The Next(49)

Grandfather must have left it unlocked as well …

The screen door opened.

Paul put his arm around my waist, and we hobbled back to the living room to meet our Grandfather.

The door opened.

We stood at the kitchen, arms around each other in our nakedness, bracing ourselves for one dooming whopper of a reaction.

Grandfather entered …

He surveyed the room with surprisingly steady eyes. First he assessed  the two of us, then the masses of ricocheted red spots streaking across  the white walls, and then Graves, facing down on the mattress with his  firm yet pruned bare ass smiling at the ceiling and a chunk of his  cranium blown off. Wet pellets of gore still glooped sporadically off  the wall to the carpet. Grandfather returned his gaze to us.         

     



 

For the first time ever, we experienced an expression in his face we'd  never seen before. His lips curled upwards ever so slightly as his eyes  glazed over with the thinnest film of moisture. He was not angry. He was  profoundly pleased. And I was profoundly confused in that moment by  that reaction.

But now … now …

Yappity yap yap.

My eyes opened and darted right to the two silver, gleaming framed  photos of my parents as children. My eyes were open, but my brain was  arriving at a conclusion like a tourist on his first visit to Niagara  Falls in the late spring. The Vastness. The Torrent. The Invasive Spray.  The Inescapable Roar. The Destruction of Nature. The Construction of  Nature. The Coalition of Both. The Inevitability of Everything.

Minnie sounded the alarm again, but I could not yet break my train …

Grandfather wanted Graves dead.

Specifically, Grandfather wanted us to kill Graves …

Whatever code of honor Grandfather and Graves lived by, it would have  been unthinkably disloyal to blow out the brains of the man who stuck  his hand in your stomach for seven miles in the back of a Jeep to  prevent you from bleeding to death. He couldn't kill the man who saved  his life in Korea. But he could live with getting others to kill him,  especially if they killed him in self-defense. That's why we were taken  out to the woods and taught to shoot from the first day we arrived.  That's why we were trained to shoot progressively larger and larger  animals. That's why Grandfather taught us to shoot handguns.

Grandfather had been training assassins.

And while he was training us, he'd been setting a trap. We'd been set up  as targets from day one. He'd seduced Graves night after night by  parading his nubile grandsons in front of him and leaving open the one  curtain that looked directly into Graves' kitchen. Graves wouldn't even  be able to clean the dishes without viewing Paul and me. He was being  tantalized all summer, repeatedly, only feet away. He'd made sure Graves  had a clear view of Paul and me in bed when Graves prowled at night.  Grandfather had the trap wound up until all he had to do was let it  spring.

He uncharacteristically organized that poker game. He invited Palmer to  the game to remove any neighbor who might possibly impede what had to  occur that night. He changed the lock on the bathroom to eliminate any  place to hide. He left the closet unlocked for the first time ever to  give us complete access to the rifles and handguns. He removed our Swiss  Army knives to increase the odds that we'd kill Graves, not merely  wound him. He left the front door unlocked to give Graves free access to  his targets. And then he drove away, with the gravel announcing loudly  to Graves that his grandsons were now left alone.

Grandfather thought of everything that would increase the chances of  Graves' assassination. As I looked at my parents' gleefully carefree  childhood photos on the shelves, I remembered that day in the woods when  we'd blown the photos of our parents as miserable, sluggish adults  away. Suddenly I realized exactly what tragedy lay between the two sets  of photos, and therefore exactly why Grandfather wanted Graves dead.

Graves had molested Mom and Dad when they were young as well.

It made too much logical sense for it not to be true.

Soon after Graves and Grandfather became Palmer's neighbors, Graves'  pedophiliac proclivities surfaced when my parents came to stay some  summer in the early 1960's. Having his life saved in the Korean War by  Graves, Grandfather would have been in no place to confront him and, in  the 1960's, it was possible Grandfather hadn't even the vocabulary to  truly comprehend the horror of an adult neighbor desiring children  sexually. Grandfather had no recourse, and no path towards justice that  he could enact-until the day Paul and I had been sent to stay with him. A  plan surfaced. With military precision, it was covertly executed.

