What Happened to Uncle Paul?

Paul and Alyce Klimek
Living in St. Cloud, MN 1917-1919

Eva, Alyce, Paul, and Peter Klimek
Superior, Wisconsin, approx 1915

Something awful must have happened to Mary Jane's Uncle Paul. By the time Grandma Klimek told Mary Jane the stories and showed her the pictures, everyone knew it. Everyone had known it for a long time by the time he stood by the war-time coffin and cried, "Dad...Dad." His sister Eva knew it already while the family ran the Hotel Alyce in Osakis, the one that caught fire. She called to him for help, and he threw glasses from the dining room into a bucket, breaking them all, and then he sat down to finish what was left of a fresh lemon pie. What was going on? It had been understandable when he shot partridge out the school room window with his slingshot; that was just stuff that a boy might do. But not grasping the concept of fire--the danger--It was incomprehensible.

Grandma Klimek told Mary Jane that Paul was her most beautiful baby. "Then he had that fever...and was never right afterwards. But he looks "right" in the picture with Alyce when they lived in St. Cloud, and before that with Eva and Pete when they lived in Superior.

He looks "right" in his first communion picture, too.

Paul's First Communion

Pete, Paul's younger brother, thought he might have been responsible. Paul fell from the back of a truck Pete was driving. Grandma never told this story. Pete told it to his daughters, I guess, because that's how it came to me. In more recent years the question arose that Paul could have had Down Syndrome, a mild form that didn't really show up until later. All speculation.

Paul at 19

By nineteen he looked like this. And after that pictures either don't exist, or I have none in my possession.

Why are we so ready to find fault in what we don't understand? Was anything wrong with Paul at all?

He did grab Mary Jane's arm.  He did fling her around.  He did talk loud and call her names.  "Gimme Girl!" he taunted.  "Gimme a nickel.  Gimme Girl!  Gimme Girl!"  He chased her, laughing, but for her--not fun. 

           

 "Uncle Paul can't help it," Mama explained.  "Uncle Paul doesn't understand little girls."

He drove a big black panel truck and delivered the Sunday Minneapolis Tribune to all the resorts.  He ran a taxi service from Baudette to the Lake.  He made trips to get minnows, often all the way to Waskish on Upper Red Lake.  He stole tourists at the bus stop and brought them to Klimek's Lodge.

           

 "Paul is a good boy," Grandma told anybody who would listen.  "He doesn't smoke, drink or chase women."  But she wished he would go to church.  He wouldn't.  He didn't believe in God, he said.

            

Paul was fleshy with big lips, fat hands, and crinkles around his eyes that were dotted with blackheads.  He wore ankle-high lace-up shoes, brown or gray canvas pants, and a grayish-white tee shirt in the summer. 

            

If Uncle Paul tried to be tender his voice shook.  Even trying for gentleness he held onto Mary Jane's arm too tightly; his fingers dug into her flesh.  He wanted her to stand still and look him in the eyes.  He tried to be serious with her.  "You stay out of the street.  You want a car to run over you?"  But it always came out threatening.  She tried to pull away.  His fingers tightened.  His face reddened.  "You listen!" 

            

"Uncle Paul would never hurt you, honey."  Mama comforted.  "He's just a little rough sometimes.  He can't help it."

            

"You better eat onions, girl."  She hated onions.  Why should she eat onions?  "You want to have hair on your chest, you gotta eat onions!"  Hair on her chest?  Girls didn't want hair on their chests.  He turned her world upside down. 

            

A long time afterwards when I was twenty years old and a novice in the convent Uncle Paul stopped to see me.  It was Holy Thursday.  All the nuns were keeping the deep silence of the Triduum, the three holiest days of the year.  I knelt in the chapel.  The doorbell rang.  I heard Paul's loud voice.  "My niece, Mary Jane.  I gotta see her."

The sister portress rustled up to my side.  I pretended I hadn't heard him.  "Sister Mary Christopher, your uncle," she whispered and her veil brushed against my hands.

He stood in the entrance turning his cap round and round in his hands.  His hands trembled.  So did his head.  He tried speaking quietly, his voice shook.  "You okay, Mary Jane?"  His eyes looked at me like dog's eyes, soft, questioning.  He reached out his hand and patted my arm. 

"I'm just fine, Uncle Paul."  Then, because we had rules there, because we didn't speak in hallways and vestibules and especially not on Holy Thursday, I invited him to come into the guest parlor with me.

"No.  Can't.  My car's running.  I was in Grand Forks and came by here and here I am.  I gotta go."

"You can't stay a while?"

"Can't.  Just wanted to find out if you're okay.  You okay, Mary Jane?"

"I'm okay."

The smell of him mixed with incense from the chapel.  I'd forgotten he smelled so rank, like he never took a bath.  Probably he didn't.  It used to bother me, that smell.  When I was in high school Uncle Paul embarrassed me.  What did it mean about me, about who I was, to have an uncle like that?  Loud.  Smelly.  Retarded, maybe.  But now I didn't want him to leave the vestibule of the convent.  I wanted him to sit down with me and tell me what he had been doing in Grand Forks.  I wanted to know if he'd won at BINGO lately.  I wanted to hear about the people in Baudette and who he'd driven to Minneapolis lately.

"I gotta go," he repeated.  He put his cap back on his head.  "If you need anything, Mary Jane, I'll bring it to you.  You just tell your mother and I'll make the trip.  I don't mind.  You just let me know, that's all.  Just let me know."

Then he left.

He fell dead a few years later while he was playing BINGO at the Moose Lodge in Baudette.  At his funeral I knelt beside his body and tried to pray the beautiful "In Paradiso."  I sobbed instead. I thought of the shining robes replacing the dingy tee shirt, the tattered wool jacket, the shapeless pants.  I imagined the new light in Uncle Paul's eyes.  Mama finished the reading for me, her voice soft.           

                        May the angels guide you into Paradise

                        May the saints accompany you as you go;

                        And with Lazarus who once was poor

                        May you have eternal life.

Several hundred people came to pay their respects to this uncle of mine.  They told stories.  How he took one woman home late at night when she was sick and wouldn't accept any payment for it.  How he saved another woman's life, dragging her out of a fire.  He always said he had a lot of friends in town.  I didn't believe him.  I was wrong.

The editor of THE BAUDETTE REGION town newspaper wrote:  he contributed more than most of us who come to this life with, perhaps, a greater reservoir of gifts.