A children’s story

For Carl R. Finch

Byline:

Leaves flew into the air as the leaf-covered body of their grandfather burst from the pile, looking like some sort of deranged scarecrow.  The leaf monster stomped around and snorted, like any good monster should.  He kicked leaves into the air, a big toothy grin on his face as he chased after Josh, then Rachel, then Josh again.  His long arms finally snatched Rachel—Grandpa lifted her off the ground, turned her upside down, and began swinging her back and forth by her ankles.  Rachel screamed from mingled terror and delight.

Josh sat out on the picnic table in the backyard, hugging his knees to his chest.  His uncle had just finished cutting the grass a few hours earlier.  Clumps of it lied around the yard and made Josh’s nostrils excited, but his nose was confused when the grass smell mixed with his salty tears.  Someone turned on the porch light; Josh looked up and saw Uncle Tim open the screen door.  It closed with a dull thud as Uncle Tim walked down the porch steps and sat down next to Josh on the picnic table.

“What’s the matter Josh?” said Uncle Tim, as he put his arm around the eleven-year-old.

Josh sniffled and looked up.  “You know.”

Uncle Tim sighed and said, “He was one of a kind, wasn’t he.”

“Yeah,” said Josh, after a short pause.

“Do you remember when he used to take you fishing?”

***

Josh was 8 years old on that day.  The dry, yellow grass contrasted with the clear water of the pond, which reflected the overhanging trees.  Josh and his grandfather stood on the far side of the pond, away from the road, with the woods on their right and some tilled earth and a tractor on their left.  The reflection of a white sign in the middle of the water said, “GNISSAPSERT ON.”

“Grandpa, what does that sign say?” asked Josh, as he began to work it out from the backwards letters.

Grandpa laughed; his eyes crinkled.  Talk with him for a few minutes, and you’d think his wrinkles had come from years and years of laughing, and not from old age.

“Don’t you worry about that,” he said, just as Josh figured out what the sign said.  “Besides, I know George.  He wouldn’t mind.”

They  reeled in their lines, their orange bobbers making zigzag patterns through the water.

“Let’s try a new spot,” Grandpa said.

“Right for that sign!” said Josh

“Why, you little rascal!”  Grandpa ruffled Josh’s hair.  “We’ll give it a try though.  Looks like you need a new worm.”

Grandpa opened up the bait box and took a night crawler away from its fellow worms and its lair of cool, wet newspaper.  He broke it in two and strung one wriggling half on Josh’s hook, the other on his own.

Josh’s line made a satisfying whiz as he cast it right smack dab in the middle of the white reflection.

“Perfect!” he said, grinning.

Almost before Josh had a chance to reel in his slack, his bobber disappeared from the surface of the water, and his line tightened.

“Reel!” said Grandpa, the long piece of grass he was chewing on falling from his mouth.  “Reel!”  He put his hands on Josh’s shoulders.

Josh didn’t need his grandpa telling him what to do.  Grandpa knew that, but he loved getting in on the excitement.  On his third year of fishing, Josh felt he was practically a pro.  His red tackle box, a Christmas gift from the year before, even proclaimed so.  “Future Pro” was written in gold letters on the top of it.  All he felt he had to do was learn to bait his own hook and take fish off it.

As Josh reeled, his line sometimes getting pulled back out again, he wondered what was on the other end.  Visions of a huge largemouth bass swam through his mind.  Josh finally pulled the fish close enough to shore to see its black shape at the end of his line.

When the fish had surrendered its battle with him, Josh and his grandpa eagerly examined it.  It had a large mouth, but it was no bass.  Two long whiskers protruded from the sides of its blocky snout, its beady eyes staring helplessly at its captors.

“A bullhead!” said Grandpa.  “They can put up a good fight.”

“Can I take it off this time?”

“No, you’d better let me do it.  These fish have stingers, and man do they hurt.  One of those buggers got me a few days ago.”

Grandpa showed Josh his finger, a band-aid blue from sweat wrapped around it.  Josh decided he would let his grandpa handle this one.

Grandpa gingerly grasped the fish, sliding his hand from its head to its middle to keep its three fins with stingers on them from sticking out.  He took the hook out of its mouth with his other hand and tossed the bullhead into a big white pail half filled with water, where it went ploosh! “Alright, let’s both give it a try this time,” Grandpa said.

Their lines sang as Josh and his grandpa both cast near the reflection of the sign.  Not long afterward, Grandpa’s bobber plummeted out of sight, and he began to reel with gusto.  The bullhead on the end of his line leaped out of the water, realizing that pulling the line harder than the old man was impossible, and fell back into the pond with a loud splash that rippled toward the shore.

