Saturday comes, and so does the local paper. The letters to the editor cover a full page. A quarter of them are about us.

Censorship Is Wrong

Our rights as Americans are being silently taken from us by strangers. Our children’s right to read books is a fundamental right and I applaud the kids who came to the school board meeting Tuesday night to fight for the rights of our children. We should support them!
—Nettie Mase, Elm Street

Re: Censorship Is Wrong

When I was young, children listened to their elders. They knew we knew what was good for them. It’s a shame to see kids run loose like this. Their parents clearly have no idea how to raise them.
—Anonymous on Broad Street

That one stings. It makes me think of Dad, because he really didn’t have any clue how to raise me. And it makes me think of Mom, who has enough to worry about without letter writers putting her down.

“Mac? You coming?” Grandad asks. “You and me, taking over the world, kid.”

I put the paper down, put on my sneakers, and walk to the bus stop with him. Something in me wants to hold his hand, which I know I can’t do. Right when I think that, he puts his arm around my shoulder and says, “You’re heavy today.”

Grandad still talks like it’s the 1960s. Heavy means serious.

“Yeah.”

“Heavy is a good way to protest,” he says.

“Sure.”

“It’s the only way things get done around here.”

We play twenty questions on the bus and arrive in the city. Grandad knows the way to the square where the protest is, and I can hear a crowd of people and someone speaking through a microphone. Our kids are our future! I see two teenagers walking in our direction. They both have signs. One says TEACH TRUTH and the other says STOP LYING TO CHILDREN.

“I didn’t bring a sign,” I say.

“Next time, you will. No big deal.”

“What’s the point if I don’t have a sign?”

He looks at me and I can tell he’s done with me being heavy. I’m even done with being heavy myself but I don’t have any other option. I guess some days, or weeks in my case, are just heavy.

We get to the square and the crowd is big. Bigger than I expected. A woman is talking about how young people should learn the truth in school and how Columbus Day is an insult to all of us. Grandad gets a premade sign from a woman who’s handing them out. Actually, he gets two, but when he hands me one, I say no, so he holds a sign up in each hand.

I am too heavy to handle this. The crowd is making me feel like I can’t breathe. There are too many people. Too many strangers. Too many voices talking. Too many thoughts in my head. I don’t belong here.

The woman talks for another five minutes, and I listen and look around and read other signs to keep myself distracted. IF YOU’RE COMFORTABLE LEARNING HISTORY, IT’S THE WRONG HISTORY. CENSORSHIP CAUSES BLINDNESS. FIRST THEY BURN BOOKS; THEN THEY BURN BODIES. The clouds drop rain on us and some people have umbrellas and some start to leave. I turn to Grandad and he’s clapping, signs under his arm, and smiling and he puts his fist in the air.

“I want to go,” I say.

“We just got here,” he answers.

But he sees the look on my face. He puts his arm around me and we walk away from the square.

A block later, he asks, “Did the crowd get to you? Too big? Too loud?”

I nod. We keep walking. The rain falls harder and we’re both soaked.

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why am I scared of everything now? I thought getting older would make me less scared.”

Grandad nods.

I keep talking. “I don’t want to be this scared going into middle school. The other kids will know and they’ll pick on me.”

“Back up, Mac,” Grandad says. “I need you to understand something important.”

“I’ll get beat up and stuff,” I tell him.

“Hear me out on this.”

We keep walking. Grandad points to a bus shelter that’s empty. We go sit in it.

We don’t sit side by side like usual. He straddles the bench and looks right at me, so I do the same.

“Mac, you’re going to be scared of a lot of things in your life,” he says. “It’s a crazy feeling, being afraid, isn’t it?”

“Okay,” I say.

“Listen to me. Are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he says. “I need you to hear to this.”

I nod.

“When I got shipped to Vietnam, I didn’t know what to expect. I was only six years older than you are right now. And I was full of fear.” He clears his throat. “I was afraid of my dad because he was strict. I was afraid of my boss at the restaurant where I worked because he was always making me feel small. I was afraid of girls—all of them. I was afraid of everything. I’d just graduated high school and I was afraid of the future. You know?”

“That’s how I feel,” I say. “Like—I’m twelve and I don’t know anything about anything, so I’m scared of all of it.”

“It gets a little worse,” he says. “I don’t want to scare you, but fear is something that gets worse before it gets better. Anyway, the thing is, well—I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“I’m scared that school is just a series of lies and people just keep repeating them and then we all have to live inside a big world of lies and I can’t live like that, Grandad.”

“That’s why we fight the lies,” he says. He gestures to his protest sign.

I get the urge to cry again. I wish it would go away.

