My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today

by Bill Dodds

  I wondered if he would be able to come down to the sitting room in a wheelchair. He couldn’t walk without a lot of help and it tired him out fast. At some birthday parties he would fall asleep sitting up in his wheelchair right in the middle of the celebration.

  Two balloons—one red, the other blue—were taped to the door to his room. There were some birthday cards, too. The door was open and I could see that his roommate, Mr. Parker, wasn’t there. Or maybe he had died. Anyway, the bed next to the door was all made up, nice and neat.

  Great-grandpa’s bed was next to the window. It was behind a thin, light green cloth curtain that hung down from the ceiling like a shower curtain. Each bed had one. That way a doctor or nurse could pull it shut and give a patient at least a little privacy while something was going on.

  Something like going to the bathroom. Well, not going to the bathroom but using a bedpan. That’s kind of a flat pot that somebody sits on and then poops. Great-grandpa’s curtain was shut. Maybe he was pooping.

  Great-great-aunt Lauretta took about three steps into the room and I followed. Then she stopped suddenly and I almost ran into her. “He’s here,” she said to the curtain and then turned and walked around me. She shut the door on her way out.

  There was another flash of lightning that made everything in the room turn white. This time the thunder came sooner. The storm was getting closer.

  I held my breath but I couldn’t hear anything from the other side of the curtain. I just stood there and listened as thick rain drops began to furiously pelt the window.

  “You there?” a thin voice asked after a while.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. That was one thing Mom and Dad had drummed into us. “Sir” and “ma’am” for our elders. We sure got enough practice because we sure had enough elders.

  “Come here, Michael,” Great-grandpa said. “Come on over here.”

  I walked through the slit in the curtain and a little, old head on a pillow smiled at me. He looked smaller than he had when we had been out at Easter. The lump under the white sheet—his body and his legs—wasn’t as big. The head of his bed was titled up a little bit and he held out his right hand to me. It trembled.

  “Happy birthday, Michael,” he said and gave me a toothless grin. He was so skinny his head almost looked like a skull.

  “Happy birthday, Great-grandpa,” I said.

  “What did you bring me?” he asked and I stammered, “Uh, buh, uh, um . . . .”

  “I’m teasing you, son,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was another flash of lightning and pounding of thunder and his blue eyes jumped. So did I, closer to the bed. I ran smack into a thick, clear plastic bag hanging from the side of it. A bag that had pee in the bottom of it. I jumped back. Great-grandpa didn’t seem to notice.

  “How many older brothers do you have?” he asked me.

  What? “Uh . . . two,” I said. He nodded. “Me, too.”

  “How many generations separating us?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment. Me, my dad, my grandpa, him. “Two,” I said.

  “My father was the third boy in his family,” Great-grandpa said.

  Swell. He was going to lie there and gas for a while about old times and in the meantime all my relatives back in the sitting room would be chowing down on all that good food. I was hungry.

  “Your father,” he said, “is the third boy in his family.”

  I thought about that. Uncle Frank, Uncle Pat, Dad.

  “Uh huh. Yes, sir,” I said.

  There was a siren outside somewhere. That last bolt must have struck something and set it on fire, I thought.

  “I am,” he held up his right hand, his index finger pointing straight up, “the third son of a third son. You are the third son of a third son. We were both born on June the twenty-first. You twelve years ago. I, one hundred years ago this very day.”

  He opened his hand and held it out to me. I reached out and took it in my right hand. It was cold. It felt more like paper than skin. And then the biggest flash of lightning I have ever seen in my entire life filled the nursing home room. It knocked me back through the curtain and onto my rear end and I banged by head against the wall. Tears were coming from my tightly closed eyes.

  Boy, that hurt.

  My ears were ringing from the thunder.

  “You all right?”

  “I . . . I smacked my head,” I said.

  “But are you all right?”

  No, I’m not all right, I thought. I smacked my head.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yes, sir.”

  “Let me help you up.”

  He was going to help me?

  A hand took hold of mine and pulled me to my feet. I sniffed and rubbed my nose with the back of my other hand and opened my eyes.

  Standing in front of me was a kid just a little shorter than I am. He was wearing some kind of blue overalls and a short-sleeved undershirt with buttons in the front. He was barefoot. Something next to me let go with a loud, “MOOOO!”

