The Second Time I Accepted A Bribe

The second time I openly, unapologetically accepted a bribe from my grandfather occurred a mere three days after the Grand Canyon Incident of 1988. We had left Arizona and we were in Mexico, enjoying pleasures you can only find south of the border – like as under-priced leather good. (Not donkey shows, you perverts.)

Less than an hour into our adventure, Papaw had ditched my grandmother and his daughters and taken me – an 8-year-old – into a cantina. He ordered me a glass-bottled Coke, something I'd never seen before. Then he ordered himself a cerveza. We sat on barstools at the old wooden counter and sipped our drinks silently. Papaw had positioned us in the two seats closest to the door. A television played a Mexican newscast behind the bar. A long line of older Mexican men watched intently and Papaw spoke to them in fluent Spanish. I don't know what he said, but the men all laughed in unison with him. One even patted him on the back like they were old friends.

"What's that on the television about?" I asked.

"They're talking about the election," he said.

"The what?" I asked.

"The election for the president of Mexico," he said. "They are having an election next week."

"Oh," I said, not understanding but satisfied with his response.

"How's your Coke?" he asked.

"Its good. It tastes different. Its sweeter," I said. "Want some?"

"No, honey," he said. "I've got my own."

"What are you drinking?" I asked.

"Cerveza," my grandfather replied.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Beer, seniorita," the men standing behind the counter said through a heavy accident.

We left the cantina after he finished his second beer and walked over to a market across the street. Papaw looked through silver jewelry for his daughters while I admired a pink, native fiesta dress. The $50 was burning a hole in my pocket. Among the poor villagers selling their goods I was a millionaire. I bought the dress for $7 after Papaw haggled on my behalf.

"What's beer seniorita?" I asked as we walked through the stalls of the market.

"Well, 'beer seniorita' is two things. The word seniorita is like being called 'young lady,'" he said. "And beer is something Mamaw doesn't like the taste of. So just don't say anything to her, okay?"

"Oh."

"Is beer like buttermilk?" I said. "I don't like how that tastes."

"No, its nothing like that," he said. "Beer doesn't come from a cow."

Then Papaw offered me another $50 to "forget" I'd ever heard the word beer. Figuring that total pull of $100 was like winning the lottery, I gladly took his 50 bucks and never mentioned a word to my grandmother, who I would learn later was an obnoxious teetotaler. My confidentiality was purchased and the cerveza was forgotten.

The years passed and my grandfather was declining rapidly. Cancer, in his lungs, they said. Nothing that can done, the doctors proclaimed. Every day became special. Sunday dinners lingered longer than before. One particular Sunday afternoon my grandmother pulled out family videos and we sat in their living room and laughed at the 1980s hairdos and awkwardness of our childhood.

The second video we watch turned out to be of that trip to Mexico nearly a decade earlier. We all remembered it so fondly. My mother wore earrings she'd been given by my grandfather, she said. And I suddenly recalled the incident in the cantina, my stubby little legs hanging off the stool and my grandfather swigging down cerveza.

"Papaw, do you remember going into that bar that day," I said?

"Yeah, you wanted a drink. It was the first time you'd seen a glass-bottled coke," he replied.

"And you spoke to those old men in Spanish!" I said.

"I don't remember…"

"And you drank beer!" I exclaimed. " Remember, you said you hadn't had one in twenty years, and we sat there and watched the Mexican news."

"Honey, I didn't drink a beer," he said smiling nostalgically. I opened my mouth to disagree. To protest the memory – what I knew had transpired. But there was a look in his eyes that told me not to say anything else. Something that said he did remember. He knew what'd happened. He drank that beer. Then I glanced over to my grandmother, her disdain for booze glaring through. She was so much of a prohibitionist that she would have held him responsible for a "crime" he committed a decade earlier. Her hatred for the bottle was so great that she wouldn't have granted him a reprieve even though he was dying of cancer.

"No, I didn't drink a beer," he said evenly, showing no guilt to his wife.

"Maybe it was a root beer," I said, turning back toward the television. My grandmother smiled and all was ignored.

Later that day, as I was leaving my grandparents home, I went to kiss my Papaw's check and say my goodbyes. As my lips brushed his face, Papaw caught my hand and pulled it to his lips, kissing the back of it gently.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you too," I replied.

Then he pulled my face down so only I could hear what he was about to say.

"You owe me $50,'' he whispered, recalling the terms of our agreement, which I had just violated by speaking of the that-which's-name-shant-be-uttered. Apparently, there was no statue of limitations on grandfather/granddaughter bribery. Then he winked at me and let go of my hand.

Thirteen days later he was dead.

My grandfather has been gone for 12 years and sometimes I miss him so much it hurts. He was a large, powerful man, but he possessed a humility and meekness that I have never experienced in anyone else. And as much as he affected my life and my heart broke the day he died, I suspect I never really knew him at all.