Great Uncle Marvin

Great Uncle Marvin

It was the Spring my cat Petey moved away. At least that’s what my parents told me, a three-year-old too young to be exposed to the fact that the neighbor across the road had poisoned and killed my pet. I heard that story many years later when my mother referred to it, then sheepishly remembered no one had ever told me the truth. By then the lesson was no longer the world is a hard place where a neighbor can kill your cat, but the past which you thought was concrete and known is actually fluid and mysterious, changeable by perception and point of view.

It was also the Spring my Great Uncle Marvin made his one and only guest appearance in my life. I had never seen him before although I had heard some about him. Marvin was an independent sort who lived in a cabin in the Sierras by himself that sometimes became snowed-in. He was a caretaker for PG&E of their remote power stations and in the winter he would snowshoe to check on his charges.

Marvin, a tall, skinny sort of man, who could have doubled as a Circus Sideshow “Elastic Man,” roared into our lives on a smallish dirt-bike, accompanied by a mop-dog who rode along in a basket. Details are almost non-existent. I don’t know how long he stayed, what was talked about, or if there was a reason for his visit. What I remember was that each family member got to go for a ride on his bike. Each man, each woman took a turn riding behind Marvin. They would drive down the road, past a bend and disappear only to return five or ten minutes later. I remember feeling enough of an established member of the family to hope for a turn of my own, but one that was “seen and not heard enough” not to speak up and ask for one.

I didn’t get a turn.

Later we sat at my grandparents table, the mop-dog asleep on a blanket by the fire, and talked together as a family. Once again the details are fuzzy and I can almost imagine the static of a bad connection in my brain as the members present jump back and forth. First my Grandpa Vern, Marvin’s brother, is there and they are hugging, glad to be reunited again; then Grandpa Vern is gone and has recently died, and Marvin hugs and comforts Grandma Lil. Aunt Diane, my mother’s sister, who would later hold a grudge and take leave of our lives for more than twenty years, alternately skulks in a corner only to disappear.

What I do remember is that mop-dog. After all of the talking was done and it was time for them to go, that dog ran joyously to the motorcycle and leapt at least eight times it’s own height into that basket with no help from a human. Tongue panting, tail wagging, body trembling with excitement, he seemed glad to be departing our company. And I remember Marvin, riding off into the sunset; I can almost picture the closing circle-vignette of an old silent movie closing around him; no more permanent in my life than a cat who moved away only to be murdered decades later.