by Ryan Gebhart
I follow Gramps down the staircase. He bought this house with Grandma the year Ashley was born and the rest of us were living on the other end of town. Sure, all the other homes in the neighborhood are nicer and newer, but it’s like someone took a cookie cutter and baked the exact same two-story cube a hundred times over.
Gramps’s house has a soul. The pine trees in his front yard are huge, while all the neighbors just have saplings being held up by twine and metal rods. Some yards have sod that didn’t take, and now there are all these patches of yellow grass everywhere.
I close the door and head to Gramps’s pickup.
Gramps dials the radio knob to 96.9 — KBCR Big Country Radio — and they’re playing Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard singing one of Grandma’s favorite songs.
I slouch back and imagine wearing Gramps’s cowboy hat, driving in my pickup through the canyon to work another day at Henry Feed and Tractor Supply in Hayden. One arm rests on the windowsill, and I eat a Fruit Roll-Up my old lady packed, because she knows how I think Fruit Roll-Ups are the cat’s pajamas, as Grandma would say.
We pull into Bright’s driveway, and the light is on in his bedroom, just above the garage. With Gramps waiting in the truck, I ring the doorbell. Chloe starts barking.
Bright’s mom answers the door, and Chloe rushes out to snort at my ankles, wagging her tail. Her eyeballs bug out of her smashed pug face, making her look like a mouse caught in a trap.
“Tyson, hello. What are you doing over here so late?” His mom sounds so formal, with her thick British accent. Bright was born in England and moved to Colorado in the first grade, but the only time he sounds remotely British anymore is when he laughs.
“Is Brighton home?”
“Let me fetch him.”
It sounds like he trips and comes tumbling down the staircase. But he appears in one piece, wearing a green polo and expensive jeans. Or as I like to call them, his fancy pants.
“Hey, Ty.” He coaxes Chloe into the house and closes the door behind him. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to see how your game went. Did you win?”
He scratches at his buzzed head. Bright and his teammates shaved their heads at the beginning of the season as some good-luck thing. He looks so much older without his shaggy hair.
“Nah, we lost.”
“What was the score?”
“Thirty-one to thirty-three.”
“Hey, at least it was close. Did you kick any field goals?”
“A twenty-five yarder and a nineteen yarder.”
“Twenty-five yards? Good job, football bear.”
He makes a little grin. “I missed the third kick from fifteen yards and lost us the game.”
“It happens. So, hey, me and my gramps aren’t going hunting until next weekend. You want to hang out tomorrow afternoon? It’s supposed to snow. Maybe we could go sledding at Snowshoe.”
He shakes his head, eyes to the ground. “I might be going skiing with some of the guys on the team.”
“Oh,” I say. I get this feeling in my chest. It’s like a pain, but not really. I mean, I’ve seen this coming since summer. Bright’s becoming one of the popular guys.
I can already imagine him going to parties and “forgetting” to invite me, and then the next day in the halls, kids will come up to him saying stuff I won’t understand. I’ll ask Bright what they’re talking about, and he’ll say, “Oh, it’s nothing. You had to be there.”
Pretty soon I’m going to be just some other kid he nods at in American Civ. Pretty soon I’m going to go from having one friend to having zero friends.
It feels like something is pushing up against my rib cage.
“That’s cool,” I say. “And sorry I couldn’t make it to your game tonight. Something came up.”
“What’s that?”
“I was taking a dump at the neighbor’s house.” I’m trying so hard not to cry, because Bright making new friends is a stupid reason to cry. It’s not like anyone died. I’m just being all emotional. So I laugh instead. “I drank a bunch of prune juice with my gramps, and dude, have you ever tried that stuff? It works.”
He’s not even paying attention. He’s just checking his phone.
“Who are you talking to?” I say.
“Mika.”
“Mikachu!” I say in my Pikachu voice, and Bright barely smiles. “What’s she saying?”
“She’s just talking about how Amanda Morgan brought this ridiculous sign to the game for Nico.”
