The Next(25)

     



 

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.