A Grandpa's Truth

Chapter 1

One hot summer evening, I sat in my grandfather’s bedroom listening to his short wave radio. It was a gift from my uncle, after his last tour of duty in Vietnam. A light breeze from the window, the glow from his pipe bowl, and the indicator light from the radio made me drowsy. The radio was an oriental wonder of light mahogany wood and push buttons, it looked like a cathedral of sound on the telephone table against the wall.

I lay on the bed, my head toward the headboard. Grandpa sat in his recliner by the window, head east, feet west, smoking on his pipe. He gazed outside with rheumy Alabama, black man eyes. He could see through the oak tree branches to the yard to the street.

I could hear kids playing outside.

I don’t remember if I was on punishment. We had to sit in his room when we were bad.

It was rare to spend time with him, he always seemed to be at work. He was an intense small black man who exuded a world-weary intelligence. He smoked Prince Albert in his pipe or was it, Edward? There’s a bad pun about the tobacco. The aroma was nice, it made me daydream about life. Another soft breeze wafted through the window making me drowsy. He leaned forward and asked me some questions that evening. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life? He asked me what I thought of certain public figures, events, and places in the world. Though I was just ten or so, I tried to answer to please him with my opinion on these topics. He’d listen, puff and digest what I said as if my words were important. I sat on the edge of the bed wondering if what I said made sense. Then he asked me something I thought silly. He asked me if I believed black people, at the time he said, ”Negroes” were from another planet? A hazy puff of smoke obscured his face as he relaxed back in his recliner awaiting my response. In the twilight of the room, I laughed inwardly, Grandpa is really getting old!

“Of course,” I said, ...no I’m just kiddin’, Grandpa. We, I mean Negroes come from Africa, it's what I learned in geography.”

The bowl of his pipe glowed, another breeze lazily swept the room.

“I want you to think about it”, he said.

The evening light made a silhouette of his head as he turned to gaze out the window. He never mentioned it again, though I often think about it, the question raised.

I felt certain at the time there was no way, not even a remote possibility in reality it might be true. Events proved me wrong...

I smile as I recall that night, sitting here in the void billions of stars twinkling in the black expanse of space, looking at the Earth floating in the darkness.

When I was a child I read a lot of comics and science fiction. Space battles and crashing starships were part of my nightly dreams. Often, I had strange bouts of deja vu. You know, seeing things you’ve already seen before? I'd get these sensations right after I had the flu or a bad cold. I remember, it's what made me try to answer the question my Grandpa raised.

Once, I came home from school with a slight fever...

I was a latch key kid, I went straight home to an empty house, well I got home burning with fever. I tried my key, but I struggled with the lock, it seemed jammed? I got the door open and there was a strange blue glow, a hue like early morning light in

the living room. I shut the door, then looked out the picture window, it was a sunny fall afternoon. I looked toward the dining room - no one was there. The light was steady. I walked a few feet into the living room, I turned back to the window, the afternoon had turned to sunset. I walked to the dining room, empty. I was sweating heavily.

I yelled,” Anybody here?”

Then a strange thing happened. I felt a line touch my throat as if I walked into a clothesline and grazed myself, softly. I couldn’t speak! I tried to yell...nothing! I looked into the kitchen, empty. I turned back and walked through the dining room to the hallway. A hand grabbed me by the front of my jacket. The hand belonged to a man a few inches taller than me. I was eleven at the time. He had come out of my parent’s bedroom. There was another small man like him rummaging through the dresser drawers near the bedroom door. When he grabbed me I went limp and fell to the floor. I couldn’t move, I lay there and watched them. They closed the dresser drawers, then looked at me on the floor. Floated past me?

They went into the kitchen...the blue light subsided.

I still can’t believe what I did next. I got up and collected my school books from the dining room table. I walked through the hall to my bedroom. I turned on the TV and watched the “Million Dollar” movie. A Shirley Temple movie, I watched it with intensity. My mother woke me up when she arrived from work. I had fallen asleep on my bed. I felt great. I put that episode out of my mind or maybe they did. From that point onward, however, those two little men would pop up in my life at the oddest times.

Chapter 2

“Mr. Hendry...Mr. Hendry wake up,” my Grandmother whispered softly.

“Look attcha sleep,time for ya t' eat.”, Etta Hendry tsked.

“Come on now. Wake up so y’all can eat before Anna comes to pick ‘ em up.

Look at ‘em. Anna

lets that boy watch too much TV. Guess he needed a nap too”, she sighed.

Grandpa stirred some, harrumphed, and continued to dream...

