A Simple Life: Chapter 24 (Patreon)

With the fresh, moist air rejuvenating my body as much as my visit to Winona had done to my spirit I wasn’t tired in the slightest.  Initially I ride for home but at the last moment I decide not to take the turn and carry on riding right down to the harbor.  I simply had to share what happened with someone.  Well, parts of what happened.  I just hoped he was still awake.

The very first thing I do after parking my bike is to shoot Kayla a text to make sure the movie night idea was on.  It was thankfully.  My date with Winona was on!

At somewhere between a fast walk and a slow jog I make my way down the docks and find the area surprisingly busy with people tidying up and checking in on their yachts and boats in the wake of the storm.  With all of this activity tonight it is no surprise when I round the corner to see the lights of Grandpa’s boat on and him leaning over the rail chatting with his neighbor.  His grizzled old face wreathed by cigarette smoke lights up like a sunbeam through the clouds the moment he sees me.

“Buttercup!”

His current neighbors, a couple of retirees from California, wave down at me from their vessel in the berth opposite.  “Hello Avery.”

“H-Hello Mr and Mrs Jackson.”  I say with a polite smile.

“Come to check on your Gramps?”  Asks Mrs Jackson.

“Yes Ma’am.”  I say.  “It was a heck of a storm.”

“What a fine young man.”

“That’s my boy!”  Grandpa says as proud as a man could be.

“Permission to come aboard skipper.”  I say.

“Get on up here kiddo.”  He says.  After a final drag on his smoke he mashes it out and begins to crank down the folding gangway.

The Jackson’s say their good nights and head back into their yacht as I wait for the ramp to bump the dock.  I scamper up and onto my Grandpa’s floating home.  We hug and I kiss his scruffy cheek.

“How bad was it?”  I ask him.

“Ah, it was nothin.”  He says.  “I ever tell you about the storm of 81?”

I giggle.  “Yes Grandpa.  Many times.”

“Now THAT was a storm!”

As he goes on to recount the harrowing ordeal of he and his crew being out on the water on this very ship during that legendary storm he leads me into down into the main living area of his converted fishing trawler.  As always, the place is an immaculate jumble of gaudy kitsch, baubles, knick-knacks and gewgaws.  What most would consider clutter to Grandpa these were his treasures.  He was no hoarder though.  There was no filth or squalor here.  Everything was clean and secured in its place.  Here and there among the old signs, bright toys, oddball heirlooms and peculiar bric-a-brac were dotted pictures of our family along with photos I had taken of the island over the years.

“See.  Not so bad.”  He says as he shows me around the main deck.  On the floor of the galley there was strewn some broken ceramic and a whole drawer full of cutlery and across the hall in his hobby room some books and papers were scattered but other than that he’d made it out unscathed.  Without being asked I enter the kitchen and start to gather up forks and spoons.  Across from me Grandpa settles into a comfy armchair in the hobby room and tidies up the books.  “I’m surprised to see you down here so late.”

“I was out and about anyway.”  I say, unable to hide my smile.  “It was no trouble.”

“You were out?”  He looks across at me.  “Eyyy, what’s that smile about?”

I laugh.  “I was at Winona’s.”

“Ohhh!”  His bushy eyebrows raise.  “Miss Perfect?”

“Oh Grandpa!”  I swoon back to rest against the cupboards.  “She is perfect!  She’s kind and beautiful and funny and she likes me…and…and…and…oh Grandpa.  I’ve…I’ve never felt this way before.”

He chuckles and stacks a couple of books beside him.  “That was fast.”

“She invited me up to make a character for a game we’re going to play.”  I say.  “And…well, I had the wind in my sails…so I agreed.”

He grins.  “The wind in your sails.”

“I…I asked her out on a date.  Tomorrow.”  I say dreamily.  “And she said yes!  She said YES!  Ahhhhh!”

He leans back with a merry chortle.  “Atta boy Avery.”

“Tonight we made dinner together and ate and listened to music and watched a show.”  I say.  “And just had the greatest time together.”

“Sounds like you’ve already had your first date.”

“Ha ha ha!  Sorta I guess.”  I say.  “She calls me Sprout.  Sprout!  Pfff.  He he he.”

“That’s cute.”

“Yeahhh.”

“And?”

“And?”

“A first kiss perchance?”  He cocks a curious brow.  “Mmm?”

I blush and cover my face while shaking my head.  “No!  It wasn’t a date.  And…she’s not that kind of girl.”  Needless to say I wasn’t going to mention anything about what happened between the music and the show.  “She’s a lady.  A real classy lady.”

