Grimm Tales (8 page)

“She never liked them,” he said. “I was going to leave her. I never should have been with her.”

“It's okay, Poppa,” Greta said.

“Yeah, Dad,” Han said. “Don't sweat it.”

Grimm left them to their reunion. Got on his cell phone and called for someone to come and take the carpenter's second wife to jail. Told them to send the coroner to collect the dead old cannibal woman from her gingerbread house.

When he went back into the house, he found the carpenter's bar and poured himself a Scotch.

Gato

By Seana Graham

In casting about for a story to use for this challenge, I found myself drawn to one that has always seemed to me to have an element of latent criminality. I'd rather not say what the story is—it's a common and famous one, which should be enough. I think it was the element of a helper character who seems to have an agenda of his own rather than a slavish devotion that particularly intrigued me.

It was a Saturday, and I had driven over to my brother's house. The house, I mean, that used to belong to my dad. He had left it lock, stock and barrel to my oldest brother, Joe—Joe, who had three other properties already and would no doubt have a couple more before the year was done. It needed a lot of work. By the time Dad died, it was a real shambles. Joe was the only one who could afford to fix it up. Still, it hardly seemed fair.

I pulled up and couldn't even park in the driveway because Bill, my second brother, was working on his car there. Dad's car, that is—an old Lincoln that would be worth something restored. Right now, it didn't even run, which was what Bill was addressing, in a manner of speaking. Mostly, though, he was just plain swearing.

“Frankie!” Joe called when he saw me coming his way. A stranger might have taken it for a heartfelt welcome, but I had my reasons to be wary. I hadn't just made my way here on my own—he'd summoned me. From long experience I should have known that it wasn't because he meant to help me, but, as always, I'd come anyway.

“How's it hangin', little bro?” he asked, coming up and wrapping me in that big bear hug he'd perfected over the years. It wasn't just because it was me—the born salesman, he used it sooner or later on everyone.

“What's up?” I asked, extricating myself from his embrace, or wrestler's hold, whichever you like to call it.

“Finally got the permits, buddy! So it's full speed ahead!” His eyes were bright—as if he was on something. Maybe he was, but I think it was the project itself that got him high. Freud had it about right when it came to fathers and sons. On the other hand, I was my dad's son, too, and I felt nothing but sadness. I remembered again that he was gone, and what I was left with were these two. I felt myself tearing up, but hid it—I'd learned long ago that tears brought only blows and scorn.

“Billy! Come on over here!” Joe called over the sound of the engine that Bill was revving, trying to get the engine to turn over. No one called Bill “Billy” except for Joe, not for a long time. Jesus, I thought. Why the hell had I come? “We got a bit of a situation here, Frankie,” Joe said, now that the racket had stopped.

Pretty
good
situation, I thought, looking at my brothers. A house and a classic car. And for me?

“What situation?” I asked, because he expected me to ask it.

“Gato,” Joe said. “Now that we're in motion, he can't stay.”

* * *

My dad died in the hospital, struggling for breath, all those cigarette packs finally catching up with him. His timing was bad—we couldn't scrape up a woman between the four of us, and men are hopeless at this sort of scene on their own. My mom had died ten years before. Joe's divorce was just through, and Bill had finally broken free of a bad relationship—bad for the girl, that is. As for me, well, we'll get to that.

We stood around his bed, awkward as teenagers, not knowing what to say, wishing ourselves away. The others went out—for a smoke, for a drink—I don't remember. All I know is that I was left. I wasn't in the mood for either. I sighed, sat down by his side and took my father's hand.

“Frankie,” he said, after awhile.

“I'm here, Dad,” I said. I squeezed his hand, because I'd heard somewhere that that was what you were supposed to do in these situations.

“I know,” he said, and squeezed back. Better he hadn't—it was heartbreaking to feel how feeble his grip was.

“Frankie, someone's got to look after Gato,” he said.

“I know, Dad. We will.”

“No,” he said. His hand grasped mine hard enough to hurt. “No
we
. It's down to you.”

I understood. He knew the others weren't up to it, and so did I.