“I see you,” Grandad says, “holding back tears.” He waits a few moments and adds, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What are you so ashamed of?”

I didn’t expect this question, this bus shelter, or this feeling of wanting to throw up. If I threw up now, I think it would be all salt water. I suddenly feel like I swallowed the ocean.

“I can’t talk about that here,” I say. “We’re in public.”

“Public? No one can hear us. We’re alone in a bus shelter.”

“Shame is private,” I say.

“Only if you let it wreck your whole life, it’s private,” he says. “Which is what most people do. I aim to bring you into the light, Mac Delaney. Shame is no way to live. And you have nothing to be ashamed about.”

I can tell he wants me to look at him, but I’m still swallowing the ocean and looking at the pavement.

“Listen,” he says. And then he stands up and yells, out toward the street and the building on the other side of it, “I killed two men in the war and every single day I think of their families! One time, I stole food from a grocery store in North Carolina because I was hungry! When my kids were young, I used to spank them even though they were only doing kid stuff! Sometimes I feel like I was a bad husband because I had all this shame!”

By this time, he’s standing on the curb and has his arms out.

“Grandad!” I yell. “Stop!”

He turns around and says, “There was one night I left your gram because I thought she deserved better than me. I will never forget the look on her face.” He starts to cry. I feel so embarrassed and yet—something else. “She looked disappointed, and I realized I was a disappointment. She said, ‘Marcus, you have two choices. You can face all this stuff and stay or you can keep running from it and leave.’ And let me tell you, Mac, I stayed.”

“Wow,” I say.

“Are you hearing me?”

“Did you really kill two men?” I ask.

“It was war. It’s what war is about.”

“Do you really think of their families every day?”

At this, Grandad starts wailing. I mean like a toddler in a grocery store. He’s not quiet, he’s not curled up in bed. He’s on a city street, strangers walking up and down the sidewalks. I stand up and go to him and hug him. We end up back on the bench, straddling it, and he keeps crying.

When he finally gets control of his breath again, he says, “Your turn.”

I don’t know what to say.

He holds my head so I have to look at him. Tears run down his cheeks, but he’s smiling. At me. Nodding a little like he’s cheering me on. I think of Dad. I’ve never seen him cry. And that makes me cry.

“Your turn,” he says again.

“I don’t like myself,” I say. “I think no one else likes me, either. And I think that if someone likes me, they won’t like me for long because I’m probably like Dad, even though I don’t think I’m like Dad. I don’t ever want to get married and I’ll probably be a crappy father like he is.”

Grandad doesn’t move. No hug. No comment. He just waits for more.

“Uh—I am sick of having to fight about dumb stuff like history! Or censored books! I can’t stand people who don’t want to learn new things! Why do they treat kids like we don’t mean anything? I can’t even make a difference. Not in my school or the world. I’ll never make a difference!”

I look up at Grandad and he’s still cheering me on and crying and smiling and it’s kinda weird, so I look back down again.

“I like Marci but I don’t know what to do about it. She’s so cool. I’m not smart enough for her. Denis told Marci about how Dad left and now I don’t know what to do. How am I supposed to know what to do? And he’s probably mad at me because I got all mad and yelled at him. He didn’t even try to fix it. Like I didn’t even matter!”

I take a few deep breaths. I realize I’m crying, too, now.

“And I hate my dad!” I say. “He lied to me and to my mom and to everyone he ever knew and I never want to see him again! Nobody likes me or wants me, and if I ran away tomorrow, no one would even care!”

“Whoa, Mac. That’s a lot,” Grandad says.

“And I think I’ll never grow up to be as cool as my grandad because he fought in a war and he has confidence I’ll never have! My confidence is fake.”

“It is not,” he says.

“The only reason I fight against Columbus Day is because it makes me sound smart,” I say.

“You are smart.”

“I’m smart up here,” I say, pointing to my head. “But the rest of me is a mess!”

“We’re all a mess,” he assures me.

“I don’t like being a mess,” I answer.

“We’re all a mess,” he repeats. “The biggest lie ever told to children is that the adults around them aren’t a mess.”

“All of them?” I ask.

“Most of them, anyway. I don’t know anyone who wasn’t a mess at some point in their lives. Anyone who says they weren’t is lying.”

I don’t know why this makes me cry harder. I think it’s because the truth is beautiful and like rain—it washes everything.

“Let’s go get something to eat,” Grandad says.

I don’t want to get up. I feel like I could do this all day and into the night. “I have more to say!”

“Nothing we can’t talk about over a good sandwich,” he says. And then he hugs me so tight and I wipe my snot on his shirt and he laughs and wipes his snot on my shirt and then the clouds give way to the sun and the whole scene is over.

I don’t know what just happened, but I know everything is different.