Stanley approached the old man's bungalow with a sense of awe and mystery, as always. The place was like an abandoned structure. The shutters were rusty and loose, and Stanley figured a good storm would likely tear them right off the house. Once yellow with white trim, the home now sported a yolk-like color, with algae festering between the slabs of siding. He heard Gramps once say that the exterior was made of asbestos, which could be dangerous.

The yard was a wreck, with tall grass that reached up to Stanley's knees; the lawn looked like it hadn't been mowed in a month. Stanley always offered to cut it for him, but he insisted on doing the work himself, with a push-mower that looked like it was forty years old.

Doris ran up the front steps onto the tiny porch. At the door, she lifted her front paw and scratched. Bearing the imprints of many of the dog’s previous visits, the once-white door eased inward and Doris cautiously entered. Stanley followed and was engulfed by the dimness of the living room. When his eyes adjusted, he moved toward the kitchen, where he heard Doris's nails on the linoleum tile floor. Advancing through the dining room, Stanley felt like the air was heavy, foggy...like years of cooking fumes had been permanently trapped in the house, creating its own little atmosphere.

The kitchen was markedly brighter. Shards of sunlight parted the stagnant culinary vapors and illuminated the kitchen table, where an old coffee tin lay on its side, having spilled its contents: not ground beans, but rusted nails, nuts, bolts, marbles and a heap of intertwined rubber bands across the surface. Gramps was standing at the window, the one that faced the corn fields. He was so still that Stanley wondered if it was possible for old people to die standing up.

Doris whined with delight as she pranced around Gramps's feet, but he paid her no attention. Stanley said nothing but stared at the old man with growing dread. Maybe his heart had just stopped working, right here in the kitchen. There was a cup of coffee on the counter. Gramps always took it black. No cream, no sugar. He said he learned to drink it that way in the army. Stanley supposed this was true, although he had no way of validating it. Gramps said that in the army "...you got what you got and you didn't complain. When you were lucky enough to get a treat like hot coffee, you accepted it and were thankful." He also said that they rarely ever got cold water; that most of the time it was warm or “Damn well hot!” Then again, Gramps was known to embellish a story or two in his time.

No steam rose from the dark liquid, indicating that Gramps may have been in this position for a while. Stanley moved behind his grandfather, who now seemed like some unknown entity that had crept into the house from the woods. Some kind of space creature, right out of one of his comic books. It was well documented that they could shape-shift, or change forms to look like anything they chose, blend in. Maybe this wasn't his grandfather at all, but some extraterrestrial that had donned his skin as a disguise. As this idea ripened in the boy's mind, his pulse quickened.

At the counter, Stanley noted the spilt sugar bowl on its side. He touched the coffee mug. It was cool. Of course, it was; an alien wouldn't know what to do with a cup of coffee. Gramps had probably been in the middle of fixing it when the intruder caught him by surprise. Maybe it was the kind that infiltrated the brain. It might take hours or days before it discovered how to manipulate the limbs of its host.

Doris had stopped winding between Gramps' legs and curled up into a ball on the floor and sighed. Stanley crept back around the being by the window, toward the splayed blinds. Before peering outside, he looked back at the old man. His lips were slightly parted and appeared dry. His white beard was in need of a trim and it had crumbs embedded in it, just below his mouth. Looked like toast.

At the window, Stanley saw the dirt road that led to the right – east – up to his home. To the left and west, the road ran downhill, where it became a tiny bridge that spanned a narrow creek before climbing upward again. It eventually led to a small clearing by a fishing pond.

Stanley followed Gramps' gaze. He had been looking straight through the blinds, into the corn stalks. To Stanley, it was just a thick maze of green. There might be more creatures out there.

"Muskrat."

Stanley spun around and fell backward into the blinds. Doris jumped up and began to wag. "Jesus, Gramps!"

"Hiya, girl," the old man said to the dog. She began to lick his hands as he bent down to pet her. He looked at Stanley. "Don't take the Lord's name, boy."

"Sorry, but you scared the crap out of me." Gramps allowed Stanley to use such language in his presence, but Mr. Reece would've been stricter. His mother never would have tolerated it.

"What, did you think I was dead?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Can't die standing up, Muskrat."

Stanley got to his feet and brushed off his bottom, convinced there must be all sorts of dust and grime on the tile floor. He peered through the blinds. "What were you lookin' at?"

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Gramps patted Doris' head and stood back up. "Not sure. Somethin' movin' in the field. In the stalks."

