The War with Grandpa (9 page)

I was thinking pretty hard about how I was going to get back at Grandpa. It wasn't easy. There were a lot of things I could do and a lot I'd never do. Like burning his underwear, for instance. I didn't want to do something I'd be sorry for later.

I thought about, and then actually tried to steal his toolbox and hide it. But I found the thing was so big and heavy that just thinking about carrying it up three flights of stairs from the basement to hide it in the attic was enough to make me tired.

Then I figured out what I'd do. But before I had a chance to do it, I spent a day with Grandpa I want to tell about.

On Friday night Grandpa asked me if I'd ever gone fishing. I told him no, I hadn't. Dad was not a fisherman. And the only time I ever saw a live fish was in the big tank at the fish
store. Unless you count the lobster I saw once in a restaurant, but he was cooked. Or the goldfish I had once for about a week until he died.

“Well,” Grandpa said, “I'm thinking about going out tomorrow morning to catch us a mess of flounder. I'd sure appreciate the company, Petey. And I think you'd like it too.”

I wasn't so sure I'd like it.“You won't go out in the ocean, will you?” I asked.

“Nope, just a couple of hundred yards from shore in Cold Spring Harbor.”

“Where's that?”

“A short ride away. Maybe thirty miles or so.

“We wouldn't run into anything big and dangerous, would we?”

“Like what?” Grandpa asked.

“Like Jaws.”

Grandpa laughed.“Well, now,” he said, “I never thought of that. I don't think we'll meet up with Jaws, Petey. Leastways, I never have in all the times I fished out there.”

“Okay, then,” I said, feeling relieved.

Grandpa told me we'd be getting up very early the next day, but when he told me to set my alarm for four thirty
A.M.
I couldn't believe it.“That's the middle of the night,” I said.

“You've got to get up pretty early to outsmart a flounder,” he said.

Did you ever get up and out of bed at four thirty in the morning? It's pitch-black outside then. I washed and dressed and put on all the clothing Grandpa said I'd need. Old jeans, T-shirt, a flannel shirt, an old sweater over that, and my hooded sweat-shirt jacket to go on top. Grandpa was down in the kitchen working on a bunch of sandwiches to take along.“Ham and bologna,” he said, “that okay with you?”

“Fine,” I said, “no mustard on mine.”

“Okay,” he said. “You should never take tuna or any other fish sandwiches when you go out fishing. Scares away the fish.”

“How could that be?” I asked.

“Don't know,” said Grandpa, “but I believe it.”

He put the bag of sandwiches into a vinyl zipper bag along with a thermos of cold milk for me. He had another big old thermos he said we'd fill with hot coffee on the way. If you're hungry, Grandpa told me, take some bread or crackers, because we weren't going to eat breakfast for an hour or so. I told him I wasn't hungry. What I was was sleepy.

We stepped out onto the front porch into
the black morning. I peeked into the milk box near the door.“The milkman wasn't even here yet and we're leaving,” I said.“Why do we have to go fishing so early?” I asked. “Won't the fish be there in the afternoon too?”

“Tides,” Grandpa said as we went to Mom's car. Before I got into the front seat I squinted up into the black sky. The stars looked like asterisks.

Grandpa drove slowly and carefully through city streets, then turned onto the Interstate highway.“High tides,” Grandpa explained to me,“are when most of the fish like to feed. The water comes into the harbor and it brings a lot of things fish like to eat. So if you drop your hook on the incoming tide, see, Mr. Fish just thinks, ‘Here's a tasty nibble,’ and takes your bait. That's why we have to be out and on the water by seven o'clock today. Because the high tide comes at 9:07 exactly.” ” He looked over at me in the dark. “You do know what a tide is, don't you?”

“It's when the water gets higher and lower,” I said. “But what makes it do that?”

“The moon,” Grandpa said.

I thought he was making a joke.“How about the stars?” I said. “Or mountains or trees, maybe?”

Grandpa chuckled. “Nope, just the moon. And on the full moon you get your highest tides of the month. It's called gravitational pull, Pete, and it's true. You could look it up sometime. People keep charts of tides and they can tell you when each tide will come for years and years ahead. The tide is very important.”

“Must be,” I said. “It pulled me right out of bed at four thirty in the morning, didn't it?”

We stopped at a diner a little while later and had breakfast. It was only about five o'clock in the morning, the earliest I ever had breakfast in my life. Grandpa had the waitress fill his thermos with coffee and we hit the road again.

Grandpa was humming along with a song on the radio. He seemed very happy. Ahead of us the sky was beginning to lighten as dawn came up.“Ain't it great?” Grandpa grinned at me. “Just us two gents out on the road, footloose and fancy-free. Don't you love it?”

It did feel good being out and alone with Grandpa.

We got to Cold Spring Harbor just as the sun was peeping all red and gold at the edge of the sky. Grandpa drove down to the water and parked near Bill's Boat and Bait Shop. I have to tell something true right here. Inside that place
it smelled so awful, there ought to be a law against it. It smelled like rotten fish had been left there for about a year. That smell could gross out my whole class. Maybe the whole school.

We got two little pails of bait and walked down the dock on the other side to where the rowboats were tied up. Grandpa helped me into my life vest and put one on himself. Then we put all our stuff into the boat. It had a wide, flat bottom, and Grandpa tucked our fishing rods and tackle under the front seat, then helped me get in.“Safety first,” he told me. “No standing up, sit in one place on the seat, and tell me beforehand if you want to move around.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” I said, and it made him grin.

