by Chris Bauer

The scent of wood smoke and bar-b-cue lingered as summer evening cooled the day. Great Grandpa gazed up into the black velvet summer sky and its dense littering of stars. They shined like diamond stick-pins on black velvet, and he felt he could reach up and touch them.

Michael, the five-year-old grandson of the son he didn’t get along with, shared the porch swing.

"I'm going to build a rocket ship," said Great Grandpa.

Strokes were supposed to damage the brain. But after his, Great Grandpa acquired photographic memories of plans and machinist's drawings, all done in fine pencil with block-letter instructions on onion-skin paper. Fifty years ago he had engineered rocket engines that way, with slide rule and T-square and the Bible-thick engineer's handbook.

The drawings allowed him to be project manager, chief engineer, draftsman, machinist, and assembly crew, all rolled into one. He was useful again.

"Can I fly the rocket ship sometime?" asked Michael.

"No, I don't think so," said Great Grandpa. "But I"ll tell you what. Let's go look at some of my gadgets."

He had built a second garage attached to the first, complete with heating/air conditioning, and a double wide overhead door. He wondered why the large door had been important at the time, but now that he was building a rocket ship, he understood.

Great Grandpa punched in the code to open the door-Ruth's birthday-and the door rumbled upward. Inside the bank of fluorescent fixtures covering the ceiling flickered, hummed, then filled the room with light.

Down the center ran a wide worktable, with half a dozen elaborate constructions that could have been mistaken for abstract sculptures of electrical wire, circuit boxes, vacuum tubes, and brass gears.

He pulled the chair from the wall and invited Michael to stand and take a look.

"Cool," he said. "What do they do?"

"I'm not sure," said Great Grandpa. He knew for certain they were part of a greater work. Maybe it was the time machine he'd been thinking about.

He had been reluctant to start that particular project. With a time-machine he'd be obligated to make the world a better place, and he just didn’t have the energy to think it through.

All he wanted to do was save his buddies at Iwo Jima, stop his little sister from dying of the mumps. Before she died, he would have told his wife Ruth more often how he loved her. He'd be more patient with his sons, especially the one he didn't get along with.

"Grea' Gran'pa?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking."

Great Grandpa walked over to the newest creation on the worktable, a three-dimensional spider web of electrical wire, brass disks, and crowned by a metal plate inside a metal cage.

"You want to see a special trick? But you can't tell anybody. Promise?"

"Promise."

He slid a wire scrap inside the cage and flicked the switch. The wire rippled like it was a mirage, then disappeared.

"Where'd it go?" asked Michael.

"I don’t know," said Great Grandpa.

A boy Michael's age ran up to the open garage, waving a disposable flashlight. "Uncle Paul gave us flashlights. We're playing tag."

"Thanks for showing me your stuff," called Michael as he leapt from the chair and disappeared into the summer night.

It's OK, thought Great Grandpa. If he weren't eighty-six years old, he'd be out there running with them.

* * *

It was the start of autumn with warm days and chilly nights, the time when the fingertips of summer and winter touched. The trees turned gold and red and orange, rustling in the same breeze that carried the scent of dying leaves and changing seasons.

Great Grandpa's neighbors called the police.