My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today (9 page)

“Or anything else I could think of,” Uncle Peter said and laughed. “Then I’d cover it all up and slide it safely back behind the hay where no young lad coming up to pitch hay down to the animals would see it. Oh, I’m a sneaky one.”

“How much?” Sean asked again. He seemed much more serious than Pat or Charlie.

“One hundred and seventy-five dollars,” Uncle Peter said.

“Saints preserve us!” Aunt Mary exclaimed.

“Fortunately,” he said, “Mr. Braxton let me know late last winter that he could allow us to fall a little behind in our mortgage payments but he might not be the one holding the note by the time the crops came in.”

“How come so much money for one piece of furniture, Pa?” Pat asked.

“The wood and the design match the set the Widow Dixon already has,” he said, “but it was the carving that she was really interested in, and willing to pay for.”

“But it’s such a shame you have to give it away,” Aunt Mary said.

“I’m not
giving
away anything,” he reminded her. “What I’m doing is keeping our house and our farm.”

“How are you going to get it down, Papa?” Sissie asked. “It’s too big to go down the ladder.”

“Oh, no!” he said and he smiled. “I guess then we’ll have to wrap it all up in blankets and then put some ropes around it and lower it right down over the edge of the floor there. Right down into the wagon and out the big door and into Culver City.”

“That’s a good idea!” the little girl squealed.

“And now if all of you will excuse me,” Uncle Peter said, “I have some carving to do.”

“Let’s go, children,” Aunt Mary said.

“Pa?” Charlie asked.

“Mmm?” his dad answered.

“Can Michael and I go swimming?”

“
May
Michael and I go swimming,” Aunt Mary corrected him.

“May Michael and I go swimming?”

“I guess some boys will do just about anything to get out of a Saturday night bath, won’t they?” he asked and then he nodded his head. “Don’t either one of you swim alone,” he said.

“No, sir,” Charlie answered.

The girls went down the ladder first and then all the boys except Charlie and me. Uncle Peter had pulled out the other door, set it up on some sawhorses and was getting out some wood chisels that looked really sharp.

“You do know how to swim, don’t you?” Charlie asked me.

“Uh huh,” I said, “but I’m going to need to borrow a swim suit.”

“A what?”

“A bathing suit. I didn’t exactly pack one with me.”

“You don’t need a bathing suit,” he shook his head and said. “You’re going to be naked.”

Chapter 14

To the River

“I’m going to be
what
?” I asked but Charlie was already scampering down the ladder.

“You boys be home for chores,” Uncle Peter called out.

“Yes, Pa.”

“Charlie!” I hurried down after him. Everyone else was gone. “What did you mean when you said . . . ”

“Warming up, ain’t it?” he asked me and he headed out the main double doors. “Going to be right hot this afternoon.”

“Wait up,” I said.

“One way or another,” he said, “I’m going to have to get wet today and I figure I’d rather do it swimming in some nice cool water than sitting in some old bath tub in the summer kitchen.”

I walked along beside him. Down the driveway and out to the road.

“There was a bath tub in your kitchen?” I asked. “I didn’t see it.”

“Well, it wasn’t there during dinner,” he said. “Never is. Usually on Saturday after supper Sean or Brigid will fetch it from the summer kitchen and bring it on in but during the summer it just stays out there.”

“Bring it on in where?”

“Into the kitchen,” he said. “Isn’t that what we’re talking about?”

“And instead it stays where?” I asked.

“The summer kitchen,” he said.

“What’s a
summer
kitchen?”

“You don’t have a summer kitchen?” Charlie asked and I shook my head. “How do you keep your house cool with your wood stove going?”

Wood stove? I figured he meant the fireplace insert. “We don’t use a wood stove in the summer,” I said. “We use an air conditioner.”

“A what?”

“A machine that cools the air. It make the house cool in the summer.”

“Oh, go on with you,” he said and laughed. “And if you don’t light your stove all summer then how does your ma cook or bake anything?”

“She uses the stove,” I said.

“I bet she does.”

“She just turns it on.”

“She just does what?”

“So what’s a summer kitchen?” I asked, going back to something he had said earlier.

“That’s the room built on out back where Ma and Brigid cook meals during the summer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. You mean you’ve never heard of a summer kitchen?”

“Huh uh,” I said, “and could you slow down a little.”

“I’m talking too fast for you?” Charlie asked.

“No,” I said, “you’re
walking
to fast for me. How far is it anyway.”

