Grandpa

I always wanted to explore the big barn on a patch of farmland I passed on my way to the river to fish. It was on private land, though I never saw anyone about, but I'd stop and look at it from afar. It reminded me of when I was five years old and went to see Grandpa's shack on a patch of wide prairie plagued in the summer by flies. I visited the shack when we went to meet the family. Before that, I'd known only Brucie and Mom.

Mom worked, and looked after us too. She was tall, and pretty, with lots of blonde hair, and jolly too, though she cried a lot, and said we were a handful. Brucie and me were skinny and blonde and had lots of time to do whatever we wanted. Mom said we were always getting in trouble, but it suited us just right. We lived in a city far from cousins, aunts, and uncles descended from European homesteaders fleeing the famine in Sweden, and the fighting in Ireland, who'd settled northern Alberta in Grandpa's day.

One summer day Mom said, “C'mon Eddie, c'mon Brucie, we're going on an adventure!” She trundled us into a bus and we headed up to meet the family. I was impressed when Mom said it got real cold up there in the winter, because where we lived, minus fourty plus a howling wind was pretty cold too. We got to town and met the family. They lived in a palace compared to our two-room-and-a-bathroom apartment, though their home was just a clapboard, green, two story building, with small rooms, and not many windows. But I was five years old and everything was still huge and bright and new.

“C'mon,” Mom cried, “Were going to see where your grandfather lived.” We all jumped into a 1950 Ford something or other that I said, “Looks like a dumpling,” and everyone laughed at me, and said I had a good sense of humour. I was just stating the facts.

Mom, uncle Tom, auntie Bell, cousin Albert, Brucie and I piled into the dumpling and drove across the hot prairie. The wheat grew tall, and waved golden swishes in the breeze as flies buzzed and tried to land on you for a bite. They didn't bother me much, but Mom was always muttering, “Damn flies,” and, “No flies in the city.” That wasn't true. It was just her, and didn't bother me a bit. We were on an adventure, damn flies or no!

Grandpa's little shack was tiny, even by my standards, grey as soot, with wood weathered by that awful cold. I felt sorry for Grandpa, who I imagined thin, and standing on his bit of ground surrounded by snow covered prairie jutting into the widest, bluest sky I ever saw. That sky was so blue Mom said, “It was as if it splashed out of your own eyes, Eddie,” and she had that teary look when she gazed at me. I didn't know what she meant. How could the sky splash from my eyes? I never looked at my eyes except when I got something in them. I guess they were pretty blue.

I was kind of afraid to go into that little shack with its mud room outside all falling apart. An old metal pipe stuck crooked out of the roof where smoke left from a little stove that wasn't there any more. I stayed to the side when the crowd went inside. Their murmuring faded when I went into the tiny barn for a look-see.

It was a two-horser, and that was it, and as near to fallen in as you could get, and still be called a barn. I was careful jumping over rotten boards as I looked for mice rustling about I could hear when the family was quiet, which wasn't often. I stirred up dust as I poked around, making sunbeams stab the air in glittering shafts of gold entering through spaces between the boards of the walls. I played the beams were out to get me; punched and slashed them with an old, white wire I found on the ground. I had my eye on the cabin too. Seemed you could see it from every side of that barn.

I never met Grandpa, but I'd sure heard his story. As far as I could tell, Grandpa was treated pretty bad back in Ireland. The people there didn't like each other much, and did awful things to their own family. I didn't understand the story. I thought it was a bad thing when Grandpa's Dad sent Grandpa away because Grandpa'd fallen in love with a girl from a different religion. That was mean, and made me wonder if it was wise to love anyone. What if Dad did that to me? But I didn't have a Dad, nor a Grandpa, so I was safe. Still, it didn't make sense, because when you fell in love, which I had no experience with, though something happened when I saw Barbara, who was a girl a year older than me, and boy, was she interesting. If love was interesting and made you feel funny-good inside, why wasn't it permitted for Grandpa? He was sent to live in Canada all by himself and not allowed to go home, ever. That was hard! I sure liked to go home where it was warm and dry and safe.

The shack made me nervous, but I wanted to look inside because though I'd never met Grandpa, nor Dad neither, I wanted to meet them, sort of in the same way I wanted to meet Barbara, but Dad was gone and Grandpa was dead. This was as close as I'd ever get to those guys.

