Except all that was left were the two places he didn’t want to go.
As he paused outside the door to Mac’s room, he wished like hell his older brother would check in. He supposed there was always the option of trying to track Mac down through military channels, but he knew his brother wouldn’t appreciate getting red flagged even if it was for a good reason. Besides, given what the guy did, it might not even be possible to find him through regular army contacts.
Sean went inside and worked fast. He needed only four boxes for Mac’s stuff and then he was left with nothing but his father’s domain.
Gearing up, he headed down the hall with an armful of cardboard and a taping wheel. Inside his dad’s room, he flipped on the overhead light and looked around. Pretty much standard-issue, lower-middle-class stuff. The bed was made, but the blankets were old and the pillows thin. On the side table, there was a fake wood alarm clock, a lamp with a yellowed shade and a little thicket of pill bottles.
Sean went over and checked out the labels. He recognized the ones for high blood pressure and cholesterol, but the others didn’t mean anything to him. Whatever. They obviously hadn’t worked all that well.
He taped up a box to use as a trash bin and tossed the orange vials then emptied the drawer underneath of a bunch of old racing forms.
He was about to start stripping the bed when he saw the slippers on the floor.
The pair were right out of the L.L. Bean catalog, made of tan leather and lined in sheep’s wool. They were old and worn, peeling up off the carpet at the toes. The two were lined up right together, facing out as if his father had kicked them off as he’d gotten into the bed for what had turned out to be the last time.
God…Same kind Eddie O’Banyon had worn twenty years ago. Conceivably the very pair.
Sean picked one up. Inside, as if the soles were made of sand, there was a precise impression of his father’s foot registered in relief. The man had clearly spent hours wearing them, shuffling around this apartment, crossing from room to room…until suddenly there were no more trips to be made and the slippers would never be worn again.#p#分页标题#e#
Thoroughly creeped out, Sean pushed them under the bed so he didn’t have to see them, then took off the sheets and threw them out.
The closet was next. After opening the doors, he stared at what hung from the wooden dowel. It was the same stuff his father had always worn. Low-price button-downs—cotton for spring and summer, flannel for fall and winter—and khakis. Off to one side, there was an old work shirt from the phone company with a patch that read Eddie O’Banyon as well as a suit with a fine layer of dust on the shoulders. Probably the last time that had been worn had been at Sean’s mother’s funeral.
Looking at the clothes, thinking about the slippers, Sean could picture his father so clearly, it was as if the man’s ghost had wandered into the room, all simmering and pissed off at being called from the grave.
To get rid of the Stephen Kings, Sean put his hand into the closet and grabbed the first thing he hit. Going on autopilot, he stripped the hangers bare then picked up the shoes from the floor and cleaned off the top shelf. He hit the dresser after that, whipping through the drawers, throwing out the underwear and socks, putting the sweaters into a box.
Final salvo in the room was the rolltop desk in the corner.
The thing was a rank, ugly, worn piece of crap that had nothing but function to offer the world. Battened down tight, with the top in place, it gave off the illusion of having something precious inside.
But only out of desperation.
As Sean slid up the cover, papers spilled out as if he’d opened some kind of wound and the POS was bleeding white.
What a mess.
Copping a seat in the hard-backed chair, he pulled over the box he was using as a waste bin and started sifting through Medicare notices and doctors’ bills and insurance-company correspondence and bank statements. Most of the envelopes were unopened and he felt as if he were on an archaeological dig. The farther he went back, the older things got.
After having turfed the balance of it into some loose organizational piles, he was able to get to the shallow drawers in the back of the desk. He found nothing much important in them, just a couple of old Ticonderoga pencils, some paper clips, a thicket of rubber bands, a bottle of Elmer’s glue that had turned into a solid. Everything smelled like the musky wood of the desk and the dry, dusty scent of time’s passing.
He moved on to the big drawers underneath…and wasn’t prepared for what he found.