Lisa sounded subdued this morning, which caused Emmy to say, “You feeling all right, hon? You seem sort of quiet.”
Lisa faked a grin. “Just all that hard work Grandad made me do. Wore me out.”
Lisa was still thinking about the rifle shot. So was I. Several times my eyes strayed to Nick’s holster and gun.
Just as we were all starting on our second cup of coffee, Lisa included, a car horn sounded at the far end of our driveway. The mail was here.
Wanting a little time to myself, I said I’d get the mail. Sometimes Lisa walked down to the mailbox with me but this morning she was still working on the second pink glazed donut. The rifle shot had apparently affected her appetite.
After the surgery and the recuperation, I decided to spend whatever time I had left — months maybe or years, the doctors just weren’t very sure — living out my Chicago-boy fantasy of being a farmer. Hell hadn’t my daughter become a farmer? I inhaled relatively pure fresh air and less than two miles away was a fast-running river where, with the right spoon and plug and sippner, you could catch trout all day long.
I tried to think of that now, as I walked down the rutted road to the mailbox. I was lucky. Few people ever have their fantasies come true. I lived with those I loved, I got to see things grow, and I had for my restive pleasure the sights of beautiful land. And there was a good chance that I was going to kick the cancer I’d been fighting the past two years.
So why did somebody want to go and spoil it for me by shooting at me?
As I neared the mailbox, I admitted to myself that the shot hadn’t been accidental. Nor had it been meant to kill me. The shooter was good enough to put a bullet close to my head without doing me any damage. For whatever reason, he’d simply wanted to scare me.
The mailbox held all the usual goodies, circulars from True-Value, Younkers Department Store, Hy-Vee supermarkets, Drug-town and the Ford dealer where I’d bought my prize blue pickup.
The number ten white envelope, the one addressed to me, was the last thing I took from the mailbox.
I knew immediately that the envelope had something to do with the rifle shot this morning. Some kind of telepathic insight allowed me to understand this fact.
There was neither note nor letter inside, simply a photograph, a photo far more expressive than words could ever have been.
I looked away from it at first then slowly came back to it, the edge of it pincered between my thumb and forefinger.
I looked at it for a very long time. I felt hot, sweaty, though it was still early morning. I felt scared and ashamed and sick as I stared at it. So many years ago it had been; something done by a man with my name; but not the same man who bore that name today.
I tucked the picture into the envelope and went back to the house.
When I was back at the table, a cup of coffee in my hand, I noticed that Emmy was staring at me. “You all right, Dad?”
“I’m fine. Maybe just getting a touch of the flu or something.”
While that would normally be a good excuse for looking gray and shaken, to the daughter of a cancer patient those are terrifying words. As if the patient himself doesn’t worry about every little ache and pain. But to tell someone who loves you that you suddenly feel sick...
I reached across the table and said to Nick, “You mind if I hold hands with your girl?”
Nick smiled. “Not as long as you don’t make a habit of it.”
I took her hand for perhaps the millionth time in my life, holding in the memory of all the things this hand had been, child, girl, wife, mother.
“I’m fine, honey. Really.”
All she wanted me to see was the love in those blue eyes. But I also saw the fear. I wanted to sit her on my lap as I once had, and rock her on my knees, and tell her that everything was going to be just fine.
“OK?” I said.
“OK,” she half whispered.
Nick went back to telling Lisa why her school should have an especially good basketball team this year.
On the wall to the right of the kitchen table, Emmy had hung several framed advertisements from turn-of-the-century magazines, sweet little girls in bonnets and braids, and freckled boys with dogs even cuter than they were, all the faces and poses leading you to believe that theirs was a far more innocent era than ours. But the older I got, the more I realized that the human predicament had always been the same. It had just dressed up in different clothes.
There was one photograph up there. A grimy man in military fatigues standing with a cigarette dangling from his lips and an M-16 leaning against him. Trying to look tough when all he was was scared. The man was me.
“Well,” Nick said about ten minutes later.
Emmy and Lisa giggled.
No matter how many times they kidded Nick about saying “Well” each time he was about to announce his imminent departure, he kept right on saying it.
Emmy walked him out to the car.
I filled the sink with hot soapy water. Lisa piled the breakfast dishes in.
“Grandad?”
“Yes, hon?”
“You sure you don’t want to tell Mom about the gunshot?”
“No, hon, I don’t. I know it’s tempting but she’s got enough to worry about.” Emmy had had a long and miserable first marriage to a man who had treated adultery like the national pastime. Now, on the small amount of money she got from the farm and from me paying room and board, Emmy had to raise a daughter. She didn’t need any more anxiety.
“I’m going into town,” I said, as I started to wash the dishes and hand them one by one to Lisa, who was drying.
“How come?”
“Oh, a little business.”
“What kind of business?”
“I just want to check out the downtown area.”
“For what?”
I laughed. “I’ll fill out a written report when I get back.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, no, hon. This is something I have to do alone.”
“Detectives usually have partners.”
“I think that’s just on TV.”
“Huh-uh. In Weekly Reader last year there was this article on Chicago police and it said that they usually worked in teams. Team means two. You and me, Grandad.”
I guessed I really wasn’t going to do much more than nose around. Probably wouldn’t hurt for her to ride along.
By the time Emmy got back to the kitchen, looking every bit as happy as I wanted her to be, Lisa and I had finished the dishes and were ready for town.
“When will you be back?”
“Oh, hour or two.”
Emmy was suspicious. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing, sweetheart,” I said, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. “Honest.”
We went out and got in the truck, passing the old cedar chest Lisa had converted into a giant toolbox and placed in the back of the pickup. She had fastened it with strong twine so it wouldn’t shift around. It looked kind of funny sitting there like that but Lisa had worked hard at it so I wasn’t about to take it out.
Twenty years ago there was hope that the interstate being discussed would run just east of our little town. Unfortunately, it ran north, and twenty miles away. Today the downtown is four two-block streets consisting of dusty redbrick buildings all built before 1930. The post office and the two supermarkets and the five taverns are the busiest places.
I started at the post office, asking for Ev Meader, the man who runs it.
“Gettin’ ready for school, Lisa?” Ev said when we came into his office.
She made a face. Ev laughed. “So what can I do for ya today?”
“Wondering if you heard of anybody new moving in around here?” I said. “You know, filling out a new address card.”
He scratched his bald head. “Not in the past couple weeks. Least I don’t think so. But let me check.” He left the office.