“About three miles.”

“Three miles!” I said. “Why didn’t your mom or dad drive us?”

He really laughed at that one. I ignored him and I thought about what he had said a little earlier. “So in the winter,” I said, “you would just take a bath in the kitchen? I mean the regular kitchen.”

“Yep.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why? Because that’s where the water is heating up, that’s why. The kettle is on the stove.”

“Everyone would take a bath there?”

“Of course they would. Not all at the same time. One at a time. From Francis on up to Sean. Then, when we’re all in bed, Ma takes hers and goes to bed and Pa comes back downstairs and takes his and dumps out the water.”

“You don’t each get fresh water?”

“Fresh water?” he asked, sounding puzzled. “We each get a little hot water added.”

“But isn’t the water all dirty from soap and shampoo and conditioner?” I asked.

“Soap and what and what?”

“Never mind.”

We walked along for quite a while with neither of us talking. I took off my jacket and carried it. We passed farmhouses and barns every once in a while. Sometimes a dog would start barking at us and Charlie would call out its name and tell it to hush. There was a man in one field with a team of animals pulling a plow.

“You still use horses for everything?” I asked.

“Those are mules,” he said.

We kept walking.

“That’s my schoolhouse,” he said at one point, gesturing toward a small, one-story building.”

“How many in your class?” I asked.

“Three.”

“Three?”

“Thirty-seven in the whole school. First through eighth grade.”

I wiped the sweat off my forehead. “I don’t suppose this swimming place we’re going to is indoors, is it?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “most rivers are outside.”

“We’re going to a river?”

“Fair Brook,” he said.

“So is it a brook or a river?” I asked.

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know how it got the name,” he said. Then suddenly he stopped and turned to me. I stopped, too.

 “I’m not supposed to know a lot about the future,” he gushed, “but I just gotta ask. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to sail the oceans on some big ship. See the world, you know? I just gotta know: Do I ever do that?”

“You . . .” I began.

“No!” he said. “Don’t tell me.”

“Okay,” I said. We walked about ten feet.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I . . .”

“No, don’t tell me.”

We walked another ten feet.

“All right,” he said and he stopped one more time. “I give up. I don’t care what we’re supposed to do or we’re not supposed to do. I just have to know. Do I sail around the world on some big ship?”

He looked up at me and I could tell he was a afraid I was going to say no. “I . . . I . . . .” I stumbled over my words. “I don’t know,” I honestly said.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know what you did.”

“Aren’t I your great-grandpa?”

“Yes,” I said. “But . . . I don’t really know what you did for a lot of your life.”

“How could you not know?” he asked, sounding very puzzled.

“I guess I never asked you,” I said.

“You never asked me!”

“No,” I apologized, “I always just sort of say hello and then stand there and say good-bye after a while.”

“You never even asked me,” he said, stomping away.

I chased after him. “But you’re different later on,” I said.

“What do you mean I’m different?” He kept walking.

“You’re . . . old.”

The road had led into a small grove of trees. It was cooler in the shade.

“I know I’m old,” he said. “I’m a hundred. But I’m still me, aren’t I?”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “but . . .”

 “Bucky is crazy,” I heard another boy say and I looked over toward some bushes to the left and there was a black kid about our age. “Bucky is just plain touched in the head,” the boy said.

Chapter 15

Ireland and William

Charlie didn’t act surprised. He was hardly paying any attention to the boy who wore old blue overalls but no shirt or shoes.

“Who’s that?” the boy asked, pointing at me.

“My cousin Michael,” Charlie said.

“He sure dresses funny,” the boy said.

“Yeah, he does.”

Then the boy turned and disappeared into the bushes.

“Charlie,” I asked, “who was . . .?”

“And I never told you if I went sailing the high seas?” he interrupted me.

“What?”

“You said you never asked but I never told you if I sailed around the world?”

I shrugged. “Not that I remember.” I paused. “But I don’t always listen to family stories,” I said. “Sometimes they seem, well, boring.”

“Boring!”

“Well, yeah, I mean it all happened a long time ago and so it’s not as interesting as what’s happening now.”

I could tell he was thinking about that. I could hear some kids whooping and hollering in the distance. I could hear some big splashes, too.

“In Ireland,” he said, “the farms were small. Only four or five acres. Rocky soil. Rock walls. The hills are a soft, soft green and it’s cool and wet. Not as heavy as rain but not as fine as a mist either. The cottages are stone and the roofs are made of thatch.”