He was back in Tuskegee, working with his father. They cleaned the science building, labs , and classrooms, Mr. Hendry senior was happy to get the job at the University. He came down from Hunstville to take the job around 1915. World War I was just hitting its stride.

David Hendry jr. was happy too. He loved working for Dr. Carver.

He scrounged around the town for any usable items for the labs.

Dr. Carver needed glassware, pots, tubing, and useful items, to build the lab and conduct his experiments. He paid both Hendrys a little extra when they found things for his work.

Dr. George Washington Carver came from out West to work on his new ideas about farming and using the land to solve some problems for the government. He was a gentleman, he took time explaining to Dave jr. the various properties of plant life.

While scrounging for some glass bottles near the local dairy, Dave jr. met two little men.

He saw them behind the dairy as he searched the discarded junk from the daily waste of milk production for a small town. They were strange, they had on little overcoats on a mild spring day. He continued his search for an unbroken bottle with no chip on the lip of the thing. He could get a few cents from the Dr. for a perfect quart bottle. He’d found a few and added to the collection he’d set at the edge of the garbage pile. He bent down to check his bottles. Two little feet in black leather button-up shoes walked into his field of vision. He raised his eyes to take in the little man in those shoes.

They had been on the opposite side of the garbage pile. How’d they get over here

without seeing them?

“I’m not stealin’ nuthin , sir.”, Dave said.

“They let me carry off any good bottles I can find.”

The little man’s head was bald underneath a derby hat. His eyes seemed to waver between gray and a watery blue in a bland sallow face. His companion looked like a twin, just a little fatter. They both needed some sun. They looked white and then again they didn’t. A big man’s voice came from the thin one.

“No worries, son. You might like some of these rubber seals to go with your bottles.”

He held out his small hand with three rubber stoppers that would fit perfectly in his milk bottles. How’d they known these were the very things Dr. Carver was needin’?

“I don’t have any money to pay for that, sir,” Dave said. “How long y’all gon be around?

I can go an' get some if y’all stay here a minute.”, he said eagerly.

“Hey, David!” One of the dairy workers came around the side of the building.

“I got some spoilt bottles, you wash ‘em out you can have ‘em!”

Dave shielded his eyes to see who called him.

“Alright, Mr. Granger, I be right there!”

He turned back to deal with the little men. They were gone. The seals lay next to his collection. It was the first time he encountered the little duo.

He asked Mr. Granger whether he’d seen the two little men or where he could find them.

“You the only person been outback this mornin’. I ain’t seen nobody else today.”

David didn’t press it, the dairy was a good source of materials for the Dr.’s work.

He didn’t want to offend him.

“Come on Grandpa, time to eat dinner.” I shook him awake.

“Go on down,” he said.

Rising slowly from his recliner, he followed me out to the hall and down the steps to the dining room. I could hear Grandma in the kitchen bustling around. My cousins burst in the front door laughing and yelling about some game they'd played outside. Grandma came through the pantry with a platter of fried chicken as we seated ourselves at the dining table.

“Mr. Hendry you wanna' a cold glass of milk with your dinner or a glass of beer?” she asked.

“John Brown it!” he exclaimed,” Why would I want a damn glass of milk!”

We all looked at him. Grandpa rarely yelled at anyone, especially Grandma.

“Anybody home?”, I heard my mother ask through the screen door.

Grandma sat the platter on the table.

“Let me open the door for Anna.”, she said softly.

My cousins and I sat stunned, our faces staring at the surfaces of our plates.

“...Been married damn near forty years...now what would make her ask if I want a damn glass of milk for dinner?”

Grandpa looked bewildered and angry at the same time. I didn’t know then but I do now, it was because of those two little men.

Chapter 3

“Nature is an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour, and every moment of our life.” Dr. Carver lectured his students as sunlight streamed into the crowded classroom. My Grandfather carried his collection of bottles to the front corner of the room and sat the box down as the Dr. continued his lecture. With a smile, he nodded thank you. Dave left to finish his duties.

As he put away his work tools, he felt perplexed, ”How or where did those two little men get to?”

He locked the janitor's closet and followed his father through the science building headed home. Mondays meant a trip into town for groceries and maybe some vanilla ice cream for dessert. It took his mind off the little men in bowler hats.

After dinner, Mr. Hendry went upstairs as the rest of the family ate sweet potato pie ala mode. He went to his recliner, drifted off to sleep, and returned to the land of his youth. He dreamed of old country roads, open fields, and the greenhouse where he tended the plants for Dr.Carver...

