InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 8: Vendetta ❯ Old Granger ( Chapter 85 )

~~Chapter 85~~

~Old Granger~

 

-=0=-

 

 

Glancing into the rearview mirror, Kurt stifled a sigh as he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.

 

Oh, why did he just know that this was a bad idea? From start to finish, no matter how he looked at it, he just couldn't see a good outcome in this. Exactly how Samantha had talked him into it, he still didn't know. Even then, he hadn't been able to get a wink of sleep last night after they'd finally checked into a hotel in town. He'd spent the entire night, inventing scenarios in his head, one right after another, and not one of them ended well for him . . . Oh, no. This felt less like a homecoming visit and more like a time bomb, just waiting to blow up in his face.

 

“Are you sure you know the way?” Samantha asked dubiously.

 

Kurt sighed and turned down the lonely stretch of road—barely discernible these days, and barely wide enough to allow the rented Jeep to pass. “Oh, I'm sure . . .”

 

“But it's so overgrown . . .”

 

Kurt shrugged. “Well, this is all private property, and if he doesn't care to keep his land cleared up, then there isn't much anyone can do. Besides . . . I'm the only one who ever comes out this way, anyway . . .”

 

“He lives out here all alone?”

 

“He's not much of a people-person.”

 

She rolled her eyes but giggled as she opened her cell phone then snapped it closed again. “It's official: we're out in the middle of nowhere. I can't get any kind of signal at all . . .”

 

“You did warn your family about that, right? So they don't worry?” he asked.

 

She nodded. “Yes, I did. I told them that you'd said that there wasn't very good reception out this way. I just wanted to check in on Tanny. She seemed okay when we left . . .”

 

“Hell, everyone was giving her candy. Of course she was okay.”

 

At least there was that, he supposed. The family in question had done their best to hide the alarm that he knew they'd felt when he'd taken Samantha over to the mansion to let them know about their plans. The only thing that had saved them, as far as he figured, was that Kichiro wasn't in the house at the time. Her mother had looked completely panic-stricken for a few moments before she managed to cover it up with a wan smile. Still, he couldn't help but feel as though he were doing something entirely horrible to them, taking their precious one away, even if it was only going to be for a couple days.

 

“I can't believe that by this time next week, I'll be Mrs. Dr. Kurt Drevin . . . That's how it works, right? Mama explained it to me once, but it sounds so awkward.”

 

Kurt chuckled despite himself at the disgruntled tone in her voice. “Hell, I have no idea,” he admitted. Her words had given him pause, though hearing it out loud . . . It was nice, wasn't it?

 

Samantha fell quiet for a moment, staring out the window at the dense foliage they were creeping through. “Doesn't get many visitors, does he?”

 

Kurt grunted, leaning forward to get a better view of a low hanging branch before he attempted to drive under it. “Not really,” he agreed almost absently. “Not surprising, considering how obnoxious he can be . . .”

 

“So tell me more about him,” Samantha prodded gently.

 

“Like what?”

 

She giggled. “Well, anything!”

 

“He . . . uh, he likes whiskey,” Kurt said, unable to come up with something better.

 

“I gathered as much when you bought six bottles of it before we left town,” she quipped.

 

Kurt grimaced and sighed inwardly. “He used to have this bastard of a raccoon for a pet. Little monster would bite me whenever it could and shit in my bed if I didn't catch him before he did it . . .”

 

“A raccoon?”

 

Kurt snorted. “Oh, yeah . . .”

 

She was trying not to laugh; he had to give her that much. She wasn't quite succeeding, but she was trying . . . “In your bed . . .?”

 

“Yes, little demon, in my bed.”

 

“What was his name?”

 

He couldn't hide the grimace from her that time, but the last thing he wanted to do was to admit to her what his twisted grandfather had named the damned beast. “D . . . Doug.”

 

Her mouth fell open. He could see it out of the corner of his eyes. “After your father?”

 

Kurt forced himself to nod. “Sounds `bout right, yeah . . .”

 

She pressed her lips together to contain her amusement that was sorely evident in her quivering nostrils. “W-why . . .?”

 

“Said that the raccoon had that shifty look about him, same as Dad did when he was younger and getting into mischief.”

 

She choked on that, not that he blamed her. He let out a deep breath as the feeling of impending doom grew thicker and heavier in the pit of his stomach.

