The War with Grandpa (5 page)

But you don't shoot at your grandfather. Not in my family anyway.

It was hopeless.

But then I got a funny thought, and still another one. And the whole idea of what I could do became clear to me.

I scouted around and when nobody was looking sneaked down to my dad's office in the basement. It was a mess. There were three lights in the ceiling, but only one of them worked. Dad had put down the floor himself and some of the tiles were loose. There was a sink in the corner near the bathroom, but it didn't work and nobody knew how to fix it. Lucky for me, all I wanted was to use Dad's typewriter, and that was working.

When you start a war you have to send the enemy a note, or something like that, telling them what you want and why you want it. I had to let Grandpa know why I was about to go to war with him. And I really didn't want to sign my name to the note or even have it in my handwriting. Because if my parents got ahold of it, that would be the end of the war. And the end of me, probably.

I stuck a piece of my dad's scrap paper in his typewriter and began. Here's what I typed:

I signed it this way:
THE SECRET WARRIOR

I thought that was pretty good. The note sounded hard and tough. Like I really meant business. To tell the truth, I was so nervous, my hands were shaking. And then I thought Grandpa would certainly show it to Mom and Dad. So I put in a P.S. at the bottom.

Well, I thought, if you are going to start a war, this note was a good way to begin. Now the question was, what should I do with it?

I thought about that for a long time. About
ten minutes anyway. I wanted to put it someplace where Grandpa could find it when he was alone. I sure didn't want anyone else in the family to see it. That meant I had to put it in Grandpa's room—
my
room, really, until he stole it. And I had to sneak it in there sometime when my mom wasn't coming up there to clean.

I waited until after dinner. All the time I had that note folded up and tucked into my pants pocket, which was practically the whole day, I was like a shivery rabbit. Just feeling that piece of paper crinkling in my pocket made me nervous.

I sneaked upstairs when Grandpa sat down in front of the TV in the living room, which was where he was almost every night now. I went into Grandpa's room and closed the door quietly behind me. Then I looked around. On top of the dresser Grandpa had a photograph of Grandma in an old silver frame. Next to it was his hairbrush and comb. Then the door opened suddenly and I almost jumped out of my skin.

“Hi, Pete,” Jenny said. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I said real fast. My voice was so high and squeaky, it sounded funny in my ears.

Jenny gave me a strange look.“Did I frighten you?” she asked.

“No, you didn't frighten me,” I lied.

“You look funny,” she said, then shrugged. “You want to play casino? Mom and Dad are busy and Grandpa is too tired.”

That was just like Jenny. Here I was about to start a war, and she wanted to play games.

“No, I don't want to play casino,” I said, “or any other stupid game. Why don't you go downstairs and watch TV with Grandpa? Or read a book? Or go practice ballet? Or do anything instead of coming up here and bothering me?”

She looked at me for a long minute.“Weird,” she said,“totally weird.” Then she walked out of the room.

If this was how a war is, I thought, I wouldn't make a very good soldier. I took the folded note from my pocket, unfolded it, and stuck it under Grandpa's bedspread and on top of his pillow. He'd have to be blind not to see it. So he would surely read it tonight and then the war between us would start. I felt nervous about it, but not too much. Whatever was going to happen I was ready for.

Then I went upstairs to my stinky room and threw a tennis ball against the wall about forty million times.

Well, it was a lot of fear and worry over nothing. Because Grandpa didn't say anything or do anything about my note. Not the next day, anyway, or the day after that.

I didn't know what to do. Here I had declared war and written a note and my enemy totally ignored the whole thing. It looked like it was going to be the shortest war in history.

That day and the one after I followed Grandpa around and gave him plenty of chances to talk to me when nobody else was around. I even sat through a whole afternoon with him while he watched those stupid soap operas on TV. Later I went to the candy store with him when he wanted to buy some cigars. It took forever to walk two blocks, because Grandpa just limped along so slowly.“Is there anything you want to say to me?” I asked him on the way back.

He grinned at me. “Only that I like your company, Petey. You are very easy to be with.”

“Isn't there something you read lately you want to talk about?” I asked. Like a note, I almost said.

“Just the newspaper,” he said. “And there's so much bad news in it, I try not to pay too much attention.”

I was learning something about Grandpa. He was one of the world's best ignorers. And my fight to get my room back looked like it would never even get started.

“You are so stupid, it's amazing you can live,” Billy was saying. We were at his house, playing his game: Stratomatic Baseball. Steve and I had one team, Billy had the other. Naturally, Billy always fixed it so that he had Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb on his team. Naturally, Billy always seemed to win.

“You don't start a war with a note,” Billy said. “You think the Japanese sent a note before they attacked Pearl Harbor? ‘Dear United States, pardon us but we are going to sink all your ships. Sorry.

“Are you sure your grandfather got the note?” Steve asked.

“Yes. He couldn't miss it. It was right on his pillow.”

“Maybe it fell out when he took the bedspread off,” Steve said.

“Then where would it go?” I said. “On the
floor, out the window? It was a big piece of paper. It didn't just fly away.”

“You have to attack,” Billy said, “not just write a polite note. Blam! Drop a bomb. Wham! Hit him with a rocket.”

“I am not going to bomb my grandpa,” I said.

“Then what are you going to do?” Steve said in his slow and careful way. His eyes seemed to be laughing at me as he waited for me to answer.

“I'll do something,” I said.

“Some war,” Billy said. Meanwhile, he threw the dice and his All-Time All-Star team scored two more runs on a double by Honus Wagner. “It's time you got started fighting.”

All of a sudden something clicked in my head. Before I knew it, I began to laugh. Billy and Steve looked at me as if I'd gone nuts.“Thanks, Billy,” I said, “thanks a lot. Time I got started, all right. Time, sure enough.”

And then I told them what I was going to do.

I really figured that I wouldn't be able to sleep at all that night, but I was wrong. I set my AM-FM digital clock-radio for two o'clock in the morning before I clicked off my reading lamp. I guess I must have tossed and turned for a while, thinking of what I was going to do and being nervous about it. But when the radio came on, playing a Beatles song, I was fast asleep.

I put the light on, shut off the radio, and looked at the note I had prepared one more time. This is what it said:

I took my pocket flashlight, put on my slippers,
and went out into the hallway. Down the stairs to the second floor I sneaked, slow and careful, trying not to make any noise. The house was so quiet, it was weird. At the bottom of the stairs I paused for a moment; my heart was beating
thump-a-thump
very4oud in my chest.

To tell you the truth, I felt uncertain about what I was about to do to Grandpa. But to get back what was mine, I had to fight. All's fair in love and war, somebody said. I hoped he wasn't the same guy who said Respect your elders.

I sneaked down the hallway like a thief in the night, tiptoeing past my parents’ closed bedroom door and then Jennifer's. Outside of my old room I stepped around the floorboard that always creaked so loud. Then I turned the doorknob as slowly as I could, opened the door, and went into the room.

Even in the dark I could see that Grandpa was lying on his back under the covers, fast asleep. He was breathing slow and easy, making a little whistling noise that ended in a snore. One of his feet poked out of the covers at the bottom of the bed.

I walked very carefully around the floorboards I knew creaked and went to the dresser. Here was where I needed my pocket flash. I
covered it with one hand and made sure the light went only on the little electric clock on top of the dresser.