He felt the weight of the watering can as he hefted it along the paths between the rows of seedling plants. Raising the can with muscled effort, he watched the water drizzle out of the fat round nozzle’s many holes like a small cloud burst. The humidity of the greenhouse required a twice-daily watering per Dr. Carver. They were done precisely at the same time every day. He could hear Dr. Carver humming a tune as he inspected flowers and plants grown for his experiments.

“ Dave, do you think you can come up with some more of the bottles you brought the other day?”

He examined the leaves on a blossom closely.

“Mistah Granger, usually sets some aside for me each week, so I’ll have some for ya Friday.”

“Satisfactory, David, satisfactory...”, said Dr. Carver.

He continued to water. Row after row of potted plants set in wooden soda crates on boards straddling sawhorses. The Dr. continued to hum, examining his plants as Dave worked. He got to the end of a row of plants away from the Dr. ready to start up the next row He casually glanced out the misted panes of the greenhouse. He saw two men at the end of the garden behind the greenhouse. The little men shaded their eyes from the sunrise, peering at the greenhouse.

“Doc Carver! Doc Carver do you know them two men out there in the garden?” he asked.

“Let’s take a look!” Dr. Carver answered. He strode up the aisle to David. The Dr. rubbed the window with his handkerchief, he looked to where Dave pointed.

“My, what peculiarity is this?’” the Dr. mused quizzically.

“Come, David let’s see what is about.”

Dave dropped the water can to catch up with the Dr. as he headed out the door set in the back of the greenhouse. They walked briskly but carefully through the muddy garden. Dave hoped the Dr. had another pair of dress shoes. The Dr. called out to the bowler hats,

“Gentlemen, can I help you?”

Dave slipped but regained his balance. He came up behind the Dr. who stood with arms akimbo at the end of the garden. He looked around the Dr. to see the little men. Nothing!

“This is truly peculiar.” The Dr. looked from side to side. He took off his glasses and rubbed them with his handkerchief.

“The evidence would suggest men in bowler hats can disappear at will, David.” he stated as if he’d formed a scientific theorem.

“You right about that, Doc.”, he concurred.

“You’ve seen them before, haven’t you David?” the Dr. asked.

“Jus’ once at the dairy, Doc.”

“Their performance, I imagine was as strange as today’s.” the Dr. stated, wonderingly.

Doc turned quickly and headed back to the greenhouse.

He stepped carefully as he walked,” Those seals you brought with the bottles, they gave them to you?”

“How’d you know, Doc?” he asked trailing behind.

“Nobody in Alabama makes rubber seals as perfect as those.”

Dr. Carver sat on the sagging wooden bench set against the brick wall base of the green house. David sat next to him as he undid the laces of his dress shoes. Dr. Carver banged his shoes together, mud flew off. “Remind me to get some of those hobnail boots and let me know the next time you encounter our visitors.”

He began to hum some tune and lace up his shoes.

“Get your hand back in this car, right now!”

My mother always said something was going to knock it off. I liked to stick my arm out the window as she drove, using my hand like an airplane wing. I’d cup the air, angling my hand up and down like a jet fighter, like the one’s my dad worked on at General Electric.

“Turn around and sit down,” she commanded. We stopped at a light.

“Why was Grandma so upset, did Grandpa yell at her?” she asked.

“Daddy never yells,...he’s coool Dave,” she said smiling to herself.

“Well?”

I lied,” Nope he didn’t yell.”

“Well, what happened at dinner?”

“Grandma asked if he wanted a glass of milk with dinner,” I said guiltily.

“And?”

“He said somethin’ about John Brown and he only drinks beer with dinner.”

“Milk!” Mom declared. She pulled through the light.

“That’s all he said, are you sure?” sounding skeptical.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

Chapter 4

Grandma Hendry lay sleeping. Dave Hendry sat in his recliner, unable to sleep, by the window. He lit his pipe, the glow of the flame lit his face as he puffed. He apologized to her in his head. The house was quiet now. A breeze of hot night air ruffled the curtains. He knew his anger was from the past. He wanted badly to forget those little men. From that time to this he knew he was linked to them. He sat smoking, staring into the starry summer night. The wind whispered through the leaves of the trees, He started to drift off. He set the pipe on the ashtray stand next to his chair. He settled into his recliner...

The taste of vanilla ice cream was very satisfying, especially on a cold winter night. Dave savored each spoonful. He wondered if Dr. Carver liked vanilla ice cream?

A cold wind rustled the branches outside the kitchen window. He licked his bowl clean and set it in the washtub on the counter. He went into the narrow living room of the shotgun shack the Hendry’s called home. His parents sat reading the bible.