“I think we found our spot!” Grandpa said, as he took the fish off the hook.  The bullhead made another ploosh! as it landed in the bucket.

Not even a minute later, Josh’s bobber was dragged underneath the water once again.  “Bullheads tend to travel in schools, I’ve noticed,” said Grandpa, with the sage wisdom of one whose dad took him fishing, whose dad took him fishing, and so on.

Josh reeled his fish in—still satisfying, but without the excitement of speculating what was on the end of the line.  And so it went, ploosh! after ploosh!, until the sun started to get low in the sky.

“Uh-oh Josh.  We’d better get back for supper, or Grandma will holler.”

Josh and his grandpa walked to the car parked on the side of the road and put their gear and the big white bucket full of bullheads in the trunk.  They put their poles in the car, after Grandpa stuck scotch tape on the hooks.  Grandpa drove down the dirt road, made a right, and parked in the old wooden garage.

Sure enough, Grandma was standing out on the porch, ringing the little hand bell with a loud clang clang clang! for supper.

“One minute, V,” Grandpa said.  He and Josh emptied the fish into the blue rain barrel under the gutter of the chicken coop.  There hadn’t been any chickens in there for the past several decades—Grandma and Grandpa used it as a storage shed now.  But it was still called the chicken coop, and whenever Grandpa had to leave someone whom he had been visiting, he’d say, “Gotta go home and feed the chickens.”

Uncle Tim would sometimes protest, “Dad, you don’t have any chickens anymore.”

And Grandpa would smile and say, “They have to be fed.  They get hungry around this time of night.”

Grandpa told Josh, “Bullheads are tough fish.  They’ll last a long time in there.   I’ll get around to cleaning them one of these days.”  He patted him on the back.  “Let’s go eat supper.”

Grandma couldn’t help betraying a slight smile as she said, “You’re late!  She paused for a moment and said, “Catch anything?”

Josh ran his words together as he exclaimed, “Yeah, we caught tons!”

The smile still lighting up her face, Grandma said, “You’d better wash your hands well, after touching all those fish.”

After dinner, Josh and his younger sister, Rachel, had their choice:  a fudgesicle, Grandpa’s apple cake, or tin roof sundae ice cream.  Rachel took a fudgesicle, and Josh went with the apple cake.  Grandma, who had always been fond of ice cream, had a bowl, and Grandpa had an ice cream cone.  “You know,” Grandpa said, “When I was younger, my parents bought me a popsicle once a year, and that was if I had good grades.  Now, I eat an ice cream cone pretty near every night.”  The ice cream cone crunched as he casually bit off a piece.

Grandpa looked out the window.  “Looks like we’ve got some daylight left,” he said.  “I think there are just enough leaves to make a leaf pile.”  Josh grinned, and Rachel openly cheered, “Yay!”

“But we have to clear up the table first,” Grandpa said.  Everyone took their silverware and light sea green plates off the table, put them in the sink, and rinsed them off.

Grandpa took Rachel and Josh outside, to the maple tree whose branches formed a canopy over the grass among the house, the chicken coop, the garage, and the front walk.  Josh and Rachel’s mom had planted the maple as a sapling on Arbor Day when she was a girl in elementary school.  Now, it supported a rope swing and made quite a job during autumn, when its leaves fell.

Rachel, who was six, grabbed a big plastic rake with a wooden handle that was leaning against the chicken coop.  Although she had to hold it near where the handle met the plastic, she tried to rake up the yellow and orange spotted leaves with all her might.  Her short stature, and the fact that she wasn’t even sure where she was supposed to be moving the leaves to, made her a comical sight of quiet yet frustrated determination.  Rachel’s hair began to frizz out from the pink barrettes that held her braids together as she toiled.  Grandpa said, “Rachel, why don’t you let Josh push you on the swing?”  Rachel, relieved but somewhat disappointed that she wasn’t big enough to clean up the leaves yet, handed the rake to her grandfather.  Josh was doing a bit better, although leaves often got stuck on the rusty metal tines of the old rake he was using.  He dropped it as he went to push his sister on the swing.

Grandpa made sure to make the leaf pile just out of swinging range as Rachel flew through the air, giggling with delight.  The swing was a flat plastic seat attached to a rope tied around the thickest branch of the tree.  Rachel soared every which way as her brother pushed her.  Unlike normal, playground swings, the rope swing sailed freely in all directions.

Leaning on the rake handle, Grandpa said, “It’s almost ready.  Josh, do you want to finish up?”  Josh gave Rachel a few final pushes before he took the tool from his grandfather and raked the last of the leaves into the pile, which was starting to look like a great flaming hay bale.  Grandpa was giving Rachel a push now and then, her braids whipping around, as Josh worked.  Grandpa started slowing Rachel down when he saw Josh adding the last of the leaves to the pile.  When the swing stopped, he grabbed her by the waist and set her back on the ground.

