than winter when he’d walk the same route but on a cold road that made his feet tingle, just on the verge of uncomfortable.
“A billion tons,” he said aloud, still awed by all the zeros. “Them’s a lot of cookin’ fires.” Oh, Coos County was in the new century, for the most part, but some folks still used wood and coal burning stoves in the more rural parts. Even today some don’t have a proper indoor shower. One of Jolly’s classmates comes to school smelling like iron. He showers in an outdoor stall using well water so thick with the metal it’s almost like a thin tomato soup. Got ya clean, but tended to add a light red tint to the skin.
The sun fell behind the nearby hills just as Jolly pushed through the back door of the old farmhouse, a farmhouse that’d been in the family for nearly 150 years, sitting on the side of the hill in a stand of middle-aged Douglas fir, a well-tended garden of vegetables that made up a sizable chunk of each night’s dinner.
“Hi, moms.”
“Just in time, Jolly. You cut it pretty close. Your father just went upstairs to take a shower.”
“Do you know how big a billion is?” Jolly scuffled across the linoleum floor, twisted the old wooden chair away from the table and tilted back, staring at his mother.
“Pretty big, darlin’.” She was half-way through frying up three nice-sized lamb chops in one cast iron pan and dipping a wire spatula in another, pulling out fried potato skins, dropping them into a bowl lined with a towel to soak up the grease. Jolly’s stomach growled.
“Smells great, moms.”
Mrs. Davis had just gotten the one lamb slaughtered so the freezer was packed with fresh chops, ground and leg. Lamb chops were always the first to make the dinner plates. It was the family’s favorite.
Jolly didn’t need to be told. He automatically climbed from the kitchen chair and pulled plates and glasses from the cupboards, knives and forks from the utensil drawer and grabbed a gallon of whole milk (fresh from Mr. Hancock’s cows) from the refrigerator, putting it all on the table in the usual places.
“Hey, Jolly my man.”
Tim Davis tipped this side of large. Topping six feet and 210 pounds with hands that could palm a basketball with inches left over, Jolly’s pops spent his days as a welder in Coos Bay. Made a good living and spent it all on his family. The Irish in him dragged the body to a local pub on occasion, but not often enough to get the former Colleen O’Shaugnasee’s own Irish temper up.
"How big's a billion?"
Tim Davis thought about the question then pushed away from the table. "Follow me."
Colleen scowled, “Be back in 10 minutes. Dinner’ll be on the table.”
Father and son walked into the yard, across the country lawn to a large wooden barn. The paint was fresh. Brick red. White trim. Neat and thick with 150 years worth of paint.
"Go out to the garden. Mom has a sand pile to mix with dirt for the vegetables. Bring me back one grain of sand. Just one."
Jolly learned long ago that his father always taught a lesson with some hands on demonstration. When he asked how the tractor’s diesel engine worked, pops made him pull a glow plug on his own. Not only did he learn to use a wrench, he began to understand that it took the glow plug to ignite the fuel to make the pistons go up and down.
The 12-year-old grabbed a hand full of sand and pulled his pocket knife from his jeans. Used his teeth to unfold the blade. He licked the tip of the blade and touched the point into the handful of sand. He checked the blade and saw there were quite a few grains stuck to the shiny steel point. Jolly dropped the handful of sand and wiped his palm on his pants. With his tongue clamped between his teeth, Jolly began fingering excess sand from the blade until he had about a dozen grains. He carefully flicked at them until there was only one.
Being careful not to drop the lone grain, Jolly walked back to the barn where his dad stood in the doorway watching.
"Got it," Jolly said, satisfied he'd accomplished a magical feat. "Mighty small, pops."
"How much does it weight, you think?"
Jolly pushed the sand into the palm of his hand and made a weighing motion with his palm. Up and down. Up and down. "Nothing, pops."
"Okay, put it right here," patting the top of a six-by-six that once was a hitching post.
Slowly tipping his palm sideway, Jolly used the index finger on his other hand to carefully scrape the grain of sand onto the post.
"Now get the shovel and those five pails and bring them over to the garden."
Jolly grabbed the old shovel and picked up two steel buckets by their handles. Tim Davis was already standing next to the sand pile, arms crossed, a smile on his lips. His son dropped off the two pails and the shovel and returned to the barn to grab three more containers.
"Line 'em up next to each other," Davis said.
Jolly did as told and set them one by the other in a row.
"Now, fill each of them with sand right up to the top."
It took Jolly only five minutes to shovel sand into the pails then stood waiting for his next order.
"Haul them back to the barn."
It took three trips, but shortly the five containers of sand were hip to jowl next to the hitching post.
"What do you figure those buckets weigh?" Davis leaned against the barn door and watched.
Jolly picked up a bucket and hefted it like someone would a barbell. "Four, maybe five pounds, I'd guess."
"Times five."
The 12 year old knew his multiplication as good as any kid his age.
"20 to 25 pounds."
"Don't guess."
Jolly hoisted one of the buckets to the small weigh scale used for mixing feed. The needle stopped at 4 pounds three ounces. He did the same with each bucket. Using the nub of his pencil to write the weights on the side of the hitching post; he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and began adding.
"20 pounds, 15 ounces." Jolly finally said.
"And what was the weight of the one grain of sand?"
"Not anything I could weigh."
"Okay, you want to know what a billion is. A teacher once told me -- he was English, so I can't swear to his honesty -- that a billion grains of sand would fill five regular pails that size." Davis licked his fingertip and put it on the lone grain of sand where it stuck fast.
"One grain," holding up his finger and then with a sweep of his arm at the five buckets, "One billion grains."
"That's a lot of grains, pops."
"Want to try for a trillion?"
Jolly turned and looked at the garden.
"Moms don't have that much sand."
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