“Oh.”
He laughs. “You had to be there.”
A bolt of panic strikes me.
“I’ll see your next game,” I say. “I promise.”
“I should probably get back to studying for Hoole’s test. See ya later, Ty.” And then he goes inside and locks the door.
I get back in the truck.
“Is everything okay?” Gramps asks.
“Whatever.” I turn to him and say, “Let’s go over to the water tower.”
“Maybe it’s best if we went back home. It’s getting late.”
I slouch in my seat, my teeth clenched. I’m funner than the football kids, but after all these years, why doesn’t Bright know that?
Driving down the street, Gramps says, “Okay, just this one time.”
He flicks his turn signal and takes a right onto Shady Lane, toward the hills, the warehouses, the highway, and the old water tower.
Gramps pulls in front of the only gas station on Shady Lane. It has bars on the windows and cameras perched on the roof. We walk in, a bell chimes, and I casually check myself out in the security monitor.
I head for the fridges lining the back wall. I scan through the selections until I find the red can with the insane cartoon bird. RoadRunner Energy Drink. It’s got ginseng, taurine, caffeine, and my mouth is watering just thinking about that sour tingle on the insides of my cheeks.
I don’t want to think about Brighton. I mean, I knew him long before Mika and his football friends. I met him in first grade when Ms. Virost sat him next to me, and oh, my God, he had the most ridiculous booger in his nose.
Heh. I remember him picking his nose, then he showed me the booger on his fingertip.
“You want to eat it?” he said. “It’s got vitamin B.”
“Gross.” I got out of my seat.
“The B stands for booger!”
He started chasing me around the desks like we were in an intense game of duck, duck, goose. I wailed like a girl as he wrestled me to the ground.
“Eat my booger!” he said, and back then he had a full-on British accent.
“Never!” I cried like a determined soldier in an already lost battle. I was using all my strength to fight off this disgusting kid beneath the chalkboard, but he was one of the stronger first-graders that played T-ball.
Soon we were inseparable. We’d ride our bikes to the water tower every day after school. We’d climb to the top and eat snow, or talk about stupid stuff, or see how far we could throw rocks. I pretended I was a grizzly named Pizza Bear defending America from the invading Gorlaks. Bright was my trusty sidekick, Booger Bear 5000.
No one else would talk to him because he was the new kid with a funny accent. He worked so hard to sound American so everyone would stop calling him a wiener. But I didn’t care. He seemed cool enough.
I hand the cashier my drink and a bag of Skittles. Gramps puts a bag of peanuts and a huge beer on the counter, which is odd because I haven’t seen him drink in years. The cashier puts his stuff in one bag and mine in another. His eyebrows are narrowed, as if Gramps is a creeper giving candy to some random kid.
“Have a good night,” the cashier says.
When we’re out the door, I say, “What was that guy’s deal?”
“Don’t mind him.”
As we’re driving away, the guy gets on his cell phone. Oh, my God, is he for real? He’s actually calling the police.
I pop the top to my drink. It’s tart and eye-opening and strawberry flavore
d. I say, “Some of the kids at school think it’s weird that we hang out.”
“Do you?”
“Nah, I love it when you take me to the Tavern. You got skills when it comes to the ladies.”
We drive beneath the highway overpass, and on the other side, the water tower appears at the top of a hill. It’s different coming here without Bright. It’s abandoned and dark, and the metal looks cold.
I say, “Maybe you could teach me some of your pickup lines.”
“You got a girlfriend?”
“No. But there’s this girl named Karen in my choir class. She just moved here from Texas.”
“A Texas girl, eh?” Gramps parks his truck past the broken gate and the barely readable No Trespassing sign, in a bunch of weeds growing from the abandoned parking lot. There’s a little bit of wind, and the air is heavy, as if it wants to snow. “I met myself a girl from Abilene once, before your grandmother. Dorothy McCoy. Must have been fifty-nine years ago.”
“What should I say to her?”
