by Ryan Gebhart
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 - I Drink Half a Liter of Prune Juice and Use the Neighbor’s Toilet for Two Hours
CHAPTER 2 - Me and Gramps Make Our Hands into Bear Claws and Growl
CHAPTER 3 - It Turns Out My Best Friend Is Actually a Yamhole
CHAPTER 4 - Gramps Gets Pulled Over and I Eat Some Skittles
CHAPTER 5 - I Murder a Newt
CHAPTER 6 - I Order the Nothing with a Side of Nothing
CHAPTER 7 - There Will Be Bears
CHAPTER 8 - The Sunrise Village Nursing Home
CHAPTER 9 - Two Rifles and a Box of Ammunition
CHAPTER 10 - Gut Punch
CHAPTER 11 - I Call Gramps by His First Name
CHAPTER 12 - She Wears Short Skirts; I Wear Pizza
CHAPTER 13 - Someone Karen Would Like
CHAPTER 14 - The Headline Story
CHAPTER 15 - Wad
CHAPTER 16 - It’s Hot and Uncomfortable Inside a Bear
CHAPTER 17 - The Grand Tetons
CHAPTER 18 - Grizzly Bears Like Their Meat Rotten
CHAPTER 19 - The Place Where the Ohio Couple Died
CHAPTER 20 - Where Everything I Wanted Comes True
CHAPTER 21 - Like Breaking Open a Piñata
CHAPTER 22 - The Smell of Elk
CHAPTER 23 - Beneath a Heavy and Warm Shadow
CHAPTER 24 - BFFs
CHAPTER 25 - The Latest Issue of Better Homes and Gardens
Country Orchard Prune Juice, reads the label on the plastic jug in front of me. They say this thick, nasty-looking sludge is a potent laxative. Well, I’m about to drink the whole thing.
I heard somewhere that courage means being afraid of something and doing it anyway. I never thought I would be so frightened by a fruit juice, but my heart is pounding and my palms are sweaty. As far as I know, no one has ever OD’d on prunes.
Google, please don’t let me down on this one.
Gramps sits across from me at the kitchen table, his fingers tapping against his own jug, checking the birdsong clock above the sink.
In fifty-four seconds, it will be six o’clock.
Tick.
In fifty-three seconds, the Canada goose will honk.
Tick.
In fifty-two seconds, Gramps and I will each be chugging a liter of prune juice to completion.
Pruning, Gramps calls it. Before he goes on his yearly elk hunt, he prunes so he’ll be ready to face the wilderness. He says it’s good for the digestive tract, puts hair on your chest, and makes you feel like a new man. And for my thirteenth birthday, Mom and Dad promised I’d get to join him this weekend. We’re going to the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming, and I’ve been waiting for this trip all year. Not only do I get to hunt with the coolest old guy in Colorado, but this will also finally be my chance to see a grizzly bear in the flesh. I’ve been obsessed with them since I saw the Timothy Treadwell documentary. He lived with the bears for thirteen summers, until one finally ate him. It was so cool. But Gramps says that if I want to go, I have to prune with him.
Mom would never let me prune with Gramps — she thinks it’s immature and disgusting — but Mom’s not here. And what Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her. It might back up the toilet, but I’ll just blame that on Ashley.
“You ready, Tyson?”
This is it. And to my own surprise, I’m not that scared. The Canada goose honks, my eyes close, and I’m choking the stuff down. My eyes are watering and my throat gets tight and I’m just about to refund all over the table when Gramps gives a satisfied sigh.
“That’s the stuff.” He wipes his mouth with his forearm.
I can only finish half of my jug.
Now, your typical old person just drinks a small glass of prune juice with his toast and soft-boiled egg in the morning to stay regular, but Grandpa Gene is insane in the good kind of way. He wears his beat-up cowboy hat to church and sits in the front row. And he’ll dance with any woman at the Rodeo Tavern. It doesn’t matter if she’s some hot woman in her twenties or some fatty in her fifties. He just loves to dance.
