The Backpack

I was sixteen years old on the day that I went to visit my dying grandfather in the hospital.

The only way we could tell he was alive was a machine blurting out the rhythm of my grandpa’s heartbeat. Anxious, confused, and feeling a little sick, I huddled around a cramped hospital bed. I focused on an unopened lime jello cup on the bedside tray.

A war of odors, stale and dead, bruised my nostrils. The room smelled like a bandaid covering an infected wound. I glanced at the shell of my grandpa who gasped for air like a fish out of water. My mom looked at me from the other side of the bed.

“Do you think he’s in pain?”

I shrugged in hopes of not letting the smells seep between my teeth.

“I’m going to find a nurse.”

She navigated around the unrelenting bedside table tray, which blocked her like a professional basketball player.

“Talk to your grandpa. He can hear you.”

She left me with the shell of him. My ears followed the heel of her boots down the hall. I stared at my grandpa. I watched his chest rise like it was the last time, every time. I grabbed the jello, ripped open the lid and brought it to my nose.

My eyes shut.

Every ounce of my being inhaled the scent of a lime orchard made out of plastic. It was like I was running through the trees while little toy limes exploded into clouds of citrus scented plastic wrap. It was like someone impaled my nostril with lime popsicles and the smell would never leave my side.

Someone was watching me. I could feel their eyes licking my face. Then I saw them, the old icy blue eyes of my grandfather. They looked right through me.

“Give me back my jello.”

I tripped on the chair behind me. I wasn't certain if he said those words or if it was an echo of a ghost in the room.

My grandpa hadn’t spoken in weeks. Maybe months. “Grandpa...I...”

I put his jello down on the once formidable tray.

“Did they bring my backpack?”

I looked around the room and saw a blue backpack, that looked like it survived a world war, sitting in the corner.

“Get it for me”

I picked it up and brought it over to his bed.

“I want you to close your eyes and think of one thing you really want. Then, reach into the bag and pull out the first thing your fingers touch.”

I smirked at him while glancing at the morphine drip. I closed my eyes and reached in the bag. Twenty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars...

Beep.

My hand fluttered around.

Beep. Beep.

I felt paper. Raw paper. It felt like money. Cold. Hard. Cash. Covered with a soft binding. Like leather. I pushed down further to retrieve my prize.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

My fingers attached themselves to an object that felt different than the rest. It wasn’t physically different but it felt hot, like it was glowing.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

I pulled it out of the bag like a sword from a giant stone.

Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep....

My eyes opened. The humming of the flatline ricocheted off the walls.

Someone grabbed me and I was pulled out of the room. Nurses busted in, yelling for the doctor. My mom had my arm. I looked down to see that I was still clutching the backpack. In my other hand held a book.

A little black book.

I would rub the edges of its leather binding until my fingers dipped into a trench of unified pages. They were rough against my fingertip until I pushed hard enough that they would retreat into themselves.

I hung onto the backpack like it was a part of my skin for the next few days. People came and kept telling me that they were sorry about my grandpa. I expected to cry every time I heard those condolences for my loss, but I never did.

I also couldn’t look inside that black book. It wasn’t fear that kept me from opening it but I felt like once I did then I would lose my grandfather for good. As long as I held onto that book, he would always be with me.

So, I kept it in my back pocket. It lived there, until the day my mom took me to my grandfather’s house. It smelled like old books and burnt wood. Like a leather jacket left to die in the sun.

While my mom went through boxes of old pictures, I explored each creak in the house. It seemed to announce my steps before I took them. Each step on the stairs whisked me up closer to whatever was leading my way. My path was laid out before my feet which moved me down the upstairs hallway into a room that I didn’t even know existed.

The door opened to an empty room and then shut itself, nearly decapitating my grandfather’s backpack. My eyes followed the click of ticking that tocked out of the clock.

A grandfather clock.

It even looked like him. They were probably even the same height. The large brass arm swung wildly back and forth like it was beckoning me. I opened the glass door and grabbed onto the brass arm like it was a fight to the death. The sounds of a cog insurrection clanked to a halt.

I felt the brisk air of nothingness behind my brass nemesis. I called out and received a dusty response. The nothingness told me to close the door behind me. I pushed my way in the tight squeeze. I wasn’t sure I would fit but I kept pushing past the cranky arm into the void. My body moved past the arm and I started to fall.

The open air caught me while my feet dangled in a free fall.

