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by Joe Manus

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My mother’s second marriage was to a man twenty-seven years older. He was the greatest generation older.

He was an orphaned, first car Model T, Chicagoan, D-Day paratrooper, television on the radio old man.

No fear in loss.

Compassed risk.

Compassed reward.

He had an astounding fear of storms. We moved in together in Stone Mountain, Georgia when I was six. The house had a half basement that he used as a studio. There were tools to cut and shape wood, metal, stone, just about anything. It was filled edge to edge in a chaotic symphony that was really a masterpiece. One end of the room had a garage door to the outside. The opposite end had a heavy white door sullied by mildew and time. That door sat sentinel to a small room. It had a concrete pad for a floor and ramped red clay walls carved by someone some time ago. It was a damp, rainforest of a room that held hostage the humidity of a hundred past storms. Every surface shifted with half dead wood crickets from various poisons. There were candles and glass Mason jars filled with water, and four deteriorating wicker chairs. There was a weather radio he had fashioned to run off a stationary bicycle-powered generator.

That room was where he marched us all whenever there was a severe storm warning. He reacted to these warnings with the intensity of his Normandy invasion.

Hurried pace. Commanding orders and order.

Go! Go! Go!

We all latched on to the Sisal rope handrail. It acted like a surrogate static line to decent our descent down to the Bunker of Faith. I do not know if it was his past he was seeking shelter from or a premonition of our future together. He didn’t fear Nazis, but he surrendered his courage to storms. It was a strange dichotomy that made me not want to grow up. Those moments, in that earthen room, are the serenest memories I have of him, my mother, my sister, and I together.

Candlelight pirouetting across our faces. Drinking water from jars cooled by the dank dirt. Me breaking a sweat, as I pedaled to power a voice from a box. Watching my mother and sister being protected, by a man who, for that moment, was vulnerable. He was fearful of an occurrence that I was not scared of. He gave me that moment. We were safe. We were together. We were not in any real danger.

No fear in loss.

Compassed risk.

Compassed reward.

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