Marvel and a Wonder (20 page)

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When the grandfather came to, he was coughing. The taste of both blood and vomit was in his mouth, though he did not remember why at first. He was on the sofa in the front parlor. There was a crocheted blanket, blue and white and pink, one of the last things Deedee ever knitted, laid over him. A girl, no older than twenty, in a white blouse, a nurse, was taking his pulse. He coughed again and then pulled his wrist free from the girl’s fingers.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Falls?” she asked, but he didn’t bother to answer. With some work, he got himself upright. When he did, his entire head began to throb. The left side of his face—his lip, his ear, his cheek, his jaw, his neck—all of it was stiff. He could feel his left eye watering, the tears dappling his wrinkled chin. Someone had taken his boots off. He noticed that right away. He was in his stocking feet. His pants were off too, revealing the faded white boxers, stained with urine along the left side of his lap. The girl tried to take his pulse again but he shook his head and said, “No need to grab at me like that, missy. I’m still here, ain’t I?”

The girl frowned, finding a silver thermometer in the pocket of her blouse. She shook it and then placed it under Jim’s tongue. He sat there patiently for a moment. The girl glanced at her tiny silver watch and removed the thermometer.

“One hundred even. You got yourself a little fever. Do you feel feverish?”

The old man coughed once more and remembered his shoulder, placing his right hand against the wound: the whole wing of his deltoid muscle had been bandaged and taped over. “No. I feel like I been shot.”

The girl smiled, the old man still poking at the bullet hole. There was absolutely no feeling there, only a kind of hollowness, an echo of some distant, dulled pain. He looked over and saw his jeans had been set on the coffee table. Next to them, on the center of the table, was a porcelain horse-shaped ashtray, a birthday gift from his father some fifty years ago, bought at a Mishawaka flea market. The ashtray—a white statue of a horse rearing up on its hind legs, rising over a concave bowl, having never once been used, not even by the boy’s mother—was a close likeness to the missing mare. The old man saw the figurine, saw the shape of the animal being led up the ramp, heard the shot, and felt his heart begin to palpitate with anger.

“Hand me my pants,” he said to the girl.

The nurse smiled, shaking her head kindly. “Dr. Milborne was very specific about you getting some rest.”

“Hand me my pants, missy, before I get cross. Whoever sent you here was mistaken. I’ve been taking care of myself my whole life. Go on now and mind your elders.”

The girl obeyed, brown eyes wide with trepidation.

The old man hobbled into his pants, pulling them up around his narrow waist.

“You’re dismissed or whatever you call it when someone sends you away.”

“Dr. Milborne made it very clear that he intended for me to stay with you until he returns this afternoon.”

“He drive you out here?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I have my own car. It’s parked right outside.”

“Good. You got a way home then.”

“Yes. But I don’t think—”

“Thanks for your help. We’ll be seeing you.”

“But Mr. Falls . . . I think I should call the doctor first.”

“You can do whatever you like once you’re gone.”

“I see. Well, the doctor’s going to hear about this.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“Yes, well, good day, Mr. Falls.” The girl packed her tiny black bag, jerked it over her shoulder, and hurried out through the front door.

The boy was eating cereal at the kitchen table when his grandfather stumbled in. Rodrigo was beside him, hands folded on the table; he stood when he saw the old man swaying there. “Mister Jim!” he said, gripping the grandfather under the shoulder. But already Jim was moving around a little steadier now. He was having trouble buckling his pants, but then he did, the silver belt buckle in the shape of an American flag finally finding the leather hole, snapping into place. The grandfather was shirtless and the sight of his own body—pale, blue-veined, a whitish-yellow crop of hair spread across the middle of his chest, the wiry-looking ribs, the wrinkled neck—all of it was the same color as some recently expired animal.

The boy set his spoon down, his mouthful of sugary starch going to mush. He did not swallow. He spat it back in the bowl and jumped to his feet, helping Rodrigo get his grandfather into a chair.

“Bottle,” is what his grandfather first stuttered. He pointed to a wooden cabinet above the refrigerator that had been locked for some time.

“But you said never to open it no matter what.”

“Go fetch me that bottle, son.”

“But you told me not to, no matter what you said.”

