By Ed Staskus

   The week Oliver turned nine was the same week his grandfather turned ninety. His father, who was the son of his grandfather, threw a party on the back patio and grilled dogs, hamburgers, and corn on the cob. His sister Emma, his right-hand man when they got down to the monster hunting business, made a chiffon cake. She was eleven and a half and had been baking since she was eight years old. She was an old hand at it.

   Chiffon cake is a mix of an oil and sponge cake. The oil makes it lavish and whipped egg whites and baking powder make it airy and light. Birthday cakes go back to the Roman days. Back then fried bread was the order of the day since it is cake-like sweet. Special days aren’t complete without something sweet and yummy.

   Emma was a blue moon baby. She had been born on the 1^st of September under a full moon. The day the month ended there was another full moon. She claimed she should have two birthdays and two parties every year. “My policy on birthday cakes is pro about eating as much as I can,” she said. Nobody paid any attention to her policies. She sulked as the month came to an unsatisfactory end without more cake.

   Oliver and his grandfather both looked young for their age. “It’s in our genes,” Grandpa Wally said. “Even if it wasn’t, it’s not about counting your years, but making your years count. That’s what I say. That’s what keeps you young at heart.”

   Every day counted with Oliver, too, even rainy days. He looked up at his grandpa, who was looking down at his new Samsung cell phone. He had gotten it the three months before but still didn’t know how all of it worked. He was able to make calls, take pictures, and scroll the internet. He didn’t know how to get to his voice mail or how to look up his pictures. He was on the internet now. He knew how to do that since his get-rich schemes depended on it. Oliver knew it would be a while before he came up for air, so he bent over his paper plate and wondered which end of his hot dog he should start with.

   They were Eisenberg dogs from the Heinen’s grocery store. He knew they were the best wieners in the world and both ends were probably the same. He chomped on the end closest to his mouth. It was more than good. He did some more eating.

   His grandpa had lived a long time. “Nobody has poisoned me, yet,” he said. Oliver knew his mother could poison him as easy as pie if she wanted to. He knew she never would, but who was to say some monster with a grudge against him wasn’t going to sneak into the kitchen when she wasn’t looking and lace his dinner with arsenic?

   He wouldn’t be counting his years if that happened. He would be counting his minutes. He knew his mother would protect him, though. Just in case, he kept antidotes for most of the popular poisons inside an LL Bean personal organizer under his bed.

   His grandpa liked golf, celery and stew, foreign cars, and reliving the past.  He ate celery and stew and drank black strap molasses every morning. He was an immigrant from Romania, popping out of his mother’s belly on the boat to New York City. He liked money but didn’t like the rich. He liked the laws of the land but didn’t like liberal lawmakers, even though they had written Medicare and Social Security into the law of the land. He liked those two laws more than all the others. His Social Security check was very important to him. 

   He didn’t like Jews, even though they were immigrants like him. “The Jews control everything,” Grandpa Wally said. “They keep it in the family. They keep it a secret. Never trust a Jew. They will always screw you. Somebody should do something about it.”

   “Dad, maybe we shouldn’t bring that up about Jews,” Oliver’s father said to his father, nodding at his children.

   “OK, son, OK.”

   Oliver had never seen a Jew unless he had. What did they look like? Did they wear something special? Maybe they kept their Jewishness a secret. If they had all the money, they must be fabulously rich. Every time he saw an expensive car, he thought one of them might be driving it. He looked closely, but every driver he saw looked like they could be one of his neighbors. He made a mental note to look up Jews in the school library.

   His father sat down at the table with Grandpa Wally and Oliver. The sun was hazy in a lemon blue sky. A hot wind was blowing in the late afternoon.

   “It’s been a hot summer,” Oliver’s father said to his father. “Has your air conditioning been holding up?”

   “Sure son, I’m staying cool as a cucumber.”

   “Let me know if anything happens, pop.”

   “I will, thanks.”

   Grandpa Wally had been rolling in dough once, but then got divorced, lost his job, lost his house, and from then on lived in a one room apartment on odds and ends and government money. The family never visited his apartment because Grandpa Wally was a veteran pack rat and another person couldn’t fit under his roof, much less a family of four.

   “Grandpa, is it hard being old?” Oliver asked.

   “It’s hard enough,” he said. “There’s no getting out of the way of it. Everything it does to you is bad, except for some chicken feed of wisdom. You go over the hill and pick up speed on the other side. Old age gets bigger and bigger while you get smaller and smaller. It’s a monster, no place for sissies.”

   Oliver’s ears perked up. Since it was a monster, and since he was a monster hunter, maybe he could help. He had taken care of trolls and kaiju. Old age should be no problem.

   “I could help you fight the monster.”

   “Thanks buddy, but listen up. There’s not much anybody can do. I’ve outlived most of my friends and my health. It’s like being on a boat sailing through a bad storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do except wait for the shipwreck.”

   He looked down at his cell phone and before long was lost in it. His mind had gone one-track lately. His hearing was shot so he listened to himself more than anybody else. He used to walk while playing golf two and three times a week, but now had trouble walking to the grocery, so he drove the half mile there.

   “Isn’t there anything I can do? Emma could help too.”

   “I don’t think so. I’m as active as I can be. I mind my diet, don’t smoke anything or drink booze, and get enough sleep. It’s down the hatch with m tablespoon of black molasses. My coffee klatch gets together and we hash out the world’s problems. I check in with my sawbones. Every day is a good day, although I’m slowly but surely coming apart at the seams.”

   “I feel bad,” Oliver said. “I wish we could help.”

    “Life goes on,” Grandpa Wally said. “Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. I’m happy it’s happening to me in that order.”

   “What will you do at the end of the order?”

   “Don’t worry, I’ll get by. And by the way, when that happens, I’m leaving you the gold pocket watch my father left me. You have to wind it up every day. Batteries not included. It’s got an alarm. When your time has come and it goes off, it gets your attention real fast.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A big story in a small town.” Barron Cannon, Adventure Books

“A stem-winder in the Maritimes,” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVDP8B58

Atlantic Canada, 1989. A town on the Gulf of St. Lawrence. A satchel of stolen counterfeit money. Two contract killers from Montreal. A gravel road cop stands in their way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication