"You know Jamey," Grampy said cutting into the cool silence of a walk through the woods of a white afternoon in early spring. "Moose used to have wings."
"Never did," Jamey said certain that if this were true he would have heard something about it in his three years at Parkman Elementary School if nowhere else.
"Ayeah, look at the shoulders of ‘em." Grampy flicked a finger at a tangle of bare shafts of pine. Just beyond the trees in the spong at the side of the lake stood a large, shaggy cow and her calf nosing into the tufts of grasses. "See the shoulder blades? That’s all that’s left of the wings; used to sprout right there. Big grey feathery things. Of course, the moose were smaller back then. They bargained away the wings for a larger size and them antlers."
"Why ever’d they do that?" It never took much of a story for any of the family to buy into a Grampy tale.
"When you’re small and tasty in the big woods, you give up what you have to in order to survive. Moose gave up their wings to the owls."
"Owls?" Jamey asked quietly so as not to interrupt the flow of story.
"Owls. You don't think owls are a wee bit enchanted? Watch them turn their head; even though most of the magic's gone outta the world, an owl can still turn it's head right around in a circle. Now, owls, they've always been predators, but they used to be large lumbering things stuck on the ground. They've never been what you'd call dumb though. Way back then it took a lot of small winged moose to fill up an owl stomach, and they knew they'd run out of food before many generations. Swift little moose were dang hard to catch. People were too smart to be caught by owls, and everything else was under human protection or too small to be worth a hunt. Prince among the owls realized if they were smaller and faster, they could live on animals they ignored like mice and rabbits. He bargained with the Queen of the moose and the exchange was made. This was back before everything was set and fixed like it seems to be now. Moose got size and protection from near about everything, but they lost their wings. Now the owls can fill up easier, move faster, and feel the wind beneath their bellies; but every moose is born wishing they can fly."
"How you know that?"
"There's just things Grampies know. Like, right now I know Grammy's fit to be tied cause we aren’t home for dinner." He spun around to face the crack of white sky between the trees and headed back up the path to the field road.
On a rare winter visit to their grandparents’ house two years later, Jamey and his younger brother Landon wobbled and slipped across the ice on double bladed skates. They had played train chugging across the pond watching their breath plumes rise like smoke into the bright grey sky. They had played perhaps the slowest and most unsteady game of chase back and across the pebbled surface of what was mostly a runoff ditch in the spring and a mucky hole in high summer.
Halfway to five in their game of pine-cone hockey, Jamey’s left skate blades bit into a particularly solid chunk of ice and stuck. He jerked forward, landed on his knees, and slid clear across the pond. The laugh on his lips turned to a cry when he leaned to dust himself off and saw his torn snow pants and the red smear of blood in a straight trail behind him.
Landon, guarding his goal with a scrapboard hockey stick broke into tears from where he stood and wailed.
Neither boy was aware of Grampy until he scooped Jamey up in his arms. Half-way up the hill to the shed, Grampy called to Landon to gather the toys and come in for the day.
In the shed, amidst and among the orderly piles and metal shelves of pieces of this and parts of who knew what, Grampy settled Jamey on an upturned crate. After a consoling pat on the back and a kiss on the top of a hat-mussed head, he turned to the workbench and reached into a dark cubby to withdraw a battered first aid kit. Grampy carefully peeled Jamey’s snowpants off. "So, did you see them?" he asked.
A sniff extended Jamey’s "Who?" to multiple syllables.
"Stars," Grampy said, the ‘of course’ implied by his tone.
Jamey rubbed his eyes with still-gloved hands and recalled flashes just after he felt the first impact on his knee. His nod coincided with another sniff.
"You’ll see stars every time you knock your noggin," Grampy dabbed at Jamey’s ragged kneecap with alcohol-soaked cotton. "It’s to comfort you, remind you where you’re from."
"North Andover?" Jamey asked quietly.
Grampy laughed. "No, the stars. You didn’t think people and animals originated here did you? We all came from some place up there. And how’s we know that, is that when we bump our heads or whichever-parts, we are treated to a quick glimpse of home for comfort’s sake. Do you remember what constellations you saw?"
Jamey shook his head. His knee, cleaned and bandaged, was completely forgotten.
"Well, maybe next time. Just pay attention." Grampy grinned. "Just a little known fact; only Grampies know it." he said with a wink. "If the scientists did, they’d all bonk themselves on their beans trying to find out exactly where we’re all from."
Jamey laughed just as Landon, laden down with toys, waddled through the door with a surprised look on his tear-stained face.
It was ticking snow. More would be on the ground before morning, but Jamey who had driven the family up for the first time was where he planned to be for some time to come. He was glad to be gathered with the family at his grandparents’ for the first time in years even if all of everyone wasn’t present.
"What’s he doing now?" Landon asked. "Does anyone know where Grampy is?"
"He’s fine, Lan," Grammy said from the kitchen. "He’s in the shed. He likes it there."
Sarah, Jamey and Landon’s mother, kept glancing up into the light from the bay window, squinting, and then returning to her knitting. "Mom, isn’t there a lot out there he can hurt himself with?"
Sticking her head around the doorjamb while not seeming to take her attention from the pots on the stove, Grammy said, "Sarey, your father has been spending the better part of his time in that shed since before you could reach the knob on the door. Come help me with dinner, and let’s let him be."
Over the dissonant melody of plates, sliver, and pans and the constant mumble of the television, Landon asked, "You think this might be the last year for this?"
Jamey, himself staring into the white light at the lazily drifting dark dots of the snowflakes, said, "I’d sure like to hope not."
"Yeah, Gram has her way, we’ll be bringing our grand kids here for the holidays." Landon rolled on to his back and stared at the ceiling. "Grampy really seems fine, I don’t know what Ma’s problem is."
"Fine, sure," Jamey returned his attention to his brother on the couch. "But sometimes he’s in a different NOW all together than the rest of us."
"But he’s still, good for a Grampy tale," Landon smiled, and the boys sank into a comfortable silence.
Later after a hot, fine meal and a considerable amount of laughter and talk, Grammy handed Jamey a sudsy cup for rinsing and drying, "You boys should come up more often."
"We’d love to—well, I’d love to and I’m sure Landon would too." He dunked the cup in clear water. "Travel’s hard with school." He hesitated to ask what was really on his mind as he applied the towel the cup. "Is… is Grampy a problem? For you I mean."
"No, foolish. We’d just both like to see more of you."
"You know Mom worries about you two up here alone."
"Alone?" Grammy looked genuinely shocked. "Heavens. What are my church ladies? Our friends?" She smiled into the pot she was scraping and filling with lemon-scented bubbles. "Your mother is a goober. We are fine. Your Grampy is fine; you heard him at dinner. Full of stories as ever. Fisher cats with tails like monkeys… I’ve known him half a century and he still pulls tales outta the air I’ve never heard."
"We should have been writing them down all along." Jamey smiled himself.
"Nothing to stop you from starting now?" She handed him the pot and turned her smile on him.
"But his memory—"
"Nothing’s what it used to be, Jamey-Jo." She poked him in the shoulder with a dripping ladle. "Or ever will be again."
"‘We are the stories we tell’ has always been my favorite Grampyism."
Grammy pursed her lips before saying, "And there’s never been a man more full of ‘em."
"I think it bothers Mom when he forgets who we are or worse, what year it is."
"Bedrock fact: we love him." She pulled the stopper out of her side of the sink.
"Yep." Jamey said rinsing the last dish.
"He loves us." Grammy turned to him. In the waning light from the kitchen window, she looked about as solid and capable as a five foot woman could.
Jamey looked down at the emptying sink, "Sometimes he’s loving a memory of us."
"And can’t we agree they are one in the same?" Grammy kissed him on the cheek and took the towel from him. "Now, how long are we going to have to wait for great grand children to visit us for the holidays?"
Jamey rolled his eyes. "I’m going out to visit the man himself." He held up a hand. "Not to check on him; just to be with him. Maybe trade a few tales." He turned toward the door to the shed.
There was a whicker of cloth spinning through the air, and the dishtowel snapped behind him. Jamey leapt as if he’d been hit and smiled at the sound of his grandmother’s giggle as he reached for the doorknob. He was happy in anticipation of a tale, maybe two, and years more of this particular story.
'The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.'
(Albert Einstein.)