It isn't easy telling another person's story. Can't be sure you're getting it right, you know? Nothing's documented, and all I have to go on is Grandpa's muddled recollection. Did I tell you Grandpa knows he turned 83 but can't remember when?

It all began when he was a boy.The family lived in a tiny shack on the outskirts of Blemished Woods. Since he was the oldest, it was his job to gather the kindling every October. His younger brother, Tim, was only seven and too small to hike way back in and lug it out in the make- shift wheel-barrow. Two years he says, makes a big difference in height, weight, and moxie. Grandpa uses that word a lot when he tells me stories. Seems like he was the only one in his family that had it.

He was late getting to it that year. The deer were already camouflaged in deepened shades of winter brown. And most of the leaves had been stripped from the trees by a couple of harsh frosts. They laid wrinkled in deep piles on the forest floor, making navigation difficult if you had to get out in a hurry.

On that dark, dreary day, Grandpa's daddy armed him with a sharply honed axe, a sandwich oozing blueberry jam snitched from his mom's dwindling pantry, and a flask of spring water. He sent him on his way with a swift slap on the rear and the usual warning. "Now get in there and get out before dark. You know what they say about what goes on in there after dark." Then he hobbled back into the house on his wooden leg without saying another word.

But Grandpa wasn't worried, he had all that moxie. He went a bit deeper than usual, looking for a sparser patch. The wood was more likely to be drier in a spot where the sun was able to filter through the dense canopy.

Once he found it, he started whacking away. He'd lost all track of time and when he looked upward the sky was graying. Dusk was closing in on the forest. As the light faded, he became disoriented. He was having a hard time steadying the wheel-barrow. Underfoot, he could feel the ground begin to shift. An owl swooped down, and then another, and soon all he could hear was their screeching as they tried to warn him of the impending danger. Grandpa knew it wouldn't be long before the ground opened and swallowed him up without a trace. Just like it did all of those other kids over the years.

Then before he knew it, his moxie kicked in, he made a bee-line for it, and he escaped that narrow miss. There were lots of other predicaments in his boyhood when he was saved by his moxie.
When I asked him if I could borrow it, he told me moxie can't be lent out. You have to find your own.