Peter Johnson

Extended Family Romance

“I was so fat my kids couldn’t wrap their arms around me.” People say things like that. “The answer always pales before the question,” is what my grandfather said. Something to sink one’s teeth into, like the smoked venison hanging in our attic. In the basement wooden birds appeared overnight. A squirrel’s tail tied to my handlebars. A gift. Woodworker, hunter. “He was so good-looking he should have been someone,” someone said. And grandmother in the kitchen listening to the dough rise, watching the long-legged alcoholic who’d stand half-naked at the window when grandfather shovelled.