Separated

Separated — page 5 — A while back he stopped in at our house in Buffalo and offered to take me on one of his trips to celebrate my becoming a man as he put it and clapped me so hard on the shoulder that I just about fell over He’d made similar offers to all six of his grandsons and had already followed through on a few What he meant by man was a teenager a thirteen-year-old I was still a few months from that then though I’m almost there now But age was beside the point the chance he gave me to go far away to the land of IKEA and the world’s best meatballs and other cool things was something I was into immediately I should have been in school it being the first week of September and all That was an added bonus when he made the offer and maybe helped blind me to the fact that I was going to have to fly in an airplane to go on this trip From way up there in the plane the weather outside or at least down below appeared amazing We were high above wispy white clouds that looked like massive stretched-out cotton balls and the 4 shane peacock

Separated — page 6 — sky was clear blue all around us I use the word sky loosely because as far as I could figure out from the altitude the pilot said we were at we were basically in space That meant that when we started to fall we’d reach terminal velocity really quickly Maybe we’d die before we even hit the ocean before the plane ripped into the water like an atomic bomb into concrete disintegrated and evaporated all of us But there was Grandpa disgustingly calm sitting beside me with his black beret still on his head smiling at me every now and then and each time I gave him my best fake smile back his earbuds in and music pumping out of them Yep I said pumping This guy is God knows how old I’ve lost track but he’s over eighty for sure and he was listening to the Black Eyed Peas or something like that It sure sounded like Boom Boom Pow I knew he was a Frank Sinatra fan he always slapped me hard on the back when he had that sort of historical stuff ramped up on his stereo My cousins tell me 5 separated

Separated — page 7 — they’ve heard him listening to lots of Elvis too and even the Boss Bruce Springsteen This guy is so open-minded it is sickening He’d obviously found some channel on the music feed on the plane that was giving him newer stuff and he’d just started getting down And of course he was multitasking I guess when you’ve flown dangerous missions in a war and been all over the world doing amazing things like climbing mountains in your spare time you’ve got to have that sort of talent He was reading and he’d been at it just about all the way across the ocean as he nonchalantly flew in that deadly machine listening to music and smiling at me Reading Not exactly my idea of a scintillating time I wished I had my cell phone with me or at least the cell that would finally be mine on my thirteenth birthday Grandpa was some sort of speed reader too of course He must have read about three or four books on that flight He handed me The Little 6 shane peacock

Separated — page 8 — Prince when we boarded along with another hard clap on the back That novel was a big fave of his one he had read to me and all the cousins over the years I didn’t entirely get it really a story almost like a fable about this weird person this small prince from another planet who was involved in a plane crash Perfect A plane crash I only pretended to read it as I sat there worrying Grandpa had already read the Sherlock Holmes thriller The Hound of the Baskervilles which actually sounded kind of cool with a massive dog with glowing eyes and murder and all that stuff and had almost finished a Swedish crime novel which he’d started plowing into about halfway into the flight He was kind of holding the cover away from me and I had the feeling that maybe the story inside was a bit inappropriate for someone my age maybe a tad violent and all You wouldn’t think the famously happy-go-lucky Swedes would be up to that sort of thing I certainly didn’t but they actually were Big-time I’d done some research about 7 separated

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