The Keeper of Dawn

by Hickman, J. B.

  The day was overcast. A steady drizzle hung in the air. Evidence of the previous night littered the grounds. A tow truck was backing toward the swimming pool (BEEP-BEEP-BEEP), squeezing between Zeus and Dionysius. Two men in hip waders sloshed through the dark, oily water. The once elegant swimming pool resembled a prehistoric tar pit. A large hose from a second truck was draining the pool. The tow truck driver—a man with a heavy beard and an ample beer gut—stepped out of the truck and shook his head in disbelief as the roof of Derek’s car emerged.

  When one of the men lifted the crystal swan from the water—the oil oozing off its smooth surface—it felt like I was watching the recovery efforts of an oil liner spill when dead birds are pulled from the ocean. The tow truck driver continued shaking his head.

  Remnants of the party were strewn throughout the house like clues to an unspeakable crime. There were muddy footprints on the carpeting, broken chairs, empty bottles of beer, wine and liquor, and a pile of hardened vomit on one of the Persian rugs. Servants and maids rushed back and forth in a cleaning frenzy. I did my best to stay out of the way, retreating to the basement—the quietest area of the house—where I drifted in and out of sleep.

  Our morning ritual of reading the paper was postponed until that afternoon. We sat in the kitchen eating Southwestern omelets Derek had cooked. Though the entertainment section of The Hartford Courant lay before me, my hangover made reading difficult, and I continued to watch the men outside. They had drained the pool—the walls were now a glossy black—and the convertible sat outside the ring of statues, a black blob dripping in the grass.

  According to Chris, Roland was in pretty rough shape. As cruel as it sounded, news that someone was worse off than I was helped improve my mood. Chris and Derek were mysteriously unaffected by the previous night’s drinking. Derek looked tired and hadn’t bothered to shave, while Chris was bright-eyed and annoyingly flippant. Despite a scratchy voice from smoking, he wouldn’t shut up about the party.

  “I don’t know which was better—Trav driving your wheels into the pool, or Zack getting shit on by those nutso birds. I never thought I’d say it, but last night would’ve rocked if I’d been stone-cold sober. And you, Jake, you wouldn’t stop talking about some girl playing the piano. A piano. That kills me.”

  At least he had enough sense not to bring up Samantha. He eventually became engrossed in an article on the senatorial debate in Providence. As much as Chris claimed not to care about politics, he devoured every article that so much as mentioned his father.

  “So who won?” Derek asked.

  “Depends on who you ask,” Chris replied, sipping his coffee. “Coleman hedged on foreign policy and stressed his economic stimulus plan. The Governor droned on about his accomplishments. They’re both broken records. It’s all scripted. For once I’d like someone to ask them a question from out in left field. One they hadn’t gone over a hundred times with their advisors. Something hypothetical like: if Martian leaders landed on Earth and crapped on the White House lawn, what would you do about it? Or, if Hugh Hefner invited you over for a little soirée at the Playboy Mansion, would you go?”

  “They should have a wrestling match to see who gets to be senator,” Derek said, only half-listening.

  “Coleman would win, hands down. He’s a World War Two Vet. He was storming Normandy when the Governor was poppin’ the Cavalcade Queen’s cherry at junior prom. But for being a marine, I can’t believe what a pussy he is when it comes to foreign policy. The Democrats have corrupted him.”

  The more he talked, the worse Chris’ voice became. By the end of breakfast, he sounded like a raspy chain-smoker.

  “Did you ever tell your father where you were?” I asked him.

  “I called Ronnie, his campaign manager. Boy was she the wrong one to talk to. It was her grand idea to drag me along the campaign trail, so I got an earful.”

  “Bitched you out, huh?” Derek asked.

  “Speaking of getting bitched out, where’s Mrs. Mayhew? I figured I’d wake up to a poolside crucifixion.”

  “Don’t know,” Derek said. “Probably went shopping or something.”

