Bright and ridiculously early the next morning, I help Gram dust the obscene amount of pig knick-knacks that stretch from the living room into the kitchen and down the hall. She's been collecting pigs since the invention of time. She doesn't even own any real pigs. As we work, Gram sings oldies – not the oldies that I know, but the old oldies. I pray to stumble upon a time machine so I can go back to last week and not piss off Mom.
I can't seem to shake the habit of slapping my back jeans pocket, reaching for a cell phone that is not there. Not that I have anything of importance to tell anyone, but some random friend's text would help so much right now.
We finish the pigs and Gram makes us turkey sandwiches and then settles into the living room to catch the beginning of her soap operas. She doesn't give me any more chores to do so I assume I'm free for the afternoon and that actually sucks more than cleaning. It is so boring here. There is no cable TV so the only channels are playing soap operas, divorce court, a show about cheating spouses and Spanish soap operas.
I decide to take a walk outside, hoping I'll trip and fall off the porch, slip into a three-month coma and wake up in time to go back to school. A police car turns into the driveway. Dust from the gravel road puffs around the four tires. Grandpa was tending the flowerbed and now walks up to the officer's car door to talk to him. I sit on the porch swing. If a cop showed up at my house I would be all sorts of excited, dying to know what the drama was about. But in this small ass hick town, everyone knows everyone and I wouldn't doubt if the cop is here just to invite Grandpa to a rip-roaring fun game of bingo in the town square. And then I hear yelling.
“You have got to get control of your town, Sherriff!” Grandpa is actually yelling, and at a police officer. God, what I would give to be able to tweet about this. I stop swinging to shush the creaky wooden porch swing.
“I understand Ed, but there's nothing I can do. The boy owns the land now.”
Grandpa gazes at the neighboring piles of dirt and haphazard newly dug lake. He frowns and shakes hands with the officer. “I know Richard is turning over in his grave. He would have never wanted his house to become a motorcycle playground.”
As soon as the cop is gone and the dust settles in the driveway, I run to the flowerbeds to talk to Grandpa. “What was that about?” He hands me a pair of gloves from a bucket of gardening tools.
He points to a weed. “You remember Richard from when you were a kid?”
I grab the weed and pull it from the ground. “Yeah.”
“He died 'bout five years ago. Left everything to his ungrateful brat of a grandson. He never did talk to his own son after that big fight they had.” I'm blown away at how much Grandpa's talking to me. I'm almost scared to ask another question incase he's used up his word quota for the day.
“So the grandson made all those dirt piles?”
He nods.
“Why?”
He shrugs, letting his face go back to a grimace. I guess I've made him talk too much. I pull a few more weeds as penance. We work in silence until all of the weeds are gone. Finally he talks, and I've almost forgotten my question. “He rides a motorcycle on it. Every day.” He wipes sweat from his brow. “Surprised he ain't out there now.”
I smile. Grandpa's warming up to me.
After dinner, during which Grandpa didn't say a single word, I retreat to the balcony for another afternoon of stargazing and nothingness. Only it isn't yet dark, so I make do with finding shapes in the clouds.
The first cloud blob is shaped sort of rectangleish which reminds me of my cell phone. I roll my eyes. I must be completely insane if I'm creating cell phones out of clouds. My heart aches for my phone as much as it does for Ian.
A grasshopper appears out of thin air next to my shoe. I pick it up, cupping it inside my hands like I did as a child. It hops around, tickling my fingers. Catching bugs has become my new past time in this stupid small town. I sigh. I'm pathetic.
A firecracker-like roar fills the air and revs a few times like a motor. I jump and the grasshopper escapes as I jerk my head around looking for the source of the noise. Puffs of smoke sneak out of the neighbor's backyard shed. The motor revs again, in quick spurts. A man pushes a motorcycle out into the yard. He pulls back on the throttle a few times and the motor screams. Soon, the smoke stops and I can tell that it isn't really a motorcycle, at least not a Harley type motorcycle. It's a dirt bike. The recreational kind my brother wants so badly. Now that I get a better look at the guy, he's closer to my age. He's wearing these funky-looking red and black pants and a white undershirt. Muscles ripple through his arms as he grips the handlebars.
I grab a hold of the wooden rails of the balcony, pull my face up to the crack between them and watch. He can't see me, but I can see him. For the time being, my cell phone is the last thing on my mind.