It didn’t make much sense, especially the
part where my eighty-nine year old grandfather climbed on the roof.
It made me wonder if that exertion was the cause of the stroke that
killed him.
I have a very clear memory of the day we
found him. I was coming over to work on our latest knife order and
my father was just coming over to check on grandpa.
When we entered the house, the sense that
something was wrong was immediate and palpable. The coffee wasn’t
made, and there was no sign he had been up for breakfast. Grandpa
was up every day by six’o’clock, day in, day out, for as long as I
could remember.
We called to him but there was no answer and
the house felt empty of life. Part of my brain was telling me that
the worst had happened; while another part was worried he had
fallen and broken a hip or something. My father didn’t say
anything, but his face reflected similar fears.
By unspoken agreement we entered the bedroom
together, immediately seeing my grandfather, in bed, lying on his
back, hands clasped over his stomach. His mouth was open, wider
than natural, rigor mortis holding that way. Two paths of dried
blood trailed down his cheek and chin, pooling in a congealed mass
under his head. His eyes were blessedly shut. Death was
obvious.
The rest of the morning was a blur. I
remember placing the 9-1-1 call, but it wasn’t an emergency, so dad
and I waited downstairs for about twenty minutes for a sheriff’s
deputy to arrive. Cause of death was determined to be a stroke.
It took two months to clean up the house, and
another month to get the deed signed over. I repainted and
re-carpeted, seeking Ashley’s input on colors and textures, trying
to make it ours. I, of course, took my GrandFather’s room and
Ashley got the guest bedroom. It was late August when we moved in.
The sale of our old house had closed two weeks before, so we only
spent a short time at my parents’ house before taking up residence
in the farm. The day we moved in was also the day we got Charm. My
father can be a bull in a china shop when he gets an idea, but this
turned out to be a stroke of genius. Taking Ashley to pick a dog
from the pound had completely redirected her discomfort with moving
into the house her great grandfather had died in.
Charm had been a rescue dog, plucked from an
illegal breeding mill by ASPCA officers. She was on death row when
Ashley spotted her in the kennel. The attendant told my father that
she had refused to interact with anyone since her rescue. She told
him it was a waste of time for Ashley to try to go in her pen.
Ashley proved her wrong in about four minutes flat.
My GrandFather’s writing seemed strange….not
outright crazy but odd. Who were ‘they’ and how could ‘they’ get
into the house through a screen? Why had he put heavy mesh over
every window (something I had been wondering about since I moved
in)? Why would anyone bother the old man?
I looked at next most recent entry.
May 26 - Heard noises outside last night.
Found tracks of one of the big ones near the kitchen window. Can’t
tell if it was the green one or the white one. Sprinkled steel
filings all around the house. The tracks never go near the barns
where the forge is.
Okay, that was sounding more than slightly
crazy. I couldn’t figure out the part about the green or white
‘ones’ and why he would sprinkle filings around the property. I
went back another day.
May 25 – Witnessed another aerial fight
today. Just at dusk. One of the big flyers was hunting something
(mice? Chipmunks?) near the garden and a group of three green Tinks
attacked it. Thought the bigger one was dead right there, but it
managed to tear apart two before it got stung. Even then it killed
the one that stung it before it died. Those teeth are nasty! Bodies
gone as usual.
The part about teeth caught my attention. If
he had been discussing a bird of prey, he would have said beak. I
had no idea what ‘Tinks’ was, but I was hooked. I flipped back
through the entries, scanning for the first problems. The first
strange entry was in early April.
April 4 – I’m starting to think I’m seeing
things. Last couple of days, I’ve been seeing hummingbirds or maybe
large dragonflys (at least that’s what I told myself they were).
Just quick flashes, never a solid look. Today one of the bug-like
ones landed on the clothesline post, the one nearest the garden. I
watched it from the kitchen window. About four inches long, green
body, tannish brown legs, dragon fly wings. Not a bug! Looked like
that little fairy girl in Peter Pan, but not! I probably shouldn’t
be writing this down. My son will commit me if he reads it!
The phone rang. Caller ID read ‘Academy MMA’.
I picked up, “Hello?”