"Probably deer."

"Too early for deer. They don't come around till night, when they know none of us humans'll be around."

"Nut-uh, I saw em' in there before, during the day," Stanley rebutted. "Saw them yesterday. They weren't even scared of me, just turned and walked away."

Gramps scratched his beard. "Well, you stay away from them. Might be sick. Wonder if they can get rabies...guess so. Anyways, this wasn't deer. This thing moved strange. Big as hell, too."

"Maybe it was a space giant."

"Don't be a wise-ass, Muskrat."

Looking surprised, Stanley said, "Hey! You can't say that!"

Gramps wiped his mouth with a napkin. "Can too. It's called freedom of speech."

Stanley scanned the field across the road from the old man's house, trying to detect any movement. "Hey Gramps, why do you call me Muskrat?"

"You know why, Muskrat. Why do you want me to tell you again?"

The boy remained fixed on the field beyond the window. He shrugged.

"Well, alright...when you was little – just a tyke, now..."

"What's a tyke?"

"Hmm? It means little, like a toddler."

"Oh."

Gramps picked up a piece of uneaten toast lying on the counter beside the coffee cup. "Anyways, your parents named you Stanley, after your dad, but you made sure to tell everybody that you didn't want to be called Junior."

"And my middle name, Gary, is after you," interrupted the boy.

"Right. Except that I'm Garrett. They gave you Gary, just to make it a little different. So, I figured I'd give you a nickname, that way you wouldn't have to worry about having me or your dad's names."

Stanley nodded, knowing the story all too well, but relishing when Gramps told it.

"As you got a little older, you were goin' down to the pond to fish so much, and you were sneaky about it, that I thought you seemed just like a muskrat." Stanley chuckled. "Your Ma didn't like me callin' you that, so I only did it when it was just you and me. It was like our little secret." He broke the toast in two and tossed a half to Doris, who hungrily accepted. "I'll always call you that because it reminds me of your Mom."

"I miss her," said Stanley.

There was a significant pause in their conversation as the boy's words seemed to linger in the air like a tangible thing, commanding attention, before finally dissipating. Then Gramps said, "Me too, boy."

Stanley turned from the window. "Well, I came to check on you. Aaaaand I don't see anything out there, in the field. Aaaaand you’re alive and all. Have to be going."

"How's your Pop?" asked Gramps.

Raising his eyebrows, Stanley replied, "Good. I mean, he seems good to me."

The old man licked his lips and his tongue found one of the crumbs in his beard and brought it into his mouth. Stanley wondered how long it had been there. "He still drinkin' a lot of beer?"

"Well, he's still drinkin' it, but I don't know if it's a lot or not. I don't count them." Stanley didn't have to...he knew his father consumed quite a few every night. It was evident not only by the accumulated cans in the recycling bin but by his father's slurred speech, but Stanley didn't want to get his father in trouble. Gramps was his dad's dad, but he had genuinely cared for his mom. It occurred to Stanley that maybe Gramps felt like it was his duty to watch over Stanley, like maybe that was a promise he had made to his daughter-in-law.

Gramps fed Doris the remaining half of toast. "Mm-hmm...well, if he ever acts funny, your dad-”

"Funny?"

"Don't interrupt, Muskrat. Yeah, funny – ya know, weird, strange - then you just come and get me, okay?"

"Okay. Well, I have to be goin' Gramps," said Stanley, moving toward the dining room.

"Where you headed?"

"Me and Doris are gonna check and see if any meteors came down on our property last night."

"Meteors?"

"You didn't see it? Came down just off the farm, I think. In the woods. Pop and I saw it."

Gramps followed the boy through the house to the front door. He waived his hand through the air in a gesture of disgust. "Hell no. Heard them blabberin' about it on the news, but I didn't see no meteor. And neither did you. What you saw, if anything, was a meteorite."

"Meteorite?"

"Mm-hmm...a falling star, in other words. Meteors are much bigger. If it had been a meteor, the whole farm would've been blowed up. Anyways, they burn up before they hit the ground."

"Oh, okay. I’ll check, just in case."

Stanley started off down the road with Doris in tow. He turned and waved. "See ya, Gramps."

Gramps returned the gesture. "Watch yerself, Muskrat!" he shouted. "You get back home before dark."

"Okay, I will."

"And watch them weird deer!" Shoving his hands in his back pockets, the old man stared off into the spaces between the stalks, searching as he did earlier, for the movement.