37.

"Grandpa?"

Grandpa Chuck recognized my voice immediately. He got up and turned around, "Hey! How've you been, Paul. It's been ages."

"Well, OK, I guess," I said brightly.

"Hey," Chuck yelled at someone else, "I'm still waiting on those damn peanuts... How's the family been? The funeral must have been terrible."

"Yeah, it was. I feel like there's nobody in my family I can deal with anymore. I don't know. It's been hard."

"It's been hard for you?" the smile drooped off of Grandpa Chuck's old face. "I'm dead, Paul. Don't tell me about hard times." He stared into the television's warm glow for a second, then the smile returned. "How's your brother doing, Paul? He was always such a successful boy."

"Yeah," I said. "He's doing well. Still making the big bucks."

"It's hard to be miserable when you've got money." His expression turned serious. "Let's go for a walk," he said, motioning toward the front door.

On our way a short server carying a bucket of peanuts on a servers tray stepped in front of us. Grandpa Chuck smiled and winked at her, took out a peanut, and walked around her to the door.

Outside it was almost airless, or the air was so full of dust and sand that I could barely breathe. I started coughing, and Chuck patted me on the back. We tripped over several rows of little mounds on the ground invisible in the awful green fog laying low around our ankles - I took the top off of one with my foot then lost my balance and went down.

"Fuck." Grandpa Chuck shook the dirt out of his shoes. "I always forget about those things."

"What the hell?" Every now and then I got a glimpse of the mounds through the swirling fog - little mounds of black dirt.

"Those are the sentries," Chuck said. "You're not supposed destroy them, too much."

I got up and shrugged. "So what's it like--being dead."

"I don't know," he said. "Marginally shittier than being alive, but not quite as bad as going to that other place." He pointed upwards with his eyes. "At least here I have a job. That takes up some of the time."

"A job?"

"Everybody has to go down to the salt quarry two days a week and put in their time," he said. "Here, at least. The guys below us put in three, the guys below them put in four, you get the picture."

"Do you get paid?"

Grandpa Chuck laughed. "Yeah, I get paid. I get paid in peanuts and rodeo TV shows. What about you, Paul. How's Grod treating you?"

"You know Grod?"

"Know him?" he laughed, "We used to run a butcher's shop back at home, before you came along. It was great, steak all the time, and on the weekends we got drunk and picked up women."

"Damn," I said, "A butcher's shop? Like cutting up cows and stuff, right?"

"Hell yes. And I never met a man that liked cuttin' up livestock like Grod did."

"I can imagine." I wasn't kidding, either.

"So where's Grod now?" Grandpa Chuck struggled to light his pipe in the rushing wind.

"I don't know," I said.

"You don't know?"

"He said he'd be back in a couple weeks," I said.

"Oh for fuck's sake," said Chuck. "That fucker's going to get himself killed." A bell started ringing buzzily, under the noise of the wind. "Uh-oh," said Grandpa Chuck. As he spoke, the ground in front of me disappeared, and I found myself looking down into nothingness. Grandpa Chuck pointed into the void. "See that?" he said. I nodded, stepping back from the edge. "That's the gulf of tomorrow, Paul."

"The what?" Instead of responding, Grandpa Chuck put his hands against my back and shoved me over the edge. The blackness enshrouded me, then slowly parted as I opened my eyes and awoke to the smell of bacon.

"You hungry," asked Larry from the kitchen.

I started to say something, but then a feminine voice from the other side of the couch answered in my place. "Hungry for some more of that lovin'," she said.

"How about you, Paul?" he called.

"What?"

"You Hungry?"

"For some lovin?" I asked. "No."

Larry shrugged. "Well, how about bacon and eggs?" I sat up and rubbed circulation back into my legs.

"Yeah, I can do bacon and eggs," I said.

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