Eizer Griggs
From the archive, a five-minute reading. El Dorado County, Foothills of the Sierra, 1951.
Eizer Griggs was first posted in September 2022 as chapter 26 of my novel, Bartle Clunes. Many of you have already read it - and for that, I thank you! I post it again for my new subscribers as a sample of what Bartle Clunes is all about. Eizer is one of the finest men to have ever sprung from my head. I hope you like him, too.
The little boys followed Eizer up the dusty road, skipping along, teasing, chanting. They threw small stones at him and made faces, but they stayed out of reach of his walking stick. “Eizer Griggs is a mean old man,” they mocked. “Washed his face in a frying pan!” It didn't bother him; he was used to it. Truthfully, their song was inaccurate on both counts. Eizer Griggs was never mean. He was a little odd, but always kind. Neither did he wash his face much - nor any other part of the body God gave him, for that matter.
“You boys get along home now,” he said. “Go about your business, just leave an old man be.” He turned and continued up the dirt road toward home. The boys grew tired of their game and headed back toward town, snorting, rough-housing, jostling for dominance, like the restless young males of any other predatory species.
It was early April and every growing thing in the foothills of the Sierra was bursting with life. El Dorado county was ablaze with the gold of poppies, the purple of lupines. The morning air, already starting to heat up for the season, was laden with the heady fragrance of bay laurel and pine. The sun radiated down lightly on Eizer's head. He pulled off his wool cap and stuffed it into his coat pocket. His hair shot out in several directions at once, like dogs who'd found the gate open. A gray squirrel darted across the road in front of him, flew bird-like up the trunk of an oak and disappeared. A faint hint of skunk was in the air.
Eizer was a walker. It was his habit these last thirty-five years to walk three or four miles a day, just to get out in nature. Riles Crossing knew who he was and where he lived — he was a fixture, so to speak, a part of the foothills landscape. He was often spotted on the hillside following the cow path up and over the top of the rise, or picking his way along the rocky creek that ran down below. Sometimes they happened upon him on the dirt road that meandered back behind the hill. They always paused to offer him a ride, but unless it was raining, he declined.
Eizer had just turned sixty this spring, but he looked more like eighty today with his gray beard and his ragged clothes. He always needed a haircut. He'd once confessed that he trimmed it himself with the kitchen shears.
He stood tall and straight, but he walked with a rolling limp. “Nearly lost my leg in 1917 at the second battle of the Somme, over there in the north of France, you know,” he'd said one time. “Then the Army sent me home on my own, to mend the best I could after my less than glorious eight-months in their service. Took a while … took a good long while.”
He had been raised mostly by his father, his mother having abandoned the two of them when Eizer was only eight, leaving them both fairly stunned, a condition that was to last both of them for the next ten years or so. He had never married, never had much to do with women at all. He said, “I find women hard to talk to. They're not reasonable, they don't listen and they are most demanding,” adding the sincere amendment, “... excepting my friend Louvina, of course.”
Because of Eizer's worn out clothing and his marginal attention to personal hygiene, strangers may have believed him to be indigent. Those who passed him in their cars when he was walking along the road, may have assumed he was a poor hobo looking for a barn in which to sleep. But Eizer Griggs was not a poor man. His grandfather and father had both owned successful placer mines in the foothills, and to Eizer they'd left the fruits of their labor, mounting up for years, no doubt, under the careful auspices of the local Savings and Loan.
Eizer arrived home about noon today and was startled to find a small boy sitting alone on his porch, a cardboard suitcase at his feet. Eizer said, “Here now! What are you doing on my porch?” The little boy looked up, and did not reply.
“What are you doing here on my property, young man?” The little boy put his head down on his knees. Eizer thought he saw one small tear fall onto the child's shoe.
“Can you not speak?” said Eizer, a little more softly.
“My mama told me to wait here,” the boy answered. “She said Mr. Griggs would be home soon. She said I ... I had to stay here for a while and be good and she would come back for me.” He rubbed his cheek with a knuckle.
“Is that a fact now? Well ... and who is your mother then, and why has she left you here at my place?”
“My mama is Merlene. She said I had to stay right here on this porch and she would come back.”
“Merlene? Merlene! Come back when? Where's she gone off to?”
“I don't know. She didn't tell me.”
“What is your name, son?”
“I am Eli. Eli Flounder.” He offered a grimy hand to Eizer. The man, no stranger to grime, shook the boy's hand, saying “Eizer Griggs.”
The child was small and thin, and looked as if he hadn't been fed. Eizer thought he was maybe five or six. His long hair wasn't combed and one of his shoe strings was broken. He wore a thin gray tee-shirt a few sizes too big, the sleeves rolled up. His trousers were torn at the knee. He looked pretty clean, but was still a sorry sight to Eizer. “Well, I guess you better come on in then,” he said. “You'll be hungry.”
I hope you enjoyed meeting Eizer Griggs and Eli. Next week, I will offer a couple more pages — I hope you’ll come back to read about the beginnings of this happy union.
The novel, Bartle Clunes, has its own section at 🌿Leaves, HERE
Oh, I remember this beautiful post! You've described everything in such gorgeous detail - I feel I've really got to know both Eizer and his landscape. And his kindness to Eli - ahhhhhhhhh, wonderful stuff.
I will be back! Though I’m not waiting for my mother!