Heroes Die

My Grandfather and I were walking through the parking lot behind my school. I had my bag, stuffed with clothes for the weekend, slung over one shoulder and my backpack strapped to the other; in my hands I balanced my sleeping bag and the gingerbread house I had made in class. Walking was difficult, both because I could not see past the chocolate door of my gingerbread house and because the things I carried weighed nearly as much as I did. The measured strike of His cane on the pavement was the only sound that broke the quiet of the coming dusk.
I reached the car first and set my bags on the ground and sat waiting for Him on the rear bumper. Though the courage of day had yet to fail, the stars, those burning tears of night, wavered like lonely candles in the sky. He strutted through the shallow light of the fast westerning sun tall and proud, seeming to defy the coming dark that so frightened me. With His Vietnam Veterans hat atop his head as a circlet, and his grey beard hugging his face, he looked more like some ancient king of legend than a mere mortal man.
He sighed when He reached the car. “You ready, bud?”
He opened the trunk and leaned against the car again as I began throwing my stuff in. I expected Him to shut the trunk as soon as I was done, but when I finished I turned and He was still bent against the side of the car like Atlas with all the weight of the world on His shoulders. His cane, with its Jaguar emblem handle, was now leaning against the driver’s side door and His hands were folded on His thighs and He was starring intently at nothing.
When He noticed me starring He looked over. “You’re getting pretty strong, kid. You didn’t used to be able to load the trunk so quickly.”
“Strong like you, Grandpa.”
He ruffled my hair. Even though he smiled I felt that maybe I should have taken longer in loading my bags. Maybe He wanted to rest. I walked over and hugged Him, and then walked over to the passenger’s side and opened the door and climbed in and buckled my seatbelt and sat anxious for the drive to His house.
He was just then opening His door.
With a suppressed grunt he lowered Himself into the seat. He closed His eyes and leaned back, taking deep and labored breaths.
“Could you put my cane in the back? It’s getting kind of hard for me.”
“Anything, Grandpa.” I took His cane and laid it in the backseat with as much care as if it were the staff of Moses. After He shut His door He reached into His pocket and procured a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and then put the rest of the pack in the cup holder.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
I wanted to say yes. “No, it’s ok.” He lit the cigarette and took a long draft. He exhaled and smoke engulfed the inside of the car like cancer in a lung. I coughed and rolled down my window. He turned on the radio and we pulled out listening to Good Riddance (time of your life) by Greenday:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

We turned onto the highway and roared past the other cars; He liked to show off His Jaguar, or “the Jag” as He called it. The wind whipped through my hair and stung my face and made me squint. I stuck my arm out the window and let the cool air rush through my fingers and force my arm back. I cupped my fingers together and turned my hand palm downwards so that my arm sliced through the wind. For several moments I watched my arm fly through the air and suddenly I realized that wind, like life, is cold and ever moving.
I heard Him coughing and looked back to see Him hacking violently, his cigarette in one hand and the wheel in the other. “Are you ok, Grandpa?”
“Yeah bud. Just a little cough. Nothing to worry about.” He stabbed out the cigarette in the ashtray and grabbed another.
I told Him that I had a state quiz next week for Geography and spelling counted.
“That’s fine,” He said. “We can knock that out before we get to the house.” He proceeded to teach me how to spell all fifty states and whenever we got to one that was difficult for me, He would make up some rhyme or song to help me remember.
“Come on now, Brandon, Ohio. Sound it out.”
“I don’t know Grandpa.”
“You know how I remember it?”
“How?”
He cleared His throat and began singing, “O’s on the ends and hi in the middle spells o-hi-o.” With His help I soon mastered all the states.
We drove on and before long the sound walls dropped away from the sides of the highway and rolling fields extended to the horizon. We passed a cornfield with stalks that were thin and brown when they should have been full and green.
“Bad harvest this year, I’ve heard,” He said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Not enough rain.”
“Why does corn need rain?”
“All things need rain. Without it, they die.”
“Oh”
We pulled onto a two-lane road and drove on for many more miles. As I began to doze we passed a sign that read:

Verdant Forest-
One Half Mile

It was an old and weathered sign made of wood and it was hand painted and hammered into the ground. Every time we passed those woods I imagined that I was a knight tramping through an enchanted forest on some daring quest. We passed a stump, then another, then a whole field of them— they leered up like defiled tombstones.
“Grandpa, where’s the trees?”
“Oh…got cut down about a month ago I guess.”
“Oh.”
We passed on and the landscape returned to open plain and did not change much for quite some time. My head began to nod and my eyes grew heavy, and I leaned over in my seat.

It was dark and my breathing sounded much too loud in the cold silence. I could hear a man coughing and retching and I strained my eyes to find him in the total black. The darkness fell away and I found myself standing in a stone chamber lit only by a single torch on the far wall. Water trickled down the walls and formed shallow pools on the floor. In one of those puddles laid a man, filthy and writhing. I bent over him. His skin was white as chalk, and his nails were crusty and yellow, his hair scant and gangly,
his browned teeth hung crooked in his mouth.
The man cried out. “Help me! Please! You are the only one!” His body went rigid and no more sounds did he utter. A sudden pang of sorrow gripped me for this man I did not know and I wept over his dead body. But a hissing voice disturbed my sobbing and I turned to seek the owner of the voice but could find no one.
“Coward!” It whispered from the darkness. “You could have saved that man, but you are too weak!”
“No!” I cried. “It’s not my fault! There’s nothing I could’ve done!”
“Weak!” The voice hissed. “It’s your fault he’s dead!”
I reeled about, searching for the speaker.
Shrill laughing ripped through the stale dungeon air. “Weak!” I looked to the puddle at my feet and saw a skull grinning back.