“You just need to be yourself.”
That’s horrible advice. Be myself? If any girl saw the things I do when I’m alone — when I’m really myself — she would never date me. I get excited when I scrape my elbow, because that means in a week I’ll have a scab to pick. And if I had the money, I’d get a one-hundred-gallon aquarium and just go to town. Newts, live plants, discus and angelfish, and maybe a small school of neon tetras and a sucker fish to keep everything clean.
I walk to the ladder and grab the bottom rung, but then I let go. For a second I imagine climbing to the top the way me and Bright used to. But that part of my life when we protected the world from the Gorlaks is over. Bright’s voice is deeper now, he’s got peach fuzz above his lip, and he makes out with Mika outside of Ms. Hoole’s class all the time. He’ll never throw rocks with me again.
Gramps sits with his back to the rusted metal, his beer in a brown paper bag by his side. His skin and clothes are yellow from the lights. And he looks sad, the way he shells his peanuts and stares at the ground.
“Everything okay?” I say.
“Oh, I’m fine. Just don’t tell your father I was drinking and eating peanuts tonight.”
I sit by his side in a patch of dead grass. “Why can’t I tell him that?”
“I’m supposed to be watching my sodium.” He twists open his beer and gulps it down as if he’s dying of thirst. He wipes the foam dribbling down his chin. It’s just . . . this isn’t right, the fact that he’s drinking in front of me.
“Is something on your mind?”
He belches. “Nothing you ought to worry yourself about.” But with his grim, rumbling tone, I can’t help but worry. He takes another swig and says, “Your grandmother was very proud of you, you know.”
He’s trying to change the subject.
“Proud of me? I was nine when she died. Why? Was it because I made some fierce macaroni art?”
I laugh. Gramps does not.
He says, “She was so proud of you because you didn’t care.”
“Huh?”
“You were friends with all the other kids in your preschool. You didn’t care who they were; you just wanted to play KerPlunk.”
“So what was it like when you were a kid? Was everything in black and white and did kids wear suits and ties to school? Were you not allowed to play KerPlunk?”
I finally get a laugh out of him, but it isn’t very rewarding when it’s followed by an outburst of tears. There isn’t anything more horrifying than an old man crying. It’s just something Gramps doesn’t do. He didn’t even cry at Grandma’s funeral. He simply put a rose on her coffin before they lowered it, then walked away with a poker face.
Something must be really wrong.
He looks at me with his eyes all red and says, “I’m glad we’re going to have one more trip together, just you and I.”
The wind dies. A few flakes of snow drift down like ash. What does he mean? Is he dying?
Even though I’m right by his side, he’s never looked more alone.
Headlights appear at the end of the road beneath the highway overpass. I picture the Grim Reaper in the driver’s seat, his sickle sticking out the window, coming to take Gramps away.
He jumps to his feet and hides his bottle and paper bag in the dead weeds.
We get in the truck and he pulls past the gate in reverse. That’s when I see the car blocking our way. It’s a Ford Crown Victoria. It’s white. It has a spotlight next to the rearview mirror and lights on the roof.
Gramps lowers his window. A cop shines her flashlight into the truck.
“Evening, officer,” Gramps says.
She says, “A little late to be out in this part of town, don’t you think?”
“I was taking him to his friend’s house, but we got lost.” Gramps points his thumb at me, and I offer a wave. His voice is a pitch higher than usual and it sounds fake, like he’s trying to pretend he’s not nervous.
“We got a phone call this evening; guy at the gas station said he wanted me to check you out. He said you were hanging out with a young boy and purchasing alcohol.”
“Yes, officer. This is Tyson. My grandson. The beer — obviously — was for me.”
“Have you been drinking tonight?”
“No.” He pauses like he’s choking. “Well, only the one.”
“Have you been drinking and driving?”
“No!” he squeals. I’ve never heard Gramps sound so . . . pathetic.
“Would you mind stepping out of the truck?”
“Absolutely, officer.”