“This is not one of those times, this is the other kind.”

“But you said—”

“Quentin, tote those keys from wherever you hid them and then hand me down that bottle.”

The boy slipped out of the kitchen to the parlor, where he opened the front panel of the grandfather clock, found the liquor cabinet keys; he walked back across the kitchen, slid a chair into place, climbed up, paused before putting the key into the lock. He turned to face his grandfather again.

“You really . . .”

“Yes,” the old man said gruffly.

The boy slid the key into the lock, opened the white doors, and found a dusty-looking bottle of sour mash sitting there, the seal not yet broken.

“You said this was for when you—”

“I know what I said. You two are gonna have to find some other way to miss me.”

The boy climbed down from the chair, tore off the seal, unscrewed the top, and placed it before his grandfather. The old man stared at it for a second, at the amber-colored hue sparkling in the morning sunlight, and pressed the glass ridge to his lips, tilting the bottle back, slowly beginning to swallow. When he finished, the bottle looked a quarter empty, though the boy knew that wasn’t right. The old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes stricken—gasping a little for air, the liquor constricting the muscles of his throat—and nodded at his grandson again. Rodrigo only looked down.

“Shirt.”

The boy sighed, hurried up the carpeted stairs, grabbed the first shirt he could find in his grandfather’s closet—a blue, gray, and black summer flannel—and hustled back down, handing it to his grandfather by its wire hanger. Jim struggled for a moment, trying to get it on, and realized he couldn’t, as his left shoulder and left arm were now useless. He had to glance back over at the boy, who read the sorry expression on the old man’s face before silently helping.

“Doc Milborne said he’d be back this afternoon. He said you weren’t supposed to leave the sofa. He said he was gonna come back with a state trooper.”

“Mister Jim, how about we go back to the couch?”

The grandfather shook his head, then winced as he fought to button up the shirt.

“Upstairs. My closet. On the top shelf. The gun. Bring it down.”

The boy stared at his grandfather for a moment, heard the curtness, the unfriendly words, and tromped up the stairs again. Jim finished buttoning the shirt with a snarl, fitting the last one through just below his neck, his right hand shaking. By then the boy had returned with the gray-green metal box clanging before him. Jim nodded at the kitchen table and said, “Set it down.”

The boy did. Jim leaned in close to study the rolling numeric lock placed just beside the front latch. He sniffed once or twice, then remembered, and thumbed the appropriate numbers into place. The metal box opened with a sharp click. The boy and his grandfather stared inside at the glossy M1911. When Jim began to fieldstrip the weapon, the boy watched his shaking hands working over the tiny pieces, until, only a few moments later, the gun had been reassembled. Once more, Jim ejected the clip, began thumbing in round after round, and snapped the cartridge back inside the pistol’s handle. He cocked the hammer back, sighted on a bowl of fruit on the counter, and fired. There was an eerie silence, as the safety latch prevented the gun from suddenly exploding, though Rodrigo’s eyebrows still jerked upward.

“That boy,” his grandfather said, looking at his grandson now.

“Sir?”

“From last night. That one.”

“Yes sir.”

“You know him, don’t you?”

Quentin nodded, ashamed.

“You know where he stays?”

Quentin nodded again.

“Okay.”

The grandfather forced himself to his feet, both of his arms shaking, and carefully slid the pistol into the front of his jeans. Fumbling around through his pockets, he found his truck keys were missing. He spotted them on the kitchen table—the familiar red state-shaped key ring—and clumsily snatched them up. He stared absently for a moment, thinking something over, weighing something in his mind, and then he slowly placed the keys in the boy’s soft hand.

“Go get some shotgun shells from the shed. As many that can fit in your pocket. And then go start up the truck. You’re driving. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They made their way awkwardly outside, the sun resembling a falling comet. Rodrigo, still holding the grandfather under the arm, helped him to the passenger side.

“Mister Jim,” Rodrigo protested.

The grandfather steadied himself against the side-view mirror of the truck. “Rodrigo. You’re a fine fella. But you’re an illegal and the state police might come out this way if they find out what happened. You should go on home now and I’ll call you when we get back. Don’t make sense for you to get in trouble on account of us.”

