Stephen King - Cookie Jar

There was a certain accord between them, right from the beginning. The boy thought the old man looked pretty good for ninety, and the old man thought the boy, whose name was Dale, looked pretty good for thirteen.

The kid started by calling him Great-Grandpa, but Barrett was having none of that. It makes me feel even older than I am. Call me Rhett. Thats what my father called me. I was a Rhett before there was a Rhett Butlerimagine that.

Dale asked him who Rhett Butler was.

Never mind. It was a bad book and only a so-so movie. Tell me again about this project of yours.

Were supposed to talk to our oldest relative, and ask what life was like when he was my age. Then Im supposed to write a two-page report on how much things have changed. But Mr. Kendall hates generalities, so Im supposed to concentrate on one or two specifics. That means

I know what specifics are, Rhett said. Which specifics have you got in mind?

Dale considered the question. While he did so, Rhett considered the boy: healthy mop of hair, straight back, clear skin and eyes. There were seventy-seven years between them, and Dale Alderson probably considered that an ocean, but to Rhett it was only a lake. Maybe no more than a pond.

Youll get across it in no time, kiddo, he thought. The brevity of the swim between your bank and mine will surprise you. It certainly surprised me. He wasnt sure his great-grandsonthe youngest of the loteven thought of him as an actual human being. More like a talking fossil.

Speak up, Dale. Ive got all day, but you probably dont.

Well you remember before there was TV, right?

Rhett smiled, even though he felt this was a question to which his great-grandson should already have known the answer. He restrained an urge to say, Dont they teach you kids anything, because it would have been curmudgeonly and impolite. Not to mention ungrateful. This boy had come to the Good Life Retirement Home for the sole purpose of hearing Barrett Alderson talk about the past, a subject that usually had kids running the other way as fast as they could go. It was only for a school assignment, true, but still. He had come all the way across town on the bus, which made Rhett think of trips he and his brother Jack had made on the interurban line to see their mother.

Dale, I never even saw a television until I was twenty-one. Radar scopes, yes, but no TVs. I had my first confirmed sighting in an appliance-store window, after I got back from the war. I watched for twenty minutes, almost hypnotized.

Which war was that?

Two, he said patiently. Nazis? Hitler? Japanese in the Pacific? Ring any bells?

Sure, yeah, banzai charges and all that. I thought you might mean Korea.

When Korea blew up, I was married with a couple of kids.

Was my grandpa one of them?

Yup, hed just made his appearance. And when Vietnam rolled around, I was as old as your father is now. Maybe older.

So you were stuck with radio, huh?

Well, yes, but we didnt consider ourselves stuck with it.

Outside his room, from down the hall, came the electronically amplified voice of the retirement homes recreation director (or one of her minions) calling out bingo numbers. Rhett was happy not to be there, although he supposed he would be tomorrow. He was measuring out the last years of his lifemaybe down to months now, considering the blood that had started to show up in the bowl when he took a shitnot in coffee spoons but in coverall games.

No? Dale asked.

Absolutely not. After supper, my dad and my brothers would

Wait, wait, hold that thought. Dale dug into the pocket of his jeans and brought out an iPhone. He fiddled with it and the screen lit up. He fiddled with it some more and then set it on the bed.

That thing records, too? Rhett asked.

Uh-huh.

Is there anything it doesnt do?

Honey, it dont do windows, the boy said, and Rhett laughed. The kid might be a little foggy on twentieth-century history, but he was quick. And funny.

Dale smiled back at his great-grandfather, glad the old guy had gotten the joke, perhaps seeing him as a human being after all, or beginning to. Rhett could hope; even at ninety, he remained mostly optimistic, although optimism was a little harder to manage at three in the morning, lying awake and feeling the threads holding him to this life loosening.

Are you sure its hearing me?

Yeah, this babys got great pickup. Also, I can see your voice on the screen. He held it up. Say something.

Our radio was a Philco table model, Rhett said, and watched sound waves roll across the iPhones screen.

See?

Yes. Great gadget. Dont know how we ever got along without them.

Dale checked the old mans face to be sure he was kidding. Good one, Great-Grandpa.

No, good one, Rhett.

Good one, Rhett. So tell me about the radio.

Rhett talked for ten minutes or so, about how he and his two brothers would lie on the living-room rug after supper, them with their schoolbooks, his father in his easy chair with his feet up on the hassock, smoking his pipe, all of them listening to the Philco. He told Dale about The Shadow and The Jack Benny Showhow Jack was such a cheapskateand his own favorite, The Major Bowes Amateur Hour, where the host would hurry talky guests along by saying All right, all right, and bang a gong if their performances were bad. But he began to slow down as more vivid memories slipped into the flow of his recollections. Those bus rides with Jack, for instance. And he thought, Why not tell him? You have never told anyone, and youll be dead soon enough. Blood in the toilet does not lie, not when youre ninety.

That amateur show was really sponsored by cigarettes? Dale asked.

Yup, Old Golds. If you want a treat instead of a treatment, smoke Old Golds. Theyre good for you!

They could really say that? The boys eyes were shining with fascination.

They did, but lets forget about the radio shows. I want to tell you something else I remember.

Okay, but those old radio shows are pretty interesting.

I can tell you something a lot more interesting, but turn off your gadget. I dont want you recording this.

Really?

Really.

Dale turned off his iPhone and put it back in his pocket. He looked at his great-grandfather with some caution now, as if Rhett were about to tell him hed robbed a few banks or enjoyed setting dogs on fire as a teenager.

I had sort of a peculiar childhood, Dale, because my mother was peculiar. Not outright crazy, at least not crazy enough to be locked away in a sanitarium, but very, very peculiar. I was the youngest of three. In 1927, two years after I was born, she moved out of the house, bag and baggage, and into a little cottage on the other side of townthis side of town, in fact, and not far from here, although theres a shopping center there now. The place was hers by inheritance, from an old aunt, and not much bigger than a garage. She left my father to raise Pete, Jack, and me. Which he did, with the help of a woman who came in to do the housekeeping and watch us when we were too small to be trusted on our own.

She never even gave a reason? Dale asked.

Said it was for our own protection. My father saw she had a good allowance for her necessaries, and he did it without complaintthose were tough times, but he had a shirt-and-tie job with the American Eagle Insurance Company, and her wants were small. They maintained a collegial relationship. Do you know what that means?

That they got along?

Thats exactly right, and good for you. My brother Jack and I got along with her, too. Accepted the situation the way young kids usually do, without much complaining or too many questions. We went to visit her quite often. Wed play gin rummy and Crazy Eights and Monopoly. The place was cold in the winter and hotter than a stovepipe in the summer, even with a fan blowing the air around. We had a lot of laughs. She had a ukulele. Sometimes the three of us went out on the back stoop, and shed play, and wed sing. Stuff like Old Black Joe and Massas in the Cold, Cold Ground.