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sunny afternoon when I was about seven years old, and Ivan was sitting on our front porch in a lawn chair, drinking a can of beer. I saw him drink only once or twice a year, and he never consumed anything stronger than Budweiser. For some reason he always dumped a couple spoons of salt into the can before he drank it. He once gave me a tiny sip from his can, and I could taste nothing but salt.
    I was playing out in the front yard wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. I was open for attack. “Hey, boy,” Ivan called out, blinking like a cat in the sunshine. “Bring me that board over there.” He pointed to a piece of plywood lying across the road.
    I picked it up unsuspectingly and started to make my way back to the front porch. When the pain came, it seemed to inflame every part of my body at once. I began to shriek and flail about wildly. The pain was so intense that it short-circuited my logic. I spun in circles, slapping myself and stomping my feet, giving voice to one unending scream. The board had been sitting atop a nest of fire ants. This wasn’t the first time I’d been bitten, nor would it be the last, although it was the worst and most painful.
    What was my grandfather doing while I was going into a frenzy? Sipping his beer and watching me in a half-interested way. My mother came running out of the house and grabbed me up. She already knew what the problem was, and she carried me in to the bathtub to pour cold water over me. As we crossed the porch and passed my grandfather, I heard him chuckle.
    I heard that maddening chuckle again after one of his trips to an auction, which he loved. He would go through people’s garbage, show up bright and early at every garage sale listed in the local paper, and bid on ungodly amounts of junk at auctions all over the state. He took this rubbish and fixed it up, then sold it at his booth in the flea market.
    One day he came home with a box of odds and ends that contained a pair of swim fins, or swimming flippers. They weren’t pliant and flexible the way professional-quality fins are. These were as hard as bricks, like petrified frog feet. They would have broken before they bent. My grandfather tossed them to me and said, “Put ’em on and try ’em out.”
    I carried them out into the backyard, where a four-foot-deep pool had sat for a couple of years. It had never been drained or cleaned since its initial setup, so the water was dark green and disturbing. Odd-looking bugs skimmed along the surface, looking for someone to bite. I did not relish the thought of having to splash about in that muck.
    I sat on the rickety ladder and attached the flippers tightly to my feet. Standing on the ladder, I launched myself out into the middle of the pool and began kicking. My efforts were futile, and I quickly found myself thrashing around on the bottom. I began to wonder if perhaps these flippers were made for imaginary swimming and not intended for actual water wear. Whatever the case, I thought,
To hell with this,
and decided to get out. The problem was that I couldn’t stand up. The rock-hard plastic flippers made it impossible for me to get my feet under me. Frantic, I managed to get my head above the water one time for what I believed to be my final gasp of air. What sight did I behold as I was drowning? My grandfather, hands on hips, chuckling. Next to him stood my sister, also giggling, as she squinted against the sun. My terror evaporated in the face of the rage that swept through my small body, and I managed to get a hand on the ladder and pull myself up.
    For a few moments I could do nothing but cough, sputter, and try to expel the water from my nose, which was making the inside of my head burn like fire. When I could speak, I snatched off the flippers and began to shriek in outrage, putting the finger of accusation on them both. “Stupid! You’re both stupid! I’m telling Mom!” I shot into the house like a scalded cat, my grandfather shouting after me, “Don’t