“Well, it’s what they say and I won’t have it said about mine.”
Little of the conversation had much meaning for George, but a few days later workmen appeared on the property and began the long, noisy, fascinating task of taking the wall apart, stacking the freed bricks that would be carried away by the wagonload. The boy could not persuade his grandfather to come out into the yard to watch the workmen; the old man would not leave the house nor look out the window to see how strange the yard seemed without the wall, nor even to observe the men when they began putting up an iron fence that was not much higher than the boy himself. The old man now spent most of his time in his room, taking his meals alone there, and he no longer had time, he said, to tell the boy any stories. So matters stood for about a month, and then the grandfather changed his habits. Every day he would leave the house in the morning, go to the barber shop and from there to the Exchange Hotel bar and remain until late afternoon, when Rafferty would bring him home in the cut-under and assist him to his room. In a year he died, without ever telling his grandson another story, but by that time George was in the first grade, in the company of boys and girls his own age. A lot of soldiers were at his grandfather’s funeral and his grandfather was in a box that was covered by an American flag and instead of a hearse the box was on a sort of cart drawn by four horses, two ridden by soldiers, and at the cemetery the soldiers shot their guns in the air and another soldier played a bugle. George’s father was in a soldier suit and so were a lot of other men who were not soldiers. After the funeral was over George saw a lot of the real soldiers from out of town and many of them were drunk. An old man named Mr. Baltz had supper with his mother and father and all he seemed to do was shake hands with everybody that came along. George Lockwood had never seen anyone shake hands so much.
His other grandfather, in Richterville, was not a teller of stories, but it was pleasant to visit him even so. Near Richterville there were two pony farms, and Grossvater Hoffner, as he preferred to be called, usually took George to look at the ponies and ride around in the shiny wagon that was drawn by a four-pony hitch, always promising George that when he got a little older he could have a pony of his own. At Grossvater Hoffner’s house George would sometimes be visiting at the same time his cousin Davey Stokes, a year older, was visiting. “Are you going to get a pony from Grossvater?” George once asked his cousin.
“He says I am, but I don’t believe him,” said Davey, who then reported to George that several other cousins, one of them eleven years old, had been promised ponies, but that Grossvater always kept putting off the actual purchase. Their cousin Leroy Hoffner, the eleven-year-old, was still being taken out to look at the ponies and ride around in the wagon, but had been given no pony of his own, and soon would be getting too big to have a pony. George hated David Stokes for telling him these things, and went on believing Grossvater. He discussed the matter with his mother, and on his next birthday he got a pony, a set of harness, a trap and a cutter. Within a few weeks David Stokes likewise had a pony, and so did Leroy. “Did Grossvater give me the pony?” George asked his mother.
“You might say he did.”
“But did he?”
“You might say so. Why do you care, as long as you got it?”
“Because I want to tell Davey.”
“Well—no. Poppa and I gave you the pony, but Grossvater gave me the money for my share, so you might say he gave you the pony too.”
“But do I have to thank Grossvater too?”
“No, you don’t have to thank him.”
“Then he didn’t give it to me, or you’d make me thank him.”
“You’re like your Poppa. You can twist around with your questions. Just don’t say any more about it.”
Davey Stokes, when he got his pony, told George that their Grossvater had not bought it, that it had been bought by his parents, and that Leroy Hoffner was getting one from his parents. “Grossvater is a big liar,” said Davey Stokes. “He’s a dumb-Dutch big liar, that’s what my father says. My father says all the Dutch are stingy.”
“Your mother’s Dutch.”
“Not any more.”
“She talks Dutch.”
“She does not,” said Davey Stokes. “My father won’t let her.”
“She does so. She talks it to my mother. My mother is your mother’s sister.”
“Anybody knows that.”
“Anyway, your mother talks Dutch to my mother, so you don’t know everything.”
“Anyway, my grandfather didn’t kill two men and your grandfather did.”
“My grandfather was a soldier in the War.”
“That’s all you know. Ha ha ha ha. Your grandfather killed two men.”
“He was a soldier, that’s why. My father was a soldier, too.”
“Ha ha ha. Your grandfather killed two men before he was a soldier. He was arrested.”
“He was not. He killed an Indian.”
“He did not. He killed a man that owed him money. Ha ha ha ha.”
Davey Stokes was so sneering and positive that George Lockwood asked his father about Grampa. “Poppa, did Grampa kill a man? Two men?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“Davey. He said Grampa was arrested.”
“Oh, your uncle’s been talking. Well, it had to come out sooner or later,” said Abraham Lockwood. “Yes, Grampa killed two men.”
“Not Indians?”
“No, not Indians. White men. Long before I was born, one man tried to rob your Grampa, sneaked into his room in a hotel, with a dagger, and Grampa shot him to save his own life. That was long ago, before I was born, when it wasn’t safe to go out at night. In fact, your Grampa was what you might call a constable, a policeman.”
“Then they couldn’t arrest him if he was a policeman, could they?”
“Yes, a policeman can be arrested. Anybody can be arrested. Even somebody named Stokes can be arrested.”
“Was Uncle Sam arrested?”
“No. But that’s not saying he couldn’t be. Or that no Stokes ever was arrested. Anybody at all can be arrested.”
“Was Grampa?”
“Yes. He shot another man. He thought the man was going to shoot him, and Grampa shot first.”
“Is that why they arrested him?”
“Yes. You don’t know about courts, yet, do you?”
“About what?”
“In a court a judge decides whether a man is guilty. A judge and a jury. Twelve men and a judge. They decide if a man is guilty, and they decided Grampa was not guilty.”
“Didn’t the man die when Grampa shot him?”
“Yes, he died. But Grampa wasn’t guilty. I’ll have to explain these things when you get older. You’re too young to understand it now.”
“Davey understands it.”
“No he doesn’t.”
“But he told me Grampa shot two men, and you said he did too.”
“He still doesn’t understand about the law, and court. His father neglected to explain that. It’s too bad his father had to say anything at all.”
“Are you mad at Uncle Sam?”
“Oh, no. No, of course not, son. But Davey shouldn’t listen to grownups’ conversations. Little boys never should. They hear things they shouldn’t hear.”
“Are you going to have a fight with Uncle Sam?”
“Of course not.”
“Poppa, didn’t Grampa ever kill an Indian?”
“No. He killed some Rebels, but not Indians.”
“He told me he did.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know what stories Grampa told you, but he made up most of them.”
The boy remembered that his grandfather’s stories varied from telling to telling, but basically the stories had been the same. He wanted to ask his father how he knew that Grampa had made up the stories if he did not know what stories Grampa had told; but the question was too complicated to present.