Grandpa & Henry

Grandpa & Henry

by Travis Lee

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Travis Lee on Smashwords

Grandpa & Henry

Copyright 2011 by Travis Lee

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

* * * * *

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 1

Grandpa & Henry

An old man and a boy are sitting on a park bench. The old man pours Sprite into a cap and they take turns drinking from it.

Grandpa, says the boy after a sip. Do you think you'll be finished soon?

Soon, says the old man. He sneezes uncovered and wipes his nose with his free hand.

Bless you, says the boy.

The old man nods and pours some more Sprite.

Henry laced his shoes on the back porch and clutched the wad of bills. Twenty five. Twenty five of them. He shoved them in his pocket and pushed out the screen door, past the toolshed and across the backyard, under a fence and through the woods and out into a field to the edge of the road.

He looked. Side to side. Just as Grandpa had shown him. Traffic slowed when the lights to his left commanded and as soon as the herd of vehicles stopped, he tensed and dashed across. He reached the other side and stopped and counted. At seven the light shifted and the herd roared down the road. A fleet of carbon exhaust and metal unleashed on the world.

He watched the cars pass by for a few minutes. Then he pivoted and ran down the sidewalk. A quiet little neighborhood of fences, Beware of Dog signs, small cars, boats and nice houses one storey two storey three storey four the yards evenly divided and full of children fresh out of school. He blinked by them, a phantom to their realm, and stopped when he reached a green sign. Apple Avenue. He took a right and past a small gas station pushed open a glass door with Thomas Drugs muraled big black letters above the entrance, twisting a bent shadow on a dirty parking lot.

Henry stepped from light to dim. An old man his beard the color of ash sat behind the counter. He never said anything to Henry but the total and he spoke this in a voice that did not fib about his true condition. Henry paid, grabbed the package and began his return.

He jogged back to the great crossing and kept himself still again. Herds came and went in both directions. When did they not? They stopped and he crossed.

Grandpa kept two piles of junk on the back porch. They had been there for as long as Henry could remember and Grandpa also talked about hauling it off for money as long as Henry could remember, and for as long as he could remember, Grandpa had never done it. Castoff television sets, ancient tools, and spare car parts aged and waited for the truck that was never coming. He had thought about hauling a few down there himself, maybe grabbing that hatchet, but he didn't know where to go and honestly, didn't know how much it was worth anyways.

A spider's web between a twisted set of rabbit ears. Its tenant nowhere in sight.

Henry popped up the stairs and into the house. They slept at different ends. Grandpa near the living room, Henry on the top bunk near the laundry room and a bathroom whose shower liked to spit up brown sludge every now and then. He went into the living room and veered left, the bag bouncing against his leg. Grandpa was resting in his room and from here Henry saw part of a leg coated in thick white hairs lying off the bed. As he approached, more of Grandpa came into view, the old man's attention on the ceiling, whispering quietly.

Grandpa.

Hey kid, you got it?

Henry handed him the bag. The old man snatched it and turned it over and the bottle. He bolted up and tugged at the lid. Henry waited for as long as was necessary.

Then, Here Grandpa. Let me.

More like adult proof lock, Grandpa grumbled as he handed it over.

Henry pulled at the lid himself and did so for as long as was necessary. He got it off and handed Grandpa the bottle. He waved the lid.

Go on and chuck that damn thing, said Grandpa as he scooped two pills and downed them in a single swallow.

Henry chucked the damn thing. He chucked it into the trashcan and returned to the master bedroom. Grandpa was leaning up clutching the bottle near his groin. A smile stretched his lips pale.

Help me get up.

Henry helped Grandpa stand. The old man buckled at first, but his legs held the weight and carried this relic of the roaring twenties to a small desk beside the dresser. He leaned close to the typewriter. He appeared ready to kiss it, and he tapped a few keys and said, Go get me some paper.

The paper was in the living room next to the old TV that Grandpa kept unplugged. A stack of it, Henry lifted, an imprint the last trace of its presence on shag carpet that swirled in colorful delirium. He loaded a sheet in the typewriter and Grandpa's smile stretched further. It turned and his head tilted, fingers embracing the keys like old friends reunited.

Grandpa needed say nothing. Henry knew. He left the room and closed the door behind him.

A toybox beside a bunk bed. Donatello's arm hung limp over the edge. Henry pushed it inside and closed the toybox. To the right a small black television sat atop a wooden entertainment center. Grandpa had made four or five of them decades earlier and a couple years ago he got Henry a new television and a Nintendo 64 for Christmas to join the Super Nintendo.

He opened the blinds. Cracks unfolded to crevices. Light filled a strip down the center of his room, his legs mirrored on a dusty screen. He looked out the window and then raised the blinds. In the corner, a sticker informed him that in case of fire dial 911 and he looked back out the window. A flat plain stretched out, two trailers down the street and the woods. He believed the woods to be haunted but only at night. During the day, the monsters slept. The trailers were indistinguishable. A beat up truck in dead grass. An old man lived there, a man almost Grandpa's age. Every day he got up and kicked that truck into gear. Every day he drove off to work at a factory and every night he went to bed only to get up and repeat the next morning. Each sunrise indistinguishable from the last. Henry had never heard him talk and wondered idly if he could.

The other trailer met the standards of those mobile homes, as Grandpa liked to point out in catalogs.

As soon as we're out of here, he had said with Henry in his lip. As soon as I'm finished, we'll be living in one of these nice places. What do you think of that?

Henry said he thought it was good. What else was there to say?

We're going to live deep in the forest all by ourselves, he continued. How about a ranch in Montana?

Or Alaska? Grandpa had never been there. He talked about visiting a lot, but forget visiting, why not live there?

If we got the money to visit, we got the money to stay, he reasoned. We got a ranch in Alaska awaiting us.

Grandpa had last talked about it a couple months ago. Henry still had the Alaska brochure he'd swiped from the library.

He crawled under his bed and pulled it out. He studied the cover. A river cutting through a forest mountain in the freshest spring. He rifled the pages and slid it back under his bed.

Beside Grandpa's handiwork and Henry's presents sat a cardboard box marked Aquafina. Inside were dozens of games, mostly for Nintendo and Super Nintendo, but two for the Nintendo 64. When Grandpa first brought him this box, a replacement for the last one because it felt about time, he spent half an hour ordering the little gray cartridges alphabetically, and Henry spent the rest of the day yanking out various games and throwing them back in once he lost.

He dropped to his knees and rummaged through. Grandpa had gotten the Nintendo 64 as a last minute deal. He found a store in south Kentucky carrying exactly one, one last system, and Grandpa had promised the clerk an extra fifty bucks to hold it. He returned later that night, tossing Henry the box and offering a Merry Christmas and making a beeline to his room. Later during that fateful annual morning, while Grandpa slept in Henry had gotten up early and clocked the sunrise playing with his new toy. Getting all 120 stars in Mario 64 had been a challenge worthy of many months, but as far as Pilotwings 64 was concerned, it bored him for two days and there it went to the box where it laid today.

He grabbed Donkey Kong Country 2 and blew the dust from the bottom. He played for a couple hours, the same game he'd beaten, what, eight times now? Something like that. Finished with the game, he headed to the kitchen for a sandwich.

Typewriter keys banged on the other side of the house.