But, as with every war, fallout could not be avoided. Grandfather  knowing and doing nothing mangled the development of my parents until  they evolved into the creatures Paul and I knew. And, then, years after  Graves' assassination, the mangling of my brother and my development …

Yappity yap yap yap.

I was refocusing on the present, but the clarity of the past left me  breathless. I was filled with anger at this man who involved Paul and me  into his twisted plot of revenge, yet I was simultaneously overcome  with compassion for a man who suffered horribly under the weight of  loyalty, duty, honor, and forbearance. It became clear that the central  collateral damage of the battle between Graves and Grandfather was, of  course, Grandfather himself. A man who hardened with restraint every  minute of his life, two thin metal walls away from the man who committed  irrevocable atrocities on his own flesh and blood. Yes, he could have  moved to another trailer park after Graves had first touched his son,  but Grandfather was a man imprisoned by the need to exact justice on his  neighbor as much as my parents had been imprisoned by their inability  to exact justice. Just as much as my brother and I were imprisoned by  our inability to understand injustice, and therefore our inability to  forgive when it was finally exacted.         

     



 

Until now.

The clarity forced its way through my fogginess and burst out of my eyes  in a sheet of tears. I had so much I wanted to explain to my brother.  So much I still needed for him to understand, let go, and hold on to. To  forgive himself. To forgive me. But I was too late. Instead, I could  spill it all to the one person miraculously thrust into my little life  that would, could, and wanted to understand as much about me as I could  muster spilling … .Marzoli.

Marzoli … shooting … the Layworths...shit!

I jumped up and looked out the window. Marzoli was still slumped on the chair. He was unconscious but breathing.

Thank fuck!

Mrs. Layworth was still a bloody dead mess behind him.

Then I realized Mr. Perfect was nowhere to be seen.

My blood turned to ice.

Yappity yap yap yap.

The silhouette of two feet appeared under my front door.





Chapter Twenty-Four

The doorknob turned.

It was pushed in a centimeter in a failed attempt to open the locked door.

Then the silhouetted feet disappeared.

Where was he going?

I remained absolutely silent and listened for any and every sound.

A honking horn two blocks away. Jennifer Lopez on a television faintly  defending her choice of dress as articulately as she was able. Two dogs  claiming territory on a grey patch of sidewalk. Justin Timberlake  electronically stuffing his message that what-goes-around-comes-around  into some teenager's brain via the entire courtyard. The ho-hummm of a  busy city drifting in and clouding the courtyard.

Then I heard it.

The click of Ruben and Nathan's door upstairs being opened.

Only two people had the key to that apartment now. Me, with the contents  of Marzoli's pocket in a neat cluster on my desk, and the Layworths,  with the contents taken from the pocket of a dead kid in their closet.

I heard the faint footsteps above me cross to the window, and then it  opened. I looked at my own window, shattered from the first bullet, now  framed with sharp little triangles. The outside could enter unimpeded. I  was a sitting dick of a duck.

I called 911.

A chunk of snow fell in front of my nose as a foot landed on the fire escape landing above me.

Shit! No time!

I tossed the phone to the side.

Where's that gun?

I'd dropped it in my last trip to trauma town.

A shiny black loafer appeared on the step in front of my eyes.

Did Layworth have a gun? Did he have a knife? Fuck!

I couldn't find the goddamn gun! I could turn on the lights, but that would only reveal his target even clearer.

I ran to the front door, unlocked it, and placed my hand on the knob.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't get my two eyes to focus on one thing. My  veins surged like a torrent. Marzoli was right. My past found the right  moment to finish me off. My years of shoving memories into the blades  of the disposal failed to destroy it, and for all of the grinding and  screeching, it still crawled back up from the dark hole at the worst  possible opportunity.

I opened the door.

The amber hall light funneled across my floor to my window.

Layworth faced me on the other side of the shard-encrusted window frame. .