“I'll take care of it, Dad.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

He seemed comforted by that. Maybe it was the last thing he'd been waiting to do, because not too long after that and before the others returned, he died.

* * *

Joe led me out to the shed where Gato was staying. I'd like to be able to call it a studio but if I'm honest, I can't. If it wasn't a shed, it was more like a shed than anything else.

“Gato!” my brother called out as we approached. “Gato! We got a visitor! Someone here to see you.”

I wondered if he'd be disappointed. “It's just me, Gato,” I said. “Frank.”

There was no reply, but after a moment Gato came out. He had a cloth in his hand and was cleaning a wrench. He was always cleaning something. He looked at me. If he was glad to see me, he didn't let on.

“Gotta shift you, pal,” Joe said, to the background accompaniment of a sledgehammer.

Gato gave a slight nod that was almost a bow, but said nothing. We waited. I realized that my brother, for all his bluster, was afraid of the man. He had called me here to be a buffer.

“Gonna tear down this old shack,” he said—to Gato, to me…to no one. The silence and therefore the rebuff were so deep that he was forced to extemporize. “Frankie here said he has room for you for a while.”

Gato and I looked at him with what I expect was equal astonishment. My brother had two other properties in town alone. I had a rented two-bedroom flat, and calling it two was being charitable about the thing. I would have laughed at how ludicrous it all was. But I looked at Gato. He looked at me. I thought about my father—what he would have wanted.

“Want to bunk in with me for a while, Gato?” I asked.

Gato said nothing. He simply turned around and went back into the shed. After a few moments, he returned with a small black athletic bag.

“I'm not sure you understand,” my brother said. “I'm tearing it down. If you have anything you want to keep, better grab it now.”

Gato gestured toward his bag and nodded his assent, but he did not return into the structure.

My brother watched him for a moment and then said, “Okay, then.”

It was all happening pretty fast, much faster than anything I'd expected. “Come on, Gato,” I said. I led him out to my car. He threw the bag into the backseat and got in. I got behind the wheel of my beat-up old Honda. We pulled away to the tune of the jackhammer and the misfiring of a powerful internal combustion engine. I looked at Gato as I backed to a place where l could turn around. His face still told me nothing.

I'd headed over there without taking the time to fill up the tank, so I stopped on the way home to do this. It happened that just ahead of me at the pumps was a car I recognized, a black Audi convertible that belonged to Marina Reyes. Even rich people have to fill up sometime, I guess. True, she was rich enough to have a driver to do it for her, but I think she liked to drive too much herself to tolerate a chauffeur.

I had been in love with Marina since we were in kindergarten. She liked me, too, I knew, but we didn't and never would travel in the same circles. We'd been lab partners in high school chemistry, and gotten along well enough that I'd held out the hope that I might somehow find the courage to ask her to the prom. For better or worse, our classmate Pete Torres, a scion of another long-established and affluent local clan, had swept her off her feet before I made an utter fool of myself. The last I'd heard, they were engaged.

“You know her, Señor Frank?” Gato asked. I had forgotten he was there.

“I used to, a little.”

“And you don't go say hello, a beautiful woman like that?”

I flushed and shook my head. She glanced back at the car as she pulled out the hose, so we had a close-up view of her in all her splendor, but there must have been a glare off the windshield, because she didn't see me at all. At least, I hoped not. She too would have thought me impolite, but I couldn't and wouldn't go through it all again.

“It's just Frank, Gato,” I said, in slight irritation, but mostly to dispel the dark mood that had overtaken me. “You're not my servant.”

“I am, though, Señor Frank.
A sus ordenes
.”

At my service. Great. So now he felt beholden to me, and that was the last thing in the world I wanted or needed.

Or so I thought.

* * *

Gato settled in without a lot of fuss. I felt put upon by my brothers, but not by him, and grew to like knowing he was there, though I was often absent myself. I thought it would just go on like that into some ill-defined future, but one day I came home and he said, “Señor Frank, I feel I need to make a contribution.”

“You already do, Gato. Don't worry about it,” I said, because he did. He kept the place clean and even cooked a meal from time to time. It seemed like an arrangement I could live with.

