The Good Oak

Four: Lau

four I lau Grandpa's '59 lime-green pickup was in the faculty parking lot. The rusted vehicle sat amid the teachers' shiny cars. Piled in the back were two bales of hay, rolls of wire, and the wooden posts of an old corral. I groaned. The Beverly Hillbillies . All I needed was for the kids in my class to see this. On top of the pickup's junk lay Atarrabi and Mikelats. Of course, both dogs were asleep. "You can't park here," I told Grandpa. "Sure, no, it parking place, ba-yes?" "Faculty," I said. "Can't you read?" "Ba," Grandpa said, "baina only words I know." As we got closer, I saw that Grandpa's pickup was right next to Principal Lench's Lincoln Continental. The silver car's paint glistened in the afternoon sun, as did the wet tires where one or both of the dogs had peed. "Stupid dogs." I glared up at Atarrabi and Mikelats, who seemed to be grinning at me in their sleep. I pulled open the pickup's passenger door, and the leg bone of a lamb fell out onto the asphalt. Besides being 25 gross, the bone had to be for Atarrabi or Mikelats-not even my grandpa would gnaw on an old bone, at least I didn't think he would-and since I was mad at the dogs and Grandpa and his ugly pickup, I left the bone where it landed on the ground and got in. As Grandpa climbed into the driver's seat, he said, "You got nice teacher. Polita ba?" "School sucks." "Like bildotsa-Iambs on momma's teat?" "You know what I mean." Grandpa shook his head as he started the pickup. "Sure, no, English so gogora-hard. Many words they sound same but no mean same." "Go already." I slumped down in my seat and pulled my shirt collar up to my chin. I checked the school's windows to see if anyone had watched me get into the pickup. Not that it mattered. I knew I was doomed to be the bass-boy from Eden for the rest of my school life. The pickup's gears ground as Grandpa pulled out of the lot and onto the street. At the end of the block, a construction worker with a flag waved us on. They were working on the new Valley Bank building. Ms. Helm had told the class it would be the tallest building in Phoenix. Chunks of asphalt were piled up on the sidewalk, and the pickup vibrated with the noise of a jackhammer pounding the earth as Grandpa drove forward at a crawl. The red Buick behind us honked. "Could you drive any slower?" I said. "Sure, no, very hard drive this place," Grandpa said. "Glass all shiny, path very narrow, eta people they like sheeps got no shepherd." "It's not like it's New York," I said. "It's just Phoenix. Geez, it's barely a city." 26 "It city enough," Grandpa said. AI; we drove past the construction, I peered up at the building's steel frame rising toward the white sun. Right then, I wanted to be up there, on top, all alone, with nothing but blue sky around me-no school, no Rich, no Grandpa. Then I thought of Oxea. Was that what it was like for him now? Was Oxea floating somewhere in the clouds? Looking down and watching me? Wishing he could come back? Or was Oxea glad that he was gone? When I glanced back over at Grandpa, it was like he knew what I was thinking. No muscles moved on his face, and his eyes didn't blink. I recognized that look. I'd seen it on Oxea's, Dad's, and even my own face. He was working out a problem. About his brother probably. Going over what happened. Trying to figure out a way to undo it. Or maybe not ... maybe the hole Oxea left in Grandpa was too big to fill and Grandpa was thinking of following Oxea up into those clouds. I couldn't know, and Grandpa wouldn't tell me. We didn't do that in our family. We worked out our problems alone, without anyone knowing what was going on inside. But what if Oxea had told Grandpa what he was going to do? What would Grandpa have done? Could he have stopped...