Meanwhile, Kit patiently tended his poles, hoping the ends would bob up and down, telling him he hooked a fish. Little did I suspect that would happen, but suddenly one gave a huge tug. He yelled that he had a giant one, grabbed the pole out of the nail base, and maneuvered toward shore. He pulled out a fish at least six inches long, and he beamed with a wide-eyed smile and declared, “I have my dinner right here.”
In the end, Susan and I caught nothing. Feeling skunked, we pulled our poles in the darkness and trucked them to the lakeside shed for safekeeping overnight. Louise had dinner prepared when we entered the cabin, but she acknowledged Kit’s triumphant, smiling march into the kitchen exclaiming, “My catch, my dinner.”
Granddaddy was awake, heard his excited cry, and made his way to the kitchen. The frying pan was loaded with lots of butter, spices, onions, and lemon, and a six-inch trout, and Granddaddy declared, “The best-looking trout I’ve ever seen. Good for you, Kit.”
So dinner had a special flavor. Kit took his place next to Granddaddy, and although we all had small portions because everyone wanted a taste, Granddaddy declared it “the best tasting trout I’ve ever had.” His pleasure was genuine, for Kit, with his smiling, freckle-filled face, rounded tummy, peevish humor and nature, undoubtedly tugged at memories of his middle son, our father. Family was not a topic for conversation, and that night was no exception. However, memories of my father were closer to the surface than ever before, as I would reluctantly experience toward the end of our stay.
While I slept, I kicked off my comforter more than once, squirming around through an unusually warm night for Lake Tahoe. When I awoke at dawn, it was still warm. Out on the deck I found the railings were bone dry, absent the beads of moisture that usually collected during the night. The sky was not brilliant turquoise, shrouded by a high haze that brightened the sunlight. The air was absolutely still. By breakfast time, a little before 8:00, it was eighty degrees, without any breeze, and I could smell the heat rising from dry pine needles and earth. It didn’t bother me because I was headed down to the lake to retrieve my rowboat, swim in the cold water, and discover who might be visiting Sky Water Lodge or the homes south of Granddaddy’s pier.
After the morning had passed, I securely tied the rowboat and stood on the beach in almost tepid water, wondering if I could perspire under water. The climb up the steps to the cabin left me dripping. I crossed the deck and saw Granddaddy looking at the outside thermometer, patting his forehead with a hanky.
“It’s hot, Hersch, real hot. This temp thing is either broken or it’s over ninety-five degrees. Can’t remember the last time this happened.” His long slacks and shirts were unsuited for this heat, and I knew he wouldn’t go down to the water unless he had to. Without a breeze, it didn’t matter if we left all the doors and windows open. The clammy feeling made me feel that the Central Valley heat had followed us to the mountains.
“It usually doesn’t last long, but this is awful. Hardly slept last night. How about you?” We exchanged our stories, and I could see how uncomfortable he was. I recalled watching him trudge up the steps from the lake. Knowing his age, plus how he had worn himself out at the fruit stands, I wanted to make sure he had his pills, especially for his heart. Louise was ever observant, and when I asked, she assured me that he did, but mentioned his labored breathing at breakfast.
I hoped the heat wave would break, but it didn’t. By 3:00 the temperature read ninety-eight degrees and the air was so still, a balloon wouldn’t move. The next day was the same, and the day after a degree hotter. Irritability began to infect everyone, as we milled around just to create some air movement. Granddaddy couldn’t sleep at night, and trying to nap in the afternoon was miserably frustrating. The high haze didn’t budge, turning the lake into a steam cooker. I had the icy lake to dip into, so until afternoon I was well occupied. Inside the cabin, though, was stifling hot, and outside the sun beat down like a blast furnace. Open windows or doors made no difference day or night; the air didn’t move.
On the fourth day of the heat wave, I returned to the cabin from the lake later than usual, expecting Granddaddy to be squirming in the chair next to his radio, trying to forget the heat and drift off to sleep. He was wide awake, twitching, with his eyes shut, flopping his arms when they stuck to the wooden armrests. I sat at the octagon table, opened a box of cards, and set out a game I could play by myself, waiting for time to pass. Near 5:00, his eyes opened, and he unexpectedly bounced up from his chair and began wildly waving his arms. He walked around the grand room, twisting his head as if trying to hear a distant sound. His animation caught me by total surprise, and I thought maybe something terrible had happened. Maybe he was suffering heatstroke, a heart attack, or worse. He acted like he had lost his good sense.