Gramps is pretty much my best friend. Well, Brighton is technically my best friend, but lately he’s been busy with football practice and hanging out with his new girlfriend from American Civ. The last time we actually did something was in July, when we sang karaoke for his birthday. He has a game tonight, so at least I’ll be able to see him then.
“Now what?” I ask, a sour aftertaste in my mouth and a purplish-brown mystery sitting low in my stomach.
With one hand against the table, Gramps hoists himself up. “We watch Wheel of Fortune.”
I follow him into the living room. There are still a couple of unpacked boxes from when me, Mom, Dad, and Ashley moved into his house last month. It already feels like home, all old and broken in. Heck, we’ve spent every holiday here since Ashley was born. I know everything about this house, from the crawl space in the basement to the picture of Michael Jordan slam-dunking in the bathroom.
In the bathroom. As in one.
There’s only one bathroom in Gramps’s house.
Why didn’t it occur to me before? What are we going to do?
“What time is your friend’s game tonight?” he asks. He makes a relaxed groan, deflating into his reclining chair.
“Um, what are we going to do about the bathroom situation?”
“What do you mean?”
“Who gets the bathroom?”
With a devilish grin, he says, “Whoever is faster.”
My stomach gurgles like someone just flushed a toilet. “Huh?”
“Your grandmother and I pruned twice a year. Once in the spring, once in the fall. We watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!, and then we raced to the bathroom.”
“What does the other person do?”
“They make do. Now, hush.”
This is the most horrifying episode of Wheel of Fortune ever. How can people be solving puzzles at a time like this? Who cares about a new car or a ten-thousand-dollar prize?
After sixty agonizing minutes, I’ve become an overfilled water balloon hovering above a needle, ready to explode with prune juice and bad news.
I can’t make any sudden movements.
Gramps lowers the leg rest and gets into position.
We both eye the closed door at the end of the hallway.
As soon as Jeopardy! ends, we make a break for it, rushing for the bathroom like football players trying to recover a fumble. He stiff-arms me with his left hand, and I fall to the ground, using every muscle to hold back this cat-4 hurricane inside of me. Gramps may be bigger, but I squeeze my way underneath him and I’m just about to make it to the bathroom when —
“What the heck?” Dad stops both of us when he opens the door going to the garage.
“We were just —”
Gramps closes the bathroom door behind him. I hear the horrifying click of the lock and the bathroom fan turning on.
“Dude, you cheated!”
Dad says, “Tyson, what’s going on?”
I bolt out the front door, my butt cheeks clenched tight. Where do I do the deed? The Privetts’ house or the Castillos’ house? Who would be more offended by me barging in and tearing up their bathroom?
The Privetts.
So I run toward the Privetts’ house.
Mr. Privett looks at me all weird as he opens his front door. He can’t really help it when his turtleneck is swallowing his face like a snake with its jaw unhinged.
He says, “Ty. What can I do for you?”
Oh, man. Cat-5! I break past him and hurry for the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I drop trou and . . . dang, Mr. Privett has a pretty solid setup in here. There’s a whole stack of mags, really fruity potpourri,
and this toilet paper is way better than what we have at Gramps’s place.
Now I can just sit back and relax.
He knocks. “Tyson —”
Guh. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
In here, I don’t have a care in the world. In here, I can read Better Homes and Gardens to my heart’s content.
He knocks again.
“I already told you, I’ll be out in a second.”
“Tyson Eugene Driggs, it’s your father. You can’t go barging into Mr. Privett’s house.”
“Sorry, Dad. I had to use the bathroom, and Gramps was using ours.”
“Then you shouldn’t have drunk an entire bottle of prune juice.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I only drank half.”
There is a long pause, and I fill the silence by misting some Mountain Spring air freshener.
He says, “You and I are going to have a little discussion.”
“What? Why?”