The crowd left the shack, and approached the barn for their look-see, so I angled towards Grandpa's shack, came up to it like I didn't care about a thing. I stopped to pull a piece of golden wheat from the dry ground and stick it in my mouth, like cousin Albert did. I dug a shard of blue pottery from the dirt near the shack's door. Maybe it was from Grandpa's cup? I sniffed it. I heard he drank a lot, because I figured he was pretty sad by then, and I could tell that wasn't too good. Whiskey made Mom cry when she played those slow songs everybody liked, and she'd say to me, “Don't ever drink, Eddie.”

“No Mom.”

But Mom drank, and she said Dad did too. Maybe Mom liked to drink and cry? I liked to laugh, but it sure seemed there was plenty for the adults to cry about. I'd never be like that!

As I circled the shack I kept an eye on the crew and knew just where they were. Their eyes were on the barn, so when no one saw, I darted through the broken down mud room without even a look-see, and I was inside. Just me and Grandpa! It wasn't much.

There'd been greenish glass in two small windows on opposite walls, but only bits remained around the edges. I couldn't even pull them out. Still, there was plenty of light in the room, and that's all it was, one room. Its walls had peeling cream-coloured paper, and were so thin the thought of winter made me shiver even in the heat as I imagined poor old Grandpa, wrapped in all his blankets, and feeding coal to his tiny stove. I hunted about, but couldn't figure out where he went to the toilet. The floor was all broke, with bits of linoleum curling around the edges as if everything was looking for nothing. Except this; sheets of paper were on the rotten floor. Grandpa's paper!

Dozens of sheets with faded script rustled in the breeze coming through the door, and waved at me in raggedy bunches blown against the walls and into the corners. Grandpa's writing! I wondered what he wrote. I didn't write or even read, but I loved the stories Mom read to Brucie and me to put us to sleep. Grandpa's stories!

Grandpa's writing was pretty, like I decided mine would be too, with letters easy to read and words straight on the page, one following the other in some kind of order. Holding Grandpa's scattered writing, I guessed he wrote stories of fantastic worlds where no one was ever sent away, and love was always allowed. I thought it must be fine to write stories, and you didn't need to know anything to do it; you just had to do it, and learn. I sure was ready to learn. I held the pale pages in my hand, and felt a thrill shake me. Grandpa!

I wondered what it was like to sit on Grandpa's big old lap. I could almost feel him peering over my head, reading in a deep voice with an Irish accent, his big, freckled hand gentle on my arm, and me snug in his big old lap as I went to sleep surrounded by his big old voice. I tried to imagine his thick red hair and handsome, blue-eyed face. It wouldn't come. I kicked at the pages; just pages written with ink the pale blue of watercolour. I sure recall that colour. Then Mom came in the shack.

“There you are,” she exclaimed, “You shouldn't disappear like that!” She hugged me tight.

“I didn't disappear,” I said. “Mom, who did Grandpa live with out here?”

“No one, sweetie,” she said.

That confused me. “Why?”

“I guess he wanted to be alone.”

“No,” I said, “He missed her.” I knew it.

“Who?”

“Her. The girl he was sent away from.”

“Oh sweetie.” and she started to cry.

“It must have been awfully cold,” I said, to take her mind away.

“I'm sure Grandpa was okay,” she said, but the look in her eyes didn't agree. “Let's go into the sun,” and she nudged us outside.

Later that day I was running through the wheat fields and ran right across an old barbed wire fence, caught my leg on a barb, and gave my calf a tear. The blood flowed pretty good. Mom got all excited, but Auntie Bell fixed it up and said my bandage was cool-eo, and I got a piece of gum. On the way home I asked Mom, “ Where did grandpa go poo?' She told me about outhouses, and I wrinkled my nose when she described them, and then she said, “That's where flies are born.” I was pretty disgusted, and boy did they all laugh at me.

We left the family on the prairie after a few days. I wished I'd taken some of those sheets with their beautiful writing. I would've put them on a wall so I could think of Grandpa a little better than what memory allowed, clear as it is. I miss the men I never knew, and though that old scar on my leg is as gone as gone gets, sometimes it tingles when I look at the barn on the road on the way to fishing.

That barn's in rough shape too, weathered grey, wide, with a caved in roof. Its hand-hewn log walls are pretty straight. There's black and white cows scattered on green land cleared from a forest of pine and poplar that climbs away on all sides. It would be nice to explore that barn. I scratch the itch and whistle a sad tune. There's a bottle of whiskey in the cooler and fish to catch, so I start the truck and drive away, and for just a moment, I wonder what Grandpa would write about me, and he, on a beautiful spring day like today.