Suddenly he shouted, “Hersch, Susan, grab the sheets! Grab all the sheets!”
I thought he’d gone crazy. Alarmed, Susan emerged from her bedroom, saw him waving madly and shouting to “grab all the sheets off the beds.” She stood rooted by the doorjamb, unsure what was going on.
He shuffled across the floor in stocking feet, nearly sliding into his bedroom, repeating urgently, “Hersch, grab the sheets, all of them. Move on. Hurry, hurry. Susan, you too.”
I hesitated, still startled, watched him throw his bed cover aside, grab both sheets, and rip them off the bed. He did the same on the single bed, holding the big ball of sheets to his chest. He came out in a determined rush and grinned, “Move on now, get them and follow me.”
I hustled to my bedroom, not daring to fool around even if he was acting so crazy. I grabbed all the sheets I could hold. As I finished, I heard water pelting the metal sides of the shower in the bathroom. He shouted above the full blast, “Hurry up, you two, bring me your sheets!” I did, and he tossed them under the running water. “Hersch,” he told me, “go get the stepladder. Quick. Hurry.”
I was almost certain he’d lost it, thinking he just wanted to get wet for relief, but moved my fastest and retrieved the stepladder in a jiff. He was wringing excess water from sheets when I appeared at the bathroom door holding the stepladder. He didn’t stop for an instant, barging past me, holding both arms around a huge soggy clump of white sheets. By this time his shirt and pants were soaked through. He signaled with his head to follow, and we stopped at the door leading out to the deck. He climbed the stepladder, took a wet sheet from me, draped it over the open door and pushed thumbtacks to hold it up, covering the entire doorway like he was building a kid’s ghost house.
“Check on Susan, throw the rest of ’em in the shower. Soak ’em good and follow me.” Susan was holding her sheets at the bathroom door, and I repeated what he said and backed up while he descended the stepladder.
We did the same thing at the other door out to the deck, located near his bedroom. He opened that door, draped a sheet over it, tacked it down, descended the stepladder, and headed for the front door. I followed, but halfway across the grand room I looked back at what I thought was a kid’s playhouse and detected movement in the hung sheets. They slightly billowed into the cabin, rounding inward, catching a faint breeze!
After four miserable days of sweltering heat and stifling air, he had noticed a tender breeze from the west. We worked nonstop to mount sheets on all six doors in the cabin and some of the windows. The breeze flowed through the wet sheets, cooling the great room first. The refreshing air seeped into the bedrooms and kitchen, and it became a gentle wind as the end of daylight approached. We worked steadily, resoaking sheets and replacing drying ones with wet, dripping ones.
As we cooled down, the twinkle in his eye appeared, and he chortled. “How do you young’uns like Granddaddy’s air conditioning!” He grinned, partly in relief from the heat, mostly from enjoying sharing his mountain knowledge with us.
I laughed to myself, shaking my head at my qualms, wondering why I ever doubted him. Old though he might be, his senses were as sharp as ever. Susan went so far as to nearly wrap herself in the front door’s hanging
wet sheet while the breeze cooled her.
The heat wave finally broke. That night all windows were open to allow cool lake air to drift throughout the cabin, lulling me to sleep. At dawn the next morning, I relished shivering on the deck, watching Lake Tahoe wake up below. A cool lake breeze was blowing from the west. I often laughed with Granddaddy later about his “air conditioning,” both at Lake Tahoe and Atherton. His sharp senses added to my comfort and confidence in being with him. He was as pleased by the suspense he had created with his grandchildren and the relief of his family’s laughter, as much as with the coolness his trick had created.
Granddaddy slept late, probably the first good sleep he’d gotten in four nights. I went down to the shore early in the morning and enjoyed being chilled by the cool breeze. With a lighter heart I prepared for a day of adventure, thinking I would hunt crawfish to start off the day.
