A Simple Life: Chapter 7 (Patreon)

With the fresh ocean air coming in from the west blowing in my face I zip back into town in record time.  Before heading for home I take my planned detour through a drive-thru and make for the harbor with the warm bag of fast food precariously balanced at my crotch.  I glide smoothly through the wide tidy lanes of gleaming New Town, putter through the cozy avenues of charming Midtown, and finally snake through the narrow cobbled lanes of historic Old Town until at last I am rolling up to the Haven Point harbor at the end of the peninsula.  I park my bike and with my lunch in hand I practically skip my way across the docks.

I can hear the tinkling of my grandpa’s keyboard as I approach his old trawler turned houseboat.  As I round around the front of it there he sits near the gangway to his home.  With his long white hair, scruffy face, bare feet, fraying straw hat, well worn shorts, and unbuttoned demin shirt a newcomer to the island might have thought him a bum, and they wouldn’t have been too far off.  How he actually made a living even I didn’t know.  He sort of did everything and nothing.  He’d sell oddball trinkets to the students and tourists one day, be busking the next, then be helping another one of the boats out here with repairs the next.  Whatever he did it worked as he never seemed to be wanting despite living on his own terms.

The moment he sees me, as he always did while he was playing, he stops his current song dead to break into a rousing and rasping rendition of My Little Buttercup from the movie Three Amigos.  It never failed to bring a smile to my face.  Buttercup was his nickname for me due to the bright blond hair I had as a child and though my locks had darkened over the years the moniker had stuck, at least for grandpa.  As he serenades my blond hair and blue eyes I come to sit on the empty folding lawn chair he kept beside him.  On the little table between us I set out his burger and fries then unwrap the first of my two fish burgers and tuck in.  The wonderfully silly ditty at an end he draws out the final “…I looooove youuuu.”

I giggle and say.  “Love you too Grandpa.”

From the tacky turtle shaped ashtray sitting on the end of his keyboard he nabs the awaiting lit cigarette to take a long draw.  For years I begged him to give up that dirty habit but he insisted that the smoke gave his voice ‘seasoning’.  I loved this man, I loved this man more than anybody else in the world, but that one habit of his I detested with all of my heart.  I could hear the wheeze in his regular breathing now and the rattle in his cough but I had resigned myself to this simply being a battle I could not win.  The bright eyesore of an ashtray was pure grandpa, his whole boat was furnished with other such garish knick-knacks that he had picked up over the years.  An eccentric to his core he had actually been ‘normal’ once, a hard working fisherman until the fisheries collapse in the early 2000’s, but in all of my lifetime he had always marched to his own beat.

After another puff he munches a few of his fries then starts to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, my most favorite song of all.  As he plays he talks.

“Did you get that bluebird you were after?”

Patting my backpack I say.  “I sure did.”

“Well…let me see.”

I put down my sandwich and dig out the camera he had given me a couple years ago.  I flip past the pictures of Mama and her litter to the shots of the azure avian.  I tilt the screen so that he could see them and, as I go through them, I impress myself when I see that they were even better than I remembered.

“You’ve got the eye.  I always said that about you.  You got the eye.”

“It’s more patience and luck than anything.”

“Well you’ve got those too.”  He says.  “I know how long you’ve worked for those.  I’m proud of you Avery.”

“Thank you.”  I smile bashfully.  Turning the camera off I put it away and resume eating my lunch while I listen to the slow, somber tune.  “Hey Grandpa.”

“Yeah?”

“Can…you play something else?”

“Oh?”

I sit up tall.  “I’m in a really good mood today.”

“Heyyy!  Good mood music coming right up.”  With that he transitions from the sonata to an upbeat Alley Cat.  I laugh as I munch and bounce along to the tune.  With a glance over to me he gently prods.  “It must have been the bluebird of happiness.”

I chew and swallow, the silly smile on my face not going away.  “I…I met…a girl.  Or, met her again I guess.”

“A girl?”  His whole demeanor brightens.

“Remember that role playing game I went to a few years back?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s her.”

He looks at me surprised, though his playing continues smoothly.  “The girl that embarrassed you?”

“I was wrong Grandpa.  I was so wrong.  It wasn’t at all like I remember.”

“Hmm.”  He hums, remembering back.  “I seem to remember someone telling you it might be that way.  A wise old skipper if I recall.”

I giggle and hide my face in my sandwich wrapper.  “It’s nothing though.  We just met.  I helped her a little.  It’s nothing.”

He chuckles.  “I see.”  Continuing to loop the simple tune he plays on.  “Pretty?”

“Ohhh Grandpa!”  I swoon back.  “She’s the most beautiful girl the world!”

He laughs a hearty laugh that turns into a cough.  With a phlegmy spit into the water and a shake of his head he says.  “What have I told you?”

“I know, I know.  Start small.  Go slow.  Let her get to know you.”  I say.  “But Grandpa…this girl, she’s different.”

“Oh?”

“She's funny and kind and smart and strong and a little nerdy and….ohhhhh so beautiful.”

“Slow down Buttercup.”

“She’s…perfect.”

He plays a for a few bars just looking at me from the corner of his eye then says warmly.  “I met a girl just like that once.”  His dancing fingers switching to a breezy As Time Goes By.  “Ended up marrying her.”

Stretching out my legs I stare up at the lazily circling gulls and happy blue sky.  “She wants me to ask her out.”

“Oh really?”

I nod, my smile only getting bigger.  “I wasn’t even going to ask her, not yet anyway.  I’m not that brave.  But she said she wanted me to ask.  She wanted me to!  I think she likes me too Grandpa.”

“So?  Did you?”

I sigh.  “I’ve got to talk to Kayla first.”

“Kayla!?”  He laughs.  “Didn’t you tell me that they were a thing once?”

“Yeah.”

“After you and Kayla was a thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Kid, I might have only had but one woman in my life but even I know that talking to exes about exes is a bad idea.”

“Kayla’s cool.”  I say.

“If you say so.”  He says.  “So, is it one of the students or…?”

“No.  She’s a mechanic.  Her and her Dad are opening the old garage up at the junction.”

“Oh!  The native lass?”

I look at him surprised.  “Yeah.”

“Yeah, her and her parents came in on the morning ferry.”  He says.  “I met Amos a few times at the coffee shop the first time they were through.  Real nice guy.”

“You saw her then?  In the pickup truck.”

“Yes Avery.”  He chuckles.  “I saw her.  In the pickup truck.”

“Isn’t she…beautiful?”

He looks at me as the romantic old tune floats through the air around us, a smile of understanding on his weathered face.  “She is lovely my Buttercup.”

Chapter 8