GRANDPA

Sample from Desist

“Hey. Wake up, kiddo.”

Casey grumbled and rubbed the crud from his eyes and then opened them and squinted through the car’s roof light.

He sat up from where he was lying in the car's backseat. The door by his feet was open and his father was bending down to look at him from inside.

Casey looked around. It was dark out. It wasn’t dark out before. The only light came from the canopy and windows of the gas station and the tiniest blue glow from the eastern horizon.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know. Some gas station. We’ll ask when we get some breakfast,” he patted Casey on the leg, “C’mon.”

Casey grumbled.

Gorman asked his boy, “You want pancakes or not?”

“Yeah. And some coffee.”

“You’re ten. You don’t need coffee. C’mon.”

Casey pushed off the blanket from his lap and scooted himself towards the open door and got out and stretched and yawned. They walked through the nearly empty parking lot and through a double-door into a diner attached to the gas station. Only a handful of diners were inside, sleepy-eyed, drinking coffee and eating their meals in silence.

A aproned woman walked by with a coffeepot in each fist and said, “Y’all sit where you like and I’ll be with you in just a sec.”

Gorman asked, “You wanna sit in a booth?”

Casey shrugged.

“Someplace you’d rather sit?”

“At the counter over there?” Casey pointed.

“You like the counter better than the booth?”

“Mom always wants the booth. I’ve never sat at the counter before. They’re always sitting at the counter in movies.”

“Alright, let’s try the counter.”

They sat on the brown pleather cushioned stools. Gorman pulled a menu from the metal holder that held all the sugar and fake sugar and salt and pepper. He handed it to Casey.

“I don’t need that.”

“You know what you want?”

“We’re getting pancakes, right?”

“Okay. Fair enough.” He put the menu back.

The waitress returned and readied her notpad. “What can I get you?”

“Pancakes. Both of us.”

“Blueberries, please,” Casey added.

“Both of ’em?”

“Yeah,” said Gorman.

“Whip cream, too,” said Casey.

“Both of ’em?” she asked.

“Yeah, and a coffee for me. And a couple of small, empty bowls,” added Gorman.

“Alrighty.”

Just as she was turning around, Gorman stopped her to ask, “Hey. Where are we?”

“Trina’s. Says right on the menu.”

“No, what state? What city?”

“Just outside Cleveland.”

“Cleveland?”

“Cleveland, Mississippi.”

“I didn’t know there was a Cleveland, Mississippi.”

“No one does.” She put her notepad back into her apron and left them.

The two were quiet for a while. Casey started drawing. Gorman checked the news in Detroit to see if their names came up but their was nothing about them in the Free Press.

Gorman set down his phone and looked at his kid. “What do think of the counter?”

“It’s okay.” Casey was fixated on the drawing and didn’t look up, his pelvis rotated the swiveling the stool back and forth.

“What’re you drawing?”

“A hat.”

“A hat? Just a hat?”

“It’s half sun hat and half sombrero.”

Gorman leaned over. The hat was on a featureless silhouette of a person.

“Looks like a fashion drawing.”

“Obv.”

“What’s obv mean?”

“It means obviously. Obv.”

“Well it’s a really good drawing.”

“Like you would know,” and Casey made an exaggerated eyeroll.

The waitress put their food on the table and warned them that the plates were hot and left them.

“Let me show you a good trick.” Gorman poured syrup into the small bowl. He put some butter in it too, which started melting. He cut a slice of pancake with the edge of his fork, stabbed it, dipped it in the syrup bowl, and ate it.

“What’s so good about that?”

“You get lots of syrup and butter in every bite without getting your pancakes all soggy.”

“I like pouring the syrup on the pancakes, though.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just like to. It’s my favorite part of pancakes.”

“Have it your way.”

Casey smothered the pancakes in syrup.

Gorman asked, “Is Grandpa still around?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He gets sick a lot. He’s really old.”

“Sick like how?”

“He throws up a lot. And he diarrhead on the couch.”

“Gross.”

“So gross. Mom was so mad.”

“I bet.”

“Mom won’t even let Grandpa in the house anymore because of that. He has to sleep on the porch.”

“Sad. He used to be so much fun.”

“Yeah.”

“You remember that time he got on the roof?”

Casey smiled, “Yeah!”

“That was a pain in the ass.”

“He was so upset. He was crying all night.”

“Yeah, me and your mom heard it and went outside and it was pitch dark out and we just heard this noise and were calling out his name but we couldn’t find him anywhere. But he was right up above us.”

“We were going to Mobile the next day.”

“That’s right! I forgot about that! Good thing we found him in the morning, otherwise he’d have been on that roof all damn weekend.”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t even want to come down, he was so scared. Had to go up there and pick his ass up and bring him down.”

