“Well, what the hell do you think I am?” The crotchety old man said as he shuffled his feet into the guest bedroom.
“I think you are tired, Grandpa,” Kevin said as he tried to lead his grandfather toward the room, but the old man didn’t want anyone to touch him. He was slow and easily distracted. “I just want to get you set up so you’ll be comfortable.”
“That’s what they tell people who are dying,” he coughed out as he slowly inched forward.
Kevin didn’t know what to say, so he looked at his wife, Stephanie. She shrugged and tried to direct the old man down the hallway.
Grandpa turned to see who he was looking at. “Well, you sure are pretty,” he said when he laid eyes on her.
“Grandpa, this is Stephanie, my wife,” Kevin said with an edge in his voice. He had seen his grandfather push the boundaries of what was acceptable to say to women these days. Kevin had seen him ask a woman younger than himself to sit on his lap. Not only was Kevin mortified, but he was shocked that the young woman found it funny.
His grandfather seemed much older than the last time they had been together. The old man’s hair was now just a few strands on the top of his head. His skin, which had once been taunt and muscular, now hung loosely off his bones like a long sleeve t-shirt that was three sizes too big.
His pants engulfed him, threatening to fall off. Still, no one had been able to get him a smaller size. If anyone gave him a smaller size, he would throw them back at whoever brought them and shouted at them to “go to Hell” or “There’s no way those would fit me. Idiot!”
Stephanie put her hand on the small of GrandPa Jo’s back, and Kevin winced. He feared what would come out of his grandfather’s mouth next. He prepared what to say to calm his wife down because he knew she didn’t take anything from anyone.
“Well, where are we going? When can I go back home?” Jo asked. Kevin was flabbergasted. They had this conversation three times on the way home.
“You can’t go home.” She said, directly challenging him.
“Can’t go home? Why not?” He asked, confused.
“Grand Pa, your house burned down,” Kevin said for the hundredth time since they had picked him up. “Don’t you remember?”
“My house burned down? Was it my good-for-nothing brother?” Jo asked, his eyebrows furled.
“No, Grandpa, it was the microwave. You can’t microwave foil with food in it for that long.” Kevin said sullenly.
“Oh,” he said as he shuffled towards the room again. With Stephanie’s help and some focus, they finally maneuvered Jo into his room and down on a comfortable chair.
“I’m an old man, you know,” he told Stephanie as she got a pillow for his back.
“You’re not that old in spirit,” she said with a smile.
“I’m old enough to have fought in the damn World War. Have I ever told you about that, sweetie?” He said with a smile that could draw anyone in.
“You hav…” she started.
“I survived four invasions. Them Germans tried to kill me, and even they couldn’t do it.” He cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “They even tried to drop a damn bomb on me.”
She knew the story by heart now. She had heard every time they visited Grandpa before the wedding.
“I could hear the missile dropping from the sky. Damn Germans cut the tips so that they’d whistle on the way down. I did the only thing I could think of doing. I jumped into a foxhole and pulled one of the dead soldiers on top of me. That blast rolled over me like a fire bath.
“I would later find out who that soldier’s body was that saved my life, and I wrote a letter to his family. They were so happy that he was able to save my life.” He sat there with his smile.
“That’s so nice,” she said like she was talking to a baby. Jo never got the hint that she had heard this story only about a thousand times.
“Dad, do you need anything else? Are you comfortable?” Stephanie asked.
“Well, I could use a soda.” He thought, twisting his body to view his grandson better. “And you could put that Perry Mason on the television? I’d sure appreciate it.”
“You got it,” Kevin said.
Stephanie led Kevin out of the room and stopped. She could see the look of weariness on his face. He wrapped his left arm around her waist as he caught up the last few steps with her.
“You okay?” She asked, concerned about her husband’s mental state.
“I’m okay, I’m just… sorry.” He said, his head hanging towards the floor. “This isn’t really how I wanted us to be spending the first year of our marriage together.”
“You mean you didn’t want me to realize that I married the greatest guy in the universe.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m proud of you. No one else in your family jumped up to help him.”
“Yeah, but they’ve got a lot going on, too,” He said.
“And we don’t?” She eyed him intensely. “I’m happy to be able to help your- our, family out. Besides, it gives me a chance to really meet the man. You know that we’ve never really talked much.”
“Yeah, my dad is still so mad at him.” He said, moving towards the living room, his arm still wrapped around his bride.
“Why is that?” She asked, looking up at him.
“I’m not really sure. Dad wouldn’t ever tell me. Grandpa just starts rambling on about his brother.”
“He has a brother?” Stephanie asked.
“He did. Apparently, they had a falling out, too. His brother died when my dad was young. Dad said they didn’t even go to the funeral.”
“Interesting.” She glanced back toward the shut door. She wasn’t sure if she felt sympathy or worry towards the old man.
After a few days, they got their routines down. Kevin would go to work, not knowing when he’d be home. He hated that he left them both alone for so long every day.
Stephanie worked from home. She would tend to Jo during the day. She started anticipating the yell from Jo’s room that he was hungry.
It hadn’t taken her long to realize how this interaction would go when she entered. The first few times she entered the room, he asked politely for a soda, so she started to bring one with her. She would pour the soda into his cup and sit and watch Perry Mason with him for a few minutes.
She would show him, for the tenth time that day, how to use the streaming media device to get all the shows he wanted to watch. She often wondered if technology would pass her up when she was older as it had done for him. Then he would regale her with a story.
His stories were always about one of three subjects: His army history and the invasions he went through, stories about his family and how all of them stole from him, how those family members cut him out of his life, or his battle with the squirrels from his home that burned up.
She liked the stories about the squirrels until she realized they all ended with how he trapped the squirrel, ran a knife across its neck, and skinned it.
She hadn’t known that he was even able to do that. She knew that he had enlisted and had probably learned all the skills of death there, but she only knew him as an old man, as her grandfather-in-law. She didn’t even know if he was quick enough to do the things that he’s spoken of now.
“Did I tell you able that one squirrel? The one that was so smart, he wouldn’t fall for my traps?” He asked as they sat there together.
“You did. He outsmarted you for a while, but then you started to put hot sauce around the trees by your house, which scared him off.”
“Oh yeah.” He leaned back in his chair, chuckling.
“Grandpa Jo?” she started. She was scared to bring up painful memories but couldn’t resist asking more about the family. Besides, he would probably forget as soon as she asked anyway. “Can you tell me about Kevin’s grandmother?”
“Kevin’s grandma?” He asked, his head snapping to attention. “She died.”
Stephanie smiled and leaned back in her chair. She wasn’t going to push anything. She didn’t want him to stress out and have a heart attack or anything. “She died of cancer. Kevin told me.”
“Cancer?” he said, surprised. “It wasn’t cancer..”
He leaned his head back against the chair’s headrest and closed his eyes as if he were going to sleep. A smile crept across his lips.
“Not cancer,” he said behind closed eyes. “I slit her throat.”