I woke with a start, sweat cascading down my face; it was dark.
“You ok, Brandon?” Grandpa asked. “Sounded like you were having a nightmare.”
“I’m ok.”
“You know, when I get scared I just think of things that make me happy and then I’m not scared anymore.”
“But you don’t get scared.”
“Sure I do. Everybody gets scared.”
“But you’re not everybody. You’re you.”
He laughed. “I get scared too. It’s ok to be scared.”
“I still can’t imagine you being scared.”
He laughed again and we kept driving. At length we passed a sign that read:

Uniontown

“We’re here, Brandon.” As we drove through the town that consisted of perhaps one hundred residents, He began singing, “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here!” We drove past the cemetery, past the old post office that was no longer in use, past the abandoned barn.
We pulled into the gravel driveway and the porch light came on and grandma came out to greet us. “There’s my special guys!”
I unloaded my bags and carried them through the front door and set them down in the entry next to the coat stand. The pallid walls climbed up many feet above my head, and directly over the threshold hung a large, but simple sconce. I picked up my bags again and carried them up the wooden stairs. One…three…five…seven—the fifteenth step from the bottom made the most noise and I usually tried to avoid it if I could. I turned the light on in the upstairs hallway and looked to one end where His bedroom was. The light did naught to pierce the gloom; long shadows clawed out from dark corners.
“Grandpa?” I called down.
He hobbled into sight. “Yes?”
“I’m scared. Can you help me put my stuff in the bedroom?”
He smiled. “Sure thing, bud.” He picked up His cane and began the trek up the stairs. I could hear His labored rasps as He came nearer and suddenly I regretted having made Him get up. When He reached the top He took a few breaths to steady Himself, then He lead me down the hallway. We walked into the room and He turned on the light. I took a couple of steps deeper into the room and began unpacking my things.
“It’s a good thing you’re here, Grandpa, so I don’t have to be scared. You’ll always be here to help me, right?”
“I hope so, bud.”
He turned and left and I could hear His slow steps and His cane creaking along the floor as He walked down the hallway and then the louder creaking of the steps as He descended.

I walked into the family room and was immediately overwhelmed by the stench of smoke. I looked over and He was sitting in His reclining chair with a copy of The Federalist Papers in one hand and a cigarette in the other. My grandma was reading a magazine and Jeopardy was on Television but no one was really watching it. I sat on the couch and stared at the bookcase that engrossed the far wall. Forming a sort of make shift table beside my Grandfather’s chair was a pile of recently read books.
The final Jeopardy question was asked, the one that was supposed to be the most difficult of the night. He looked up from His book, read the question, answered it, and went back to reading in as long as it took me to open my mouth in shock.
“You got it right, Grandpa.”
“Yeah.”
“You should be on that show. You could be a millionaire.”
“I don’t need that much money. I’ve got enough already.” He dabbed out the cigarette and pulled out another.

At about ten o’clock we turned in for the night.
“I love you, Grandpa.”
“I love you too, Brandon.”
I slept in my sleeping bag on the floor of my grandparent’s room and they up in their canopy bed. It was dark but I was safe because He was there. I drifted off to sleep.
I could hear a man coughing again but this time I immediately found myself in the dimly illumined dungeon. The chamber itself appeared the same but a strong smell of smoke assailed my senses; the voice said the same things only this time it was my grandma’s voice; again liquid dripped down the walls and formed pools on the floor, only now they were pools of blood.
I woke to the sound of short gasps and looked up at the bed and I could tell it was He who broke my slumber. Should I wake Him? Should I tell grandma? No, if He needs my help then He will wake me. I looked over at the alarm clock on the nightstand. 11:30. I put my head back down and fell into an uneasy sleep. When next I woke I again heard tortured rasps but this time my grandma was also screaming. The light was on and I could see her franticly dialing.
“911? Yes, my husband is having a heart attack!” It was 11:35.

My mom and dad rushed up that night and we three were sitting with my grandma in the lobby in the hospital; He was in the operating room. An hour later the doctor came out and called my grandma over. He whispered something in her ear and she turned back to us with tears welling in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “He got here too late for us to really be able to help him. If only he were here sooner.”
I looked up from my grief. “How much sooner? Would five minutes have made a difference?”
“Five minutes?” said the doctor. “Yes, I think that would have done it. If he were here five minutes sooner we could probably have saved him.” My mom and dad stood by my grandma, comforting her. I was left alone in the corner, alone and scared.
Five minutes? I could not bring myself to tell them why He died.
I could hear the voice in my head again, only louder than before. “Coward!” it hissed. “You could have saved him, but you are too weak! It’s your fault he’s dead!” I buried my face in my hands and cried.

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