“Ian, it’s Tom. I wanted to see if you have
any time tomorrow? Between ten and twelve?”
Tom Yelos ran a mixed martial arts school in
town and from time to time provided me with my third source of
income.
“Sure, Tom. I’m clear then,” I answered,
looking at the school calendar on the fridge.
“Let’s say ten then. I’ve taken on a new guy
and I need the master’s advice!” he said, lightly.
I laughed. “Okay Grasshopper, I’ll be
there!”
Tom and I had met at a recreation league
soccer game when our kids were six. His daughter Lindsey had been
best friends with Ashley ever since. While watching our kids swarm
around the ball, kicking like dervishes, we had gotten to know each
other. When he told me he ran MMA classes, I had expressed an
interest and explained my background.
If you haven’t heard of mixed martial arts,
you’ve been hiding, ‘cause it’s the biggest thing in combat sports
since boxing. Combining aspects of both striking arts (think
karate, boxing, muay thai) and grappling arts (wrestling, Brazilian
ju-jitsu), the sport is vastly more exciting to watch than boxing.
It’s rapidly sweeping the nation.
Tom had invited me to visit his school and
the day I took him up on the offer, he had been training a young
lightweight fighter for an upcoming amateur bout. I’m not the best
fighter on the planet, I mean I can hold my own, but I would never
have made a good professional fighter. But what I can do is
identify fighters’ weaknesses at a glance and help them improve. I
demonstrated this fact that day as I watched Tom work with his
fighter. I pointed out that young Ben’s aggressive forward leaning
stance was leaving too much weight on his front foot. When Ben
laughingly invited the ‘old man with the big mouth’ into the ring I
showed him the proof by foot sweeping him. Then I corrected his
stance and he promptly submitted me after four long minutes of
sparring. Tom offered me pay for helping him tune up his fighters
before bouts. My talents even extended to watching video of their
opponents and offering hints on
their
weaknesses as
well.
The day was getting older when I got off the
phone, so I left off Grandpa’s journal and went back to the smithy
to draw file the mornings’ work. Two hours of filing had the blades
in good shape and left me enough time to clean up, grab Charm and
head to Ashley’s final soccer game of the season.
Chapter 2
They lost by one stinking point, but Ashley
played a great game and was in high spirits as she came off the
field with her BFF Lindsey in tow. Ashley plays mid-field, having
the right combination of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers to be
able to sprint to the action, but endure the endless back and forth
running. She and Lindsey make a dangerous pair, the black haired
mid-fielder feeding passes to the aggressive blonde forward.
The day had warmed considerably, and both
girls were wiping their faces as they laughed about a squeeze play
they had put on a particularly nasty player. That girl had been
very free with illegal trips, elbows and shoves. The terrible twins
had sandwiched her, hard, in one play, putting an end to her
fouling.
“Dad, can Lindsey stay over tomorrow night?
It’s Friday,” she asked.
I glanced at her blonde buddy, who gave me a
huge smile that I didn’t buy for a second.
I narrowed my eyes at both of them in mock
consideration of saying no. They already knew it was a foregone
conclusion that I would say yes. Hell, I’d give Lindsey my car if
she wanted it. Nobody had been more in Ashley’s court when her
mother had died than Lindsey Yelos. I literally thanked God daily
for giving my daughter such a good friend. I nodded and they
laughed and then hugged goodbye.
“What did Coach think about your final game?”
I asked.
“She said we played well. Shen school is one
of the toughest teams in our conference. Here,” she finished by
handing me a slip of paper. There is a never ending stream of such
messages from teachers, coaches or PTA members, constantly flowing
home. This one detailed the soccer banquet the following week.
I took a moment to study my girl. At
thirteen, she stands five feet, two inches tall, just a couple
inches shorter than her mother had been. She would likely grow to
be five –five or so, according to her doctor. Ashley takes after
her mother in looks almost completely, a favor from God perhaps.
Blue-black hair, and the Asian features of her mother’s native
China. Her eyes are almond shaped, but green like mine, rather than
her mother’s dark brown. Ashley is beautiful. That’s not just a
proud Father’s opinion, but one shared by anyone who sees her and
by every boy in school. It’s the kind of effortless beauty that
lowers other girls’ self-esteem on sight.
