英語沙龍十年合集珍藏版第三輯My Father’s Hands

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My Father’s Hands

His hands were rough and exceedingly¹⁾strong. He could gently prune²⁾ a fruit tree or firmly ease a stubborn horse into a harness. What I remember most is the special warmth from those hands as he would take me by the shoulder and point out the glittering swoop of a blue hawk, or a rabbit asleep in its lair. They were good hands that served him well and failed him in only one thing. They never learned to write.

My father was illiterate. The number of illiterates³⁾ in our country has steadily declined, but if there were only one I would be saddened⁴⁾, remembering my father and the pain he endured because his hands never learned to write. He started school in the first grade, where the remedy for a wrong answer was ten rule r strokes across a stretched palm. For some reason, shapes, figures and letters just did not fall into the rig ht pattern inside his six-year-old mind. His father took him out of school after several months and set him to a man’s job on the farm.

Years later, his wife, with her fourth-grade education, would try to teach him to read. And still later I would grasp his big fist between my small hands and awkwardly help him to trace the letters of his name. He submitted⁵⁾ to the ordeal for a short time, but soon grew restless and would declare that he had had enough.

One night, when he thought no one saw, he slipped away with my second grade reader and labored over the words until they became too difficult. He pressed his forehead into the pages and wept. Thereafter, no amount of persuading could bring him to sit with pen and paper. He did still like to listen to my mother, and then to me, read to him. He especially enjoyed listening to us read to him from the Bible.

My father was forced to let the bank take possession of most of the acreage⁶⁾of his farmland one year when a crop failure meant he couldn’t make the mortgage⁷⁾ payment. He was able to keep one acre of the farmland where the small farm house was located.

From the farm to road building and later to factory work, his hands served him well. His mind was keen, and his will to work was unsurpassed. His enthusiasm and efficiency brought an offer to become a line boss--until he was handed the qualification test.

Years later, when Mother died, I tried to get him to come and live with my family, but he insisted on staying in the small house with the garden plot and a few farm animals close by. His health began to fail, and he was in and out of the hospital with two mild heart attacks. Old Doc Green saw him weekly and gave him medication, including nitroglycerin⁸⁾tablets to put under h is tongue should he feel an attack coming on.

My last fond memory of Dad was watching as he walked across the brow of a hillside meadow with those big warm hands resting on the shoulders of my two children. He stopped to point out a pond where he and I had fished years before. The night, my family an d I flew back to our own home. Three weeks later Dad was dead because of a heart attack.

I returned to my father’s home for the funeral. Doc Green told me how sorry he was. In fact, he was bothered a bit, because he had just written Dad a new prescription, and the druggist⁹⁾ had filled it. Yet the bottle of pills had not been found on Dad’s person. Doc Green felt that a pill might have kept him alive long enough to summon help.

I went out to Dad’s garden plot where a neighbor had found him. In grief, I stooped to t race my fingers in the earth where he had reached the end of his life. My hand came to rest on a half-buried brick, which I aimlessly lifted. I noticed underneath it the twisted and battered, yet unbroken, container that had been beaten into the soft earth.

As I held the container of pills, the scene of Dad struggling to remove the cap and in desperation trying to break it with the brick flashed painfully before my eyes. With deep anguish I knew why those big hands had lost in their struggle with death. For there, imprinted on the cap, were the words：“Child-proof cap--Push down and twist to unlock. ”The druggist later confirmed that he had just started using the new safety caps.

I knew it was not a rational act, but I went right downtown and bought a leather-bound pocket dictionary and a gold pen set. I bade Dad good-bye by placing them in those big hands, once so warm, which had lived so well, but had never learned to write.

□by Calvin R. Worthington

父親的雙手

父親的雙手粗糙卻非常有力。他修剪起果樹來輕松自如, 給烈性子的馬上馬具時也是不慌不忙, 穩(wěn)穩(wěn)當當?shù)?。讓我難以忘懷的是, 當他抓著我的肩膀, 指著猝然下落的老鷹或在洞穴里熟睡的兔子給我看時, 從他那雙手傳來的那種特殊的溫暖。他的這雙堅實的手讓他生活得很好, 但美中不足的就是這雙手從來就沒學會寫字。

我的父親沒受過教育。在我們國家文盲的人數(shù)在不斷下降, 但是只要還有文盲存在我就會感到難過, 因為這會讓我想起我的父親, 想起不會寫字給他帶來的痛苦。在他上一年級的時候, 如果回答問題不正確的話, 老師就會用戒尺在他的手掌上打１０下。不知道什么原因, 當時只有６歲的父親就是不能正確記住那些形狀、數(shù)字還有字母什么的。幾個月后他的父親就讓他退學了, 并把他安置在農場里干成人的活。

多年之后, 他的上過４年學的妻子打算教他讀書。再后來就是我用我的一雙小手握著他的那只大拳頭, 非常吃力地幫助他寫他的名字。這種情況只持續(xù)了很短的一段時間, 不久他就顯得不耐煩了, 并且宣稱他已受夠了。

一天晚上, 當他確信沒人看見他時, 拿著我二年級的課本走了出去, 并且費勁地讀著上面的字, 直到感到太難了無法再讀下去。他把臉埋在書里哭了起來。從此以后, 無論怎樣勸說都無法讓他再坐下來學習寫字了。但是他仍然喜歡聽母親和我給他朗讀文章, 他特別喜歡我們給他讀《圣經》。

有一年莊稼歉收, 父親無法償還銀行的抵押借款, 不得不讓銀行占有了他大部分的農場。他只保留了他的那間小農舍所在的一英畝地。

無論是干農活、修建公路還是后來到工廠工作, 他的這雙手讓自己受益匪淺。他頭腦敏捷, 工作意識無人可比。他的工作熱情及效率使他有機會當上了工頭, 直到有一天他被要求參加資格考試。

幾年以后, 母親去世了, 我想讓他過來和我們一起生活, 但是他堅持要自己住在那間帶有小花園的農舍里, 附近還養(yǎng)了一些家禽、家畜。他的健康狀況開始越來越糟了, 曾兩次因犯輕微的心臟病而住進醫(yī)院。格林老大夫每周都來看他并給他開一些藥品, 其中包括硝酸甘油片, 讓他在感到要犯病時放在舌下以緩解病情。

最后一次感受父親的慈愛是上次在家鄉(xiāng), 看著他把他那雙溫暖的大手放在我的兩個孩子肩上, 帶他們走過牧場的那座小山坡, 然后停了下來, 指給孩子們看那個前幾年我和父親一起挖成的池塘時的情景, 我心里暖融融的, 但這卻成了永遠的記憶了。那天晚上, 我和家人回到了自己的家里, 三個星期后, 因心臟病發(fā)作父親離開了人世。