There were some old magazines on the dining table. He looked at one to pass some time before bed. He waited for his parents reading to end and they’d head to the back bed room behind the kitchen. Negro’s were in Europe, fighting along side white people as World War I ravaged the land. The Negro Digest had photographs stating so. The Army, he thought, might provide a means to earning his way in the world. A chance to see something beyond Alabama. He looked at the pictures of Negroes smiling into the camera, in uniform aboard a troop ship.

A crowd of black men on the deck looked into the camera. He looked at there faces, studied them by the light of a kerosene lamp. Where did they come from? What were they doing so far from home?

He read the caption, they were Sengalese troops fighting with the French Army, still they were brave men.

He felt he helped the war effort. Dr. Carver worked on ways of developing peanuts and

other vegetables into fuel, food and even clothing for the military. Still, he envied the look of freedom on those soldier’s faces. Wistfully, he leafed through the pages. He looked at pictures of Parisians crowding the sidewalks to watch parades of American troops marching in the street. He looked at their faces. Men in bowler hats. He thought about the little men. Dr. Carver tried to contact them by leaving a bottle with a note inside at the edge of the garden. They’d check each morning to see if the little men had read the note and responded to the questions the Dr. posed to them. The Dr. didn’t inform him on what he’d asked. So far the duo hadn’t responded to the milk bottle telegraph.

Dr. Carver’s experiments were going well. Government Officials would visit his lab soon.

He was close to a solution for a fuel that used peanut oil. The lab was growing and work was flowing, due to an anonymous donation of glass tubing that arrived addressed to

Dr. Carver. Just the right kind of tubing and beakers he needed. Dave was sure it came from the bowler hats. An idea crept into his head as he studied the Parisian crowds in the

photographs. He’d write a note to the little men and insert it in the bottle with the Dr.’s.

He wanted to know what he should do with his life?

“Well...let’s see, it’s really complicated. Say, over here you have a universe, filled with planets. The planets become populated, and on each one, eventually, a person becomes enlightened. Or sometimes the higher ups introduce a messiah. Someone who embodies, for all intents, “God”. The thing of it is, you take this messiah to raise the souls of people to embrace God, the vibrations or frequencies that result from introducing this person, into a world provides the spark for a new universe. It’s because of the physical nature of the One who will be tested for his faith by his fellow men. Now I’m going to continue...Now say you were one of those messiahs, the nature of the game at it’s highest levels, dictates each messiah has to maintain his divine character all his life and if you complete the task of maintaining your divinity, the harmony of the universes is complete.

All evil is eradicated and let’s say for lack of a better concept all is one. We are One. When that moment happens, life continues, a new universe is created, adding to the infinite expansion of “God”. Creation. Yes, it has happened many times since the first creation, the first universe. Creation is a world that expands and contracts based on the competition of the Game. The messiah is a role assigned to a very select few whose genetic make up is based on a design from shall we say, ”On High”. Now mind you the Game is played throughout Creation, in millions of universes, galaxies and worlds. The players are those who are chosen, enlightened through their own efforts, genealogy or by design. The groups and hierarchy of players are much like team sports, you have adversaries, simply put, who hate Creation and those who love it. But remember they both must exist for the highest concept of “God” to exist. To become a Master of the Game,...aaahh you can spend close to eternity to make the harmonious wavelengths create another universe. But surprisingly, to use our measure of time, it happens everyday!”

Dr. Carver puffed on his pipe. The light was fading beyond the garden. He explained what he learned from the bowler hats to David who tried to follow along. Somehow the explanation made complete sense yet he felt bewildered by it’s complexity in the light of the setting sun. They sat on the sagging bench facing the sunset, it’s colors painted the clouds with it’s last embers.

“Doc are they really real. You don’t really believe ‘em do you?” he asked hopefully.

“David I’m a scientist...I study nature, the world and the life of this planet. I can see in the pattern or plan an invisible hand that stretches throughout what we know of existence. If they’re lying….what a tremendous waste all this would be....”

David was now determined to correspond with the bowler hats, he had a gut feeling they were not as real as the Dr. made them out to be. Something made him feel the Dr. was bein fooled. He felt the Dr. was probably right...but he was such a nice man and Dave was sure he didn’t know much about life outside the lab and campus. He had to ask the questions that would prove to him they were real.

Chapter 5

Mr. Hendry awoke slightly cramped in his recliner. He checked his watch, he stood and stretched his bones. The sun was rising, he could see shafts of light diffused through the leaves of the old oak in the front yard. Etta was already in the kitchen he could smell breakfast and coffee wafting to the second floor. The birds sang.

