The Next (17 page)

“I don’t.”

“Okay,” he said, followed by a silence as he registered my reply.

Mr. Palmer lived in a small world whose clock ran half the speed of every other clock. He was in his eighties and stood outside all things mainstream. He did not smile a lot, but he seemed innately kind. Or merely soft spoken, which I’d interpreted as kindness. Either way, since the first day when Grandfather led Paul and I past his trailer to the woods holding rifles, he seemed to cast a concerned, caring, watchful look our way.

With his jacket on, Marzoli started gathering the trash on the floor.

I could stop him.

Palmer continued, “Your brother was writing a book. Did ya know that? A series of books. For kids.”

“Didn’t know.”

“Never told me he was writing anything either. But I’m holding one of ’em:
The Brothers Save Jessie.
”

“Save?”

My tone was surprised enough that Marzoli paused his beeline toward the door and pricked up his ears.

“Did you say
The Brothers
Save
Jessie
?”

“It’s dedicated to you. That’s what it says. For my brother.”

I didn’t know how to continue, and Palmer waited in silence. My abdomen tightened, locking down any reaction, and remaining rigid for several seconds until I forced it to expand and suck some air into my lungs.

Marzoli remained still, sensitive enough to be aware that the gravity of the conversation called for him to pause.

“I read it. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind.”

“Um…anyway,” the old man went on, “Just want to let you know if ya change your mind…eh…I’m…I’m just gonna keep this stuff. It’s not going anywhere.”

“Thank you,” I breathed.

I glanced over and met Marzoli looking back. He was as expressionless as a slab of marble. The eye contact put us back into motion. Marzoli opened the door and gave me a polite little salute, hefting the bag full of the Layworth’s trash over his shoulder.

Palmer continued. “Also, I don’t know how you feel about ashes. If you want them or not. Unclaimed bodies get cremated, you know. I’ve got those too, if you ever want them. In a plastic bag. Okay?”

“Okay.”

All that remained of thirty-seven years of life was some dirt in a baggie. Okay.

“Uh…” Palmer pushed on, “So…eh…take care, now.”

“I will.”

We hung up.

The door shut.

No! No! No!

Minnie started yapping.

I darted to the door and opened it. Marzoli was gone.

What the fuck did I chase Marzoli out the door for? Even if he was just using me, why did I care? Wasn’t being used by that SOB better than not being near that SOB at all? He was a officer of the law using his downtime to investigate the neglected murder of the twinkie that lived above me. I knew that from the beginning. Any more expectation on my part was just the anxious monologue of one of a thousand needy, lonely, miserable, housebound New Yorkers.

A nasty lump inflated in my throat.

I looked down at my feet and realized in my haste I’d actually stepped one foot beyond the door into the hallway. I immediately broke out into a cold sweat as my heart rate elevated. I stepped back inside and closed the door.

My blood remained running at a fast clip. The call from Palmer and my fucked up dismissal of Marzoli was turning my knees into Jello. I flattened my back against the door and sank to the floor. I was panting. My eyes were damming up an onslaught of tears.

My six hundred and fifty square foot fortress no longer made me feel safe. Marzoli had torpedoed right through the brittle brick, and though my lids were squeezed tight, I could no longer close my eyes to the gaping, smoking, debris-strewn hole.

Jesus-Fucking-Christ.

Some location between my sternum and Adam’s apple was rubbed red and raw, and I couldn’t tell if that location was on the cusp of explosion, implosion, melting, or freezing. I had no perspective to tell if I’d inflicted my own pain or if he did, but why in fuck’s sake did I ever open my door to him to begin with? I could manage my shit in a sinkhole of anger. I could not in a sinkhole of longing.

Longing…

Trapped by the gouging rusty teeth of a neglected bear-trap of longing…

I opened my eyes and saw Graves. The old man stared through the trailer’s living room window at Paul and me as we lay in the pullout bed, trying to sleep. His face was barely visible, lit by the moon reflecting off the pond, but I could see the deep crevices of age outlining his expression. The thick, black wrinkles defined the eyes, the mouth, and the forehead. He was pained. Torn. Battling his impulses. One force compelled him to stare into the trailer, but every other force wrenched him away. A large blue vein in his forehead revealed how elevated his heart beat was, and how much struggle his conscience was putting him through. He was pulled by his desire to look in, but chained to the tailgate of a pickup truck about to speed away.