“Sounds like it.”  After a short bit of coughing he clears his throat and swallows.  “I’m real happy for you.”

Turning my head I look through the two doorways to him.  “You said with Grandma you knew.  You knew right away.”

His eyes drift off to where I knew a picture of his dead wife hung on the wall.  There was a photo of her in each and every room of the old trawler.  “I did indeed.”  He pats his chest.  “It just hit me.  It knocked me right up off of my feet and it’s never let me down again.”

“I think I feel that way Grandpa.”  I sigh.  “It feels…I can’t even describe it.”

“It’s easy to get swept away Buttercup.”  He says.  “You’ll know if it’s real in time.  Just…don’t get too attached before you’re sure.  Take it slow.”

“You didn’t take it slow.”  I jibe.  “Love at first sight you always said.”

“Hey! Don’t turn this around on me.”

“Didn’t you ask Grandma to marry you on your third date?”

“Now that was different!  It was different then!  Not at all the same.”  He protests.  “Besides, she said no.”

“In the end she said yes.”

“True.”

“I think she’s the one Grandpa.  I think she’s…the One.”

“You hearing this Anna?”  He says up at the photo of my Grandma with both concern as well as a big grin on his face.  “The boy is as hopeless as I was.”

I raise my chin and state boldly.  “And proud of it!”

We share a good laugh and return to our clean up.  As we go we chat and joke and Grandpa tells me the story of his and Grandma’s first date.

“So I roll up to her house, my beetle all rodded out.  Bell bottoms, beads, suede jacket, fringes and peace symbols galore.  I was lookin goooood.”  I laugh just imagining my Grandpa in his 60’s pomp.  “I hit the horn a few times and out comes her dad with a Richard Nixon scowl and a Johnny Unitas haircut.”  I hadn’t a clue who Johnny Unitas was but I got the drift.  “He comes stomping up to me, face as red as a lobster, and I say ‘You must be the Daddio, Daddio.  Groovy man.’”

“Ha!  Daddio?”

“I was nervous!”  He laughs.  “I was just trying to keep things…groovy.  Ya know?”

“He he he!  And were they?  Groovy?”

“Ohhhh no.”  He says.  “It was anything but groovy.”

I had deposited the cutlery into the sink to clean it later   I move around the island counter and out into the attached dining area to grab a broom and dustpan for the broken plate and spot some papers, a calculator and a few pens on the floor beneath the table.  There was a proper dining room attached to the main room but Grandpa and I usually ate back here when it was just the two of us.  Less fuss and less mess that way.

“So what happened?”  I call back over my shoulder.

“He tried to run me off.”  He says.  “Said that no daughter of his would be going out with any longhair.”

“Longhair?”  I kneel down and gather up the stuff under the table.

“Hippie.”  He explains.  “That was the least of it.  He said I was a drug fiend and a sex fiend and an unemployed leech on society.  Ha!  I was already working the boats at that point.  I was probably making more than he was!  Ha ha ha!”

“Must have been scary.”

“I was shaking in my in my Birkenstocks, Buttercup, but I stood my ground.  Nothin was gonna scare me off.  Thankfully Anna came out after a few minutes and cooled things down between us.”

“So not a great start, huh?”

“To put it mildly.”  He says.  “Your great grandpa had it out for me after that.  He tried so hard to make Anna cast me away.  It wasn’t until your mother was born that he ever really accepted me.  And even then it was more a truce.”

“You’re lucky Grandma didn’t listen to him, huh?”

“There was no chance of that.”  He says softly, followed by a long pause.  “Once it gets going…there’s nothing on this world that can stop true love Buttercup.  Not one single thing.”

I smile.  It always warmed my heart to hear him talk like this.  I put the papers up on the table and go to reach for one of the pens when something stops me.  Something I’d just caught the scantest of glimpses of.  In those papers I’d just put up…there was a word that caught my eye.  I’d seen it so quick I couldn’t be sure if I saw it at all, yet it snagged at my attention like a fish hook.  Just one single word that stood out of place among the rest.  Not an everyday kind of word.  A serious word.  A technical word.  A very, very bad word.

As Grandpa goes on to tell me about the dance he took Grandma to I silently stand and look down at the pile of papers.  My hand cold, my fingers trembling, I slowly turn the folded top paper, a medical form of some sort, so that it faced me properly.  My eyes scan for the word I thought I saw, all the while praying I’d seen it wrong.  Right away I find it again.  It sits there, ugly and nasty, standing out from the rest as if the letters themselves were a malignant black tumor upon the page.  And as I read it again…carcinoma…my whole world shatters around me.

Chapter 25