Essays and Assays

On the Wings of a Corsair by Darren King copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved

About the author
Darren King is a writer of non-fiction essays and assays who first explored writing at the encouragement of his 10th Grade English Literature teacher.

He supports his writing with a career in the automotive industry where it seems everyone is from somewhere else other than the Motor City. Except Darren. Mr. King resides in a small town in his home state of Michigan with his wife and their two children.

So I'm sitting in the hospital with my Grandpa Angelo who has just fallen ill.

Eighty years old, he lives alone in a small town that sits on the banks of Lake Huron. Three hours by car on a clear day from where I live down state. We talk for a while at his beside but I see I have to leave him to eat because he wants to share his lunch with me. "You eat Grandpa," I say to him. "I'll be right back."

I drive two minutes into town to check on his room at the assisted-living home where he had moved prior to his illness. One small room with a picture on the wall of him and my grandmother when they were first married. And another of him during World War ll, sitting bigger-than-life with his friends on the wings of an airplane. He's all smiles. His sleeves rolled up. His muscles shining in the black and white sun. Seemingly undaunted by the prospect of death.

Sixty years into the future, life comes down to a 15 x 15 room, a couple pieces of furniture and a few photographs. Life seems short. And yet it seems long.

I imagine a ship. A harbor. Lady Liberty in 1920 and the promise of America to a child named Angelo. A promise passed onto his grandson. Me. And so the immigrant lives his life. And packs and unpacks seeking solace in uncharted territory. A far country. A new harbor. Having moved from the city by the river, the motor city, to the northern woods of Michigan. His house paid in full.

His children raised. His wife dead and gone. He's outlived five dogs that I can think of, all of his friends and most of the young boys sitting with him on the wings of that plane. Some of who never saw the end of that terrible war.

And now, Angelo sits on his hospital bed with the same intensity as that of the young man I just saw sitting on the wings of a Corsair. Bigger than life.

Restless. Seemingly undaunted by the prospect of death. He's all smiles.

In deliberate voice he says to me, "Kid, you're the best." And he sends me off to brave new harbors and I leave him to rest in what we both know will be his last.

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