 

Pulling over with a sigh, Kurt killed the engine and shot Samantha an apologetic sort of glance. “Looks like the end of the road,” he commented somewhat dryly. “We're not far, anyway. Why don't you stay here until I come get you? Let me talk to him first so he doesn't do anything . . . stupid.”

 

She smiled at him and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “I think you're worried about nothing,” she told him, “but if it makes you feel better, I'll wait right here.”

 

He let out a deep breath and nodded, wishing that he could share her eternal optimism, but failing miserably.

 

At least the day was gorgeous, the weather clear and crisp and slightly breezy as he trudged away from the Jeep. He had far too many memories of Old Granger and his particular kind of weirdness to say that he was comfortable with the entire affair. No, he knew better, didn't he? Knew the old bastard much too well to think that this whole venture was nothing but folly. He didn't really blame the old man for the almost apathetic way in which Kurt had been raised. He never really had, come to think of it.

 

Still, he'd realized that Old Granger really had tried with him. He simply didn't really know or maybe he just didn't remember what it was like to have a child, at all. His own father hadn't really talked about him much that Kurt could remember. Maybe he was simply too young. Maybe it just hadn't occurred to Doug Drevin that Kurt might like to hear something about his elusive grandfather. In any case, there really was no use bemoaning it, was there?

 

Back in those days, as the numbness had slowly worn off, Kurt had wondered a few times, what it would have been like, to have been drawn onto his grandfather's lap, to have been comforted just a little. As time went by, though, he'd come to understand that Old Granger's way was to let Kurt blunder and muck through it all, to learn from his own mistakes as well as from his own triumphs. Whether it was falling out of a tree or figuring out a way to build a small bridge to reach the other side of the deep ravine not far from the cabin, he'd always thought that he was alone.

 

Yet how many times had he felt as though someone were watching him, even if he couldn't see him at all? How often had that feeling of isolation been blunted by the subtle knowledge that someone, sight unseen, was nearby? It had been him, hadn't it? Old Granger, in his own way, watching over Kurt . . .

 

And the one time . . . Kurt didn't remember how old he was, exactly, but he thought that maybe it wasn't long after he'd come to live with the crazy old man . . . He'd gotten sick one year—really sick. He couldn't remember much about it; only bits and pieces here and there, but when, at last, his fever had broken, he could remember seeing Old Granger, sitting in the rough wood chair that he always kept near the stove. The memory was hazy with an almost dream-like quality, and while it could have easily been nothing more than that, Kurt knew in his heart that it wasn't. The old man . . . he was crying, wasn't he? Quietly, without a sound to be heard above the ambient crackle of the flames on the hearth . . . Crying and whispering . . . “He's the last . . . the last of m' boy . . . Don't take `im . . . Don't take `im . . .”

 

Then Kurt had fallen asleep again, and by the time he woke up the next morning, the gruff old man was back, wasn't he? Grumbling at Kurt for being lazy, for lying in bed for nearly a week . . .

 

He blinked in surprise as he stepped out of the trees into the clearing where the old cabin stood.

 

The front door was standing open—not surprising since there were only a few windows in the place, and Old Granger enjoyed airing out the place—that was what he called it, anyway—if the weather allowed.

 

A sudden crack erupted around him, and Kurt grunted as his feet were yanked out from under him. A rough hemp net closed over him as he was jerked upward off the ground. Hissing in pain as his forehead smacked against the bottom of a very stout tree branch, Kurt gritted his teeth as the makeshift sack bounced a few more times before slowing to a steady swinging motion.

 

“Eh? Y' showed up just in time to test out my demon catcher!” Old Granger hollered as he thumped out of the house, leaning heavily upon the gnarled branch he used as a cane.

 

Craning his head to the side—extremely difficult since his left knee was digging painfully into his ear—Kurt shot the crazy old coot as irritated a look as he could muster. “Great,” he gasped out. “You going to get me down from here?”

 

The insane old man was too busy, hooting triumphantly over his invention to answer. Shuffling his feet as he did a half-jig around the cane, he was positively triumphant, and Kurt winced when the handmade ropes suspending the net groaned and creaked ominously.

 

“Hey, Old Granger,” he called out, trying in vain to get his grandfather's attention. “Get me down, goddamnit!”

 

“Hold on; hold on!” Old Granger hollered back. “Gimme a second, boy! No damned demon's gonna get past me, no sir!”

