Grandpa's Portal by Steve Messman
Of all of us, Brian would have been the one to jump through that portal with Grandpa. It only made sense that he asked the next obvious question. “We were right there. Why wouldn’t he take us with him?”
Thomas’s response was totally out of character. Everything Grandpa taught us over the years said that the person who asked the question should find its answer. Thomas had followed that training for most of this discussion—but, not this time. “I think it’s because we weren’t prepared. I think Grandpa went through the portal lots of times. He had to figure out how to get past the springtail armies himself. What would we have thought if all Grandpa did was tell us this story about a magic door through some tree roots in the middle of the woods?” It was a rhetorical question; Thomas really didn’t expect us to respond. Instead, he provided the answer that we knew had to be true. “We would have thought Grandpa came down with a sudden case of Alzheimer’s disease. We all know that. But, he did what he always did. He made us find all the answers ourselves. Now, we believe. We believe everything he didn’t tell us. I do, anyway.”
The hushed, almost whispered, words, “Me too,” were voiced three times, and they carried absolute certainty around the spool.
Brian was full of questions, belief being one thing, but facts being quite another. “What did Grandpa have to do to prepare? Prepare for what?”
I knew the answer to that one. “How to get past the springtail armies,” I said. “We have to prepare for fighting the springtails. Thomas is right. If Grandpa had simply told us this story, not a single one of us would have believed him. We would have thought he was just a crazy old man telling us a stupid story. As it is, Thomas spent the last year studying this. Now, we all see the logic of what Thomas is saying. Now, we understand. Now we believe. Now, we are all ready to go.”
Sarrah spoke for the first time in a long while. As simple as her question was, it held more emotion than anything we said that entire day. “G-Go?”
Thomas answered. “Yes. Go. We need to prepare as Grandpa had prepared. He gave us everything we needed to ensure we would do so. Yes, we need to go. We need to bring Grandpa back home.”
*****
12. And Why?
Sarrah posed the next question, too. It wasn’t really a question, but more of a horror-struck statement. “Us! Crawl through s-s-some magic portal? Get s-s-shrunk to the s-s-size of ladybugs? Fight off armies of bugs with a thorn?”
As amazing as it sounded, I was the first to answer. “We have to. Grandpa could be out there. No. He is out there, somewhere. We need to find him. We need to bring him home.”
Thomas kept teaching us as Grandpa would have done. “I think we have to assume that Grandpa experimented with the magic portal many times. He had to have transported through the doorway several times, at a minimum. He knew what to do and when to do it. Remember that I told you a long time ago that springtails need moisture to thrive? What do we have an absence of right now?”
I think the general level of excitement was getting to Thomas. Earlier in the day, he could have waited for this answer as Grandpa certainly would have done. Now, Thomas couldn’t get past more than a few seconds of silence.
“It’s August,” Thomas shouted, apparently irritated because we didn’t spit out the answer before he asked the question. “We don’t have any moisture! It hasn’t rained in a considerable length of time: weeks, perhaps. Look at that grass! It’s long dormant from suffering these arid conditions. Grandpa knew this. It’s always dry in August. It’s the one time of the year when the springtails would be least active and least in number. But the springtails are still there, and more than likely, so are several other insects. There are a zillion kinds of bugs out there in the dirt. So, Grandpa took a sword as his defense. He taught us that, too. He chose the time, and he showed us the how.”
Sarrah was four years younger than I was, but we were obviously thinking alike. We were both very much into this conversation and asked the same question at the same time. “Why would Grandpa leave us?” It was a perfectly good question. Thomas made the logical assumption that Grandpa had gone through the portal many times. Why, this time, did he not come back?
Thomas offered the best answer he knew. It was a less-than-satisfactory answer. “I have no idea. It’s the one question that I can’t answer, and I’ve tried for a year. I think it has something to do with everything we know about Grandpa. He was, is, a thinker. His life is full of philosophies that are always bigger than life. Every time Grandpa did something, it was as perfect as he could make it. What did he always say? What did he tell you, Hannah, when he frequently showed us his work?”