My head leered behind my back to see the angry brass arm with a firm hold of my grandpa’s backpack. A loud sound pushed me back as every inch of nothingness vibrated. It was chiming. The noise was so loud that I thought my ear drums would burst.

It rang out again and again and again. The sound beckoned me to leap.

I pulled out one arm from the pack’s strap. My body dropped until I caught the other strap with my white knuckles. I looked down and saw nothing.

Then my butt glowed.

I let one hand go and reached into my back pocket. I felt a familiar warmth. It was my grandpa’s little black book. I looked at the backpack in my other hand. It was the only thing holding me back. I pulled out the book and opened it to see the words “Let go” written in his old man scribble. A tear finally dropped out of the corner of my eye as I said sorry to my grandpa, one last time.

I let go.

My body fell like it was in slow motion as both hands used the little book as a parachute. The book began to expand like wings shuffling through the air as time seemed to merge with space.I noticed my teardrop gliding past my face. It was speeding up as if to soften my landing.

Then I heard it. My fallen tear echoed in an elegant splat that ricocheted throughout eternity.

I could feel the ground getting closer. The book started getting smaller, as if returning to its original size. I could see dim lights around me as I was gently set down in a mahogany hallway. The smell of a sweet cigar smoke wrapped itself around me. I looked down both ways in the hallways and could see no end. I opened the book and all the pages I flipped through were blank.

Except for one.

It read “13th door on the left.”

I crept slowly down a strange hall. Time seemed to be breaking the rules as I found myself staring at the 13th door. Or at least, I hoped I counted correctly. My fist knocked without my permission. The door opened violently as I was pulled in by a burly man in a wool suit.

He pushed me towards a table as the low hanging hazy smoke guided me towards a seat. The room was filled with a few adult men playing cards. Jazz danced out of the record player. Shuffling cards vibrated to the back of my teeth.

“It’s ‘bout time you showed up.”

“This that kid you were expecting?”

“Yeah boys, this is my grandson!”

The room filled with laughter. The door opened again and the smoke was sucked out, only to reveal my grandfather smirking at me while he dealt the cards.

“He’s late just like you always are!” A wobbly man in a bowtie spilled out.

The laughter rang out again.

This man couldn’t have been my grandfather because he was younger, a lot younger, maybe in his 30’s. It WAS him though, just a younger version. I could never forget his icy blue eyes . They were so alive and pierced through the room of sepia tones.

“We’ve been waiting for you kid.”

I took a seat at the old wooden table, which doubled as an ashtray.

“Yeah, your old man wouldn’t play the big pot until you showed up.”

A red faced man with a nose resembling a mushroom slapped my back. My body lunged forward as cards flew through the air.

“I don’t have anything to bet.”

The needle jumped off the record.

The men all stared.

My grandfather chewed the cigar on one side of his mouth. “Sure ya do, kid.”

He pulled out the backpack from under the table.

He handed it to me.

“You got twenty thousand bucks.”

I looked in the bag and looked at my grandfather.

“No, I don’t,” I dumped out the little black books on the table, “all I have are these.”

The books were gone. Twenty thousand dollars sat in the middle of the table. I let out a cry that spelled no.

“I want the books back!”

“It’s too late kid, the money is on the table.”

My grandfather put his cigar down.

“Isn’t that what you wished for?” He smiled at me and dealt the cards.

“I don’t want to play.”

Smoke hung on the laughter. I was dizzy. Then the laughter stopped. The smoke parted. The men all stared at me. I looked down at my cards.

Aces over eights.

My grandfather stood up and started shoving the money in the bag. The men all watched with a growing resentment. My grandfather walked around the table while the men’s eyes locked on the bag. He stood me up and strapped the bag to my back. I could feel his stubble scratch my ear.

“You know where to find me if you need me.”

I turned around to a welling of water in my eyes. He was blurry.

“I don’t, grandpa.”

His icy blues parted the water.

“Sure ya do, it’s in the books.”

The men started yelling. They started pushing towards me as he threw me behind his large body.

“Get out of here, kid.”

I couldn’t see the door. I ran to the wall as my grandpa held the men back. I felt my way across the wallpaper until I heard a familiar sound.

The clock.

It ticked its tock and opened its glass door. The brass arm moved aside and I dove through its invite.

I was back in my grandfather’s house. I sat in the room listening to the chimes. I could hear steps walking toward the room. The door slammed open.

“I’ve been looking for you!”

My mom stared at me.

I felt the bag clinging to my back.

“What do you have in that bag?”

The end