Rodrigo frowned, accepting the grandfather’s decision, then helped the old man into the truck. He closed the passenger door and said, “Vaya con Dios.”

The grandfather nodded to himself as the boy struggled to get the engine to start.

_________________

The child was holed up in a cut-rate motel outside of Marked Tree, Arkansas. It was a dingy sea foam–green affair, not part of any national chain, the electric sign out front announcing its drabness in squalid blue light with the single word
Motel
, and beneath it in filthy, red lettering,
Vacancies
. He had tracked the girl here through the Western Union, the child—nineteen, a former beauty-pageant winner, a sometime runway model, the green apple of old Jacob Bolan’s withering eye, and sole heiress to the family’s sawmill and lumber fortune—had telephoned from an out-of-state area code, asking to be wired a sum of money in excess of two thousand dollars. The grandfather—heart-worn, dyspeptic, himself the survivor of two separate triple bypasses, waiting in bed with the gold antique telephone on his nightstand, a white satin handkerchief in his hand to dab at the drool on his chin—immediately agreed to send the money. An hour later, he nodded to where Rick West stood at the foot of the ornate four-poster, Stetson hat in hand.

From there, seven hours by truck, his a black Dodge pickup, stopping once at the Western Union in Little Rock, discovering the girl had already come and gone, catching a lucky break when the clerk remembered the rail-thin girl, the nervous blue eyes, the fringe halter top, and mentioned they’d asked for directions to Marked Tree, where apparently the girl and her escort—a dupe a few years older, a doorman at a Dallas nightclub, name of Brian—were going to meet their connection. The clerk—an old fellow in a vest, visor, and spectacles, like a telegraph operator out of the Old West—went so far as to show Rick the pad of paper he had written the directions down on. Rick stared at the now-blank page, took a stub of a lead pencil, and slowly began to rub, the hand-drawn atlas slowly appearing on the finger-smudged sheet. A few hours on, finding dawn breaking over the tiny town—at one time a railroad camp, at another time the hunting grounds of the Osage and the Cherokee, bordered by two rivers, the St. Francis and the Mississippi, each flowing in opposite directions—then the dreary work of driving up and down the main drags, the tiny residential homes, the cul-de-sacs, until he spotted the flame-red convertible parked at an odd angle in the begrimed motel lot. It was just past five a.m.

He left the truck in the side lot of a family restaurant which had not yet opened, and doubled back to do recon. Of the twelve or so rooms, only half were occupied. At this hour of the morning, there were only two rooms that were still lit; the bluish-white glow of a television set cast shadows on the green curtains in the first, a laugh track reverberating behind the window with some old comedy show. The other room had all of its lights turned on, a stereo blasting teenage pop music, as if the girl herself was doing all she could to send out the message:
I’m right here. Help me. Please bring me back home.

Holding his left ear beside the window, he heard what sounded like two or three different voices. He peeked through the split between the curtains and saw the girl’s pointy elbows leaning over an atrocious flowered bedspread, her lips curled around a bulbous glass pipe, white smoke escaping her lips. Rick reached beneath the black wool jacket, found his sidearm, switched the safety off, and tapped twice on the faded red door. He could hear everything in the room go still, the absence of breath, and then movement, things being quickly rearranged, items being shoved into drawers, a frightened male voice, a little high-pitched—Brian’s—calling out, “Who is it?” and then Rick knocking again, saying, “Room service,” or some such ludicrous thing, a befuddled argument then taking place, the girl—Rylee—the purposeful misspelling of the girl’s name indicative of what Rick always assumed were deeper family problems, the misspelling somehow responsible for the girl’s current sordid situation, or so Rick believed—the girl Rylee saying, “Don’t be an absolute dumbshit, they don’t have room service here,” and yet there was the rattle of the door chain, the lock unwinding. Brian’s husky face filled the sudden portal, white, slightly illuminated like a wet half-moon, and then seeing Rick’s own long, smiling face—the oblong chin, the scar above the left eye, the thin mustache—recognizing who it was standing at the motel room door, all this way from home, the young man muttered, “Oh, fuck,” and stepped back without trying to argue, as the big ones—Rick was forever certain—hardly ever put up a fight.