“If you’re going to do something, do it with passion,” I answered.
Thomas continued without acknowledging my answer. “What did he say whenever we got into an argument?”
Brian answered this time. If anyone was going to get in an argument, it was going to be Brian. “It makes no difference what side you’re on. A person has to fight for what he believes in.”
Thomas kept going. “If Grandpa purposely stayed on the other side, then he stayed because there was some concept he was passionate about. He stayed because there was some philosophy he believed in. I don’t know what it was, or what it is, but I do know that Grandpa believed it was important enough to risk not coming back to us. That makes it extraordinarily important.”
“There’s another, much different answer to that question,” Sarrah said. “Maybe he just couldn’t come back. Maybe he got hurt or s-s-stuck. Maybe he got killed by the springtail armies.”
We were smothered by silence one more time. That seemed to happen a lot on this day. No one could deny that possibility. Sarrah was absolutely right. Maybe there was a different answer. We didn’t have time to discuss it, though, because the next sound that rolled across the lawn was a major interruption.
“Kii-iiids! Dinner!” It was Grandma!
As we looked up, we noticed for the first time that the sun was shining directly through the open door of our castle, directly from the west. We had been in The Castle for hours, and we were only now becoming aware of the August heat.
“We have to go,” Thomas said. I thought Thomas was still talking about going into the woods. Brian thought he was talking about dinner. Brian shot up and scrambled toward the door screaming, “Foooooooooddddd!” He would have raced all the way to the house, but Thomas stopped him short with a well-placed foot. Brian fell to his face and skidded to the door. Everyone laughed, but I had a strange feeling the boys were laughing about something totally different than us girls. The boys, it seemed, weren’t quite finished with the day’s funny business.
*****
13. We’ve Got To Go
Something was clearly up. Both boys stood at the base of the drawbridge where it touched the ground. The twinkle in their eyes and the curl in their smiles told me something was up. Thomas whispered some sort of instruction to Brian. They turned face-to-face and put their palms together above their heads to form a human archway. “Queens first,” laughed Brian. I was perfectly hesitant, but I had no way to exit The Castle except to pass through their arch. I took a step, then stopped. Took another, then stopped again. “C’mon,” the boys yelled. Finally, after working up at least a little courage, I sprinted down the ramp and through their upraised arms. Surprisingly, the boys did nothing. They didn’t kick me, poke me, grab me or anything else as I dove through their arch of arms, but neither one of them could stop laughing, either. They pointed at my butt and collapsed on top of each other in hysterics. One of those jokesters had painted the lid that I was sitting on! My entire behind was a cool shade of blue—the same color as Grandma’s house. I lunged at the two idiots, but they were already on their feet and running. Unfortunately, the boys beat me to the house. Fortunately for them, the moms got hold of them before I did. Grandma and I spent the next twenty minutes cleaning my backside. My legs were raw from the cleaning and the rubbing. The shorts I was wearing ended up in the trash. After that, t
Grandma was such a wonderful cook. Today I find it very difficult to feed as many people as she used to, but she loved it, and she cooked most of the food herself. Maybe it was the night’s wonderful meal. Maybe it was the family conversations, or maybe it was our anticipation of what we knew was coming, but this evening held a very significant meaning for all of us. All the moms and dads played one game of Yahtzee after another. We kids ran from room to room swinging plastic swords at each other. When Brian knocked over one too many pictures, Grandma sent us to the deck. Outside, we could run around all we wanted, even in the dark.
