PART III

  GIANTS IN ROME

  Pausanias, Ancient Geographer

  “The Celts are the tallest people in the world. They rush at their adversaries like wild beasts, full of rage and temperament, with no kind of reasoning at all; even with arrows and javelins sticking through them, they were carried on by sheer spirit while their life lasted. Some of them even pulled the spears they were hit by out of their wounds and threw them back."

  CHAPTER 15

  WHEN IN ROME

  As Grandpa Jack talked about the cave in Greece, I remember being speechless. He told the story with such vividness that not a single detail was wasted on me as he described it. I couldn’t believe what he went through. That night, while lying in bed, Darby’s insecurities questioned the day’s details.

  “It’s puzzling, isn’t it?” Darby said.

  “Puzzling?” I questioned her over what I thought was her poor choice of words.

  “Puzzling, you know, as in confusing, I mean. Don’t you find it all a little suspicious?”

  “Darby, you're always suspicious of everything. Knock it off and go to sleep.” I insisted. I wasn’t going to allow her to rob me of the visuals of such a juicy story – not that night. The story was becoming more and more a part of erasing the sadness over the death of our parents. I wasn’t in shape to allow her to pull me back into the state we had been living in for the last year.

  But Darby didn't listen to me. “It almost seemed difficult for him to tell us some of those things. Like maybe, he was making it up as he went along.”

  “Of course it was hard to tell,” I suggested. “How would you feel if someone you trusted betrayed you like that? Knowing that, you know, two people died because of something you did.”

  I had used death to silence her. She hadn’t connected the two deaths in the story to death in our lives and what it had done to us. I knew she hadn’t thought about it that way.

  Bayne had been a trusted friend to Grandpa Jack. Our grandfather opened himself up to Bayne and then felt betrayed by him. Darby knew exactly how it felt to be betrayed. She felt this way about our parents. She was hurt, and she felt betrayed by their deaths. She was smarter now. She protected herself against such hurt. She wasn’t going to feel that pain inside of herself anymore.

  I continued, “He felt responsible for the deaths of those two men. Grandpa was left to clean up the mess while his partner was off reaping the rewards. That had to be difficult.”

  I knew Darby was still angry that she had to clean up the mess left by the death of our parents. As that twenty-eight-second older sister, she felt responsible for taking care of herself and me. Although I didn’t need her to do it. She knew exactly how the families, especially the children of the two dead men, had felt. She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t control the sadness that came over her that night. I wouldn't be able to see her cry in the darkness of the room, but I had a clue because I knew the tell her tears had. She wouldn't make a sound while she cried. She had become good at it. Many nights, she would silently cry in our room. When she thought I was asleep, I would hear her asking, begging our parents to come back and rescue us. They were calls for help that went unanswered. Her desperate cries were hard to hear and would often bring about my tears. I hated it when that happened. I wanted to be tough and brave. I knew my cries were more about my helplessness in being able to protect her from what she was feeling. It would be an ongoing helplessness I would face most of my life when it came to my sister. I wanted to be more to her than that younger brother. I wanted to be the one to save her.

  Darby would tell me she wondered if Gramma Louise and Grampa Lewis felt the way she did. Betrayed? Did they feel like they had been left holding the bag with no help whatsoever from Grandpa Jack and Grandma Mimi? Darby’s feelings of anger and betrayal colored her feelings for our grandfather. She fought buying into his history of giants. She wasn’t giving in. She’d focus her anger on him as if he were the enemy.

  She’d say she felt foolish for even allowing a single moment of belief to enter her thoughts. She wasn't easily persuaded by bits of fantasy, and his stories did not lend themselves to anything she could rationalize.

  She wanted her reservations to leave her. She was tired of feeling the anger, the betrayal, and tired of having to be the rational one. She convinced herself that she wanted to hear more of his story for no other reason than to be able to divulge what she was sure was still hidden beneath the surface of her grandparents’ distance from her dead parents. The more she thought about it, the more she became intrigued with everything her grandfather was sharing. It was not the story she had expected, and it was not a story she was ready to believe, but I knew, for her own reasons, she was growing interested in the stories he was telling. I hoped she’d eventually find her own resolution in them.

  The next morning, Darby and I were up the earliest we had been since we first arrived on the farm. I couldn't wait to hear more about what Grandpa Jack had written. Unfortunately, that morning, the story would have to wait. Grandma Mimi had asked us to take on some of the morning chores on the farm. Some things needed to be taken care of before there was time to jump back into the history of giants. There was feeding Oyster and letting Romeo out of his stall into his penned yard. Plus, there were eggs to be gathered, chickens and a turkey to be fed, and the chicken coop needed to be raked. On top of that, there were the household chores like making the beds and breakfast, and the cleaning of the breakfast dishes. It seemed like it would be forever before we finished with all the chores.