“Meet me in the kitchen at seven thirty. We’ll talk then.”
“I’m a little busy right now. You better reschedule for eight thirty.”
“Tyson,” he says, then draws out a pause. “You’re not going hunting this weekend.”
Dad takes a seat next to Mom at the kitchen table, looking all parental and stern. But he can’t bring me down. My body hasn’t felt this clean in a long time. I guess a diet consisting mostly of Fruit Roll-Ups, cereal, and pizza will back a guy up.
He says, “We need to talk about your grandfather.”
I raise an eyebrow. I thought this conversation was going to be about me. “Why?”
“I don’t want you pruning with him again.”
“But it’s good for you. Prunes are high in antioxidants and potassium.”
“Your grandfather has some health issues, you know. High blood pressure, bad kidneys —”
“Yeah, but now he has a perfectly clean digestive tract.”
Mom snickers, but Dad maintains his death glare.
“And I don’t want you two hunting, either.”
“Why not?”
Mom says, “Honey, with what happened to that guy from Portland, it’s just not safe.”
“What guy from Portland?”
“This tourist was hiking near the Tetons just three days ago, and for no reason a grizzly ripped his arm off. He’s lucky he’s even alive.”
“That’s fierce.”
“It’s true! The story is all over the news.”
“Whatever. Gramps has encountered bears before and it wasn’t a big deal.”
“That was a long time ago,” Dad says. “He’s seventy-seven now. You think he can outrun a bear at his age?”
“He beat me to the bathroom.”
Dad rubs his temples, then his eyes. “Maybe next year.”
That’s his way of saying we’re never going.
“Dad, you know how much this means to me.”
“Since when have you been interested in hunting?”
“I like hunting. I have all the Great American Hunter games, and Gramps has taken me to the shooting range a bunch of times. He says I’m a really good shot. And I love nature. I got all the Planet Earth DVDs.”
“Do you really want to kill an animal?” Mom says.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Why?”
“It’s those video games,” Dad says in his know-it-all way. “Always shooting something.”
“No! No, it’s not that. It’s not about killing. It’s about . . . I don’t know. Something else.” I slouch back and mutter, “We didn’t go on a trip this summer.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Every summer all six of us would pile into Grandma’s minivan and head for the west coast. My favorite trip was the one when we drove to Los Angeles, then traveled the entire Pacific Coast Highway up to San Francisco. With everyone crammed together and all tired and stinky, I felt like a bear cub in a den. When we got a flat tire, Gramps fixed it. When I wanted a slice of gas station pizza, Dad paid for it. When I got angry at Ashley for farting and blaming it on me, Mom yelled at us and Grandma laughed. I loved our vacations.
But I don’t say any of that. It’s not going to change their minds.
Dad goes, “It’s getting late. Don’t you have an American Civilization test tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Well, move along, then.”
If Gramps wants to take me hunting, then what gives Dad the right to stop him? I mean, this is Gramps’s house. He let us move in here when Dad lost his job and couldn’t keep up with the house payments and had to declare bankruptcy.
I open my American Civ book to the chapter “US–Great Britain Relations, Pre–Revolutionary War.” After I read through it, I answer the questions at the end of the chapter and get over half of them wrong.
God, I can never get the details down. What sucks is that the details are what Ms. Hoole tests us on. The doctor says it’s because of ADD or ADHD or something. He says I can’t focus and I get overexcited, and Brighton says that explains my obsession with grizzly bears and Taylor Swift.
There’s a knock on my door, which means Gramps. Mom and Dad never knock.
“Come in.”
He sits beside me on my bed, a book in his hand. “Hey, bud. Sorry I got you into trouble.”
“It’s not your fault Dad’s so lame.”
“Don’t be so hard on him.”
Now I feel kinda bad, but only for a second. “So we’re not going on our hunting trip?”
“We’re going. Yes, sir, you and I are going to get a six-point. A real trophy bull. Maybe we’ll go next weekend when your father is in a better mood.”
