Pirates

“Why is your eye like that, grandpa?” Tommy, pressed his chubby hands against his grandpa’s face, pulling his wrinkles flat. “It looks weird.”

“I used to be a pirate Tommy. Where’d me eye patch go?” The old man hooked his finger and swiped through the air.

Tommy giggled and pulled away, letting the wrinkles fall back in place. “You aren’t a pirate, silly!”

“You’re right. I’m not a pirate.  Because I don’t own a pirate ship!”

“I want an eye like yours,” Tommy pulled on his eyelid and frowned.

Tommy didn’t notice the change in his grandpa’s face. The slight deepening of his wrinkles and the tightening of his smile. “Oh, you’re too much trouble, just like your mother. Go play with your sisters, Tommy. Leave grandpa to his breakfast.”

Tommy hopped off his grandpa’s lap and ran to the living room. The old man listened to the morning cartoons in the other room and the laughing children. He focused on his daughter’s voice and the eggs sizzling on the stove. He tried to focus on the things that surrounded him, but his hand went to his eye as if his body refused to let him forget.

There was no reason to be ashamed of it. Not really. Some called it a sign of honor or bravery. Tommy sure seemed to like it. But there was nothing good about his eye, or how the German soldier had grazed it with his bayonet.

The man wished to forget, and sometimes he came close. He thought it possible, but not when everything took constant notice. And while his milky eye stared empty and unseeing, the world always stared back.