I remain still, drinking my RoadRunner and trying my hardest to act like everything is perfectly cool and normal as he goes through a sobriety test. But this is so messed up.
Another cop car appears behind the first. A minute passes and Gramps has his finger touching the tip of his nose when someone taps on my window. I lower it.
“How’s it going, son?” This cop rests his arms on the windowsill and looks around inside.
With a mouthful of Skittles, I say, “Good.”
“Mind if I see your beverage?”
I hand it over and he smells it. “You’re going to be up all night drinking this stuff.”
“I got a test tomorrow.”
Gramps returns. He struggles to put on his seat belt, his breathing uncomfortably heavy.
“Did you get a ticket?” I ask.
He makes a wheezing cough from deep in his lungs. “I blew under the limit. You doing okay over there, Mr. Pizza Bear?”
I want to ask him what’s going on, but there’s no need. He’s sick or dying and he doesn’t want to tell me. He restarts the truck, then gives me this disgusting happy look, like I can’t figure out the obvious.
I breathe in the dry heat from the vents.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s all good.”
Gramps pulls into the driveway and the cop parks next to us. She walks with us to the front door.
The porch light turns on, and Dad appears, half awake.
“What in the heck is going on?”
With a hand on my shoulder, the cop goes, “Are you the father of this young gentleman?”
“Yes.”
“It seemed a little late for these two to be driving to Shady Lane.”
Dad’s eyes get wide. He clears his throat and says, “Officer, thank you very much for escorting them home.”
To my surprise, Dad doesn’t ground me. He just says he needs to have a talk with Gramps, so I go to my room. I take my slimy little newt from his aquarium, plop down on my bed, and put him on my chest to roam around. But he just sits there, his little green head perked up, staring at the wall.
I sigh.
“Hey, there, Jar Jar Newtingston. Did you have a good day?”
Jar Jar wanders up to my neck, his cold body tickling my skin. I place him on my comforter and pet his head with my index finger.
“Did you eat all your newt food? You’re looking a little skinny, you
know.”
Jar Jar is getting dry. I put him back in his tank, and he hurries to take a soak.
“Sorry about that, bud.”
I stumble onto my bed and grab the book Gramps gave me — Grizzly Bears of Northwest Wyoming. I open it to the introduction:
During the postglacial period, the grizzly bears’ natural range covered all of the western United States and Canada, extending as far east as Pennsylvania and as far south as central Mexico. Today, their numbers are limited to Alaska, western Canada, and small pockets in Montana and northwest Wyoming.
I yawn, my eyelids heavy. It’s three a.m. and the RoadRunner is beginning to run its course. I’m exhausted after all that pruning today. I flip through the pages.
Contrary to grizzlies’ gruesome reputation, 80 to 90 percent of their diet consists of vegetation. In the parks of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, the average bear spends most of its day grazing on berries or whitebark pine nuts. When plant resources are low, grizzlies are known to hunt and kill large game, such as elk, deer, and even black bears. However, grizzlies prefer eating carrion left from a hunter or another animal rather than expend energy killing on their own.
My alarm goes off before I realize I’d even fallen asleep. It’s six thirty.
Oh, no, Jar Jar’s light is still on! I must have left it on all night.
I check the thermometer.
Eighty-five degrees! Oh, crap. Everyone knows that the sustainable water temperature for a newt ranges from seventy-two to seventy-six degrees. Above or below that and they could . . .
I tap on the glass. His motionless body sways in the water. I take him out, and he doesn’t move. He’s dead.
No. I cannot deal with this now.
Mom opens my door. “Time to get up.”
“Don’t you guys ever knock?” I put Jar Jar’s body back in the tank, sling my backpack across my shoulder, and storm past her.
“Aren’t you going to change and take a shower? That’s the same outfit you wore yesterday.”
“I don’t care.”
“What about breakfast?”
I hate eating breakfast in the morning. Cereal is for after school, dinner, after dinner, and before bed only.
“Tyson, your coat!”
