Fall passed quickly. Even before the end of September, Josh and I found it was too cold to carry on in the barn anymore, so the only chances we got were when I visited him.
I finally finished my Drivers’ Ed course and Grandpa took me to get my license. The examiner was interested that I had learned on a stick shift and I passed easily.
At harvest time, all of us took some time off from school to help. Even Josh joined us as often as possible. We managed to do a second haying and to get the hay in during dry days. We harvested our vegetables and apples as well as the potatoes, storing them in the basement, which Grandpa called the root cellar.
After the harvest and before the first snow we began to paint the barn, which badly needed it. I did the top parts while Derek did the middle and Teddy did the parts that didn’t require a ladder. We made a good start although we did not by any means finish.
Another job we had then was to go into the woods and cut firewood for the winter. Grandpa selected and cut down the trees. We trimmed the branches and cut the wood into pieces small enough to fit in the stove before we loaded it onto the wagon. I asked Grandpa why he picked some wood and not others. He explained about hard woods and soft woods and how each burned.
When we got the wood back to the barn, much of it had to be split. Grandpa, Josh and I did some splitting while Derek and Teddy stacked the wood. Grandpa said that splitting would be a regular chore for the winter.
When the first snows came in November, most of the outside work except the barn was done. The first snow was only about six inches deep, but we had to shovel a walkway from the house to the barn, and Grandpa put up a rope like a railing, explaining that in the winter when it was snowing and blowing and the drifts got deep, it was quite possible to get completely lost going from one building to the other. Then he hitched the plow to the tractor and plowed the driveway.
The house was heated only by the stove in the kitchen and the fireplace in the living room. While some heat came from the chimney as it went up through the second story, we were grateful for the extra blankets and quilts that Grandpa provided, telling us that all of the quilts had been made by our grandmother. The way he talked about her I sure wished I had known her.
One evening, after my brothers had gone to bed, I got up my courage to ask, “Grandpa, you said one time that the family had a history of gay kids. Can you tell me more?”
Grandpa harrumphed for a few moments and then said, “Your uncle Glen was gay.”
“You’re kidding. The school jock? Jocks can’t be gay!”
“Why not?”
Well… well… well… I don’t know. I just always thought that gays weren’t aggressive or athletic. I thought they were more like me.”
He gave me an appraising look and said, “Some are; some aren’t. By the time he was about twelve, Glen knew there was no denying what he was. Of course, the term ‘gay’ hadn’t come into use then, so he thought of himself as homosexual or queer. I think he always thought there was something wrong with him. He never told anybody at school. Nobody did in those days. He kept it very much to himself, telling only me and your grandmother. I don’t think his brothers even knew. There were some boys he said he was attracted to but he never approached them. If they were gay, they kept it to themselves too. It was a very hard time for Glen. Everybody had girlfriends. He had one too, but for him it was just an act. He watched the others and figured out how to behave. I don’t know whether he ever had sex with her or not, but I doubt it. I don’t think anybody in the school ever suspected. I’ve always believed that one reason he joined the Seals was to prove something to himself, perhaps that he was as strong and manly as anybody else.”
“Wow! It must have been really hard to hide that all the time.”
Grandpa nodded. “Now I have a question for you.”
Uh-oh, I thought. Here it comes.
Looking straight at me he asked, “So have you figured out yet if you’re gay?”
I sighed. I was sure I was blushing, but I said, “Yeah, I guess I am. I remember you asked me once before but why did you ask? What did I do that told you I was gay?”
“Well, first of all, the closest you’ve got to a girlfriend is Maryanne, who, from what you’ve told me, is clearly just a friend and not a girlfriend. Second, you have a really good friend who’s a gay boy and you spend all your time with him. Sometimes when you think nobody’s looking you hold hands. Third, when it was warmer the two of you would disappear into the barn for an hour or so and then emerge with big smiles on your faces. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what was going on.”
Embarrassed, I responded, “Oh shoot. We thought we were keeping it really secret. Do you suppose Derek and Teddy know?”
“I imagine Derek knows all about it. I don’t think Teddy is old enough to really understand it yet, but he sure knows that something’s going on. A couple of times he’s asked me, but of course I haven’t said anything. That’s not my place. That’s your job when you’re ready. But I have a couple of other things to tell you. The first is that I am gay.”
“What! How could you be? You had three sons.”
“Well, back when I was growing up I knew nothing about homosexuality. Like Glen, I knew I was attracted to boys and never acted on it. I just thought that it was something that would go away when I finished growing up. Of course, it never did. Fortunately, I met a wonderful young lady. We really understood each other. We were soul mates. We had a wonderful relationship and life together. After Glen told us he was gay, I finally figured out that I was, too. I told your grandmother and she was very supportive. By then we were getting older and we never had relations after that, but we loved each other and took care of each other and I couldn’t have been more upset when she died. So I’ve never had sex with a boy or a man. I don’t even think at this point that I’d want to. Can you understand that?”
“I guess, in a way.”
“Now, I also had an uncle. He was what today you would call ‘flamboyant’. He was artistic and very funny and he loved acting. I know now that he was clearly homosexual. He was a stereotype. He was also obviously very depressed. Nobody accepted him and he couldn’t really accept himself. One winter morning I went to the barn to milk the cows and I found him hanging there from a beam. No note. No explanation, but I think we all knew and we all felt like we had let him down.”