 

Grimacing again since he felt pretty much like a sardine packed into a can after processing, Kurt shifted his gaze upward, wondering exactly how a lunatic like Old Granger was allowed out to be such a menace to normal folk . . .

 

It was a simple trap, and Kurt probably should have been ready for it. Just like the silly ones that Wile E. Coyote would think up to trap the RoadRunner, really, and Kurt had fallen for it, which just figured. A simple lever trap that he'd sprung just by stepping on the right thing, he supposed, the damn thing had been hidden beneath a layer of carelessly tossed decaying leaves . . .

 

And he really should have realized that Old Granger wouldn't just lower the damned net back down again, either, but no, he didn't think about it. Landing hard with a dull thud with only the leaves to cushion the impact, Kurt grimaced and grunted and didn't move, slowly assessing the damage. There wasn't much, aside from the sharp pain in his ass, and maybe he deserved that for having let his guard down around Old Granger, in the first place.

 

“I think I liked the powder you tossed in my face better,” he grumbled as he slowly, carefully, pushed himself up, swatting the net away with a grunt.

 

“I thought I learnt you not to sass me,” Old Granger growled, bopping Kurt upside the head with the end of his walking stick.

 

Kurt stood up, bracing his back with his hands and leaning to stretch it out. “Why aren't you dead?” he muttered, slapping the stick away when Old Granger swung it again.

 

True to form, the old loon laughed—a high-pitched cackle full of stale breath and very little sound. “Got too much work to do,” he insisted with a shake of his head. “Damn glad you came out here, boy,” he said suddenly with an almost friendly sort of smile.

 

“You . . . you are?” Kurt demanded, unable to help the instant surprise that registered on his features.

 

Old Granger nodded, letting his gaze sweep the clearing as he pushed the brim of the dusty hat he always wore back on his head to scratch at the sparse hairs on the top of his head. “I'm outta whiskey,” he said. “Hand it over.”

 

Blinking at Old Granger's wiggling fingers, Kurt stifled the urge to sigh. He should have known, right? As if his grandfather would have actually missed him . . .

 

“It's in the car,” he remarked, shaking his head and berating himself for thinking that Old Granger would ever admit that he cared. “I need to talk to you.”

 

“I'm not one for talking,” Old Granger pointed out in a tone that all but called Kurt stupid for not having realized that already.

 

“Yeah, well, you're going to listen, then,” Kurt said.

 

Old Granger slowly turned back toward the cabin once more, muttering under his breath about `citified' youngsters that forgot how to be respectful toward their elders.

 

Kurt stifled the urge to snort since he highly doubted he'd ever actually been `respectful', anyway. Besides, he had more important things to think about, like explaining to Old Granger that he was about to marry one of those demons he tried so hard to avoid . . .

 

 

-OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO-

 

 

“Kurt?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Are you limping?”

 

He didn't falter in his gait as he peered over his shoulder at her. “No,” he replied tersely.

 

Samantha frowned as she followed him along the path he'd forged through the dense foliage.

 

`He is limping just a little,' her youkai voice pointed out.

 

Samantha nodded wanly. `He is,' she agreed.

 

`And he's even tenser now than he was when he left to talk to his grandfather . . . Samantha?'

 

`Yes?'

 

`Maybe he was right . . . Maybe forcing this meeting was a really bad idea . . .'

 

“So . . . did you get the bump on your head the same time you got that limp?” she asked in what she hoped was a neutral tone.

 

“Nope,” he replied almost tersely. “The limp is from being smacked in the shin for `sassing' him.”

 

Samantha bit down on her lip—hard. “Was he at least glad to see you?”

 

Kurt sighed and stopped abruptly. “Not really,” he admitted with a shake of his head. “He did promise that he'd refrain from tossing purifying dust or restraining papers on you . . . and no anti-demon trap nets, either . . .”

 

“Trap nets?” she echoed. Something about the strange expression on his face . . .

 

He grimaced and gingerly touched the swollen lump. “Yeah . . . tested it on me, of course.”

 

Samantha stepped closer and reached out to assess the damage. “I think you'll live.”

 

The look he shot her was almost apologetic, and he tried to smile. “I just . . . If he offends you, I'm sorry in advance,” he mumbled, shaking his head with a decidedly resigned sort of expression on his face.

