You can read me a story, the boy said. Can’t you, Papa?
Yes, he said, I can.
—Cormac McCarthy, The Road
It all started with Animal Farm, this escape of a small boy and an old man from their isolated and unexciting lives into a shared bubble of adventure and fantasy that while it lasted became more real than reality. The nine-year-old boy’s seventy-nine-year-old grandfather had noticed young Timmy’s precocious reactions to movies and bedtime stories so he decided to move beyond the Peter Rabbit-Paddington Bear level normal for his age to something more challenging, also more relevant to his environment (Timmy was being homeschooled by his grandparents in the arts and humanities). His parents Dwayne and Stella ran a farm at Creston BC where they grew a variety of crops and raised cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and rabbits. Since Dwayne was a drunkard who often abused and neglected his livestock, Poppy (as Timmy called his grandfather) knew that the small boy would have no trouble understanding why the animals of Manor Farm rebelled against Farmer Jones in George Orwell’s story.
Poppy didn’t live with his son Dwayne and daughter-in-law. He and his wife Glenda, who had previously been teachers and now in their retirement operated an arts and crafts business out of their small home nearby, picked up their grandson once a week on “Timmy Day” when the child stayed overnight, enjoying meals, learning sessions, movies, games and bedtime stories with them. This ritual had been going on since Timmy had outgrown his unwillingness to be separated from his mother, at about age two. He and his Poppy were, as they liked to say, “two peas in a pod” despite the seventy-year gulf between them. They looked alike: same nose, same color eyes and hair with a mole on the right cheek, and identical storkbite birthmarks on the backs of their necks. They also had similar personalities, desires, and a shared sense of humor. Timmy was very tall for his age. His bones protruded from his slight, angular body, making his skin taut, but his limbs were finely formed and despite his being skinny at present it was apparent he would develop into a well-built handsome man like both his father and grandfather. He was a beautiful child, lithe and graceful with large luminous eyes and a smile that made him into a birthday party sparkler. The two of them had been playing together since Timmy the toddler started “flying leaps” off the bed into Poppy’s arms, sometimes even leaping from the dresser when no other adults were watching. Over the years Poppy taught him baseball, swimming, paddling a kayak and fishing and the boy loved him. They snuggled together in bed while watching Netflix movies or while Poppy read him stories.
Animal Farm was a huge success. Timmy was so excited he couldn’t lie or sit still while it was read to him, almost climbing the bedroom walls and peppering his Poppy with questions – why did the boss pig Napoleon hide a litter of puppies away to raise them himself? In this as in many other aspects of this wise fable Timmy could see that coming events cast their shadow. He wept bitterly over the betrayal of Boxer the faithful horse enabling the pigs to buy another case of whiskey with the money they got from the knacker. However, he was not surprised. He knew about cruelty to animals and about whiskey because his father, like Farmer Jones, was brutal and uncaring when drunk. He took some consolation from the story’s end, predicting Napoleon would not last as tyrant of Animal Farm because he would soon drink himself into ruin.
But Timmy and Poppy had a lot of fun with the book too. Timmy did a killer imitation of Comrade Squealer lecturing the animals on how Comrade Napoleon was always right. Sometimes in Poppy’s 4Runner they sang the revolutionary song “Beasts of England” or broke into the sheep chant of “Four Legs Good Two Legs Bad” that reminded Timmy of the TV cartoon characters “Shaun the Sheep and The Herd.” They made a running joke of referring to each other as Comrade Poppy and Comrade Timmy, praising “the Revolution” and presenting imaginary awards to each other of “Animal Hero First Class.”