Later in the afternoon, when I returned to the cabin, I found myself with nothing to do. I decided to poke around. I’d explored every nook and cranny at 48 Spencer Lane and now I would do the same at Lake Tahoe. I knew a good place to start. Underneath the deck was a large storage area, enclosed by twelve-inch plank siding. The space was filled with old outboard motors; a ruined green one-person rowboat; oars, whole and broken; snowshoes; patio chairs; beach umbrellas; parts of fishing gear; tools; and lots of boxes. I quickly figured out that things had been first stored in the rear, and as time passed, each new item was stored closer to the entrance. That meant the old stuff was way in the back. I might even find boxes holding interesting memorabilia about the family. I likened the exploration to digging deeper into the geological strata of the earth, as I’d seen in a picture I had at home. The front boxes, filled with motor oil, spare parts, and extra oarlocks, gave way to rows of boxes crammed with old magazines. The covers of Life magazine in the 1940s looked dramatic and interesting, but they could wait. I had not yet reached the far back wall. I kept shifting boxes around, peeking inside in curiosity, until I was close. I spied a promising-looking box with what looked like a black shoelace hanging out. Three rows of boxes stood between me and the waxed box, but I forged a new path. I expected spiked baseball shoes, but sighed heavily when I opened it and found nothing but bunches of black shoelaces in a pile. I almost closed the lid, but listened to the voice in my head saying, “Nobody stores a big box of shoelaces.” I pushed them aside, digging down. Yet I soon sighed again, disappointed, seeing nothing but old long baseball stockings.
The light in the far back was faint, filtering through cracks between planks, and I almost gave up. I was leery of black widow spiders as I gingerly lifted a sock out. To my surprise, it was very heavy, full of something. I spied black buckshot between the other socks. I absolutely knew I had found something, just didn’t know what. The box was heavy, but I had made a path, and I lugged it out to the sunlight. Sure enough, several old, long baseball socks, some rotting, were filled with varying amounts of buckshot!
Granddaddy was inside, fiddling with the radio, probably trying to zero in on a baseball game. One corner of the box had rotted, spilling buckshot on the steps, so I wedged it against my belly as I swung the screen door open with my foot and plopped the box on the octagon table in front of him. Buckshot seeped out and rolled over the copper top, stopping at the rivets on the circumference.
“What in the world?” were his first words. “Are the stockings still inside the box?” I lifted the flaps so he could take a look. Leaning over, he roared in laughter, exclaiming, “Hersch, where in the world did you find these? Must be better’n thirty years old.” He poked around until he found one stocking whole enough to lift out. It was limp and hung like a dead snake.
“Under the deck, way in the back. What are they?” I had no idea why someone would fill stockings with buckshot.
He held the stocking across both palms, lifting it up and down, as if weighing it. “Hersch, this is what I wore chasing those.” He pointed to the heads of two bighorn sheep mounted above either side of the fireplace. “This is how I stayed in shape, tramping all over Wyoming and Montana chasing those critters in the winter with these on my ankles. Let me tell you, by the time I went to work in the spring, my legs were ready.”
He dug deeply into the box and carefully pulled out an old sock, stiff with age, barely resembling a circle. “Hold this one, Hersch.” He offered it to me and then watched my arm drop to the tabletop. It was full of buckshot and heavy. “That one I used racing the kids who wanted to make the team. I tied these around my ankles and wore them the first month or so in spring. I lost a lot of races in early training. When I finally was satisfied my legs were ready, I took them off and flew like the wind.”
He recalled particular races, telling me about the fellows he knew would succeed and the ones who wouldn’t. He had told me on an earlier occasion that preparation, training, and determination were important, but I didn’t mind him telling me again. In my mind, I saw him racing young players, and I relished the idea of taking off the weighted socks and flying like the wind around the bases.
Usually, memories of his past brought a broad smile. He took the shot-filled sock, laid it across his instep, sat up, and lifted his foot. It didn’t rise much. His brow furrowed, and he kept gazing downward, barely moving, feeling the weight of time. When he glanced up, he murmured, “That was a long . . . long time ago.” He was talking to himself as much as talking to me. The box of weighted socks sat between us like a magic lantern. I fantasized visions of seeing how fast he once was, and he had his wistful memories of a golden time he longed for, his youth.
