He Started It(20)

“I’d shoot him,” Eddie said.

Portia wanted to kill her teacher, who made her first-grade class do all sorts of boring things and they never got to have any fun.

“I guess I’d shoot her, too. Like Eddie,” she said.

When it was my turn, I said I’d kill the guy who shot up the school in the next county over. He was just a kid like me, but he deserved to die.

“I’d give him a bunch of sleeping pills,” I said. “He’d just die in his sleep, never knowing he wouldn’t wake up.”

I still think that’s the best way to kill someone. No sense in making a bloody mess.





MONDAY, NO IDEA WHAT THE DATE IS. DOESN’T MATTER.



What is your favorite memory?

Before Grandma got sick, we used to go out to lunch on her birthday. All the girls, Mom would say. We all got dressed up and wore big hats, like church hats, and even lacy gloves. I hated it at first, because all we did was sit around in the sun and eat tiny sandwiches while Grandma talked. It was her day, Mom used to say. After a few years, I started saying the same thing.

I don’t know when that changed. I just remember that her stories were actually pretty interesting so I stopped pretending they weren’t.

The last birthday we had was over a year ago, right before the doctor said she was sick. I wore this light green dress with a giant matching hat. It was a costume, just like Grandma wore. Now I know that. Back then I thought we were just dressing up. Grandma wasn’t. She was playing a part.

I didn’t know that. Not until I learned that all those great things Grandma used to say about Grandpa were lies. When the truth came out, she wasn’t all dressed up in a hat and fancy clothes.

She was lying in bed, too thin, too pale, and too sick to worry about what she was wearing or how she looked. Cancer was making her waste away, and it was like whatever energy she had left all went to telling the truth about Grandpa.





No way,” Felix says.

Eddie smiles. “Way.”

We’re at the Gunfighters Wax Museum in Dodge City, which is conveniently located in the same building as the Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame. The building, the sign, everything about it screams the 1960s.

“This is where your grandfather brought you?” Felix says.

Krista is so annoyed. “What was wrong with him? Why would he do that?”

“Same reason they’re here,” I say, nodding to the people coming out of the museum. More than one family and lots of children are here today. “Everybody loves death.”

“And teachers,” Eddie says.

Portia waves at us from the car. “I’ll stay out here and rest my ankle.”

That ankle has become an excuse for Portia to skip anything she doesn’t want to do. Either that or the damn thing is really broken. I don’t call her on it, though. Arguing about every little thing is what makes people hate you, especially when it comes to family. They’re the least forgiving of all.

Inside the museum, a helpful woman sells us two-for-one tickets to both museums, beginning with the Teachers Hall of Fame. Grandpa had skipped that. He said we could learn about school when we were in school, but not when we were on vacation.

“School’s overrated anyway,” he said.

“Did you even graduate?” I said. Rude? Sure, but I was a kid. This kind of brutal honesty is supposed to be funny.

Grandpa didn’t think so. He pounded his fist against the hood of the van. “How did you turn out to be such a little shit?”

I stepped back, away from his hands, and I shrugged. Probably would answer the same way today.



* * *



–––––

This time we walk through the teachers museum before heading upstairs to see the gunslingers. None of us have any kids, let alone any old enough to be in school, but we do it anyway.

Upstairs we find Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Calamity Jane—they’re all preserved here in Dodge City, staged in vignettes of the Old West. The old wax figures look more like mannequins than people. They scared the hell out of me when I was twelve.

So did the head of someone I’d never heard of. That’s the display: a severed head still bloody at the neck. Now it’s not scary at all.

“Okay,” Felix says, snapping a picture on his phone. “This is pretty cool.”

“You mean, this is pretty creepy,” Krista says. “Your grandfather was obsessed with violence, wasn’t he?”

Eddie and I exchange a look.

“Maybe,” he says.

I shrug. “Possibly.”

Definitely.

The most bizarre part of the museum is Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman, who appear without explanation. Twenty years ago, they made Portia cry. I can still see her running away, sobbing, and Grandpa chasing after her. Too bad we didn’t have camera phones then.

No one cries today. We only laugh at how crazy it all is, but I have to admit it’s entertaining.

When we’re finally done and go back outside, Portia is leaning against the back of our car, scrolling through her phone with one hand and holding a gigantic soda cup in the other.

“Anything?” Krista says.

“Nope.”

Neither of them mentions the truck everyone is looking for but hasn’t seen. Not today.