather nods along, but by my next visit, the printouts have vanished—along with his memory of our talk. 

“He can’t even tell me why he’s doing it,” my grandmother says now. Her eyes are wet, and it makes my chest feel too small. “I keep asking him, ‘What are you looking for, Frank?’”

“And what does he say?”

“Is Johnny Carson on?”

I snort, and it snaps the tension like a twig. For a moment, we belly-laugh.

OCTOBER

It’s after dark when I arrive, but in the porch light, I can still make out the filled-in holes I’ve tried to re-seed. They form a closed, lopsided circle. I stare hard, trying to unearth their meaning, but they close ranks, resist.

My grandmother has a finger to her lips when she opens the front door. Behind her, on the couch, my grandfather is snoring. She makes two cups of tea, and we tiptoe through the kitchen to the garage. Two lawn chairs sit next to the car her eyes are no longer keen enough to drive.

“So how is he?”

She blows a curl of steam from her mug. 

“I didn’t see any new holes.”

“I hid the shovel.” 

We stare into the middle distance, knowing he’ll find it eventually. He always does.

When she speaks next, my tea is nearly cold. “I tried to leave him once, you know.”

I turn so quickly, Lipton sloshes into my lap. 

“Not long after the war. Your great uncle Arnold talked me out of it.”

“Grandpa’s older brother?”

She nods. “He lived with us for a while when your mom was small. Told me staying was my duty, that after what Frank had been through, I owed it to him.” She sips her cold tea, winces. “They’d sit up nights, talking on the porch at the old house. Sometimes, I listened at the window. It was the only time Frank ever discussed the war.”

“What’d he say?”

I watch as she sifts her memories. “That the people who built war memorials had it all wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“To his way of thinking, dying in the war was a great sacrifice. But so was coming home. The men who survived had to pack all that ugliness away inside them. Lug it around to the supermarket and the DMV. ‘Why build memorials,’ he said, ‘when there were millions of them walking around?’”

DECEMBER

The For Sale sign in the front yard lists to one side like a sinking ship. I make a feeble attempt to straighten it before heading inside.

It’s been two weeks since my grandfather slipped on some ice, fracturing both wrists and a leg. He’ll need at least six months in a nursing home, and selling the condo is the only way my grandmother can cover the cost.

So I’m here to pack.

She asks me to sort his clothes. I’m folding a sport coat that likely hasn’t been worn in thirty years when I find a scrap of yellowed paper in the breast pocket. It’s a schematic-style drawing of a precise ring of seven X’s; next to each is a name and a type of tree. Sergeant Bud Macready—silver maple, PFC Ned Winslow—chestnut, and so on.

“Gram?” I say, showing her the paper. 

We look for a long time. 

On the drive home, I imagine a circle of trees, grown tall and lush, branches filtering the sun. An inverse memorial, a place to sit and let go of long-guarded thoughts. I picture my grandfather at its center, breathing out his memories so they can be absorbed by the leaves and transmuted in a photosynthesis for the soul. 

I don’t know if this is what he intended. But later, I open my laptop and type a single word into the search bar:

Seeds.