  “She jumped so much she’ll be giving butter for a week,” the kid said. “You sure you’re all right?”

  Chapter 6

  Figuring Out Who’s Who

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Who are you?” he answered.

  “I asked you first,” I said.

  “So?” he said.

  This was a dream! Sure, of course it was.

  “This is a dream,” I said to the boy. I looked around. I was in a wooden building with a dirt floor. There were some stalls made of wood and a cow was in one of them. I could hear rain falling on the roof.

  “You mean I’m dreaming?” the boy said.

  “Not you,” I told him. “Me. I’m dreaming.”

  “Then what am I?” he asked.

  “You’re just part of my dream.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Sure you are.”

  He reached out and put his hand on my sleeve and then he pinched me on the arm really hard.

  “Ouch!” I said.

  “See?”

  “Maybe I’m unconscious,” I said.

  “Well, you’re sure doing a lot of talking for somebody who’s unconscious.”

  “I hit my head,” I said.

  “I know,” he answered. “I helped you up.”

  “MOOOO!”

  I jumped.

  “Hush, Millie,” he said.

  “Who’s Millie?” I asked.

  “Our cow.”

  Now wait a minute, I said to myself. Just what is going on here? “The last thing I remember,” I said, “I was at the convalescent center.”

  “At the what?” the boy asked. I was beginning to think he wasn’t very bright.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “In the barn,” he said, looking at me as if he thought I wasn’t very bright.

  “Okay. But what’s the name of the place I’m in?”

  “The nearest real town is Culver City.”

  All right.

  “Whew,” I said. “For a minute there I thought Toto and I had landed on a witch.”

  He stared at me in the dim light.

  “Somebody else is with you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Toto. You know. The Wizard of Oz.”

  “There’s a wizard with you!”

  I had been right. He wasn’t very bright.

  “Uh huh,” I said. “And a scarecrow, a tin man, and a cowardly lion.”

  “WHAT!”

  “Watch out, my pretty, or the Wicked Witch of the West will get you. And your little cow, too,” I said and cackled.

  “I better get Ma,” he said to himself.

  “I better get back to the convalescent center,” I answered. Apparently the lightning bolt had knocked me clear out of the building and into this hillbilly’s barn.

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Which way to Fair Brook.”

  “Fair Brook?”

  “Right,”
I said slowly. “Which. Way. To. Fair. Brook.”

  “Right out that door,” he said, pointing to the double doors that stood open, “out to the road and then head that way. You can’t miss it.”

  “How far is it?” I asked. I wondered how far I had flown.

  “Oh,” he said, “about three miles.”

  “Three miles!”

  “You’ll come to some other streams first but Fair Brook is the big one. It’s more a river. Got a bridge with a railing and everything.”

  “Three miles?” I asked again.

  “More or less.”

  I had flown through the air for three miles? “I bet I get in the Guinness Book of World Records,” I said.

  “The what?”

  “You know,” I said. “The Guinness Book of World Records. Whoever is the fattest or the tallest or made the biggest taco or can run a mile in three minutes and fifty-some seconds.”

  “The biggest what?” he asked.

  “Taco.”

  “What’s a taco?”

  “You don’t get out much, do you?” I asked.

  “Saturday afternoon we go to town sometimes.”

  Was he kidding or what? “Really, Gomer?” I asked.

  “My name’s not Gomer,” he said.

  “I meant ‘Gomer Pyle.’”

  “My name’s not Gomer Pyle and . . .”

  “The guy from the old TV show,” I said.

  “And,” he continued, “no man can run a mile under four minutes. Any moron knows that.”

  “Is that so?” I said. “Well, I guess you’ve been out here in the barn too long because everyone—and I mean everyone—knows that way back in the 1950s, some guy broke the four-minute mile and since then more than a ton of runners . . . .”

  I was ready to go on and on and on but the kid had gotten this funny look on his face. He seemed to be kind of scared and kind of happy and kind of excited. He looked like he knew what was going on but I sure didn’t.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he said and he reached out and shook my hand.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  He stepped back and but he kept his hand in mine. Then he giggled and started to twirl me around in a little dance.

  “Hey!” I said again.

  “Let me look at you,” he said, pulling me closer to the big doorway. “You’re taller than I am.”