Grandpa untied us from the dock, put the oars into place, and rowed us out into the harbor. It was neat, traveling across the smooth water in a small boat, the sunlight dancing on the water and a cool breeze in my face.“I love it,” I said to Grandpa and he smiled.

There's a whole lot more to tell about that day, but this chapter is much too long already. I could tell about Grandpa teaching me to bait a hook with a worm or a piece of dead clam. About how you drop your hook until you feel the bottom and then take up just enough slack
in your line. Or the fantastic feeling when a flounder takes the bait and starts to wiggle and jump around, and how you have to pull him in so careful and slow, and getting him up and into the boat.

Almost everything about that day was wonderful. We caught a whole lot offish, more than twenty. I got so hungry, I ate my first sandwich before nine o'clock. I learned how to row a boat. It was hard to do, but I rowed us partway back to the dock. I learned how to clean a fish and get the scales off.

It was an adventure. Exciting, thrilling, and just a little bit of danger behind it. And I loved every minute of it.

“We're going to do this again,” I told Grandpa on the way home.

“You bet we are,” he said.

And we have gone fishing together a lot, many times since that first day. Once we even took Jenny along and she liked it too. But nothing will ever make me forget that first time alone with Grandpa.

So you can see why I felt a little sad later that night when I sneaked into my old room and stole Grandpa's wristwatch.

It did not take Grandpa too long to discover that his watch was missing. And I guess he didn't have to walk around trying to figure out where it had gone.

He came upstairs the next morning. It was a Sunday and I was waiting around for Mom and Dad to wake up so I could go downstairs for breakfast. I heard Grandpa coming and grabbed a book so I could be pretending to read.

Grandpa knocked on my door ever so lightly, then pushed it open a crack to look in.“Awake, I see,” he said. He came in and sat down in my rocker. He was wearing his pajamas, robe, and slippers.“A funny thing happened this morning,” ” he said. “I went to slip my watch on and guess what? It seemed to be missing from my dresser,”

“Is that so?” I said in a casual way.

“That's a fact.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe there was a thief who came into the house last night and stole it.”

“Don't think so,” Grandpa said. “Seeing as how my wallet was on the dresser, too, right next to my watch, and it wasn't even touched. I had quite a few dollars in it too.”

“Maybe it was a very dumb thief,” I said. “Or a thief who needed only a watch.”

Grandpa looked at me and grinned. I didn't blame him. What I'd said sounded stupid to me too.“How come you didn't leave a note?” Grandpa said.

“I think we're past all that,” I said.

“Maybe so.”

“I took your watch,” I said. “We both know that.”

Grandpa kind of shook his head a little.“I was kind of thinking maybe our little war was over,” he said. “Especially after yesterday. I had a good time fishing with you, Pete. You're very good company.”

“Well,” I said,“it wasn't your average kind of day for me either. I had one of the best days of my life with you. But—” ” I said, and sort of shrugged. “It doesn't change things, Grandpa.”

“So I see.”

“There's something I want and you have
and I don't know what else to do except fight for what's mine,” I said.

“Too bad,” Grandpa said. “But look, Petey, I have a special reason for wanting my watch back. It was a gift from Grandma, you see, on our fortieth wedding anniversary. I treasure it, son,”

Well, now I felt like the most miserable low-down person in the whole wide world. But I wasn't about to give up.“It's in a safe place, Grandpa,” I said. “And I'll take good care of it.”

I didn't have to take care of it at all. Because it was wrapped up nice and snug in a pair of my white socks and hidden away in a tennis ball can in the bottom of my camp trunk.

“I could probably find it if I looked,” Grandpa said.

“I don't think so,” I said.

“I'm pretty good at looking,” Grandpa said. “When you're in school, Pete, I've got all day to turn this place over.”

“You could look for a million years and never find it,” I said.

Grandpa sighed and rocked a few times in the chair.“I'd rather you handed it back by yourself,” he said.

“No way,” I said. “Not until you give me my room back.”

“I've heard that before,” he said. “How about if I say please?”

“Look, Grandpa,” I said, “all you have to do is tell Mom and Dad that you want to switch rooms with me. That's easy, isn't it?”

Grandpa took a long look in my eyes, rocking so gently in my chair.“You're really like a broken record, you know that?” he said.

“I only want what's rightly mine,” I said.

“So,” Grandpa said, “now we're playing hardball, eh?”

“I'm not playing,” I said. “No room … no watch.”

“Fair enough,” Grandpa said. He got up and slowly walked to the door.“But from now on,” he said, “you'd better watch out.”

Did you ever know something terrible was going to happen but you didn't know when?

That's the way I felt that whole time when Grandpa waited before striking back at me. It was real smart of him. Diabolical, if you want to know the truth. I walked around going crazy for about a week. I mean, it's hard to be calm when someone is going to do something to you and you don't know what it is or when it is going to happen.

I lay awake without sleeping a few nights, wondering when the blow was going to come down. It reminded me of this story about an old Greek guy named Damocles who went to a party where they hung a sword over his head by a hair. It had to be either a very skinny sword or a very fat hair. But either way it couldn't have been too comfortable to be waiting for that sword
to come down and slice you into human chicken parts.

I felt like I was in the dentist's office, waiting my turn, wondering how much it was going to hurt. It's the same feeling I get in school just before a test when everything I studied just jumps out of my head. You could ask me my own name just before a test and I might not know it.