One day, my grandfather forced us all to go a swimming trip on the shore. After going for a leak in the bush, I saw the family in the water, and waded in after them. I kept my head above water, because I didn't feel like getting soaked in the salt, knowing it would dry my hair somethin' awful.
But he said, "I didn't bring everyone all the way out here just for you to not even swim."
I didn't understand what the difference was, but he apparently felt it was a matter of life and death. So he forced my head under the water, in front of everyone else. I was so angry, I splashed him in the face, and he roared and splashed me back twice as much. To the rest of the family, it looked like good fun. They didn't see the rage in his eyes, wishing he could do worse. Though worse never arrived, it made me wary of him for the rest of my stay... if only I'd known how long that would be. Regardless, the water cooled my temper, and he'd brought sausages to cook over a fire. We had to sharpen the sticks ourselves, but it was worth it. By the time I ate my second one, I'd forgotten all about it, and so had everyone else.
Two days later, he demanded I walk to the market with him for groceries, but made certain to stop by his favourite pub: The Badgerdog. I assumed the joke was that it was two animals, combined. The light humor didn't help the pit growing in my stomach, being shoved through the doors. The bardance there was a song called "I Fancy Thy Hinded Cleft", a gawk-ear he knew half the words to. Yet the women in town found him well for his 'protectorate' act, to which I was his apparent prop. By the time we got out, he was too sloshed to carry a thing. I was haulin' a sack of food behind me for half a mile, while he stumbled.
I tried to avoid him for the months when he was home, shedding toenail clippings and breadcrumbs on the expensive sofas he liked to brag about having purchased himself. On long carriage rides for food and landscaping supplies, he would lecture me about manhood, and claim it was his job to teach me everything there was to know about life. But I'd already learned a great deal, and I found much of his advice was factually wrong. He wouldn't let me climb into the back, and said it "unevened the weight" and made the journey longer. I thought he was full of shit, and he probably was, but his yelling was loud enough to scare a mountain. It made me frown, and I jumped off the cart to walk the rest of the way home. So he stopped the cart, shouted at me with his usual crack and boom that "these horses were borrowed from neighbors and I was being inconsiderate", and told me I'd starve if I didn't get back in. I sighed.
My grandfather calmed down after that, but I was still unsettled, even after returning to the house. He was rattling off about everyone else being irresponsible, but The Barreler was not the responsible sort, himself. In fact, simply to avoid cleaning his clippings off the couch, he'd often shout:
"I PAY FOR THIS HOUSE, IT'S MINE! AND I'LL DO WHATEVER I WANT!!"
It was for this reason and all others listed that I decided I didn't like my grandfather. What blood we shared evidently hadn't bequeathed me his ignorance, and I wondered what our ancestors must have been like. More of him, or more of me? But he knew very little of them, and so I was left to wonder.

That night, I heard him yelling from outside. I went back to sleep, without having learned why. The next morning, he was gone before anyone was awake. In the backyard, on the wooden steps, was a smashed bottle of mead.