What training did he have to react so quickly? Of course. Given his age, he had to have been in World War I, and given the skills he'd just displayed, it made even more sense his role in the war had been combative. Intensely combative.
At the deadly end of the rifle stood a man in grey and black camouflage cargo pants and a thick olive green vest. He was at least ten years Grandfather's senior. I'd learn from Mr. Palmer later this man's name was Graves. Like Grandfather, Graves was in good shape for his years, muscular and toned, although his stomach protruded slightly more than Grandfather's, and his cheeks were more sunken. He had bright blue eyes that betrayed neither happiness nor displeasure at seeing my grandfather. Both men displayed only fiercely formidable neutrality.
Then our grandfather proceeded to do something that surprised us both.
Grandfather lifted his right hand to his forehead and saluted the man with a rigid hand. The man returned the salute, except he accompanied it with a half-smile, the wrinkles around his eyes erupting around the sockets in deep folds. He'd lived a long life of struggle, both physically and otherwise, and it all telescoped in the creviced skin framing his focused, intense, alert, blue eyes.
As they held this salute, I could not tell if their exchange was a willing gesture or simply obligatory, but Paul and I immediately felt the respect they had for each other, or, at the very least, respect for the formality of showing respect. I was drawn into everything they were not vocalizing. I'd no idea at the time what accounted for the intensity or the sustained length of their eye contact, particularly the extraordinarily stern look in my grandfather's eyes.
The man in the vest directed his eyes sharply at us. Paul and I tried to avoid making direct eye contact with him. Grandfather clicked his heels together crisply, and Graves returned his gaze to Grandfather. I was confused. The heel clicking seemed to say, "I have no right to force you to maintain eye contact with me, but nor did you receive my permission to look at my grandchildren." But was it not a natural impulse for a person to assess all three individuals encountered on one's path in the middle of the woods, especially when two of them were armed? Why did Grandfather indicate any objection?
The older man lowered his hand first, which then permitted Grandfather to lower his hand. I'd no experience with military protocol, but my instincts immediately told me this stranger had more status than my Grandfather.
The corners of Graves' mouth raised as he turned and proceeded leisurely down a path that wound around the squirrel's tree. His hands entwined behind his back. I had no idea exactly where he was going or why. True, I did not know the lay of the land, but he wasn't carrying a rifle so he wasn't out hunting. He wasn't carrying a sack of anything to indicate he was taking a shortcut home from a store. His intertwining of his hands behind his back would indicate he was just out for a stroll. Why, then, did I get that eerie feeling we'd just been inspected?
Or appraised …
Grandfather looked at the man until he was completely out of sight behind more dense acreage of wood. I felt uneasier than I had all day. I realized as Grandfather turned around and headed back toward the direction of the pond, my unease was a reflection of Grandfather's unease at the presence of the man he'd so respectfully saluted. Paul and I shouldered our rifles and followed him through the narrow deer path back to the sterile trailer. Back to what we'd have to learn to call home, and to what Paul would end up calling home for the rest of his remaining years.
Mr. Palmer was watering the begonias in his garden. He observed Mama Duck and her armed ducklings beeline past his porch. After Grandfather had passed, he nodded hello to me. Once again I'd been singled out, and I had no idea why.
Because every curtain was closed, the trailer was dark when we stepped up the stairs and through the screen door. Grandfather turned one lamp on and opened one curtain. Six curtains could have been opened, including two that would have faced Mr. Palmer's trailer, but only one on the opposite side was opened. Through the window we could see the trailer parked parallel to ours. Specifically, its kitchen window, but it was dark. Nobody was home.
Grandfather heated up a can of beans and hotdog chunks in one pot on the stove. He stirred, plopped our meals on plates, and handed them to us. Like the trailer, like my Grandfather, like everything Paul and I had experienced that day, there was no joy in the meal. No embellishment like a sprinkle of chili pepper. No hospitality in spooning the food onto the plates. It was merely a perfunctory provision of carbohydrates and protein to his two wards. Nothing more.
