The End of FUN (20 page)

So I crashed there and spent the next morning begging my sister for a ride, but she wasn't having it. She had work to do. I tagged along while she chased down a lead on some story about the spring motorcycle jamboree, but all I could think about was Katie and Dad and how weirded-out angry I was. Even if she'd thought he was my uncle, she could've told me
something
. Just given me a hint. Just to soften the blow.

Late in the afternoon, after all the reporting was done, Evie gave in.

“Fine! I can't stand the moping any longer. I'll give you a ride, but first you need supplies—food and warm clothes and toilet paper—and if the road is even a
little
bit sketchy, we're turning right around. Got it?”

The first problem was I didn't have my bag. Katie had it. It was sitting in her truck when she peeled away from Dad's. Without explaining, I borrowed a sweatshirt and some long underwear from Sam, then we got some food and headed out.

It had been a warm day and the road was clear—dry in places, even—but even so Evie still went at a crawl, and nearly turned around twice, and by the time we got to Grandpa's it was dark and starting to snow again. And as we pulled into his drive, I had to wonder: Was nighttime really the best time to be breaking into my grandpa's house?

In all her worries about supplies, Evie hadn't thought about bringing a flashlight, and I hadn't either, so I had her put on the brights and wait while I checked it out. There were a couple chairs on the porch, and an old charcoal grill. The door was unlocked, and I pushed it open and set my grocery bags down. The light from Evie's car spilled into the living room, and I could see the outlines of furniture: his reading chair, the floor lamp, a table. I reached in and felt around the door for a switch, but when I flipped it, nothing happened.

Back at the car, I explained the situation to Evie.

“Power's out. How about you drive me back in the morning before work?”

“What, so you're afraid of the
dark
now?”

I knew her tactic—the appeal to my manhood—but unfortunately pride does not equal courage in the same way that, say, cleaning a dirty grill with a balled-up wad of tinfoil does not equal the ease and satisfaction of watching a KitchenTech
®
Advanced Grill-Cleaning Robot (YAY!) do the job for you.

I stood for a long time deciding what to do next.

“Fine. Leave the lights on while I see if there's a flashlight.”

Back at the doorway, I paused for a moment to look at my shadow on the far wall. Then I stepped inside, and the shadow took a step nearer to me, drawing closer as I headed toward the kitchen, growing smaller and smaller until as I rounded the corner it disappeared.

It was quiet in the kitchen, and there was a chill to it—or maybe I was just imagining things. There was a smell, too—there was definitely a smell. Stale cigarette smoke and just…staleness. I tried another light switch. It didn't work, either. I stood there, listening to the sound of my own breathing, wondering what to do next:

“Go away!”

Feeling along the countertop, I edged my way around the kitchen until I got to the drawers by the sink. They were empty.
All
the drawers were empty. I crept back out into the living room and down the hallway. There were two doors at the end of it—one open and the other closed. I opened the closed door and peered at the darkness inside the spare bedroom. I could just barely make out the outline of the bed in the corner.

I went back to the car.

“Keep the lights on. Give me a couple minutes so I can see my way into the bedroom. Then you can go.”

Evie looked up from her comfy seat. She had the heater on and was warming her hands. “You sure you're going to be OK in there?”

“What—so suddenly you care? I'll be fine.”

“Check in with me tomorrow morning, OK?”

“If I make it through the night.”

“Now you're just being dramatic.”

I headed back to the house. The handle was jammed on the door, and I'd barely stepped inside when I heard the tires crunch on gravel. As Evie backed away, the last of the light receded like water down a drain, and I was plunged into darkness.

My whole body tingled, and my eyes were doing swirlies from straining to see into the darkness—and it's strange, but it was like the darkness was looking back at me, like the eye of that bird all those years ago. I just stood there. I could hear myself breathing. I stopped breathing and just listened. The darkness listened back. But there was no one there but me.

It was a long, cold night. There were barely any covers on the guest bed, and I kept shivering myself awake, and then I had to pee, but there was no way I was getting out of bed until I had a little light on my side.

