veins on his face, and a $100,00 credit line in Las Vegas despite the alimony he paid his eight ex-wives.
Granddaddy Jake, as everyone began to call him at his request, drove his young grandson out to the ranch in a new Jeep pick-up. He talked to the boy continually, pointing out places they would go fishing and hunting, the swimming holes and shortcuts, the name of every waving neighbor they passed. Tiny stared straight ahead, nodding slightly.
When they arrived at the ranch house (which he'd had Lottie Anderson spruce up), he sat Tiny down at the table with a gallon of milk and a pound of Oreos, then unloaded the truck and fixed up the boy's room. When he returned to the kitchen, Tiny was sitting on the floor by the woodbox, building a miniature split-rail fence out of the redwood kindling. Jake went out and chopped some more. Above him he saw a ragged V of ducks flying high against the sunset, following the light south, but they didn't stir him like they usually did. He had a grandchild to look after now, the responsibility of care. He felt himself settle into himself. The ducks could take care of themselves.
2 The Great Checker Showdown of '78
In the early spring of
'Off to see your lady friend?' Tiny grinned, for that was the only explanation Granddaddy had ever offered when he'd started his nightly rambles a few weeks before.
'Better'n whacking it,' Granddaddy grunted, and was gone.
The sudden, stark incandescence shocked Tiny from sleep. Dazed, confused, he seemed to hang in the bare light for hours till the heavens finally tore apart and a wrenching crack of thunder rocked the house. As it faded, the wind rose to howl at its ghost. The first drops of rain came in nervous flurries; then it poured. In a rare display of temper, Tiny hurled his pillow against the wall.
The storm was the first of three that swept in from Hawaii. Each lasted about two days, with about 15 hours of humid calm betweeen the tropical soakings. The lulls were torture for Tiny: they beckoned, then denied. Grand-daddy Jake was nearly as bad. Caught out in the first storm, he'd come down with a cold (the first of his life, he claimed) and promptly took to bed. Tiny cooked and cared for him, which mostly meant fetching his whiskey and playing hours of checkers each day (Grand-daddy Jake figuring that as long as he was laid up he might as well sharpen his moves before challenging Lub Knowland for $100 a game). Tiny had beaten Lub Knowland for $2700 before he was old enough to shave and, ten years better, could demolish his Granddaddy with the regularity of an atomic clock.
On the first day they agreed to play to the first five out of nine, and when Tiny won five straight, Granddaddy insisted they make it the best of nineteen ('so as to eliminate fluke luck,' he argued), and two days after the storms had passed and Tiny was aching to get back to his fence, they were playing the best 500 out of 999,the score at 451 Tiny and 12 for Granddaddy Jake, or exactly twelve games after Tiny realized that Granddaddy was not going to get well until he won, prompting Tiny to throw as many games as he could-which, considering his Granddaddy's increasingly eccentric play, wasn't always possible.
For another three days they faced each other across the board. To look at them you'd never thought they were kin. Tiny was 22, but his round soft face made him appear six years younger, still in the stammer of adolescence. Granddaddy was 99, generally lucid, but prey to the stuttering lapses of senility. Tiny, like most men burdened with that nickname, was 6'5' standing in a hollow, and punished the Toledoes at 269. Granddaddy was 5'5' in his cowboy boots and weighed just a notch over 100-though he often allowed, upon the slightest provocation, that he was once 6' and 200 pounds before hard work and harder women shrunk him down, and that if he was still within hooting distance of his prime he'd kick your ass into cordwood and have it stacked before the slash hit ground. Tiny, fortunately, was as amiable as his Granddaddy was ornery, as placid and benign as the old man was fierce and belligerent.
The differences in temperament carried over into style. Tiny enjoyed the open, linear purity of checkers. Granddaddy favored games with hole cards, where your strength was in your secrets and you flew into the eye of chaos riding your ghost. Tiny started work at dawn. Granddaddy stirred at the crack of noon. Tiny didn't mind doing dishes. Grand-daddy cooked-a skill forced upon him with Tiny's adoption, and one which he came to strangely enjoy-but he only cooked dinner because that was the only meal he ate, breakfast skipped in sleep, lunch a cup of coffee and a shot of Ol' Death Whisper. Tiny drank a little, usually just a swallow before bed to hold back the dreams; Granddaddy drank a lot, often a pint a day, to keep the dreams moving.
Tiny fished with flies he tied himself, much to Jake's disgust; Jake used worms, had always used worms, saw not a goddamn thing wrong with using worms, and claimed they'd be serving snowcones in hell before he'd even consider fishing with a bunch of chicken feathers lashed to a hook.
Tiny chuckled, good-natured and constant. Granddaddy cackled, snorted, whooped, yipped, and roared.
Tiny had a full set of strong, well-formed teeth. Granddaddy had a strong, well-formed set of gums, plus five teeth, two of which met, giving him a jump on the gristle.
Tiny didn't like to dream. Granddaddy Jake dreamt constantly now, like a stick carried by the river.
Their differences, however numerous, were superficial; their similarities were few, but had some bottom: they were held by the bewildered love they felt for each other, a kindness beyond mere tolerance, a blood understanding of what moved their respective hearts. At first, Jake had tried too hard to draw Tiny out of his shell, bombarding him with candy bars and baseballs and toy trucks, fishing poles and chocolate chip cookies, complete attention and total, doting permission. When Lottie Anderson mentioned to him that kids Tiny's age liked sandboxes, Granddaddy had Barney Wetzler down at Wetzler Brothers Gravel deliver 30 yards of choice river sand. Figuring every boy should have a dog, in a month's time Granddaddy Jake had gotten him four: a pair of Walker pups, a Brittany spaniel, and a hardheaded Beagle crossbreed named Boss (who, without benefit of Grand-daddy's whiskey, lived 18 years as Tiny's constant companion till a huge wild boar called Lockjaw opened him from scrotum to collar. Boss, by sheer mean will, had made it home to scratch at the door before he died.)
When these excesses of good will drew a barren, if polite, response from Tiny, Grand-daddy Jake had taken a jar out on the porch to wonder it through his mind. It took him awhile to get a firm grasp on the obvious: Tiny was devastated by his mother's death, and since only time and maybe a little tenderness would cure that, he decided to just be who he was and go on about his life, and if the boy wanted to join in, that was fine and welcome, and if he didn't… well, Jake was used to fishing by himself. Real feelings take time earning the trust to keep them true and, Jake reckoned, an immortal like himself had, if nothing else, plenty of time.
They also shared their passions, which were different in kind but not intensity. From the moment Jake had tasted the first batch run off from the dying Indian's recipe, his passion had been the refinement of whiskey; he pursued its perfection with the ardor of an old alchemist seeking the Philosopher's Stone. As he explained to anyone who'd listen, it wasn't so much purity he was after-hell, you could damn near
In the late '60s a hippie had wandered out to the ranch one day. After announcing in a slow vacuum-eyed drawl that he sought and welcomed all forms of mental transformation and had heard that Jake made a beverage imbued with such mind-altering properties, he offered to trade two tablets of LSD for a fair sample. Granddaddy
