The Siege of '58

I was still half asleep when the factory whistle blew at seven. Five more minutes, I thought to myself and then I heard the heavy tread of my grandfather’s feet on the stairs and smelled the stale cigar smoke. A moment later, the bathroom door slammed shut and I snatched at my clothes and ran for the stairs, thinking that if I was quick enough, I might make it down to the kitchen and outside before he emerged. I never saw the toy dump truck my brother had left in the doorway to the living room or if I did I stepped over it without seeing the potential hazard.

Nana, still in her housecoat and slippers, was at the stove and I flew by her with the dogs at my heels.

“Breakfast is almost ready!” she called to me, “Don’t go far!”

It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes later when I heard the crash – my grandfather had stepped on or tripped over the dump truck and lost his footing – he went down like a ton of bricks, slamming into the doorway, howling in pain and then cursing and hollering like a wounded bull moose.

“SONOFAWHORE!” I heard him bellowing, “ALICE! ALICE! GODDAM IT, ALICE!”

I quickly decided my best option was to make myself as scarce as possible so I grabbed my sneakers, called to the dogs, and headed around the corner and down the front path as fast as I could run barefoot. I kept going til I got to the canteen where I ran headlong into Uncle Bernie with such force that I nearly knocked him down.

“Whoa, girl!” he said sharply once he regained his balance and rescued his spilled morning coffee, “Where’s the fire?”

“He fell!” I managed to say, “He might be dead!”

Uncle Bernie frowned, took hold of my shoulders and gave me a good shake.

“Who fell? Who might be dead?” he demanded but it was all I could do to breathe and the words wouldn’t come. I pointed toward the house and then burst into tears. For a man in his mid-80’s, Uncle Bernie moved with surprising speed, shooing me inside the canteen and telling me to stay put, then setting off for the house at a rapid but irregular jog.

And so began the siege of the summer of ‘58.

Not being a particularly nice human being, it was no surprise that my grandfather did not make a particularly nice patient. In addition to a broken leg, Doc McDonald diagnosed a mild concussion. He sedated the old man, set and splinted the broken bones and left a small bottle of codeine pain pills for my grandmother to administer, helped set up the bedroom off the kitchen as a recovery room and promising to have a bedpan and urinal delivered that afternoon, climbed into his old pick up and went on his way. My grandfather spent his first bedridden day in a narcotic haze and it was the last rest my grandmother got for months. He woke the next morning in pain and in a restless rage, shouting profanity and abuse at the entire world and threatening to whip my brother into the next week. Nothing Nana did or said could calm him and after he had flung the bedpan and urinal and narrowly missed her, she fled and locked the door behind her. Something immediately hit the door with force enough to make it tremble. That was followed by the sound of breaking glass and a stream of obscenity.

“Call the doctor back,” she snapped at my badly shaken mother, “Now! Before he wrecks what’s left of the goddam room!”

Doc had to call in reinforcements – John and Jacob Sullivan were drafted because they were the youngest and the closest – and it took both of them plus the doctor to get my out of control grandfather into restraints and then finally injected with a serious dose of tranquilizers. When he came to later that night, Doc read him the riot act and made it very clear that if he couldn’t adjust and behave, he would find himself incarcerated in Dartmouth for the duration.

“You wouldn’t dare!” my grandfather snarled.

“Your safety and the safety of this household is a responsibility I take very seriously, Charlie,” Doc said calmly, “Try me.”

It was a steel edged threat and surprisingly enough, my grandfather seemed to realize it. Over the course of the next several weeks, he continued to be cantankerous and demanding and tyrannical and the entire household catered to him but there were no more serious temper tantrums. He ran Nana and my mother ragged caring for him (neither my brothers nor I were allowed to see him and I considered us fortunate but kept it to myself) and showed not the slightest appreciation but at least there were no more flying bedpans or shattered mirrors. It appeared that my grandfather, while not brought down, had been reined in enough to be nearly manageable.

When he was able to be up and around in a wheelchair, my grandfather paid one of the younger Sullivan brothers to collect the little dump truck and every other similar toy and smash them to smithereens while my brothers watched.

The siege of the summer of 1958 ended with no one daring to defy him and as often happens in real life, misery winning the day.