When I did sleep, I had dreams. More like nightmares. First it was my dad and Katie, the two of them mashing their faces together on a velvet couch while I pounded on a bulletproof window. Then the window shattered and I found myself standing alone in a big field. It went on forever, just this gigantic field lit up under the stars with the silhouette of a tree at the far end, this big tree standing out there alone in the brush.

I started walking toward the tree, but then I remembered how bad I had to pee. I paused under the stars to unzip my fly, but just as I was getting ready to go I felt something brush against my ankle. I looked down to find a hand—a
bloody
hand—reaching up from out of the ground like some kind of monster in a horror movie, just ready to grab my tender ankle and pull me down into the netherworld and eat me alive and—

“Yay.”

The darkness was gone. I unballed my fists and took a breath. I really had to pee.

The water in the toilet bowl was frozen, but I didn't realize this until after I started to go. My pee hissed on the ice, little tendrils of pee steam wafting into the air. But when I tried the sink, it worked, so that was good. At least I had water. There was a single green bar of soap, and as I was holding it I saw something outlined on the face of it—a small, intricate coil: my grandpa's fingerprint. I rubbed my hands across the bar. The fingerprint disappeared.

I threw open the curtains in the living room, and the light poured in on the floating dust. Even in the light of day it was strange and kind of creepy being in my grandpa's house. Not much had changed since my last visit all those years ago. The green couch, the brown recliner, the corduroy ottoman, the chipped coffee table—it was all still there. But it was different. Without my grandfather, it was just—it's hard to explain. It was just a place.

And it occurred to me—
Aaron, dude, this place is yours
.

And yet as I stood there in the middle of the living room I knew it wasn't true. This was
not
my house, it was Grandpa's house. Even if he wasn't here, even if it was just a place now, even so—it was all still his. This was
his
living room.
His
recliner.
His
reading lamp
his
table
his
television
his
woodstove
his
green coffee mug sitting on a table.

And there was the place where his cabinet had stood, the one Evie jacked. And there against the wall, next to the space, was his bookcase—his crosswords, Sudoku, word jumbles. I took a book out and flipped through the pages, looking at the answers filled out in his neat block print.
His
handwriting. Somewhere, in one of these books, he'd penciled in his last answer.

Puzzles.
Right
. I reminded myself why I was there: to find the portrait of Mary. If there was one. In the living room there were three things hanging on the wall—a washed-out brown painting of deer in a field, a smaller painting of a steamship on a stormy ocean, and a Northern Nevada Auto Parts calendar turned to December.

So I moved on to the kitchen.

No portraits of Mary there, either, but here's the strange thing: the kitchen was practically empty. In the sink I found a plate, a knife, a fork, and a spoon—but beyond that, there wasn't hardly
any
thing. The cupboards were completely bare, no silverware in the drawers, not even a toaster on the counter. Where had it all gone? Even the fridge was empty. I stacked my food on the empty racks, and then I went outside.

The property was all glittery—morning sun melting the last of the snow on acres of sagebrush—but the house itself wasn't much to look at. A squat brown box, dirty windows, black chimney pipe poking up from the roof. Peeling paint, crooked door, sagging porch—one of the carved wooden posts had been replaced by a 2 × 4. OK. Even if it wasn't much, it was something. A little outpost in the brush. Things had happened here. My grandma had grown tomatoes. My grandfather had raged at the world.

Out by the shed sat his blue Ford Ranger. There in the distance was his tree, the single Russian olive, bare branches holding up snow. In the other direction, up the valley, I could see another, newer house with a corral and two horses, one white and one black, and beyond this stood the remnants of Coyote Heights—the luxury golf course development he'd sold his property to, the one that had failed after the restructuring. The source of the money I had yet to find.

It was a pretty crazy sight. Like something out of an apocalypse. Houses half-finished. A road that went nowhere. The luxury hotel, tall and square, standing alone in the snow, windows boarded up, Tyvekked walls rippling in the wind.

There was one room left to check out. I'd been avoiding it, but I couldn't any longer. His bedroom. My whole life, I'd been in his bedroom maybe once. The floor creaked as I made my way to the window and opened the shades. The bed was neatly made. The clock on the bedside table was dead. There was a chair, a dresser, and a desk with a typewriter on it. His typewriter. The one with the messed-up
D
key where he'd hammered out his final will and testament.