“That’s so sad. You know that Josh is gay, but he’s fine with it. He doesn’t feel any pressure to be anything else. And I think I’m getting to the point of accepting it myself. You know, Grandpa, we’re really beginning to love each other.”
“OK. We’ll see how that works out. Some high school romances last, but a lot don’t. What you both need to do, though, is to be real careful of each other’s feelings. Especially if you decide at some point to break up.”
“We’ll never break up,” I responded confidently, and hugging him I went up to bed.
Christmas came. We all, including Josh, went out into the woods a few days before and cut our own Christmas tree. When we asked Grandpa if we should hang our stockings, he replied, “Of course. Just because we’re off in the middle of no place doesn’t mean that Santa doesn’t come.” Teddy looked relieved. He still believed in Santa Claus and neither Derek nor I had ever said anything to change his mind.
We went to the Christmas Eve service at the church and were joined by Josh who had walked there. During the singing of Silent Night, Josh reached for my hand and we held hands, squeezing them and smiling at each other at the end of the carol.
Christmas morning, the three of us clattered down the stairs to find full stockings hanging by the fireplace. First, of course, we had to do our chores, which were probably never done more quickly. Then we sat on the living room floor pulling things from our stockings — a baseball, lacrosse balls, candy, toys, pens, pencils, little pads of paper, and, in the toe of each stocking, an orange.
After breakfast we wanted to dive into the presents under the tree, but we decided to wait until Josh arrived, which would not be until after lunch. Teddy, especially, had a hard time waiting, so we let him open one present, a new baseball glove from me. He was very excited and wanted to go right out and toss a baseball even though there was over a foot of snow on the ground. When I pointed out that if the ball got dropped in the snow we wouldn’t see it again until spring he settled down to drawing pictures on one of his pads instead.
Josh arrived in the early afternoon and we set about unwrapping the presents. All of us had gotten or made presents for everybody. The room rang with shouts of surprise and thank-yous. Finally, when all the presents had been opened and the wrapping paper disposed of, Grandpa pulled out one more package from a cupboard and handed it to me, saying, “This is really for all of you. I got it with the advice of Josh, who knows much more about these things than I do.”
I unwrapped the package to exclamations of, “What is it?! Hurry, Greg!” Holding it up with a puzzled look on my face, I said, “It’s a computer modem. But,” I looked at Grandpa, “how can we use it if we’re not online?”
“That’s the point. With Josh’s help, we have set it all up and you are now online. Far be it from me to stand in the way of progress. I didn’t want to do it at first, because I had a vision of you boys spending all your time playing games on your computer. But now you’ve learned what good hard work is and the rewards you can get from it, so I’m not worried.”
We raced upstairs and Josh and I soon had the computer online. We all played with it for an hour or so and then realized we’d had enough, and went back down to Grandpa, each of us hugging him gratefully.
In the evening Josh and I went upstairs to talk while the others played games. Hugging Josh I said, “OK, Josh I’ve finally figured it out. I’m really gay and I really, really love you. Do you still love me?”
“Oh, God yes!” he exclaimed, kissing me over and over.
In bed that night I heard Teddy exclaim, “This is the best Christmas ever,” and I couldn’t disagree.
During the vacation we tried out all our presents that didn’t need to be played with outside, enjoying their novelty. But somehow, in time we gravitated back to games like Parcheesi, Chess, and our old favorite, Monopoly.
One morning, after school had begun again, Teddy awoke before Derek and me. He was a little puzzled, because it was already light out and Grandpa hadn’t banged the skillet. Dressing quietly, he went downstairs to the kitchen. Immediately, he raced back up, shouting, “Greg, Derek, something’s wrong with Grandpa! He’s lying on the floor and he can’t move!”
Derek and I tore downstairs. In the kitchen, Grandpa was lying on his back, Charlie whimpering quietly beside him. He appeared to have fallen and his head was bleeding where he must have banged it on the corner of the table. He tried to speak but only unintelligible sounds came out. He was staring up with frightened eyes, and he was crying. His left arm was waving around wildly as though he had no control over it.
I raced to the phone and called the police who said they would send an ambulance. While we were waiting, I cleaned and bandaged the cut on Grandpa’s head and gently put a pillow under his head. Derek was just staring into space. Teddy was shouting, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
I grabbed him and held him close, saying, “I don’t know. But it’ll be OK, Teddy. The doctors will fix him,” all the while thinking to myself, It’ll never be OK. Ever! Tears were running down my face. I got a wet towel and gently wiped away Grandpa’s tears before I wiped away my own and Teddy’s.
Soon the ambulance arrived. The paramedics were efficient and kind, but would not offer a diagnosis. Charlie tried to defend Grandpa so I held him while they gently loaded Grandpa onto a gurney. As they went out the door they said they would take him to the hospital in Berlin.
Derek and Teddy were ready to race out the door and get into the truck but I reminded them that they had to get dressed and take care of the animals. When we finished that and had a hasty breakfast we prepared some sandwiches to eat at noon, got in the truck and I began the drive to Berlin, very grateful that Grandpa had taught me how to drive. I knew I had to be strong for my brothers, but I also knew that something inside me was breaking, and it didn’t feel like it would ever heal again.