Dave Barrett
The night before Will left to join his brother Ben on Lake Coeur ‘d Alene, he had a wild and unsettling dream about his Grandpa Fessler, his mother’s father. Grandpa Fessler was Will’s favorite grandparent. He and Grandma Fessler had come to visit Will’s family in South San Francisco, and they had visited at their grandparent’s farm outside of Westlock, north of Edmonton, Alberta, several times.
Grandpa Fessler had a thick Austrian accent but spoke English well and had a strong, bright smile that matched the brightness of his icy, blue eyes. He loved to joke and talk and smoke cigars with Will’s father, Ben (and he liked to drink a bit of wine as well).
He loved children—playing basketball with Will and the rough housing neighbor kids in South City—making all of them laugh because he could not understand the concept of an overhead shot. He would shoot the ball towards the hoop underhanded, Granny Style. Will’s roughhousing neighborhood friends liked Grandpa Fessler so much they wouldn’t allow anyone to attempt to block his shot when he did so!
Grandpa Fessler had had a storied life. He was a middle-class son of a flour mill owner in the Burgenland area, south of Vienna, near the Austrian/Hungarian border. He’d fought for the Germans in World War I, and acquired fame for shooting an English sniper out of a tree. But the skinny was Grandpa Fessler had felt terrible about taking another man’s life, even a sniper’s life. He had asked and received a transfer to work as a medic for the Germans for the duration of the war. It was a skill that served grandfather well when he birthed the first four of his and Grandma Fessler’s children on the farm.
When the war ended, Grandpa Fessler returned to Burgenland, married Will’s grandmother shortly thereafter, and they—like Will’s own parents, Ben and Myra—left the country of their origin for a new life: in Grandpa and Grandma Fessler’s case, first a decade as farmers on the wild Saskatchewan plain of Canada, then, purchasing a more productive general farm north of Edmonton.
Will’s dream centered round a wonderful birdhouse his grandfather had helped Will build when the Ailings were still living in South San Francisco. His grandfather was also a skilled carpenter. He had patiently taught young Will how to saw wood on a penciled line, line up corners so they were flush, and use wood screws and nails and even layer shingles on the roof of the birdhouse.
The setting of the dream was first at his grandfather’s farm north of Westlock, Alberta, starting with Will’s memories of the painfully bright poplar and quaking aspen’s leaves that shimmered in a late summer sun along the southern boundary of the property. Soon, the dream moved to Will’s small backyard in South San Francisco. The mid-sized pine tree grew in a far corner of their yard. In the dream, Will had sensed something was wrong with the birdhouse that Will and his brothers had nailed high up in the tree.
A shrill cry of a bird inside the birdhouse made Will cover his ears. Will knew he had to do something, and remembered uncovering his ears and climbing up and up the pine tree. It was a much taller Jack And the Beanstalk kind of tree in the dream. When he got to the top, he found a full-grown nighthawk trapped inside the birdhouse because it had failed to leave its nest and was now trapped and dying inside it.
Will remembered crying and calling out for his grandfather, and his grandfather running outside onto the small, pink patio at the back of their house on Arbor Drive, and his grandfather cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling up at Will in his thick Austrian accent “What is the matter?”
And when Will had finished telling his grandfather about the nighthawk trapped inside the birdhouse, his grandfather had smiled up at Will with that strong, Disney-like, otherworldly smile of his and said:
“Our time on earth is a wonderful but fleeting thing, William! A house is a fine and a wonderful thing—but it is also just a box of air. We cannot stay in it forever! This bird refused to leave its nest—and now it must die!”
“It can’t die, Grandpa! I don’t want it to die!” Will had cried back.
Then his grandfather had become suddenly stern, and even angry with Will.
“It must!” his grandfather scolded. “All things must die, Will! Take wing, Will! Take wing!”
And Will, still crying, had answered:
“I will, Grandfather, I will!”
And he remembered taking wing from the tree, spreading his arms wide and leaping up towards the blue abyss of sky overhead, only to fall down and down and down through the tree’s unforgiving branches, waking violently from the dream drenched in sweat.
He’d glanced round the deep dark of the Boom Room at his peacefully sleeping companions—Jerry and Billy—and was a little awed he had not awoken them, and could not help but think Grandfather Fessler’s visit from the grave was an omen of things to come.
And a warning, too.
– – –
losing our grip on purpose 