  Darby and I figured that if we split up the work, we would be done twice as fast. So Darby had the chickens and the coop. I would take care of the animals in the barn. I went and fed Oyster and let Romeo out. While raking the stalls in the barn, I thought about Grandpa Jack's journey to Greece. As a reader, I enjoyed losing myself in the stories I read. I hated nearly every subject in school but enjoyed all reading. This was my way to escape. I allowed Grandpa Jack’s stories to take me away from my situation, just like I had with all the other books I read during the last year.

  It was that feeling of escape that I enjoyed the most. I could let go of all my worries and all my sadness by simply picking up a book and allowing the words on the page to take me on any adventure I choose. I could be a pirate, a vampire, a wizard, or even a giant hunter. Grandpa Jack’s story was feeding that need within me.

  I began to understand my grandpa. I no longer questioned what I heard about my grandparents before coming to the farm. I trusted Grandpa Jack. I also felt sorry for him. Did Grandpa Jack really allow Bayne to take all the credit for the bone discovery? Would he allow Bayne to continue to gain all the fame associated with the quest? I was certain that Grandpa Jack would end up the hero. I wanted Darby to feel the same way.

  My quest to ensure Darby believed as I did led me to think up opportunities to get back into that cabin and get that map. I was sure the map was real. I thought it was what Darby needed to believe in all that their grandpa was telling us.

  That same morning on the farm, Grandpa Jack had sent Fitch into town to buy feed for the animals. This was usually something Grandpa did himself. He enjoyed his time in town and at Smitty’s store. Mimi would tell me that with us on the farm, his priorities shifted. Instead of jumping in the truck and heading to town, he was busy rushing through his own chores. He wanted to be ready when we came to him to read more from his journals. Mimi was keen on her husband’s rushing around that morning. She knew that Fitch going into town for feed was him keeping his chores to a minimum. She was glad to see him coming around. He no longer avoided us. She was grateful that he finally had someone new to talk to. She had hoped for a while now that he would finally be able to put the past behind him. Knowing this, she made sure Fitch was wise to what she had hoped would come. Fitch knew this was just what Jack needed to move to a new place in his life. Things seemed to be falling into place, but they both knew it was a simple solution with complicated issues and layers.

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  With everyone rushing through them, the chores ended up being done well before breakfast that morning. Grandpa got up from the breakfast table and went over to the cabinet in the living room, where he kept the journal, he was reading. He grabbed the journal and walked out the front door to the porch. This was our cue. We knew it was time for us to move quickly.

  The sun was bright that morning. I remember pushing the screen door open and being struck by the blinding white light of the early morning sun in the east. Grandpa Jack had his eyes closed when we got out there. The summer morning sun is a feeling that is hard to forget. There is the coolness from the night still in the air that zaps your skin with its freshness. Then the sun's bright, heated light hits your face. It forces your eyes closed as your head soaks up the heat of its bright light. I can still see my grandfather from that morning with his eyes closed, lost in whatever thought he had as he took in the warmth of the sun. It is a picture I can see vividly. I wondered what he was thinking. More than that, I've done the same thing through the years in bright summer morning sun, emulating that picture in my head as I let the sun penetrate my thoughts with a warming vision of what I was thinking myself.

  I remember him having the slightest upturn in his mouth. I remember it as a smile. A smile not meant for us, but nature. I chose to think he was happy in that moment, and that slight smile was evidence of it. It was the first smile I knew from my grandfather. Clearly, not a man filled with smiles, his downturned mouth was his calling card. One who called out fear to anyone he came across, including his two grandchildren.

  As both Darby and I swallowed the last bites at the breakfast table and threw down our forks, the sounds of the action danced in Grandma Mimi's head. Years later, she would retell me her side of the story, that anticipation of the slammed screen door. She hated that sound; she said she would scrunch her face up in preparation for the sound. Over the years, she said it finally reminded her of both her grandchildren out the door as kids in carefree excitement that the day would hold for the playfulness of the day.

  The slamming of the screen door by us kids reminded her of her own son when he was young and would scurry out the front door of their old house in Windsor. She smiled at the warm memory, then shook it off in her head, threw a scrap of bacon to Duchess, who was curled up again on her pillow at Mimi’s feet. Duchess chomped the bacon in mid-air and settled herself back to a resting position.

  Out on the porch, the three of us settled into our usual spots on the bench, the giant oak tree shading us from the bright morning sun. There was an even breeze blowing through the trees on the hill that made a whishing sound like running water in a stream. The leaves on the trees danced to the wind like ruffled feathers and resembled waves on the sea as their green tops turned up to their lighter green underside.

  Grandpa opened the book and flipped over to a page that was covered with black and white photos. There was a picture of the Roman Coliseum, St. Peter’s Basilica, Grandpa and Grandma in front of the Trevi Fountains and another picture of a university. I quickly scanned the photos for details. Grandpa was quick to turn a page with photos to get back into what he had written. Without skipping a beat, Grandpa started up his story again.