“Got a lot of homework?” I asked as we
trudged to my SUV.
“Yeah, I got slammed!” she admitted.
We loaded her book and sports bags into the
back of the FJ Cruiser and climbed in. She was instantly greeted by
a frantic Charm, who had had to wait in the car. The school doesn’t
allow dogs on its fields. Ashley took charge of the music, plugging
in her iPod and picking a Lady Gaga song to blast on the stereo for
our five minute drive home.
“What’s for dinner?” she asked when we pulled
onto our long driveway.
“I was thinking a grilled steak, potatoes and
onions in aluminum foil and…corn?” I said. We grill year round,
even in the arctic cold of January and February.
“Italian dressing on the potatoes…and bacon,
before you roll up the foil?” she clarified.
“That was my plan,” I said.
“Works!” she agreed.
I took care of dinner while she took a few
minutes to unwind and play with her dog. Charm is very enthusiastic
about the game of fetch, so while I started the grill and prepared
the steak and potatoes, Ash threw her a tennis ball. The steak was
searing nicely when I heard Ashley’s yell and Charm’s yelp.
I have no conscious memory of leaving the
grill, I was just suddenly running full out with my heart in my
throat. I skidded around the back corner of the barn to find Ashley
holding Charm, frantically checking her over.
“Ash? What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“Charm got into a hive of some kind,” she
said, her hands ruffling the fur under the powerful little dog’s
steel link collar. “I don’t think she got stung, it must have just
surprised her is all.”
“Where is the hive?” I asked.
“In the crack of the old shed foundation,”
she said, pointing at the concrete remains of the old tool
building. Under my GrandFather’s close supervision, dad and I had
torn down the rotten wooden part of the old shed a year ago, but
the cinderblock and mortar footprint still stood.
Approaching cautiously, I struggled to make
out anything in the thick shadows. The daylight was fast waning as
it does in November. I might have seen a brief flicker of motion
deep in the crevice, but it was too dark for details. After
observing for a moment or two, I headed back.
“I can’t see anything without a light. I’ll
take a look after dinner,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
“I threw the ball and it bounced into the
crack. Charm raced over and stuck her nose in, but I knew I would
have to get it. But before I got there, she jumped back, shaking
her head and yelping. I saw a couple of …bugs, I guess, swarming
around her and then they were gone,” she explained.
“You guess they were bugs?” I asked, puzzled
at her choice of words.
“Well they were awfully big, but they buzzed
like bugs, so they must have been.”
“How big? Like this?” I held up my thumb and
forefinger an inch apart.
She shook her head. “No, much bigger! Like
this,” she said, her palms held three or four inches apart.”
“What color were they?”
“Dark, maybe a greenish color.”
“Green?” I asked.
“Yeah, maybe, but with lighter legs. I don’t
know, it happened fast,” she said, frustrated with trying to
remember the details.
Charm didn’t appear any worse for wear, so we
trudged back to the house, just in time to flip the steak before it
could char. Ashley went inside to start her homework, her furry pal
right beside her, while I finished making dinner.
As I pulled the aluminum foil packet of
potatoes and onions off the hot grill and onto the same platter as
the t-bone, I couldn’t stop thinking about the description Ashley
had given and the entry in my GrandFather’s journal. Another
thought occurred to me as I entered the house, taking a last look
around the gloomy yard…..it was way too late in the season and too
cold for bees or hornets of any kind to be active.
After dinner, while Ashley tackled her math,
I took a close look at Charm’s neck, struggling to keep the wiggly
dog still. I found a particularly good scratching spot on her back
and she stilled long enough for a careful inspection of the heavy
choke chain collar. Link by link, I looked, checking the thick
furry neck underneath as well. Just near the part of the collar
that held her tags, I spotted something foreign. At first I thought
it was a twig, stuck to the aluminum rabies tag, but then I noticed
it was sharp and greenish in color. Grabbing the tick tweezers that
we keep handy, I pulled it off and then rummaged in the junk
drawer, at last finding my GrandFather’s old magnifying glass.