He turned on the radio and made his way down the hall to wash up. He had to be at work by 7am.His dreams faded and he felt the past was just that. Today was Monday and time to get to the labs. Etta must still be mad,she let him sleep in his clothes.

He lathered his face and began to shave. He could hear someone's house shoes sliding down the hall. Then a knock on the bathroom door.

“How long you gon’ be Grandpa?”

It was his oldest grand daughter who vied with him every morning for the bathroom. She and her brother lived in the attic of the house. Always seemed one of his seven living child's children were underfoot in this house he and Etta had worked and saved to buy. He smiled at his reflection in the mirror,a home was one of the things that had come to pass from the question he posed to the bowler hats.

“Hold yo’ horses girl, I’ll be out in a minute.” he said a little sternly,he liked to keep the respect of his grandkids. Mr. Hendry opened the door after his shave and Virgie, his grand daughter almost hit the floor she’d been dozing against the door. He caught her and set her upright.

“Children, God luv ‘em.” He walked back to his room to dress. He liked his pants pressed just so,a crisp clean shirt and suspenders. Every one in the lab wore green kakis and green shirts, except Mr. Hendry, he wore a dress shirt to match his moods. He wore them to distinguish himself from the rest of the caretakers who handled the lab animals used for the experiments. He managed the crew. They fed the animals kept in cages, they ranged from white rats to full grown chimpanzees. They tended the labs at the Children's Hospital where Dr. Jonas Salk worked on his cure for polio. Of all the jobs Mr. Hendry worked, this was his favorite. It felt right working for science. He took his fedora off the dresser and headed down for breakfast. Etta served him in silence.

“You know I didn’t mean anything...what I said yesterday.” he looked her in the eye.

“I don’t pay no attention to nuthin’ you say, no how.” He touched her hand. She smiled and kissed him on top of his head. He dug into his food and she walked to the hallway.

“Jimmy ,Virgie get dressed or y’all miss breakfast!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

She felt better. She headed back to the kitchen humming. Mr. Hendry felt better. No matter the things he knew, no matter the things that happened in the past, today he felt right.

I am often amazed at the things that life communicates to us. The things you take for granted. The things that come across your vision, that cross your path and present themselves. You have to be awake to realize they mean something in the larger picture of your life and the world’s. I’m sitting in a UFO alone for now. I can see the Earth turning in it’s designed revolutions. I tried so hard to avoid this fate.

I know this is not a UFO. It is known to it’s owners and the people on Earth who play the Game. Those people are awake, aware and focused on their missions. I am dependent on their awareness, I truly want to set foot on the Earth again. Space is cold and unforgiving. Billions of people live down there. I am dependent on the people in my sphere of awareness to make the right moves to free me from my isolation. The duo those two back stabbing little assholes have me out of the way so they can make moves to further their designs. I'd avoided them most of my life. They were always watching though.I remember when I was just 12. These jerks hypnotized my Grandmother to take me up to a local airbase where they ran myself and some other kids through an obstacle course where a mindless machine gunner fired live rounds of ammunition at us as we crawled under barbed wire on a muddy field. I was 12! I pitched a bitch after I completed the course. Believe it or not these two arrogant SOB’s chastised me and my grandmother for my complaining as the other mothers and kids stood silently as if this treatment was a gift! I thought we were going to visit my cousins who lived near the base. No! A Greyhound bus took us to the base. I thought it very strange to be on an obstacle course with other kids and these two saying we could save our, what I heard was my grandmothers life by having some fun playing “soldier”. For some reason I thought we were in a bubble of invisibility because I could see people and traffic going on around us but I couldn’t hear them or the traffic. It seemed as if the daily routines of the base were going on around us and they didn’t see us or come near where this bullshit happened. The fat little fart took notes and sneered at me as he wrote in a small black book. I pretended to be under their control for my grandmothers sake. I’d have beat the dog slop out of them otherwise. Or maybe I was in shock?

I think I was disoriented because when either of those two speak, it sounds like you’re hearing a dual track of sound, you hear what they’re saying but it sounds as if another language is going on at the same time. We rode home on the bus and for many years I vividly recalled visiting my cousins. Only thing is, I pocketed a few shell casings, when I look at them the truth always makes me shudder. Life went on and interested me in other things. Still they managed to insinuate themselves into my life here and there. Mr. Gold and Mr. Silver as I know them are the reason I’m sitting alone on a UFO eating salted peanuts, watching the world turn.

Those two in my opinion have no feeling or sympathy for you as an individual, they only care about you as a means to their ends in the quest to complete their part of the Game. You are the pawn or power piece to the victory they seek. The individual is only a useful tool, their eyes hold no love for you, no interest beyond making their ambitions true.