Tiny fished with flies he tied himself, much to Jake's disgust; Jake used worms, had always used worms, saw not a goddamn thing wrong with using worms, and claimed they'd be serving snowcones in hell before he'd even consider fishing with a bunch of chicken feathers lashed to a hook.
Tiny chuckled, good-natured and constant. Granddaddy cackled, snorted, whooped, yipped, and roared.
Tiny had a full set of strong, well-formed teeth. Granddaddy had a strong, well-formed set of gums, plus five teeth, two of which met, giving him a jump on the gristle.
Tiny didn't like to dream. Granddaddy Jake dreamt constantly now, like a stick carried by the river.
Their differences, however numerous, were superficial; their similarities were few, but had some bottom: they were held by the bewildered love they felt for each other, a kindness beyond mere tolerance, a blood understanding of what moved their respective hearts. At first, Jake had tried too hard to draw Tiny out of his shell, bombarding him with candy bars and baseballs and toy trucks, fishing poles and chocolate chip cookies, complete attention and total, doting permission. When Lottie Anderson mentioned to him that kids Tiny's age liked sandboxes, Granddaddy had Barney Wetzler down at Wetzler Brothers Gravel deliver 30 yards of choice river sand. Figuring every boy should have a dog, in a month's time Granddaddy Jake had gotten him four: a pair of Walker pups, a Brittany spaniel, and a hardheaded Beagle crossbreed named Boss (who, without benefit of Grand-daddy's whiskey, lived 18 years as Tiny's constant companion till a huge wild boar called Lockjaw opened him from scrotum to collar. Boss, by sheer mean will, had made it home to scratch at the door before he died.)
When these excesses of good will drew a barren, if polite, response from Tiny, Grand-daddy Jake had taken a jar out on the porch to wonder it through his mind. It took him awhile to get a firm grasp on the obvious: Tiny was devastated by his mother's death, and since only time and maybe a little tenderness would cure that, he decided to just be who he was and go on about his life, and if the boy wanted to join in, that was fine and welcome, and if he didn't… well, Jake was used to fishing by himself. Real feelings take time earning the trust to keep them true and, Jake reckoned, an immortal like himself had, if nothing else, plenty of time.
They also shared their passions, which were different in kind but not intensity. From the moment Jake had tasted the first batch run off from the dying Indian's recipe, his passion had been the refinement of whiskey; he pursued its perfection with the ardor of an old alchemist seeking the Philosopher's Stone. As he explained to anyone who'd listen, it wasn't so much purity he was after-hell, you could damn near buy pure alcohol-but something more precious: molecular character.
In the late '60s a hippie had wandered out to the ranch one day. After announcing in a slow vacuum-eyed drawl that he sought and welcomed all forms of mental transformation and had heard that Jake made a beverage imbued with such mind-altering properties, he offered to trade two tablets of LSD for a fair sample. Granddaddy screeched and ranted about how he hated drugs and should shoot his worthless longhaired dipshit ass for trying to corrupt his grandson, but since it was one of the few times that anyone had actually wanted to try Ol' Death Whisper, he relented-though he refused to trade. The longhair, who identified himself as Bill the Thrill, insisted on the optimum dosage, which Granddaddy, using his own tolerance as a guide, calculated to be around a pint. The longhair, though visibly shaken after the first swallow, managed to get down six or seven more quick gulps before he collapsed on the front porch and began writhing in such a way that Boss, Tiny's cantankerous and ever-horny Beagle, had come over and tried to hump him. This action caused a mental transformation in the longhair that was rather hard to follow, but as near as Grand-daddy could ever figure it, the longhair feller must of thought he was a raccoon or something, for he immediately bolted for the walnut tree in the front yard, went up it in a single gigantic bound, and spent the next three hours sitting among the bare limbs hunched over like a sick buzzard. The first hour he wept. The second hour he laughed. The third hour he was silent. At the start of the fourth hour he pitched forward and fell like a sack of wet grain. He broke both arms. On the way into the hospital, he offered to buy Granddaddy's stock on hand and all future production for $20 a pint in exchange for sole distributorship. In a few years it had become a cult item among certain connoisseurs of drooling oblivion, and Granddaddy Jake was able to maintain the $300,000 balance in his and Tiny's joint account.
Tiny's passion was fences. Granddaddy Jake was convinced that Tiny's astonishing growth spurt between the ages of five and nine was due to the fact that he wanted to build fences so bad he'd forced himself to grow big enough to handle the tools. By the time he was twelve, Tiny was building fences that any master would admire, and by twenty his fences were so strong and graceful that the same masters were forced into envy. He worked in stone, picket, post amp; rail, and wire, but he liked the traditional California sheep fence best of alclass="underline" 36" high sheep mesh stretched on 4x5" redwood posts with a single strand of barbed wire at the top. He like working in wire because wire twanged, and there was nothing that brought him deeper satisfaction than plucking the top strand of barbed wire and listening to it resonate all the way around the circuit of the fence. Lub Knowland called the fences "Tiny's guitars" and claimed to have heard their distinctive tones on a particularly clear day while he was fishing Beeler Lake in the eastern Sierras, some 200 miles away. Most folks however credited this claim as typical Lub Knowland bullshit.
Nobody was surprised that Tiny built excellent fences, for by temperament he was patient and precise. But nobody could understand why he built them, for Tiny and Granddaddy didn't run any stock, and since coyotes had eaten the Bollen brothers out of the sheep business two years before, none of their immediate neighbors did either.
Granddaddy Jake called him on it one night after dinner: If you ain't fencing nothing in, maybe you're fencing something out."
But Tiny just shook his head and mumbled, "Naw, they're just fences, that's what I like to do."
Granddaddy almost pursued it, then let it slide, repeating with friendly derision, " 'Just fences, shit! That's like saying my whiskey is just something to drink."
Tiny, thanks to the bitter vigilance of Emma Gadderly at the Social Welfare Office, had to attend school. From the first grade through his high school graduation he received straight, solid C's, seldom spoke in class, had many pleasant acquaintances and no close friends. In his first day of gym class in high school, the football coach, who had ambitions for the head post at the local J.C., actually got down on his knees and begged Tiny to come out for the team. Tiny said he would like to but he had to get right home after school and work on the ranch fences. The same thing he told Sally Ann Charters when she asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. The same thing he told Herbie and Allan when they wanted him to go with them to Tijuana over the spring break to get their car tuck-and-rolled and carouse the whorehouses. The same thing he told the basketball coach and the track coach. The same thing.