Her eyes widening as she saw the leaf pile, Rachel said, “Ooh Grandpa, can we play leaf monster?”

Grandpa sighed and said, “Grandpa’s getting a little bit old for leaf monster…”

“Please?” Rachel interrupted, her six-year-old face looking up at him.

Grandpa paused for a minute, and a smile crept over his face as he said, “Well, alright.”  He lied down in the crackly leaves with a crunch.  Josh and Rachel began throwing leaves over him, burying first his feet, then his legs, then his upper body, and finally his head.  They stepped back for a moment and surveyed their work, making sure that they left no part of their grandpa uncovered.  Then, they started counting.

“One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock,” they said together in a sing-song voice, getting more and more excited as they got to, “Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, tweeelve o’clock...”  The pile of leaves rustled as Rachel and Josh stopped for a second before daring to go on:  “It’s time for the LEAF MONSTER!”

Leaves flew into the air as the leaf-covered body of their grandfather burst from the pile, looking like some sort of deranged scarecrow.  The leaf monster stomped around and snorted, like any good monster should.  He kicked leaves into the air, a big toothy grin on his face as he chased after Josh, then Rachel, then Josh again.  His long arms finally snatched Rachel – Grandpa lifted her off the ground, turned her upside down, and began swinging her back and forth by her ankles.  Rachel screamed from mingled terror and delight.

“The grandfather clock!” Josh cried with excitement.

“Tick, tock, tick, tock,” Grandpa said, making a clicking noise with his tongue.  He swung Rachel one more time, then put her down.  She lied on the grass, red-faced.  Everyone stopped to breathe for a while.  Grandpa, pulling a few leaves out of his grayish white hair, said, “Let’s go inside—you guys have plumb tuckered me out.  Besides, the sun’s about to go down.”

***

Josh looked at the ground, where his feet kicked a clod of grass.  It fell apart as he said to his uncle, “I was watching this movie about aliens invading the earth the other day.”

Uncle Tim gave him a funny look and said, “What?”

“Wait, hang on.”

“Okay.”

Josh paused, looked up at the sky for a moment and said, “If an alien came to invade earth, I would take it to Grandpa’s house, and we would go fishing, and it would fly back into the stars and tell its friends that we aren’t so bad after all.  Then the invasion would be called off, and everyone would be happy.”

“You know,” said Uncle Tim, “I think you’re right.”

Josh  turned his face back toward the ground; his swinging foot idly kicked another clump of grass.  “I wouldn’t be able to do that now though…”  And a tear trickled down his cheek.

“Shh, shh,” Uncle Tim whispered, tightening his arm around the boy.  He pointed toward the sky, which had turned a light shade of periwinkle.  Josh looked up and saw a single white star.

“You see that star?” Uncle Tim said.  “That’s where Grandpa is.”

Josh thought for a minute and said, “Uncle Tim, I stopped believing in the Easter Bunny three years ago.”

“Hold on.  Can you prove that the Easter Bunny isn’t real?”

“Yeah.  I could hide behind the couch the night before Easter and see Mom put out the Easter baskets.”

“Okay, now, can you prove that what I said isn’t true?  That Grandpa isn’t up there?”

“Well… no.  I guess not.”

The two stopped talking for a little while and looked at the sky, their heads craned back to get a better view.

“I like to think,” said Uncle Tim, “That he’s up there, flying through space with his eyes closed, with a big smile on his face.  You remember the way his eyes crinkled, when he laughed?”

Josh started to cry again and said, “But why does he have to be up there?”

“You know how Grandpa couldn’t get out of bed much for the past two years?”

Josh wiped his nose.  “Yeah.”

“Well, since he could barely even get up and go for a walk, it’s only fair that he gets to fly for a while.”

“But… doesn’t he care about us?”

“Shh, shh.  He does.  He thinks about you all the time.”

“Then why can’t he come back?”  Josh thought about the way his grandfather rose up from the leaves.

Uncle Tim’s voice warmed.  “He can’t just come back.  You’re old enough to know that.”

“I know, but why can’t he at least fly down here for a little while?”

“Because, he’s not allowed to.  That would spoil it for the rest of us.”

Uncle Tim gave Josh a pat on the shoulder and got up.  He started to go up the porch steps, turned toward Josh, and said softly, “Come in soon, okay?”

“Okay.”

The porch door creaked, then thudded shut.  The porch light went out.  Josh sat, and thought.  He remembered the way the sun glinted off the fish as it danced over the water, and smiled.