“If you would loan me a little money, I could go out and get some good work boots, and then I could earn enough to pay rent,” he said.

I had just gotten my paycheck and was feeling expansive. “I can buy you a pair of work boots, Gato. Don't worry about it. It's what my dad would have wanted.” I peeled off a bunch of twenties and handed them to him.

“Thank you, Señor Frank,” he said. He retreated to his room without another word and I heard no more about work or work boots or anything like it. I remember thinking that I didn't mind giving him the money, but wished I hadn't had to buy the song and dance along with it.

* * *

One evening, I sat waiting for a girl I knew in a trendy bar downtown. I already suspected the date wasn't going anywhere and, mildly depressed, I was looking around the place to pass the time, when I noticed Gato standing at the bar. He was all dressed up and I might not have recognized him if in my boredom I hadn't allowed my eyes to linger. I was more than a little irked to see that Gato's “work boots” turned out to be the fanciest cowboy boots I'd ever seen. He stood there talking to several other Latino guys, their voices soft and low, and I got the feeling he was up to something and that I might not like it if I knew what it was.

But by now I knew that the girl had ditched me, and maybe more out of a general recklessness than any kind of plan, I paid the check and walked over to the bar. I feigned surprise at seeing Gato, though he had probably made me earlier—at that point I didn't know and didn't care.

“Señor Frank,” he said. His drinking companions gave me the once-over and drifted away. I was in no mood for them so it was just as well.

“Hi there, Gato.” I glanced down at his feet. “Those the new boots?” I asked, expecting to embarrass him.

To my surprise, though, he smiled—the first full-toothed grin I'd ever seen him give. “You like them?” he asked, turning them so that they could be seen from all angles.

“Well, of course,” I said. “Not sure they're the best
work
boots I ever saw,” I couldn't help teasing. “What are you fixing to be, Gato? A cowboy?”

He regarded me with an air of injury. “There are many different kinds of work, Señor Frank.”

I decided to let it slide. We downed a couple of shots together, after which we decided it was the wiser course to walk home and pick my car up later. It was a warm, moonlit night, and many people were still out and about. The river walk became a kind of
paseo
on evenings like this one. We came around a bend and I saw Gato shudder at something ahead. It was not a shudder of fear, though, but more like that of a hunter that has seen its prey. A quiver of anticipation. It made me uneasy.

“You all right, Gato?”

“Pardon me, Señor Frank.” He gave me a quick searching look, as if to know me all at once and forever. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” I said. And until that moment, I had.

“
Bueno
,” he said.

Then he pushed me into the river.

When I bobbed back sputtering to the surface, he was running around on the path like a crazy person, the least resourceful version of himself I had ever seen.

“
Ayudame! Ayudame!
” he called. “
Ay, ay, ay! No sé nadar!
”

Dazed though I was, even I knew enough Spanish to realize he was saying he couldn't swim. But I can, I thought, so what's the problem? Although at the moment, I wasn't doing so well at it. He must have slipped something in my drink, I realized as I went under…

…And came to, my head in the lap of the woman I loved. My happiness was so complete, so unsurpassable that I knew for certain I had died and was in heaven. Gradually, though, it sank in that this couldn't be true, for I was lying on hard ground and shivering in my wet clothes. I blinked, expecting my beloved, Marina Reyes, to have undergone a more prosaic transformation as well. But this part of the dream lasted. She remained herself. She looked into my eyes with a shock of recognition. It was a look that made me think perhaps my love hadn't gone entirely unrequited after all.

Meanwhile, Gato was involved in an intense conversation with Marina's father.

“Marina!” Señor Reyes exclaimed. “Would you believe it? We have rescued the very man who's been sending us those fine Cuban cigars!”

“There is some mistake,” I protested feebly. But Marina pushed me back, even a tad forcibly, and put a finger to her lips.

“What did he say, Marina?”

“Nothing, Papa. He is not yet in his right mind.”

“But I—”

This time she laid her finger to
my
lips, and to be honest, I lost all desire for speech.

“We should bring him home with us, get him some dry clothes,” she said.