We devoured the beans and meat in silence as Grandfather waited patiently, eating nothing himself. We licked the plates clean, and Grandfather washed the dishes. The lights flicked on in the window of the mysterious trailer. Paul and I saw Grandfather pause and glance over at it. There in the window, a figure passed through the kitchen. It was Graves.
Grandfather saw that we recognized him. He returned his full attention to the sink, drying the plates with a white towel and placing them in the cupboard. He picked up our rifles and put them in the hall closet. We heard a dangling of keys followed by the distinct sound of the closet door being locked.
The bed was pulled out, the lights were turned off, the front door was locked, and Grandfather exited down the hall without a word. Without a goodnight. Without a wink of acknowledgement, much less affection. We had no racetracks to play with. No familiar state park to sneak out to. Just an expectation we'd fall asleep with very little choice to do otherwise.
We lay in the darkness watching the light from Graves' living room form a square against our wall, occasionally interrupted by the shadow of the old man passing through. Frogs croaked in the pond in a vast hoarse chorus. Crickets advertised their presence with high-pitched ascending scales.
The square of light flicked off, and in the blackness I began to process the day of silence. Why hunt? Why on our first day? What was the old man's relationship to my Grandfather? Why had Grandfather kept every curtain closed that evening except the one facing Graves' trailer? Was that deliberate?
I heard a click on the hardwood floor where I sat with my back against the door. I opened my eyes. Glasses. Broken. I'd been holding them since Marzoli left, but they'd slipped out of my hands as sat there. I picked them up again, staring closely at the cracks in the lenses as my brain waffled between the past and present.
Like an apparition, Graves' gaunt face appeared through the glass. Its sudden appearance was so startling my body went rigid and my blood froze. I felt my fingers tingle like tacks were being shot through the veins to their tips. From his shadowed sockets, his blue eyes pierced the hazy dark on the other side of the window, strafing our bed like two searchlights.
Paul and I were exposed: our shins, our thighs, our underwear, our abdomens, our chests. Our white teenage skin reflected what little light crept through the window and slipped onto our mattress.
After a minute of breathless stillness, I redirected my eyes to Graves. He was staring right back at me.
Jesus!
I braced myself on the mattress with my hands but ended up gripping Paul's elbow. Paul stirred and rolled over, his firm bottom exposed to the night air, clad only in the loose, stretched white underwear he'd had for years.
Graves squinted, bringing several new wrinkles to the ridges of his sockets. He swiftly moved to the left and disappeared. I felt queasy.
I squeezed Paul's elbow more tightly than I'd intended. I felt wetness. I lifted my hand to my eyes. I'd crushed the lenses of the glasses with my fingers. Shards were sticking out from my palm. Blood was running down my wrist …
Suddenly I realized something that vice-gripped my heart and wacked me back to the hardwood floor of the present like Mohammed Ali's last blow at his first World Heavyweight fight.
The cracked designer glasses impaling my hand were Ruben's!
Chapter Sixteen
Marzoli would not return my phone call even after I'd rung him three times.
He must be pissed at me. But why? I needed to know why Marzoli needed to be in my apartment? What did he need from me in particular that I hadn't already revealed to him? Why did he need to be covert about asking me? Did I really present myself as some temperamental son-of-a-bitch he had to seduce into revealing whatever the hell he needed to know?
Errr … yes.
The bear trap gouged its rusty teeth into my gut even deeper.
The sun had set, and the courtyard was hushed with the Sunday evening activities serene people of the earth do: Downton Abbey, steaming tea kettles, foaming candle-lit baths, Eat Fifty Shades of the Bridges of Madison Pray Love.
The Broadway Dancer stood in front of a mirror, plucking his eyebrows. He turned to the side and observed the ever-so-undetectable bulge of his belly. He sucked in his stomach and held the pose for a few seconds before releasing it. He must have an audition in the morning. Dancers are more prone to harsh self-critiquing before auditions than before curtain calls. The dancer threw the tweezers onto the coffee table and shoved the coffee table out of view. He propped himself on his elbows and toes and suspended his body in plank position, maintaining the pose for two minutes as he breathed steadily in and out. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.