  Derek’s family continued to amaze me. With a nonexistent father and a disappearing mother, they bore a certain resemblance to my family, but I had never felt such a strong sense of abandonment than I would that week in Greenwich. Brotherhood was the only remaining shred of family values. They were brothers before anything else, more a clan than a family. Their strong rivalry, even their closeness in age, had been absent from my upbringing. As close as I felt to David, he was more a distant uncle than a brother. It was difficult to follow in his footsteps—after fifteen years, the trail had gone cold.

  Derek’s brothers made a brief appearance in the kitchen, each of them hung-over and carrying with them an atmosphere of regret. Travis looked the worst, and he stood for some time staring out the window at the workers in the pool vacuuming the residue of oil.

  After breakfast, I went to the library where Wolfgang and Strauss had returned to their cages. Wolfgang regarded me with unblinking eyes. Strauss shuffled back and forth on his perch like he wanted to say something.

  “Rrrrrreeeee! Rrrrrreeeee!” Wolfgang shrieked.

  But Strauss shook his head, refusing to be interrupted. Then he announced: “You pooh in cage! Gimme some!”

  * * * * *

  “I noticed your robins are still around.”

  I was seated on the couch, my head pillowed in ivy. Grandpa had the fan running despite the cool weather, the plants fluttering when its metal head swiveled in their direction.

  “They stay longer each year, the little devils,” he said. “They’ve gotten quite used to me. Pampered is more like it. I set out the BroadLeafs every spring now. Next year they’ll probably expect me to build their nest.”

  It felt good to be back in the cluttered living room. So much had happened since my last visit, but this room hadn’t changed, like it had been only yesterday that I burst through the door, complaining that my parents had enrolled me in a boarding school.

  The week had gone by in a blur. When Derek’s mother, whom we were now encouraged to call Annie, or even Mom, had learned that the sons of a New York Court of Appeals Justice, a decorated Army General, and the Governor of Maryland were spending a week under her roof, she went into an uproar at not being told sooner. She immediately canceled her shopping trip to spend the afternoon with us. The gruff, hawk-eyed woman who had been roused from bed by her drunken son discharging a firearm in attempt to murder the family pets transformed herself into the most prim-and-proper mother anyone could hope for. Perched on the divan, with the velvet collar of her spencer jacket tossed casually over a georgette blouse, she talked for hours about the Mayhew family, oblivious to her son’s embarrassment. She apologized profusely about how out of control the “gathering” on Saturday night had become.

  It made for an incredibly boring afternoon. Only Roland had been genuinely courteous. I didn’t speak unless directly asked a question, and by the end of the afternoon, Chris looked to be entering the beginning stages of a coma.

  “And the mother was home the entire time?” Grandpa had asked. But it was Strauss and Wolfgang who stole the show, causing him to laugh so hard he became short of breath. Perhaps it was the Dickens enthusiast coming out in him, for he seemed to commiserate with the macaws.

  “So, how is Seymour getting along?” he asked.

  “He’s still kicking,” I said. “Though I had to … reposition him.”

  “They can be picky about their sunlight. And how about you? How are you holding up?”

  “Fine. School’s good.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Unable to meet his gaze, I looked out the window, as if I might find the meaning of his question lying on the front porch.

  “Better.”

  “Good. Better is good, all things considered. I have to admit I was worried about how you would handle everything. But you seem to be doing quite well.�
�� He eased out of his recliner and went to the window. On the way over, he caught his foot in the carpeting and nearly tripped before disentangling himself.

  “I think it’s getting harder to hide your circle.”

  “Hmmm? Oh. Well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”

  I smiled, surprised that he no longer denied its existence.

  “So you’ve served your time, and have an entire week to do as you please.”

  “Yep.”

  “So here you are.”

  “Here I am.”

  “In Connecticut, in Brooklyn. Everywhere but Long Island.”

  A moment of silence passed, filled by the buzzing of the fan.

  “Why is that, do you think, hmmm? Why is it that you didn’t go home for your week off? Maybe not the entire week, but for a day or two. You came here, after all.”

  “Mother isn’t even there. She’s still in New Hampshire. The house would be empty without her.” But it was more than that. “I feel I have to prove something before I go back. Something has to happen.”