 

She stared at him for several moments before finally letting her gaze fall away. “Kurt . . . if you really don't want me to meet him, I . . . I don't have to,” she said. “If you really think that he's as bad as all that . . .”

 

“I just . . .” Letting out a deep breath as he raked his fingers through his hair, he grimaced. “He . . . he has a habit of coming off as a little . . .”

 

“Eccentric?” she supplied with a little smile of encouragement.

 

He snorted indelicately. “Obnoxious, is more like it.”

 

She laughed. “But he's your grandfather, and he raised you, right? He can't really be that bad.”

 

“You'd be surprised,” Kurt muttered with a shake of his head. Still, he reached for her hand to tug her along the path.

 

She blinked as they stepped out of the shade of the trees into a bright, sunny clearing. She wasn't entirely sure what she'd expected, but she couldn't help herself as she smiled when she caught sight of the small, rough log cabin. The cracks between the logs were packed with a grayish caulking—Kurt later told her that it was a mix of quick-setting cement and white sand that Old Granger always made him touch up every summer—with deeply recessed windows that weren't any larger than a foot square set into the wood. They were so deep, in fact, that Samantha suspected that the walls were likely two logs wide, and it struck her that the cabin must have been a rather dismal place to have spent so much time in his youth . . .

 

But the patches of grass that grew here and there were cropped short, probably by the two goats picketed nearby, and a large stack of roughly chopped wood stacked against the nearside of the cabin. Glancing at Kurt, she smiled again, remembering their discussion about working out that they'd had so long ago. He'd chopped a lot of wood in his lifetime, too, hadn't he? That thought only made her smile a little more . . .

 

He must have figured out what she was thinking, or at least figured out what she was looking at, because he snorted loudly and shook his head. “I'm not chopping wood for that crazy old man,” he mumbled under his breath.

 

“Can he do it, himself?”

 

Kurt shrugged. “Wouldn't know. Once I was old enough to move out, I hired someone to haul him wood in the fall.”

 

It struck her then, how much he did care about the man he called Old Granger. Even if he said he didn't, his actions spoke louder, didn't they? She shook her head at her own silly thoughts. Of course he cared about his grandfather. Kurt . . . he was too good a man not to, wasn't he?

 

Her thoughts were cut short, however, her attention shifting when a stooped over man leaning heavily on a rough cane stumped out of the cabin. She could feel her eyes widen as she got her first real glimpse of the man. Hidden in the billowing folds of a loose robe fashioned out of a rough-looking, drab olive green cloth, he stared at her with curious abandon from the darkened recesses of his hat brim.

 

Kurt was the first to speak, breaking the impromptu silence that had fallen. “Old Granger, this is Samantha. Sam, this is Old Gra—”

 

The old man's laughter cut Kurt off—a brittle sound as thin and rusty as Kurt's had been the first time she'd heard it. He shuffled closer, his feet and cane creating an erratic cadence as his continuing laughter resounded. “Caught you a fairy, did you?” he said without bothering to glance at Kurt.

 

“Caught me a—what?” Kurt blurted.

 

Samantha giggled. It was the first time she'd ever been called a fairy, and it was rather novel, really . . . “A fairy?” she repeated brightly.

 

Old Granger nodded slowly, his laughter dying away though his eyes remained aglow. “Seen a lot of fairies these days,” he remarked. “You're the first girly fairy I've seen in ages . . .”

 

Kurt shot his grandfather a droll stare. “She's not a fairy; she's a—”

 

“I ain't blind, boy!” Old Granger cut in, lifting the end of his cane high enough to whack Kurt in his good shin.

 

“Ow, damn it!” Kurt hissed. “Hit me again with that, and I'll shove it right up your—”

 

“You've met other fairies lately?” Samantha cut in pleasantly before Kurt could finish his dire threat.

 

“Fairies? Sure. Just last winter, one what looked like you but male helped me find m' choppers.”

 

“Oh, hell,” Kurt grumbled.

 

Samantha was intrigued. “He looked like me? How?”

 

Old Granger shot Kurt a calculating glance then scratched his chin through his scraggly gray beard. “Oh, you know. Silver hair . . . `em ears . . . Least-a-ways, he said he was a he. Thought damn sure he was a she—a real purty she . . .”