  “From Athens, Grandma Mimi and I traveled by boat to Italy and then by train to Rome. I can remember the Mediterranean with its turquoise-colored water like the jeweled stone out in the Arizona desert, and how tranquil the setting was for us to put the experiences of Greece behind us. Grandma was confident that we had been lucky. I, on the other hand, could think of nothing but the losses we suffered. The two dead men and their families, and the failure of our field study, were all I could think about. I couldn’t see anything positive about the experience in Greece. I knew that I had to return home to the university back in the U.S. at some point, and I feared I would be ridiculed. I also had no idea where in the world Bayne was, and it worried me.

  With Mimi’s arms wrapped around me on the deck of the boat and Mum safely riding in stowage on the ship, we crossed the Mediterranean. Mimi asked me to let the past be in the past. She wanted nothing more than for us to move on when we arrived in Italy. She was concerned for me, and I knew it. So I put on a brave face. I had to try and move forward. With Greece at our backs and Italy ahead of us, I tried. By the time we finally made it by train to Rome, it was like a lifetime had passed, and it was like we were in a different world. Heavy with Italian meals in me, I allowed the beautifully rich countryside and towns we passed by train to wash over me. I quickly allowed myself to get lost in the moment in Italy. I had always wanted to take Mimi to Italy. She had always wanted to see the place her parents had come from. It was a dream for both of us and a pleasant distraction from Greece.

  When we arrived in Rome, we were able to take up residence in an apartment. We had planned to be in Italy for a couple of months. We were both going to do some of our research at the famed University of Rome La Sapienza. On the train ride to Rome, we had decided it would be more economical for us to find an apartment when we arrived than to stay in a hotel. Luckily, we were able to find an apartment near the university that was in a building that rented to students. The building was within walking distance of both the university and the Termini train station. It was perfect.

  With our limited resources, we lived as frugally as possible. We ate pasta with garlic and oil for probably a month. Grandma Mimi often walked down to the market square to buy as much as she could for as little as possible. We splurged on nothing. Fortunately, everything we ate in Italy tasted better than anything we had ever eaten anywhere else in the world.

  Our apartment was small. It was one room that included a desk, a kitchen table, chairs, a bed, and not much more. The entire apartment was one room. The kitchen was in one corner and comprised of only a butcher-block counter, a small sink, an ice cooler, and one burner for a stove. The toilet and the shower were down the hall and shared by the other apartment dwellers on the floor. The apartment had just one window that looked out to an alley below and another apartment building across the alleyway. It was small and humble, but Mimi had the apartment feeling like a home in no time at all.

  Before long, things seemed normal for us. We were both deep in our own studies, writings, and making the most of our stay in Italy. The University of Rome La Sapienza is a large university and one of the oldest. It was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, and with its vast libraries and museums, we had plenty to keep us busy with our interests. We relaxed with nothing looming over us. We had time and enjoyed it. We were not due back at our university for teaching until the fall semester.

  I enjoyed developing my studies of the great Roman Empire. What has made the Roman Empire so impressive is the fact that so much of its history was documented. We have great examples of the Romans and their architectural and cultural achievements: the Coliseum, the Parthenon, their use of the arch in architecture, and their complex aqueducts. It is the fact that the Romans had taken the time to document so much of their history that has put them at the forefront of the ancients. Most notably, three ancient Roman historians account for the writing of most of the ancient Roman history: Titus Livius or Livy, Sallustius Crispus or Sallust, and Octavius. The writings of these three, plus many other ancient Roman historians, including Julius Caesar himself, have allowed the world to better understand and appreciate what the Roman Empire was able to accomplish. Of the nearly 140 books of history written on ancient parchment by Livy alone, 35 of his books are still intact to this very day.”

  Grandpa Jack turned a page in his journal but stopped to say, “Keep in mind what I am about to tell you is just that – documented history of the Roman Empire. It is not legend or lore, just passed on by generation after generation in an oral history. It is documented history. This is an important fact for us to remember. It is their history of their conquests, their battles, and even their losses as told by the Romans themselves. This is relevant to our story in that the Romans documented their battles with giants.

  In addition to their history with giants, the Romans documented their discovery of remains from giants. Romans were, in fact, the first actual paleontologists and had some of the first museums and halls of antiquities of any civilization. Both the ancient history and ancient paleontology of the Roman Empire have the interwoven history of giants included in it. The description of the barbaric giants and their weapons is told in graphic detail in the historical accounts of the Romans. There is no question that these giant warriors existed. It is factually documented history that dates as far back as 397 B.C. in the great Roman text. Furthermore, it would also serve to describe Rome’s great fascination with giants that would not end until the final collapse of the Roman Empire.”