It's the day after Christmas in seventh grade; I just turned 12. We're visiting my parents' relatives in Indiana. Today we drive out to the farmhouse near Garrett to visit my Grandpa Prater, my mother's father, and bring him his Christmas presents.
Grandpa Prater is 70 years old, but still big and rugged, with thick arms and shoulders and huge hands. He wears overalls, sometimes with a white t-shirt underneath, sometimes without, so you could see his hard round pecs dusted with white hair.
He moved from Kentucky to Indiana with his family in 1942, to take advantage of factory jobs during World War II. Now he is widowed, and all of his kids have moved out except Uncle Edd, who acts more like his brother than his son.
There's no car in the driveway, and no one answers when we knock, so we figure that they're out, at the store or visiting friends in town. We drive down the road about half a mile to the Trailer in the Deep Woods, to visit my Cousin Buster and his parents and wait for them to return.
Cousin Buster shows me the guitar he got for Christmas, and tries to play "Your Mama Don't Dance," by Loggins and Messina. He doesn't do well. "I should have asked for a banjo," he says. "Man, I could really howl on that box."
"Why don't you ask Grandpa if you can borrow his?"
Somehow we decide that it would be a good idea to sneak into the farmhouse while he's gone and "borrow" the banjo.
We walk through the woods until we come to the side yard. There's still no car in the driveway.
We climb onto the porch and go in through the parlor (country folk don't lock their doors).
I've been there a thousand times, but never when the house is deserted. There's something eerie, even sinister, about the two overstuffed sofas, red with clawed legs, the old console radio with a black-and-white tv on top, the picture of Jesus on the Cross that changes to an Ascended Christ if you look at it right.
The kitchen is familiar, too. I've been there many times. But there's something sinister about the plate of half-eaten toast and jar of Sue Bee Honey left on the kitchen table, as if someone suddenly rushed out. Or was kidnapped.
I've never been inside Grandpa Prater's bedroom.
I've never been inside Grandpa Prater's bedroom.
First there's an anteroom, with some coats on hooks and shoes on the floor. Then a big oak door.
More after the break