“He was so hungry that he ate that whole can of gravy in like 5 seconds ‘cus we were out of cat food.”

“Yeah, he loved that gravy.”

A man two stools over said, “Excuse me?”

They noticed him scowling under the brim of his trucker cap with the logo of The International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

“Yeah?” asked Gorman.

“What the fuck am I hearing out of you two?”

“A lot of none of your fucking business.”

“You are disgusting. It’s not right. It’s not right. And using your kid.”

“Eat for fucking food,” Gorman waved him away with the back of his hand.

The guy didn’t eat his fucking food. Instead, he stood the fuck up. Gorman did too. They met each other in the aisle.

“Dad?” asked Casey.

The guy said, “That’s elder abuse. People did it to my dad at the retirement home. It’s not right to treat people like that when they can’t defend themselves.”

Gorman laughed and was about to say something but the guy pushed him for it. Gorman stopped laughing and pushed back. Things got tangled right after, grabbing each other, falling down, incompetent wrestling on the slippery linoleum squeaking on the thin invisible layer of fry oil. The eyes of everyone in the restaurant watched, but no one seemed surprised or bothered. The men weren’t hitting each other much, mostly wrestling badly like brothers do when they disagree about whose turn it is to play a video game. One waitress casually said, “I’m calling the cops.”

“Stop!” yelled Casey.

There was some cussing back and forth. The fight ended when Casey said, “Why are you fighting about my cat?”

Gorman was on his stomach. The guy was sitting with Gorman head-locked.

“What?”

“Don’t hurt my dad! Why are you fighting about my cat?”

“Cat?”

“My cat Grandpa.”

“You named your cat Grandpa?”

Gorman nodded as best he could in the headlock because he couldn’t talk. The guy released him.

“Why’d you name your cat grandpa?”

Both men moved from their wrestling positions to sit on the floor together, and the few diners went back to eating their meals. Gorman took out his phone and saw a brand-new crack in it.

“Fuck.”

He scrolled through some pictures and showed the guy when he found the right one.

“My kid’s cat looks like an old man.”

“Shit,” the trucker laughed, “He really does. He looks like the diabeetus guy.”

The men stood up.

“Sorry about that,” said the trucker, and he offered a handshake. “I just lost my dad and I’m a little sensitive right now.”

Gorman shook his hand. “That’s fine. I get it. That’s tough about your dad.”

“He was my hero growing up. One day at a time. You know how it is.”

“Cops are here,” said the waitress who wasn’t lying when she said she’d call them.

“Shit,” said Gorman and he threw some money on the table, “Casey, let’s go.”

“I didn’t even eat yet!”

“These pancakes suck. We’re going.”

“Dad!”

“I’m not asking! Get up! We’re going!”

Casey grumbled and shuffled himself out of the booth with limp-limbed exaggerated movements like doing it took some terrible physical strain.

Gorman said, “This way,” and led his son right through the kitchen. The snitch waitress complained as he brushed past and through the kitchen with the loud Tejano music and the men without SS numbers, through the sizzling and steaming and clattering of pans and the scraping on hot flat tops, and out the back through the service door and into the rear parking lot by a stack of palettes and some dumpsters and a man smoking a joint.

Gorman walked around the building and walked past the police who ignored them as they got out of their car and headed towards the diner. Gorman got Casey into the car in a hurry and drove out quick and kept his eyes in the rearview to see if the police had figured they’d snuck off. After a little distance between them, Gorman suggested Casey should speak up if they saw something that looked good to eat.

Casey asked, “You guys were fighting, but then it was like you were friends when you showed him pictures of Grandpa.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s weird. Boys are weird.”

“That’s how it is with guys, sometimes.”

“Why, though?”

“I don’t know. I guess. I guess sometimes you don’t fight because you want to hurt someone. Sometimes you fight because you want the other person to know you really mean it.”

“That’s so stupid.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“If I got into a fight like that with a girl, we wouldn’t be friends after.”

“Don’t fight girls.”

“I don’t fight anybody.”

“Yeah, but don’t fight girls. When boys hit boys, people don’t like it. When boys hit girls, well, people will lose their minds. You can’t do that.”

Casey sighed loudly and deliberately.

“You know, talking to you, I learn a lot,” said Gorman.

“You do?”

“You ask all these questions and half of them I realize I never really thought about before. I never asked myself why men can fight and then be friends a minute later. You ask a lot of questions that I should have asked myself a long time ago.”

“But you know the answers.”

“Kinda. Not really. I’m just kind of figuring it out as I say it. Does that make sense?”

“No.”

“No. I guess it doesn’t. Does it.”

“Are you gonna say that I’ll understand when I’m older? I hate that,” Casey folded his arms and leaned his head against the window.

“Obv,” said dad.