Gruncle Paxton’s Cellar

“Paxton! We leave for Gruncle’s house in five minutes, okay?” Paxton’s mom yelled down the stairs where Paxton and his friends were playing.

“Aw, Mom, do we have to? We just finished building our fort!” Paxton hollered back in despair.

Paxton’s mom clambered down the stairs so she wouldn’t have to keep yelling. She poked her head around the corner. “Sorry, bud, but we have to keep going through his stuff,” she said. “That is a very cool fort, though.”

“But Buzz and LJ just got here!”

Paxton’s mom tapped her watch. “You’ve got two minutes.”_

The boys all put their heads together for a brief caucus, then split apart. Paxton stepped forward, giving his mother his biggest “puppy-dog” eyes possible. “Can Buzz and LJ come along to Gruncle’s place? Please, mom, pleeeeeeeeeeease?!”

“I don’t know …” Paxton’s mom hesitated.

Seeing a crack in her defenses, Paxton laid on the sales pitch. “If they come, then it’ll keep me out of your hair. Plus we can help lift stuff! I promise!”

“Well, it would make the day go by a lot faster for you, that’s for sure. Let me text their mothers.”

“Yessss!” the boys cried in unison and jumped around in victory.

“Are you guys almost ready to go?” Paxton’s dad called down the stairs.

“Almost, honey!” Paxton’s mom said. Her phone dinged twice, and the boys perked to attention as she checked her texts.

“Okay, William and James, your mothers said you can come! You boys grab your water bottles and get your shoes on, I’ll go pack some extra sandwiches for lunch.”

Knowing that they still needed to be on their best behavior, the boys sprung to action and scrambled up the stairs. They worked on double-knotting their shoes and filling their water bottles, then they ran out the door. Paxton was first into the middle seat of the family’s minivan, followed closely by Buzz and LJ.

Buzz and LJ weren’t their real names. Buzz was actually christened William Connor Busby, but his continual close-shaved haircuts, along with his last name pronunciation and the fact that his energy level was always like an electric current, lent him the nickname Buzz. Everyone called him that, except for the grownups who insisted on using his given name. James Lewis Cornell, Jr. was on LJ’s birth certificate, but he was born small and remained the shortest one in class for the first eight years of his life. That’s why people started calling him Little Jimmy. His growth spurt may have come late, but it came vigorously, and he was now a head taller than all his peers. It seemed silly to keep calling him Little, but the nickname was stuck, though now it was shortened to LJ. Luckily, LJ was laid-back as could be, and didn’t mind being tall just as much as he hadn’t minded being short.

Paxton David Palmer was just Paxton, and that suited him just fine.

Buzz and LJ buckled their seat belts on each side of Paxton. Buzz leaned over.

“Where are we going again?” he asked while Paxton’s parents packed the trunk.

“Yeah, and what’s a ‘gruncle?” LJ added.

“We’re going to my great-great-uncle’s house. Or, it used to be his house. He died about a month ago,” Paxton informed them.

“Sorry, man,” Buzz said, patting Paxton’s shoulder.

“Yeah, we didn’t know,” LJ added.

“It’s okay. I mean, he was ancient. He was one-hundred and two, so, I mean, it was his time. My mom is—was—his only relative living nearby, so I got to spend a bunch of time with him. He was kind of a quirky old man, but he was also awesome. He told me all these cool stories, and his house is full of weird antique stuff.”

“I still don’t know what a ‘gruncle’ is,” LJ stated dryly.

Paxton blushed. “When I was really little, and mom said we were going to Great-Uncle’s house, it was just too long for me to say, so I said Gruncle instead. Great-Uncle … grrrr-uncle, get it?”

“Oh, I get it!” Buzz said. “Funny.” His smile highlighted the gap between his two front teeth.

“I like it,” LJ said.

Paxton’s family approached the car, and Paxton’s older sister, Penny, wrinkled her nose when she opened the back door.

“The Dork Squad is coming?” she huffed.

“Sweetheart!” their mother chastised.

Penny rolled her eyes. “Sorry,” she said dryly. “I think I’ll take the way back,” she said, walking around back and climbing in through the open trunk. She quickly plugged in her earbuds and slouched down, scrolling her phone.

“Ready to go, troupes?” Paxton’s dad asked. The boys gave him a thumbs-up, and Penny ignored him (or couldn’t hear him, it was always hard to tell). He nodded and shut the trunk door with a thud then got into the driver’s seat. He reversed out of the driveway and Mrs. Palmer turned around to face the boys.

“So, boys, we’re heading to my late great-uncle’s house in the country,” she chirped. “I think you’ll like exploring there—he owned twenty acres of lakefront and his house if full of treasures!”

“If you define ‘treasure’ as dusty old junk!” Penny piped in from the back.

The boys looked at each other and giggled.

Paxton’s mom continued, “It’s about an hour’s drive, so get comfortable.”

“An hour?!” Buzz exclaimed. “Do you have a movie player or video game or something?”

“Oh, come now, boys,” Paxton’s dad said. “We don’t need any of that stuff when we have six superior devices already in the car.”

The boys waited for the punchline.

“Our brains!” he finished. The boys groaned. You could almost hear Penny rolling her eyes. “No, I mean it. We’ve got all we need up here to entertain ourselves for hours!” He tapped his temple.

Buzz and LJ looked nervous.

Paxton’s mother chimed in, “He’s right. Okay, I’m thinking of an animal.”

Buzz looked at Paxton, confused.

“It’s a game,” Paxton whispered to him. Then he asked his mom, “Does your animal have fur?”

“Yes, yes it does,” she replied.

“Oh! I get it,” LJ said, excited. “Does it have claws or hooves?”

“No, you can only ask yes-or-no questions,” Paxton informed him.

“Okay. Does it have claws?”

“Yes, yes it does,” his mother replied, grinning.

And so it went. An hour zipped by with the countryside as they each took turns (minus Penny) guessing a cheetah and an octopus, a hawk and a dog, and getting stumped by a red-tailed lemur (that was Mr. Palmer’s). Buzz and LJ were surprised when Paxton’s mom announced, “We’re here!”

They turned off the main road onto a gravelly driveway that crunched under the wheels of the van. There were scratchy firs and silky pines standing sentinel on either side of the path, making a jagged horizon against the sky heavy with clouds. A few deciduous oaks and maples softened the skyline with their curvy shaped leaves. The drive wound deeper into the property, and on their left, the boys saw glimpses of water between the tree trunks. At last, the car rounded a bend and the trees parted like a curtain at a play to reveal a large body of water, sparkling in greeting. And there, surrounded by overgrown hydrangea bushes with white flowers the size of volleyballs, nestled a quaint log cabin.

It was unlike any house the friends had ever seen. The log cabin seemed to have started out as a small square building, but over time it multiplied. A hallway had been connected to the main building, and small rooms had been added at random intervals off of it—like the leaves unfurling from an ivy plant. More hallways and rooms had been added on and on, connected by narrow hallways, until it was a labyrinth of squares weaving around the property with chimneys sticking out of the roof at random intervals. Maybe from the sky it would look like an intentional pattern, but from the boys’ perspectives, it was just one mish-mash of rooms and courtyards. And it looked like … adventure.

“Whoa!” LJ whispered, his eyes wide behind his thick glasses.

“When you said your gruncle was quirky, you weren’t kidding!” Buzz exclaimed, running his hands over his fuzzy, short hair. His freckles looked like exclamation points.

“Want a tour?” Paxton asked.

The boys didn’t even answer—they just started running toward the front door.

Paxton’s parents looked at each other and smiled.

“So much for all our lifting helpers,” Mrs. Palmer said with a grin.