sludgo’s Mile Markers: Mile 204

This is Part Four of a multi-part series. Click the links to read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

The next Saturday in sludgoville was absolutely splendid. The crisp scent of October was in the morning air and most of the leaves had already fallen, but Indian Summer was in full swing, skies clear and blue and a harvest-orange sun lazily edging daytime temps into the seventies. It was just after noon and I was high up in Big Olie—the big oak in my Grandma’s back yard. The Beehive hated me climbing trees but I loved it and Olie was such a terrific tree to climb, bent this way and that with lumps and bumps growing here and there that fell perfectly under my twelve year-old feet and hands. I’d scampered up his trunk like a jungle cat and took a right turn onto the first big branch. It was as fat around as a pony and I’d straddled and skittered out to its very end to my favorite crook and was finally settling in when I heard it—twin rattly rumbles of diesel-fired horsepower and torque getting closer and closer and louder and louder. I leaned forward from my perch to get a better look at what was going on just in time to see two shiny-black extra-large tow-trucks chug into Old Man Granger’s driveway and hiss to a stop. Time to pick up the Cadillacs.

Almost exactly one week earlier I’d been sitting in the very same crook of the very same tree watching two sullen paramedics carrying Old Man Granger out of his house on a stretcher. He was tautly-tucked head-to-toe under a snow-white sheet and they mumbled quiet instructions to each other as they loaded him into the back of the ambulance. Then they got in and drove him slowly, reverently, away from his house.

He’d never return.

That day as the ambulance disappeared down the alleyway, I’d shaken my head in disbelief at all that had happened in the hour since I’d seen Old Man Granger through the window of his house, lying motionless on the front room floor. I’d cried out for help as loud as I could but no one was around. Tried opening both the front and back doors but they were locked so I’d ran back to Grandma’s, bursting into the house and yelling that she needed to call the cops because something was wrong with Mr. Granger. Something bad. She knew I’d never tease about such a thing so she’d grabbed the phone book, found the emergency number page, then picked up the receiver and started dialing.

Only minutes later I heard Deputy Scharf screech his big black-and-white Ford to a halt curbside in front of Old Man Granger’s. I ran outside and stood in Grandma’s yard, watching as he piled out of the car and raced up the walk to the front door. I heard him swear as he feverishly twisted the locked knob and pushed himself violently against the thick door but it wouldn’t budge so he headed toward the back of the house. I hurried after him and watched wide-eyed as he struggled with the back door the same way but only for an instant before rearing back and kicking it open, Hawaii Five-O style, Dan-O. Then he rushed into the house and almost immediately rushed back out, his face wrenched into a worried scowl.

He ran to his car and grabbed the radio mic through the opened window and barked at whomever to send him an ambulance and to make it fast. The radio squawked something in reply but he’d already dropped the mic and turned back to the house, sprinting past me and in through the shattered doorway. I quietly followed him inside, creeping into the kitchen then through the dining room and past the den and stopping at the front room. The Good Deputy had rolled Old Man Granger onto his back and was shouting his name over and over. “STANLEY!…STANLEY!!…STANLEY!!!”

Nothing.

He leaned down and put his ear to Old Man Granger’s chest. Pulled back up and started doing CPR just like Scoutmaster Wilson had taught us all at the Boy Scout Jamboree. Pump, pump, pump. Puff, puff, puff. Pump, pump, pump. Puff, puff, puff. Then suddenly it was Bang, Bang, Bang. On the front door. The paramedics had arrived.

He leapt up and unlocked the door and two burly white-coats tumbled into the room, immediately dropping to their knees around Old Man Granger and getting to work, doing this and that to him, trying to get him to come around. They tore open his shirt and taped a few wires onto his chest and plugged them into some kind of beeping machine. Pulled a couple big syringes from their bags and shot him full of whatever was in them. Kept puffing and puffing and pumping and pumping and puffing and puffing and pumping and pumping on him until they decided to stop. I was grateful when they did. It seemed merciful. Anyone could tell that Old Man Granger was dead.

I’d never seen a dead body like that before. Sure, I’d seen my Grandpa Joe dead, but that was different because when I saw him he was lying in a beautiful maple-brown coffin and was made up with face powder and rouge and dressed in a sharp suit he’d have hated wearing in real life. I remembered thinking he looked way better dead than he ever did alive but as I looked at Old Man Granger lying on the front-room floor he’d just looked dead, all withered and weathered and grey, like a pencil-drawn sketch of himself.

I’d also smelled a smell in the house that hadn’t been there ever before, a thick, clinging sour-milk smell that was starting to make me gag so I split the scene. Ran out the back door and met my Grandma coming in. She looked at me with concerned Grandma eyes then took me in for a Grandma hug and wouldn’t let go. Nothing like Grandma Love to comfort a boy.

I can’t say Old Man Granger and I were ever friends. Our relationship wasn’t like a Hallmark Channel movie where the crusty curmudgeon rediscovers his heart of gold after he meets and befriends the neighbor boy and they frolic through various wacky and warm escapades together before walking hand-in-hand into the setting sun while the orchestra swells and the credits roll and the tears flow. Nope. The closest it came to that was the first time I mowed his lawn when he came out onto his stoop at the end of the job holding a frosty pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade and a glass filled with ice. He poured the glass full and had me sit on the stoop with him and drink it while he made small talk about the weather. It was good lemonade.

He made me lemonade the next week too, but invited me into the house to drink it. I sat at one end of the enormous dining room table and sipped on it while he sat at the other and asked me how I liked school. If I was a Good Boy or not. If I had a girlfriend. If I thought the Vikings would get to the Super Bowl. The same thing happened the following week and the week after that and the last Saturday I was there I felt comfortable enough to ask him about something—who that redheaded woman was in all those pictures on the piano. He took a long, deep sigh.

“That’s Ruth,” he whispered raggedly. “My Ruth.” He didn’t say anything after that. Neither did I.

I never found out how or why he died. I knew he was really old but never knew he was really sick. I probably should’ve figured something was up though because every now and then when I was over visiting Grandma that summer I’d see Doc Mickelsen pull up in his woodie wagon at Old Man Granger’s to make a house call. Nurse Langley was always riding shotgun and would carry in a big black over-stuffed leather bag that looked like it was heavy. They’d stay about an hour then leave, looking strangely solemn as they sped away. Hm.

From my seat in Big Olie I had a good view of the tow trucks carefully hooking up the Cadillacs then pulling them out from their dim and dusty dungeon. Both cars looked sleepy and sad to me, their headlights squinting in the bright sunlight and their flat tires lopping over themselves as they reluctantly rolled onto the flatbeds.

The drivers set about strapping the two cars down securely then met briefly to smoke a cigarette and compare maps. Then they hopped into their trucks, ground them into gear and chugged out of Old Man Granger’s driveway one after the other, Caddys in tow. I noticed the fitting mannequin was still in the backseat of the sedan and I smiled.

Then, for whatever reason, I started to cry.

Peaceful travels…

sludgo