What are you looking at, old man?

Without moving my head, I glanced at my brother. Our first night in Grandfather’s trailer was anything but comfy. We’d both tossed and turned through the tomb-silent night until our crisp white sheet had finally sailed off to the floor. Yes, the old pullout bed in the living room was like covering a pile of rebar with a yoga mat and calling it a bed, but our restlessness was due to the surreal wordless day we’d spent with this relentlessly tacit stranger we called Grandfather.

Grandfather grabbed the two photos of our parents as adults, leaving the bright happy youthful photos on the kitchen counter, and led us outside the trailer. Having absolutely no idea where we were heading or why, we trudged past the trailer to the left, hefting our rifles over our shoulders. On the small wooden porch sat Mr. Palmer. I wondered what he must have thought of us waddling past like armed ducklings cautiously and blindly following mama duck across the road. I made brief eye contact with him right before we went into the woods. He had a gentle, warm look that suggested reassurance. What exactly did we need reassurance for?

On a log in a dark stretch a half-mile into the woods, Grandfather propped up the two photos and spaced them a foot apart. He walked us twenty-five yards away, then signaled for us to lie on the ground. With our bellies flat in the dirt, he had us butt the Winchesters against our shoulders. We clumsily rested our eyes against the scope, located the photos in the crosshairs of the reticle, and pulled the triggers. The pops of the rounds firing were deafening. The rifles recoiled and gouged painfully into our cheekbones. The butts of the rifles pounded into our shoulders, breaking blood vessels under the skin. The sound crashed off the trees and sent wildlife scampering up trees or burrowing into the brush.

But the photos remained untouched.

In spite of the physical pain, the rush of firing the bullets for the first time in our lives exhilarated us. I could see in Paul’s eyes his adrenaline was pumping. So was mine, but my excitement was curtailed by the objects of our attack. And the reason.

Why did the old man want us to blow away the photos of our parents?

We fired five more times each, and missed five more times. We learned quickly to keep our eyes three inches away from the scope and to relax our shoulders to absorb the recoil. By the sixth attempt, I’d stopped thinking about the photos as a relationship that had meaning to me and merely as objects to be destroyed, like cans of soup.

Bang. Smash.

I’d shattered my father, and in quick succession Paul shot right through mother. Neither of us could smile at our first victories, but we’d felt the stroke of accomplishing something. In the photos’ place came beer bottles, then old metal lunch boxes, then chopped logs. With our bodies digging in the earth, our limbs, fingers, eyes, and minds streamlined bit by bit until we only needed two bullets at the most to hit a target.

Grandfather put his fingers to his lips to hush us. We were making no audible sounds to begin with, so we could only interpret this motion as meaning we should remain absolutely still as well.

A full ten minutes passed. We watched Grandfather watching the woods. Paul glanced at me once with a look of confusion, to which I could only respond with a shrug of my shoulders. Then, with one minimal crook of his index finger, we followed his gaze into the tree branches. A bushy tail darted as a squirrel nimbly turned an acorn between his little fingers.

I looked back at Grandfather, who was staring hard at Paul. Grandfather jerked his head subtly toward the squirrel. Paul was terrified. He reached for Paul’s rifle and leveled it with the butt against Paul’s slender shoulder. Paul obediently gripped the barrel and the trigger. He glanced again at Grandfather. The older man crossed his arms and stared ahead at the squirrel.

Paul closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. The bullet snapped loudly, and the squirrel dropped the acorn and dashed for safety to the top of the tree. Paul glanced at Grandfather fearfully. I could tell he was expecting a muscular backhand across his face, just like Dad had administered each and every time Paul made a mistake.

Grandfather, however, did nothing. He did not look at Paul in disapproval. He just stared into the foliage, searching for the next flinch of movement of wildlife.

Why on our very first day did Grandfather feel we needed to learn to hunt? To kill? Was it entertainment in his eyes? Was it yet another test of manhood, like his handshake had been when I first passed through his door?

We heard a crackling of a dry leaf behind us.

With the quick reflexes of a fox, Grandfather snatched the rifle out of my hands and swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees around. In that split second it took to turn, he’d thrust the rifle against his shoulder, the scope to his eyes, his finger around the trigger, and braced his legs for a firing.

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.