After the heat wave, the sunny, pleasant days passed quickly. I filled my time rowing outside the cove, farther and farther in each direction, looking for adventure. My liking and respect for Lake Tahoe grew, partly because I took Granddaddy’s admonitions about the neutrality of nature to heart. Although I took risky chances, I avoided too much injury, mainly because the lake’s beauty nurtured me. Of course, with all that rowing my muscles grew stronger and stronger.
Late in the afternoon on the day before our departure, I was playing a board game with Kit when Granddaddy came into the great room and called me over. “Hersch, I need you to get something for me.”
I expected to retrieve something from his car or from the storage area under the deck, but he said, pointing, “Get the ladder, it’s up there,” I looked up at the ceiling, which was ten or eleven feet high, and the only thing I saw was the large, round iron lamp hanging down. It held eight small lights, and the iron was worked to match the hunting scene on the fireplace screen.
He saw where my eye had settled and he corrected me. “No, no, way up, over by the chimney. I’ll get the flashlight, you get the ladder.” When I returned, he was standing in the small hall closet next to the front door, pointing up at a wooden ceiling panel. “Move that and you can get into the attic. Here’s the light, I’ll tell you where to go. Step on the crossbeams, and go slow.”
I made my way into a pitch-black, musty attic, flashlight in hand. The high-pitched roof soared overhead. After I found my footing and looked around, I shouted down, “Okay, what’s next?”
“Can you see the chimney? Head toward it. Don’t stick your hand through the nails on the roof.”
The underside of the steeply pitched roof was just above my head, and I spotted the nails holding down the roof shingles protruding inside. I trained my flashlight down at the parallel two-by-ten crossbeams as I began creeping toward the chimney. I took the opportunity to shine my flashlight all around, but the attic was empty. When I reached the granite chimney, I shouted down to him, “Okay, now what?”
He asked if I was at the chimney and I told him I was.
“Can you get around behind it?”
Most of the attic was wide open because of the high pitch of the roofline. The chimney rose along the front wall, and the space behind it was narrow and dark. I stooped, shined the light behind the granite blocks, and saw it would be a squeeze. I reported back, “Yeah, I think so
, just barely.”
I started to maneuver into the opening. Peering behind the chimney, I saw nothing but supporting two-by-fours. The space was four feet high at best, a tight fit, and the width of the granite chimney extended about six feet ahead.
He shouted, “Can you see some two-by-fours, about halfway in? One of them is newer than the rest. See it?”
He was right. The two-by-fours supporting the roof trusses next to the chimney were mostly charred with age. One was noticeably newer. I reported, “Yeah, I see it. Whadda you want me to do now?”
“There’s a space at the top, two inches or so. Reach up there and yank it out.”
I crawled in, reached up, and pulled. Nothing. The two-by-four didn’t budge. It was wedged tight. I thought something was wrong, but heard him shout from below, “Give it a big yank, all you got.”
So I did and it popped loose. I shouted, “Got it!”
“Okay, good work. Now reach inside and bring it down.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, and I envisioned spiders of all kinds waiting for my hand to enter the dark. My other hand was holding fast onto the chimney stones for balance, and my flashlight rested on a crossbeam, so that was not much help. I held my breath; my fingers crawled into the dark slot. Bingo, I felt something that wasn’t wood. I worked my hand around its round, smooth steel shape, and felt my throat tighten. Somehow I knew.
I pulled it out very carefully and regained my balance. I held it close and shined my flashlight up and down. Sure enough, it was a shotgun.
My breath caught in my throat. It was the same shotgun my grandfather had showed me while we were sitting in my father’s Packard on our way down the side of the Snake River Canyon to his boathouse, almost nine years ago when I was six years old. Although it was beautifully engraved, holding it jarred scary memories of that duck-hunting trip to the island. I could remember all too clearly my father forcing me to pull the trigger on the twenty-gauge, my bleeding fingers, the searing pain in my shoulder, rocks gouged into my palms, being terrified of my father’s hot breath, then seeing my grandfather’s hand appear, grip like a steel vise, and save me.
Heart of a Tiger: Growing Up With My Grandfather, Ty Cobb Page 23