“Pinkie swear?” I hold out my little finger.
“I bear swear.”
“Huh?”
“Do this with your hands.”
He makes his hands into bear claws, and I do the same thing. He interlocks his fingers with mine and then he growls, violently shaking my hands.
“Never break a bear swear,” he says. I have no idea what it means, but I can’t stop laughing.
He hands me a worn hardcover book with a picture of a bear titled Grizzly Bears of Northwest Wyoming. “I found this in the attic; thought you might like to take a look. I know how much you love bears.”
A grizz shows me his teeth from the cover as he roars. They’re stained brown with the blood of the less fortunate. His eyes are soulless little black dots. He eats, and he doesn’t care what.
God, I’d give anything to see a grizz up close.
I say, “What’s your best bear story?”
“I’ve never told it before?”
“You always said I was too young.”
“Ah, well, you’re thirteen now. In a lot of cultures, that’s the year boys become men.”
There’s no way I’m a man. I mean, I’ve never even kissed a girl.
“So my best bear story? Well, that’s gotta be when my hunting guide Brendan Rien and I were out tracking an elk herd back in, uh . . . 2003. The timber got too thick for the horses, so we tied them to a tree and moved on foot. We didn’t get no elk that morning, but when we returned, you wouldn’t believe it — all that was left of our horses were two heads dangling from the ropes, still tied to the trees.”
“Whoa. What happened?”
“A grizz happened.”
“He ate two horses? What?”
He shakes his head. “It was a she. About ten yards away, we saw two piles of dirt. There was blood everywhere and it stank like you wouldn’t believe. She buried their bodies. I mean, can you imagine the strength it would take? Digging holes for two horses?”
“But why would she bury them?”
“She was waiting for them to spoil. Grizzly bears like their meat rotten.”
A chill falls down my body and freezes up my stomach. I just got an all-too-real picture in my head of rotting horses and I can’t get it out.
“That’
s bold,” I say, like I have no problem with rotting bodies or dirt puddled with horse blood. But I have to think of something else. I try to force a picture of that new girl in choir class, but the image of a horse’s head is stuck in my brain.
I fake a laugh and say, “You know, she wouldn’t have had to kill the horses if there’d been a pizza place around.”
Gramps shakes his head. “You really like pizza, don’t you?”
“You really like The Weather Channel. No judge.”
“You’re going to learn quite a bit. This is why I hunt out of the Tetons every year.”
“Dad says you have to watch your blood pressure.”
“I’ve been hunting elk, deer, and black bear ever since I was thirteen. I don’t have to watch nothing.”
“You’ve been hunting since you were my age?”
“Yup. Your great-grandfather first took me to the Tetons when I was thirteen. And he was thirteen when his father took him. It’s a family tradition — all men hunt and field-dress an elk when they turn thirteen.”
“Did Dad?”
“Well, he killed an elk, a sad-looking four-point no bigger than a mule deer. But he left the field dressing to me.”
“No way! Dad went hunting? How come he never told me?”
Gramps laughs. “There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with killing an animal. More than your father could handle.”
“I can handle it.”
“He couldn’t stand the sight of blood.”
“That’s ’cause Dad’s weak.”
He smiles. “Looks like you missed your friend’s game. Did you ask him how it went?”
“Brighton isn’t answering his phone, and the Internet’s down. I’ll just talk to him at school tomorrow.”
“Nah, let’s go see him now.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’ll drive you. I should have told you not to make other plans when pruning.”
“But what about Dad?”
“He already went to bed.”
I slide on my shoes. Whatever health problem Gramps has, it can’t be that bad. He’s the same guy he’s always been. Still hunting elk, still pruning, and he doesn’t treat me like a child the way Mom and Dad do.
I say, “And then maybe we could order a pizza.”
Gramps shakes his head. “We’ll make a man out of you yet.”
