My Great-grandfather Turns Twelve Today
(c) 2003 Bill Dodds
Chapter 9
I followed both of them out of
the barn. The storm had passed and it was getting brighter. I was surprised to
find that we were in the middle of the country. I guess it hadn't occurred to me
that's where most farms are. I wasn't thinking too clearly but then this was
some pretty weird stuff that I was going through.
Actually, I expected to wake up any minute and find myself
back in Charlie's... back in Great-grandpa's room at the nursing home.
I looked behind me and saw that the barn wasn't all that big.
It was about the size of a garage that could hold maybe four cars. It was two
stories tall and painted red.
There was a corral of some kind next to it. Two big brown
horses were in there.
Over to my left as we headed toward the house was another
building. This one was red, too, but it was one story high. It was long and
narrow, like a skinny garage. It had a regular door on the long side facing us
and a kind of a big screened-in cage at the far end. There were chickens in
there.
The house itself was about 100 yards from the barn. It looked
pretty new but it was an old style. It was two stories high with a big porch
wrapping around one corner of it. The house was made of wood, clapboard style:
long, narrow boards overlapping each other. There were a lot of wooden
curly-cues and stuff around the edge of the porch by the pillars and rails.
There was a small one-story addition connected to it just off the back. The
whole thing was painted white.
We were headed for a side door next to the addition.
The yard, which was pretty small, had a white, wooden picket
fence around it separating it from the rest of the area. Inside was green grass,
some flower beds and two big trees. Outside was grass and stuff that looked more
scruffy and some kind of fenced-in garden that was about the size of one-fourth
of a football field.
Beyond that was nothing. I turned a complete circle and it
was the same. There was nothing but fields as far as I could see except for way
off, back past the barn, it looked like maybe another house was in among a few
trees. That would have made it down the same dirt road that this house faced.
Something green was growing in all those fields. It was about
a foot and half high.
"What's that?" I asked, pointing toward it.
"What?" Pat stopped and asked.
"All that green stuff," I said.
Charlie had stopped, too. Pat gave his little brother a funny
look and said, "Last time I checked it was corn."
Of course it was! I knew what corn looked like when it was
growing. There were still some farms around Culver City that grew it.
"Let's go," Pat said, "we're all late for
dinner."
That was another thing. It was too light out for dinner.
Something was wrong here. It made me almost sure this must be some kind of
mixed-up dream.
"It's dinner time?" I asked.
"Past dinner time," Pat said.
"What time is it?" I asked.
Pat looked at Charlie again and slowly said, "It. Is.
Dinner. Time. That's. What. Time. It. Is."
"He hasn't eaten for days," Charlie said.
"He's kind of out of his head, kind of delirious."
"He's kind of stupid is what he kind of is," Pat
said.
"No," I said again, tapping the top of my left
wrist with my right hand. "I mean what time is it?"
"He's powerful hungry," Charlie said.
Pat tapped his left wrist with his right hand, his right
wrist with his left and then tapped his head with his left as he rubbed his
stomach with his right. "It's dinner time," he said.
"No," I said, "I mean the number. You know.
Five o'clock. Six o'clock. Seven o'clock."
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Lost your
Ingersoll?"
"Lost my what?" I asked.
"Your watch," Charlie said. "Your pocket
watch."
Pat just shook his head and Charlie shrugged some sort of
apology for me being so dim. Then Pat pointed straight up at the sky.
I looked up, right at the sun that was peeking through some
clouds. Ouch! I blinked a couple of times and Pat said, "Come on."
That seemed like a mean trick to me.
"Hey," I said, "all I wanted to know was what
time..."
"Noon," Pat said, still walking and not turning
back to face me. "Way I learned it, when the sun is right up in the middle
of the sky, it's noon."
He was right.
"Cool," I said.
That stopped them both again.
"What?" Pat turned and asked me.
"That's cool," I said. "You know what time it
is from where the sun is."
"He hasn't had a lot to drink, either," Charlie
said. "He had a fever."
"When the sun is straight up, it's noon," Pat said,
as if he were talking to a two-year-old. "The place it comes up from is
called the east. The place where it sets is called the west. Every day. Same
thing."
"I know," I said, "but I have one more
question."
"Just one?" he asked and Charlie laughed.
"How come we're going to eat dinner in the middle of the
day?" I asked. Pat took a couple of steps back toward me and leaned down,
his face right in front of mine.
"We eat dinner in the middle of the day because we're
hungry," he said.
"And he fell on his head," Charlie said. "Did
I mention he fell on his head?"
"I just guess he did," Pat said and something in
the way he said it helped me figure out who he was reminding me of. He was a lot
like my brother Robert. I guess all big brothers are kind of the same. That was
just the way Robert would talk to some of my friends, as if they didn't have any
brains at all.
"No, duh," I answered. "But what kind of
dummies eat dinner at lunch time? Tell me that, Einstein."
That got his attention, all right. He narrowed his eyes a
little bit and he said, "My name's not Einstein. And everyone eats dinner
at dinner time, Mr. Funny Shoes. Breakfast in the morning, dinner at noon,
supper at night. Or don't folks in vaudeville bother with food?"
"Oh, we bother," I said. "We need to keep up
our strength because we have to keep performing for dumb farm boys just like
you."
"What did you say!" he sputtered.
It occurred to me then that I might have gone just a teensy
bit too far. After all, this wasn't really Robert I was talking to. This was
some kid from the past who had recently shoved a pitchfork my way.
"What did you say!" he asked again, straightening
up right in front of me.
Go
to Chapter 10.
