History Lesson by Jeff Coomer

我祖父十四岁就离开学校
打零工直至他年龄足以加入
他的立陶宛家族，从兵西法尼亚州
的山中凿下无烟煤的事业。
每天九个小时在高出他头顶
五百英尺的岩石上，然后乘坐
一小时的通勤车回家吃煮白菜和
鸡肉的晚餐。
第二次世界大战爆发时
他领导“童子军”，他把它发音做“sout”,
为了更好的高炉工作
沿着切萨皮克海岸大量生产钢铁。
三十二年，半个食指之后他退休
到了他亲手建造的一处实体大农厂
就在巴尔的摩城市界的外围。
今年春天他得了癌症，我从一所
私立院校中得到了文学士学位
我们站在他后院的一棵树下，他当时
逃避我祖母的视线吸烟。
“告诉我，老爹爹” 我说，想要
开始一段谈话，“你怎么喜欢在工厂里工作那么多年？”
他打量着我熨烫整洁的衬衫，
长长地抽了一口雪茄烟，吐出
一点烟沫在我鞋子附近。“喜欢，”他说，
“和任何事情无关”
My grandfather left school at fourteen
to work odd jobs until he was old enough
to join his Lithuanian kin chipping
anthracite out of the Pennsylvania hills.
Nine hours a day with five hundred feet
of rock over his head, then an hour’s
ride home on the company bus
to a dinner of boiled cabbage and chicken.
When the second big war broke
he headed “sout,” as he pronounced it,
for better work in the blast furnaces
churning out steel along the shores
of the Chesapeake. Thirty-two years
and half an index finger later he retired
to a brick rancher he built with his own hands
just outside the Baltimore city line.
The spring he got cancer and I got a BA
from a private college we stood under
a tree in his backyard while he copped
a smoke out of my grandmother’s sight.
“Tell me, Pop,” I said, wanting to strike up
a conversation, “how did you like
working in the mills all those years?”
He studied my neatly pressed white shirt,
took a long drag on his cigarette and spit a fleck
of tobacco near my shoes. “Like,” he said,
“didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“History Lesson” by Jeff Coomer from A Potentially Quite Remarkable Thursday. © Last Leaf Press, 2015