My Great-grandfather Turns 12 Today (5 page)

“Let me look at you,” he said, pulling me closer to the big doorway. “You’re taller than I am.”

Smarter, too, I thought. “I gotta go,” I said and he gave a little laugh.

“Not yet,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘not yet’?” I asked.

“What’s your name?” he asked, dropping his hand and talking a step back.

“What’s yours?” I asked.

“Charlie,” he said. He held out his hand for me to shake it again.

“I’m Michael,” I said, reaching out.

“Michael,” he repeated, smiling and pumping my hand. “Gosh, it’s good to meet you. Michael Farrell?”

“Yeah. How did . . .?”

“I’m Charlie Farrell,” the boy said and he giggled again.

Charlie Farrell. “You’ve got the same name as my great-grandpa,” I said.

“You’re my great-grandson?” he asked. “Gosh.”

“My great-grandfather is one hundred,” I said.

That stopped him. His mouth dropped open and no sound came out for a moment or two. Then his eyes grew wide and he said, “I’m
one hundred
years old?”

Chapter 7

Caught!

His blue eyes grew wide. His sky-blue eyes grew wide.

“Are you really my great-grandpa?” I asked.

“Are you really my great-grandson?” he answered.

The rain was letting up. It was getting brighter.

“If you really are,” I said, “you’re in a convalescent center and you’ve got a . . . .” I thought about the room, the curtain, the bag beside the bed. I thought about the skinny, old man who had reached out his hand to me.

Third son of a third son holding on to the third son of a third son.

“What’s a conv . . . a. conva . . . convent center?” the boy asked me and then, before I could answer, he said, “Wait! You can’t tell me stuff about the future.”

“What?”

“There are rules,” he said.

“Rules?”

“Yep,” he said, sounding pretty sure of himself. “There are rules about this.”

“How do you know?” I asked and he hesitated. Then he said, “There are rules about everything, aren’t there?”

He had a point there, all right.

“That’s true,” I said, realizing what he meant about my not telling him anything. “What I say or do now will change my whole future.”

“What?”

“Just like in the movies.”

“What’s a movie?” he asked.

“The ones about going back to the future.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “But I do know you’re not going to change your future a whole lot no matter what you do now. That’s a fact.”

“What if I get hurt?” I said.

“What, that little bump on your head?”

“No. I mean what if I die or something.”

He thought about that. “We’re all going to die someday,” the boy said. “But look on the sunny side and say a little prayer. That’s what Ma tells us. Besides, I’m one hundred, right? So that means it was . . . .What year was it where you were?”

“It’s 1986.”

He gave a low whistle. “I sure would like to see that,” he said, not realizing that he would.

“What year is this?” I asked and when he told me I gasped. Somehow eighty-eight years had slipped away.

“And where am I?” I asked again. “I know I’m in a barn and I know it outside Culver City, but where exactly?”

“The Farrell farm,” he said. “One-hundred sixty acres of some of the finest crops in the county.”

“The Farrell farm! We just passed that on the freeway.”

“On the what?”

“The . . .”

“CHARLIE!” an older boy’s voice called from outside. “WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO IN THERE?”

He . . . Great-grandpa . . . Charlie pushed me back into a stall. “Hush,” he said softly. “We have to figure out a few things.”

“CHARLIE?” A teenager entered the doorway and I ducked down out of sight.

“You remember that vaudeville show we saw last month in town?” Charlie asked as he walked out of the stall toward the other boy.

“I guess,” he answered.

“That comedian in the baggy pants and the little bow tie?”

“What’s that got to do with . . .”

“I was just trying to remember some of his jokes, that’s all. Practicing them out loud.”

“You’re daft,” the older boy said, “Crazy.”

“Only a little,” Charlie said and the older boy laughed.

“Come on,” the boy said. “Ma’s got dinner on and we’re waiting grace for you. Can’t start without the birthday boy.”

“What did you get me, Pat?” Charlie asked.

“Get you?”

“For me birthday, laddie,” Charlie said, sounding like a leprechaun or something.

“What makes you think I’m got you something?” Pat asked.

“But you already did,” Charlie said.

“Did what?”

“You got me something. You came and got me for dinner.”

I had to keep myself from laughing out loud.

“Oh, you . . . .” Pat said and I heard some scuffling. It sounded like a friendly little tussle between brothers.

“You may be twelve but I’m almost fifteen,” I heard Pat say.

“You may be almost fifteen but I’m a hundred,” Charlie answered.