 

Samantha pressed her lips together as she struggled not to laugh out loud. Only five men in her family fit that description, and since it was a fair bet that Mikio hadn't gone out to look for her, that only left four, and she highly doubted that any of them would have found even the basest amount of humor in being mistaken for a woman . . .

 

“You, boy . . . how'd you manage to convince a fairy to marry you?” Old Granger demanded, jabbing the end of the cane at the ground near Kurt's toes.

 

“Just lucky, I guess.”

 

Old Granger shook his head and slowly turned to hobble away. “Girly . . . come here,” he called over his shoulder.

 

She shot Kurt a questioning glance. He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head, telling her that he had no idea what Old Granger wanted, but when he moved to follow, too, Old Granger thumped the cane on the ground. “Not you, boy. Just her.”

 

Samantha wasn't entirely sure what to make of that, but she didn't argue, and neither did Kurt though she couldn't say that he looked like he was at all pleased.

 

Still, she couldn't help but be a little intrigued by whatever it was Old Granger wanted to show her. Stepping into the low hanging shadow cast by the side of the cabin, she felt the immediate coolness hit her, enough to bring a rise of goosebumps to the surface of her skin, and she quickly rubbed her arms to force them back.

 

“Met me a girly fairy once,” Old Granger commented at length as he stumped along with the help of his cane. “Purtiest thing, you know?”

 

Samantha frowned but didn't speak out loud. `A girly fairy . . .? A youkai?'

 

“'At was back in the ol' days—back when I had me some real choppers.”

 

Biting her lip, Samantha tried not to smile. Kurt had told her that he tended to call his teeth `choppers' and that he also had a really bad habit of taking them out at odd times, too.

 

“Had this . . . this long red hair—red like the sunset, you know? Real red, not that mucked-down brown-red, neither . . .” He hobbled his way around a fallen tree trunk that looked as though he'd been hacking away at it, bit by bit. Samantha followed in silence, waiting for the old man to continue his tale. “. . . and these eyes—weren't green or blue, but sorta between . . . Could look straight through you, and sometimes . . .” He wheezed out another airy chuckle and slowly shook his head. “But she'd smile, you see? She'd smile . . .”

 

Samantha frowned as they stopped beside a small wooden cross fashioned out of two sturdy tree branches that had been lashed together with what looked to be fishing line. Peaceful, wasn't it? Situated below the boughs of a flourishing tree . . .

 

“Died no more `n a few years after she come here with me. I built this place for her, and we was happy, too. It was afore I met the boy's gran'mamma, you know—his gran'mamma weren't no fairy. Anyways, I went huntin' and trappin' and fishin', and she did things around here. Never needed matches in those days, neither. She could start a fire, something fierce, just by starin' at the sticks . . . One winter, though . . . got cold—real cold. Fifty below zero or I'll eat m' hat . . . For a month, straight, without a break, and she never could tolerate the cold. One second, she was there, and the next, she . . . she disintegrated in front of m' very eyes. But I buried her here—what I could gather of her. Used to sit under this here tree and sing . . .” He trailed off, slowly reaching up to remove the tattered hat, showing his respect, Samantha supposed. “A fire bearer, she said she was,” he mumbled with a shake of his head. “You . . .” he said, slowly turning to stare at Samantha, narrowing his eyes—they were violet, too, though a little faded with age—as he eyed her. “You're one of them, ain'cha? A fairy . . .”

 

Samantha bit her lip for a moment, unsure why it was that she was loathe to tell the old man the truth. There was something far more fanciful about the idea of fairies, and she knew damn well that she wasn't one, but . . . but the quiet hope in his eyes . . . Had he spent his entire life trying to find another being like the one he'd lost? A fire bearer—a fire-based youkai, and of course she couldn't tolerate the cold. Being an elemental youkai had its disadvantages at times, and extreme cold . . . That was probably what had killed her . . .

 

`A fairy . . .' And she smiled. “I guess you could say that,” she agreed with a nod.

 

Old Granger nodded, too, a slow grin spreading over his features. “I thought so,” he gloated happily with a triumphant little laugh. “I thought so!”

 

 

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Final Thought fromKurt:

…A fairy …?

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Blanket disclaimer for this fanfic (will apply to this and all other chapters in Vendetta): I do not claim any rights to InuYasha or the characters associated with the anime/manga. Those rights belong to Rumiko Takahashi, et al. I do offer my thanks to her for creating such vivid characters for me to terrorize.

 

~Sue~