Grandpa Roy Has A Message...

My Grandpa Roy is dead. There would be no funeral. No funeral that is, except for me and my Dad. Mom and Dad had been divorced for a long time. I guess Dad didn't have a car then...? I remember taking the Greyhound bus to the mountains that night. We sat in the back. It was weird. Super weird. He didn't talk much. I remember mixing him drinks from bottles in a brown paper bag...and him chain smoking...throwing the still lit butts on the bus floor...watching them glow. I don't remember how we got to the cabin in the mountains after we got off the bus. I remember how dark it was. I remember that....and that I wanted to sleep in Grandpa Roy's bed. The bed he had been found in...the bed where he had laid for a few days... Creepy, creepy!! Can you say "Lil' ten year old Melody is a weirdo"? Dad didn't complain. In fact, he seemed MORE than glad to sleep in the other room.

Such a sad, sad day...just the two of us. There were lots of other chairs set out. But they wouldn't be used. I sat next to my Dad in silence, wearing my best outfit my Mom had handmade me and packed. There were graves all around us...and a hole in front of us. A big fancy station wagon rolled up. God bless the two men who tried as they might to lift that damn special made casket!! I'm ashamed to say it, but I think I might have laughed out loud at one point.

Grandpa Roy never, EVER, made excuses for his size. And let me just say, I'm pretty sure he was...HUGE!!! I remember him "trying out" an outdoor lounge chair for his porch one day. He crushed it, literally to the ground. I tried to help him off the floor. He was cursing and carrying on..."Cheap shit!!...GD cheap shit!!"... The kid who worked there was freaking out. Grandpa Roy would settle on solid redwood lounge chairs. They were so heavy I couldn't lift them. ...He eventually broke one of those too... Damn cheap shit!!

So anyway, after they call for all of the employyees on duty to come and help lift the coffin...and there were about six back-up...I watch them huff and puff it (dropped it once) over to the hole. It was crazy. The guy who drove the fancy station wagon asked my Dad if he wanted to say anything... He just kept looking at his feet, and said no. I didn't know what to do. I had never been to a dead person get buried in the ground thing. They were lowering him into the hole... A small hispanic looking helper was holding onto a rope and almost fell in... And then, I was standing up...and then, I was looking at his casket in the hole... "I love you", I said. And when I turned around, I saw something I've never seen before, and I've never seen since. I saw my Dad cry.

Grandpa Roy sat at the end of his bed. Ummmmmmm...He was SOOOOOOO not dead! WTF?? He was just looking at me...and I was looking at him...and I felt overcome with joy!! "Do you know who you are?", he asked. He was always such a rough, tough MF. But, his words were always so gentle to me, when we were alone...like this...me lying curled up in his bed, and him sitting next to me. I could see him in the moonlight shining through the window. "I need your help", he said. WHAT? Of course I'd help!!! Anything!!! "The trunk at the foot of the bed", he motioned to it. "You know the secret walls?"

Uhhhhhhhhh...of COURSE I know the SECRET WALLS!! One day after Grandpa Roy had taken me shooting at the river, and after he had made me dismantle each gun, clean them, and reassemble...he took me to his closet in the sunken room. He pulled apart his clothes, reached into a notch, and pulled out the wall...then he did this to the other walls. Guns...a secret place...filled with guns. Oh, the stories he told...

"Go to the bottom of the trunk. There's a secret wall there...you know how...you know how..." I woke up to streaming sunlight in the room. I sat up and looked at the trunk. I remember, I wasn't afraid at all. I slid out of bed in my jammies and lifted the trunk open...I emptied it to the bottom, and...sure enough... a secret bottom.... and beneath it... all by itself...there lay an envelope... In my Grandpa Roys handwriting I read, "Melody"...