Nights at Grandma’s place were especially awesome. Their own property is only five acres of trees and paths, but on two sides are thousands of acres of trees that belong to a timber company. Nights back then were so quiet you could hear field mice scamper through the dry leaves under the alder trees. Nighthawks sang their ghostly trill above the hills. In the very late evenings, you could look straight up and see the Milky Way spread its brilliant ribbon of stars across the entire sky. You could watch satellites play tag amongst the stars, and if they were out, you could see Venus and Jupiter and Saturn with the naked eye. Sometimes, even Mars. For us kids, the coolest thing to do was sit on the deck and shine a flashlight toward the woods to see bright, shining, creature eyes staring back. We didn’t always know what kind of little thing might be looking back but, this time, something definitely was.
“Maybe it’s Grandpa,” whispered Sarrah.
“Could be,” I replied.
That’s when I became very aware of Thomas. I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime during the evening Thomas’s eyes lost their twinkle. He lost his smile. He was unnaturally quiet, perfectly lost in thought. He sat with us, but he wasn’t really there. Thomas was a lot more focused than any of us. I was reminded of something Grandpa told us a long time ago. “Focus,” Grandpa said, “was like driving a car at night. You’re in charge, but all you can see is what’s directly in front of you.” Thomas’s entire body suddenly lurched, like someone snuck up from behind and shook him. He, also, became suddenly aware that he was staring off into the unknown.
“Sorry,” Thomas said as he looked at me, “but Grandpa is all I can think about right now. Grandpa and going through the portal.” Thomas didn’t have to say that. We already knew what he was thinking about.
Thomas’s comment took me back to our discussions in The Castle. There was only one more question that needed to find voice. It found mine. “When are we going?”
Thomas’s whispered answer was soft but immediate. “Tomorrow. First, we eat a good breakfast. Next, we meet in The Castle to make our final plans. Then, we go. Are you all with me?”
The other three of us, all with our feet dangling in the darkness off the side of the deck, indicated in turn that we were. I wasn’t certain about that “final plans” part, but I said, “Yep.” My agreement was followed by, “Uh huh.” And then came the almost night-shattering, “Breakfast! Cool! I’m with you!” Guess who said that.
*****
14. Gone
We almost refused to come in from the deck. The night air was actually pretty warm. The stars were bright, and we were all imagining tomorrow. Dad’s final yell, which was right on the edge of anger, brought the reluctant bunch of us in. Spending half the night on the deck was fun, of course, but putting two families of kids to bed was even more fun. Grandma’s house only had two bedrooms and an office. Grandma, of course, slept in the master bedroom. One set of parents got to sleep in the other bedroom. My parents and Brian’s actually flipped a coin to see who lost. Loser slept on the bed in the spare bedroom. I know that sounds strange, but I think the spare bed was too hard for their old bodies. All of us kids slept in the living room. Sometimes we would sleep on the furniture. Sometimes on air mattresses. Occasionally we actually slept, but not tonight. Tonight we planned, and talked, and played. I loved spending weekends with my family. Those were wonderful and special days. During this visit, there was a giant hole where Grandpa used to be, but together, we generated so much love and fun that we could almost fill that hole—almost.
The first part of the plan became a reality as soon as we woke. Breakfast! Sunday breakfast at Grandma’s was always special. Grandma lucked out this week because dad always made breakfast on Sundays. Most of it anyway. Both dads always fried eggs and made some really special pancakes, sausage and bacon. But, Grandma always made the biscuits and gravy. We kids always raved about the pancakes, but the biscuits and gravy were, by far, the best anywhere. Grandma said she always made her biscuits from scratch, whatever that was. All I know is that when you put butter and jelly on them, they melted in your mouth like warm, sweet snowflakes. Everyone else loved them with gravy. I just loved them. Sunday breakfast was as big a family deal as dinner was every day. Grandpa insisted on family time every day when he was still around. Dinner was, by Grandpa-mandate, a family affair. All of us kids believed this morning’s breakfast to be special because, when we were finished, we were headed to The Castle. From there it was the portal, and it was anyone’s guess after that.