“Daft,” Pat said. “Come on. Birthday or no, you don’t keep Pa waiting long.”

Then what they had been saying finally sank in. It was the same day as when I left Fair Brook. It was just eighty-eight years earlier. “My great-grandfather turns twelve today,” I whispered to myself.

“What was that?” Pat asked and I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was facing my way.

“That?” Charlie said. “That was me, Paddy-boy. I’m learning to be a ventriloquist. You know what that is?”

“I know.”

“It’s a fellow can throw his voice. Make it come out of a trunk or a horse or a . . . or a . . . or a anything else he has a mind to make it come out of.”

“Is that right?” Pat said.

“That’s right.”

“Do it again,” he said.

“What?”

“Do it again.”

“I could if I had a mind to,” Charlie said.

“Well, maybe I’ll just go over there and see for . . .”

“I can do it!” Charlie said.

“Make Millie talk,” Pat said. “Go on.”

Charlie cleared his throat a few times. “I’m still just learning,” he said.

In a high-pitched voice I said, “Hey, get you’re cold hands off my . . . bag thing.” What the heck do you call that bag of milk under a cow?

“Bag thing?” Pat said and laughed. “‘Get you’re cold hands off my bag thing’?”

“She’s a lady,” Pat said. “What do you think she’s going to say: ‘Stay away from my teats’? Let’s go.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Pat said. “Bye, Millie!”

“The show is over,” Charlie said before I had a chance to answer.

“This afternoon I’ll be sure to warm up my hands before I come milk you,” Pat said and laughed. “I wouldn’t want to put my cold fingers on your bag thing.”

“Let’s go!” Charlie said.

“I’m coming,” Pat said. “Good thing Ma made plenty of food. More than enough for the whole family and your friend back there in the funny jacket.”

Chapter 8

“Stretchers” and “Vaudeville”

“Pat, no!” I heard Charlie cry and I stood up to see the older boy grabbing a pitchfork from a small pile of hay and coming my way.

“Wait a second,” I said. “I’m just . . . ”

“Pat!” Charlie said, latching on to his arm.

“Who are you and what are you doing in our barn?” Pat asked. He was about eight or ten inches taller than I was. He had on overalls and a plain white, long-sleeved shirt without a collar. It was more gray than white. His hair was curly and red.

“I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m . . .” I said and Charlie looked at me and violently shook his head “no.”

“He’s just visiting,” he said.

“I’m just visiting,” I said.

“Just got here.”

“I just got here.”

“Came from town.”

“I came from Culver City.”

“Run away.”

“I ran away.”

“From the stage show that pulled out earlier this week.”

“From the stage show . . .”

“Let him speak for himself,” Pat said to his younger brother but he put down the pitchfork. “Come over here,” he said to me.

I took a couple of steps toward the bigger boy. “Sometimes Charlie here is like Tom Sawyer and he has a little trouble with stretchers,” he said. “You got any problem with stretchers?”

Do I have any problems with what? On the other hand, if Charlie did, maybe I should, too.

“Well,” I said, “as a matter of fact, sometimes I have just about the most horrible time with stretchers in the whole wide world.”

“Is that right?” Pat said.

“Oh, yeah. Horrible time. I just . . . . Just a horrible time.” That was when I saw Charlie shaking his head again.

“No?” I said. “I mean, no. No way, José! Not me. Huh uh.”

“No way, who?” Pat asked.

“I . . . I never have a problem with stretchers. Never have, never will. Not me. I see a stretcher, I just nuke it. On the spot.”

“Does he ever talk English?” Pat asked Charlie.

“Not much,” Charlie said. “That’s why . . .”

“Now it seems to me,” Pat said, “if you say you have a horrible time with stretchers and then go on and on explaining how you
never
tell stretchers, well, then I guess that makes you someone who, for sure, does tell them, doesn’t it?”

“A stretcher is a tall tale?” I asked and Pat hooted.

“He’s not too bright, is he?” he asked.

“That’s why it took him so long to find the farm,” Charlie said.

“It took him
days
?”

“You saw for yourself,” Charlie said and he touched his right index finger to his right temple. “Got a few bats in his belfry.”

Hey, now, wait a minute . . . .

“Maybe he escaped from some asylum!” Pat said, eyeing the pitchfork again.

“Or a convent center,” Charlie said.

“What’s that?”

“You know. A convent center.”

“Oh,” Pat said, looking confused. “Of course. A convent center.”

“But look at his funny clothes,” Charlie said and his brother nodded. “He’s gotta be from the circus or the stage, eh?”