Philip St. Clair

Uncle Ernie from Issue 96

When I was eight I liked to think our uncle Ernie
was the Duke of Windsor: I knew he wasn’t
but he looked just like that man inside the covers
of Life magazine, caught by the camera
climbing into a Super Constellation with the Duchess,
walking his pug-dogs along the streets
of Paris or Havana or Miami. Our uncle Ernie
had lost the first two fingers on his right hand:
it was a space-monster’s claw when he held it out
for a shake, and if he made a fist
it was the ace of clubs from a pinochle deck.
He was one of those old-time machinists
who worked on a lathe run by a long thick leather belt
looped to a pulley on a single steel rod
spinning unseen high up in the shop’s dark rafters,
and when he’d have to gear it up or down
he’d thwack the belt to the tailstock with a stick
to make it jump from one speed to another,
and once, perhaps in one of those silent reveries
brought on by hours of repetitive work,
he forgot the stick and got his hand caught in the belt,
but that was after he was mustered out:
he joined the Marines in 1917 but didn’t go to France.
They sent him down to Haiti to keep it safe
for Woodrow Wilson and the United Fruit Company,
and when I asked him what he did he said
“I lined up rebs against a wall and then I shot ‘em down.”

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