Grandma and Her Little Men
by Ed Kratz
My widowed grandmother lived with us when I was young. She walked about, humming some weird tune and mumbling to herself. I thought the mumbling was spells and that she was magical. When I was seven years old, I discovered she really was magical. And I was, too.
One afternoon, I came home from school, and Big Bill Dexter was sitting in a chair in our kitchen. He never came that early, and I wasn’t on my guard.
He snatched me when I passed him and pulled me onto his lap. “The Little Men are going to get you,” he said as his huge hands found every ticklish spot on my chest and shoulders.
I twisted and bent and tried to pry his hand away, but his thick fingers were locked on me. I resisted crying, but a sob escaped.
“Hey, I’m not raising some sissy.”
“Raising?” My mom was a widow. I knew she liked Big Bill. But “raising”? I panicked and struggled harder. Then his grip loosened, and I fell to the floor.
My grandmother marched into the kitchen like a heroic gunfighter. She smiled, snatched a can of beer from the fridge, slammed it down and sat next to Bill.
I stayed on the floor near her.
Big Bill said, “You’ll get dirty on the floor, young man.”
“That floor is cleaner than your whole house,” my grandmother retorted.
“You’re good. Maybe I’ll give you a job cleaning my house. Until I move in here.”
“Hell will freeze over before you move here.”
Bill leaned closer to her. “Old woman, you are not the only one who has power.”
“You have no idea what power I have.” She crossed her arms.
Power? My grandmother and Big Bill?
* * *
I was still thinking about power when my aunt had surgery. She lived alone in another city, and my mother planned to spend a week caring for her. Big Bill would come to watch our house.
I whined to my mother about this and went to the sanctuary of my grandmother’s room.
My grandmother reassured me: “It’s alright, Larry.” She winked at me and whispered, “It’s time.”
Time for what? I wondered. I would find out.
* * *
I managed to avoid Big Bill for most of the week that he stayed. But the last night he was to be at our house, he celebrated my mother’s pending return by drinking several beers and shots.
I retreated to my grandmother’s room. His voice bellowed like a storm blowing, “Larry, get in here.”
I looked up at my grandmother.
She sighed. “I thought this would happen. Don’t worry, we can handle this.”
I stopped at her door.
Bill shouted again.
I didn’t want to go out. But I didn’t want him to feel he could scare me. Not him. No.
“Go ahead,” said my grandmother. “I’ll be there when you need me.”
I walked out.
“Over here, boy,” Bill whispered, and that was scarier than his shouts.
Trembling, I walked forward,
Big Bill pulled me onto his lap. “I’m in charge now. You all belong to me.”
“None of us belongs to you. You’re nothing,” my grandmother said.
I hadn’t seen her come in but, in a way that I didn’t understand, I had felt her presence.
“Old lady, you’ll be lucky if I let you stay here. Don’t look at him. This little baby can’t protect you. He’s not his father.”
“Even now, he’s a better man than you’ll ever be.”
“Down, you helpless old witch.” Bill pointed a hand at my grandmother.
My grandmother clutched her chest.
“I said down.”
She sank into a chair, looking weak and helpless.
My grandmother. Helpless? This time I didn’t care I was sobbing.
“The Little Men,” she said. “Think of the Little Men, Grandson. Think. They’re coming for him.”
I slipped off his lap.
“Get back here,” Bill said. “You can’t help her; she’s done for.”
“Little Men,” I said. Little men, I thought.
I felt my grandmother whispering to me a string of words I couldn’t understand, but I could see images of little men, Little men a bit larger than ants, and they were on Bill, and they had picks and axes and spears, and they attacked, digging and chipping and stabbing at just the spots where he had tickled me.
Little men, I thought. Get him, I thought. Just as his hands had run all over me, I saw them now, sticking their axes and spears into Big Bill. Working. Working.
Now it was Bill, screaming. And Bill was running his large, sweaty hands over his body, his belly, his chest, rubbing, rubbing and screaming, but neither his hands nor his screaming had any effect. Until, at last, he slid off the chair, onto the floor on his back with his big belly vibrating like a beached whale.
Right after he fell, I could see some normal return to my grandmother. Her smile was full now, and warm. She spoke in a whisper but as speech, not as a voice in my head. “You did it, Grandson.”
“Grandmom.”
She stood up. She held her chest. But she stood up. “We’ll call emergency.”
“How are you? Your heart?”
“My heart is strong. Not as strong as yours, though.”
I ran into her arms, and she hugged me tight. She whispered. “You’ll not speak of this.”
“The Little Men?”
“Nobody will see them. Nobody. But we saw them. And someday you’ll understand. Now, hand me the phone and get me a beer.”
“A beer?”
“If I’m dying, I want to die happy.” She sat back down.
I brought the beer over. She waved for me to sit next to her. She held her hand out and motioned for me to do the same. I put my hand on the table, and she squeezed it so tight I felt she would hold me forever, and I smiled back.
Copyright © 2026 by Ed Kratz