The Castle sat on the edge of the woods a few hundred feet opposite the magic portal. The morning was wet—damp from the morning dew. One side of the dew-soaked castle glistened in the filtered sunlight that was beginning to carve through the ground-level moisture. Thomas tugged open the drawbridge by using a rope that dangled from the top of the door. Grandpa had designed a system of weights inside The Castle to counterbalance the door, so it would open easily. Thomas entered first; the rest of us filed in after him. Even inside The Castle, all of us noticed the cool dampness that hung in the air. Today, at least, the boys weren’t pointing at me and giggling. I made sure that no one had taken the time to smear more paint on the plastic lid that was my designated seat.
Our meeting was actually pretty short. Thomas ran it like a pro. I don’t know when he developed this level of maturity or such obvious management skills, but they worked. Thomas had aged so much in the year since Grandpa had disappeared. Today, he talked. The rest of us listened and, when the time was right, we answered his single question.
“We talked about this most of last night, guys. Today has to be the day. It could be the last day our families will be together for a long time. The plan is that we go to the colonnades, choose our weapons of devil’s club thorns, and crawl through the magic portal. Am I right?”
That was the single question. Our unanimous answer: “Yes!”
“You said it, but...,” Brian had to add the “but.”
“But what?” snipped Thomas, almost on the attack. No one expected Brian to have a problem, but there was apparently something he needed to say. As it turned out, it was something quite intelligent.
“I think we should wait an hour or so. The springtails need moisture. They got it last night. Even the sides of The Castle are still wet. Not rain, just dew. We should wait until the sun has a chance to dry things out.”
Three sets of eyes examined Brian. “Smart” was very unusual for him. Not that he wasn’t. He was. Plenty. Far more normal for Brian would have been emotion, energy and action. This morning he was both logical and correct. We needed to wait.
*****
15. Through the Gate
We took lots of extra time while walking to the portal. We played, actually. To our parents, everything must have looked perfectly ordinary. They were quite aware that Grandpa had disappeared a year ago this month. They looked forward to things returning to normal, as if life without Grandpa could ever be normal. It took us about an hour of play time, but we soon began to notice that our sneakers were drying; the grass was dry; and now, it was time. We headed toward the colonnades and the magic portal.
The deep woods were, of course, still heavily shaded from the morning sun. We could all sense the moisture that still hung in this shadowed air, and even though we shouldn’t have been, we were quite surprised.
The four of us stood in an uncommon silence that was brought on by mouth-drying fear. Not one of us knew where we were headed or what the next five minutes would bring. We had as our guide the words that Grandpa had given us as he danced and poked with his thorn-sword. We knew only that Grandpa had disappeared. We only guessed at knowing where he went. Among the four of us, only Brian had experienced the portal, and so it was he who took the first step.
“Gather round,” Brian said. “Watch closely.”
Brian took his place in front of the portal, exactly as he had done last February. I swear that I saw him shiver, too, as if we stood in the dead of winter. Thomas, Sarrah, and I kneeled beside him. I positioned myself carefully on the ground. I could clearly see Brian in front of the portal; the distractions of the forest were well behind him. I waited, anxious for Brian to take the next step, which he did within a few seconds. He raised his right arm. He waited just for a split second, and while he waited, he looked at his arm as if it were about to be cut off. At first, he wasn’t afraid as much as he was apprehensive. I think the instant that he waited was actually too long, because by then, terror was beginning to take control. Brian’s face contorted in a way that I can’t accurately describe, the way a young boy might watch a butcher hack at his arm with a dull meat cleaver. He shook his head to erase the image from his mind, squinted his eyes, and looked at his tiny spear just as Grandpa had done. I think Brian was scared to death, but then, you could see him reach deep inside to find some source of pure determination. He groaned, gritted his teeth, and thrust his arm through the roots of that magical tree. The next sound was the stifled yelp that barked from my own mouth as I watched Brian’s arm enter the space between the roots, and I watched absolutely nothing come out the other side.