  Smarter, too, I thought. “I gotta go,” I said and he gave a little laugh.

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “What do you mean ‘not yet’?” I asked.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, dropping his hand and talking a step back.

  “What’s yours?” I asked.

  “Charlie,” he said. He held out his hand for me to shake it again.

  “I’m Michael,” I said, reaching out.

  “Michael,” he repeated, smiling and pumping my hand. “Gosh, it’s good to meet you. Michael Farrell?”

  “Yeah. How did . . .?”

  “I’m Charlie Farrell,” the boy said and he giggled again.

  Charlie Farrell. “You’ve got the same name as my great-grandpa,” I said.

  “You’re my great-grandson?” he asked. “Gosh.”

  “My great-grandfather is one hundred,” I said.

  That stopped him. His mouth dropped open and no sound came out for a moment or two. Then his eyes grew wide and he said, “I’m one hundred years old?”

  Chapter 7

  Caught!

  His blue eyes grew wide. His sky-blue eyes grew wide.

  “Are you really my great-grandpa?” I asked.

  “Are you really my great-grandson?” he answered.

  The rain was letting up. It was getting brighter.

  “If you really are,” I said, “you’re in a convalescent center and you’ve got a . . . .” I thought about the room, the curtain, the bag beside the bed. I thought about the skinny, old man who had reached out his hand to me.

  Third son of a third son holding on to the third son of a third son.

  “What’s a conv . . . a. conva . . . convent center?” the boy asked me and then, before I could answer, he said, “Wait! You can’t tell me stuff about the future.”

  “What?”

  “There are rules,” he said.

  “Rules?”

  “Yep,” he said, sounding pretty sure of himself. “There are rules about this.”

  “How do you know?” I asked and he hesitated. Then he said, “There are rules about everything, aren’t there?”

  He had a point there, all right.

  “That’s true,” I said, realizing what he meant about my not telling him anything. “What I say or do now will change my whole future.”

  “What?”

  “Just like in the movies.”

  “What’s a movie?” he asked.

  “The ones about going back to the future.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “But I do know you’re not going to change your future a whole lot no matter what you do now. That’s a fact.”

  “What if I get hurt?” I said.

  “What, that little bump on your head?”

  “No. I mean what if I die or something.”

  He thought about that. “We’re all going to die someday,” the boy said. “But look on the sunny side and say a little prayer. That’s what Ma tells us. Besides, I’m one hundred, right? So that means it was . . . .What year was it where you were?”

  “It’s 1986.”

  He gave a low whistle. “I sure would like to see that,” he said, not realizing that he would.

  “What year is this?” I asked and when he told me I gasped. Somehow eighty-eight years had slipped away.

  “And where am I?” I asked again. “I know I’m in a barn and I know it outside Culver City, but where exactly?”

  “The Farrell farm,” he said. “One-hundred sixty acres of some of the finest crops in the county.”

  “The Farrell farm! We just passed that on the freeway.”

  “On the what?”

  “The . . .”

  “CHARLIE!” an older boy’s voice called from outside. “WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO IN THERE?”

  He . . . Great-grandpa . . . Charlie pushed me back into a stall. “Hush,” he said softly. “We have to figure out a few things.”

  “CHARLIE?” A teenager entered the doorway and I ducked down out of sight.

  “You remember that vaudeville show we saw last month in town?” Charlie asked as he walked out of the stall toward the other boy.

  “I guess,” he answered.

  “That comedian in the baggy pants and the little bow tie?”

  “What’s that got to do with . . .”

  “I was just trying to remember some of his jokes, that’s all. Practicing them out loud.”

  “You’re daft,” the older boy said, “Crazy.”

  “Only a little,” Charlie said and the older boy laughed.

  “Come on,” the boy said. “Ma’s got dinner on and we’re waiting grace for you. Can’t start without the birthday boy.”

  “What did you get me, Pat?” Charlie asked.

  “Get you?”

  “For me birthday, laddie,” Charlie said, sounding like a leprechaun or something.

  “What makes you think I’m got you something?” Pat asked.

  “But you already did,” Charlie said.

  “Did what?”

  “You got me something. You came and got me for dinner.”

  I had to keep myself from laughing out loud.

  “Oh, you . . . .” Pat said and I heard some scuffling. It sounded like a friendly little tussle between brothers.