  “Something has to happen?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Explain away. I’ve got all the time in the world.” Grandpa stood patiently before me, his hands clasped behind his back.

  I took a deep breath. “Well, when I first went to Wellington, it felt like I’d been kicked out of the house.”

  “And now?”

  “Now it feels more like I ran away. Like David.”

  “Not like David,” he said, raising a finger. “You need to get that out of your head. It’s better now than later. Better your Raker Island than Morocco. Or New Zealand, or Katmandu. Though I’ve heard New Zealand is out of this world.”

  “Has he ever told you?”

  Grandpa’s eyebrows rose. “Told me what?”

  “Told you why he left.”

  Sighing, Grandpa looked at the floor, his gaze tracing the pattern of his walking circle.

  “Back when David worked for the firm, he felt he was always in your father’s shadow. He could never measure up, or so he believed. Hawthorne is a well-known name in New York. So David left, and then your father was elected judge and sold the firm. And then, well …” He glanced over at me, and for a second it looked like all the life had drained from his eyes. “Well, you know the rest. Neither spoke to each other again. It’s been tough on him, tougher than he’ll ever let on, not getting the chance to bury the bad blood between them. He and I are the same, in that regard. There’s nothing like regret to make you feel the full weight of your years. And here you come along, after all this. And now there’s the question of what to do with you.”

  “So … what do we do with me?”

  Grandpa bent down and removed a shoot of ivy from the walking path. “You can’t change the past. You can’t dwell on it either. What’s done is done. There’s no path set in stone for you like there was for David. So, where do we begin? Hmmm. How about with that age-old question: what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  He sat beside me on the couch, which was something he had never done before. “Let’s start with the basics. What is it you enjoy doing?”

  “Fencing and fixing lighthouses.”

  He smiled. “Something tells me professions in either of those fields is somewhat limited. What do you enjoy in school?”

  “English and history, mainly. I read quite a bit. Well, at least I did before school started. Now there’s no time.”

  “Well, you can’t very well become a professional reader.” He sat very still, his body motionless except for a slight trembling in his hands. “Wait! I have it!” he cried, leaping off the couch. “Stay right where you are, young Jake. I shall return.”

  With a theatrical swirl of his robe, he vanished from the room. As he creaked down the hall, I realized that this was the first time I had ever been in a part of the house without him, and the room—sensing its master was away—began to change. Outside the afternoon was aging, sending a feeble light through the front porch window. The walls around me became vast, flat shadows; the red carpet a matted, indistinguishable darkness, and Grandpa’s walking circle appeared as a halo shining its pale magic from the floor.

  Grandpa returned a moment later dragging one of the kitchen chairs behind him. “This is an old trick of mine,” he said, positioning the wooden chair in the center of the room beside the fan. He faced me from behind the chair, resting his hands on its curved back. “It’s a simple exercise to test one’s imagination. I want you to clear your mind of everything. Sweep away all the clutter. I don’t want any thoughts about girls or school or talking birds popping into that head of yours.”

  “Well now I’m thinking about all those things.”

  “Well get rid of it. We want a clean slate to work with. Is it clean?”

  “As clean as it’s going to get.”

  “Good. Now what I want you to do—”

  Suddenly a high-pitched shriek drowned out his voice. While talking, Grandpa had inadvertently leaned on the chair, tilting it back just far enough so that the tip of its front leg moved into the unforgiving path of the fan. A plume of sawdust shot into the air, the chair vibrated, and a small woodchip landed on the couch beside me. Grandpa yanked the chair back to safety, staring in disbelief as a cloud of sawdust settled over him.

  But the disaster wasn’t over. The fan recoiled on impact, tilting back on its stand to send its breeze into Grandpa’s midsection, making his robe flap wildly, which only added to his look of stunned bewilderment. Then the fan recovered, rocked forward, teetered for a heartbeat, looked hungrily at the old man’s foot, and toppled over.

  “Grandpa!”

  He moved his slippered foot out of the way just in time. The fan fell with a defeated clang, though it managed to catch a strand of red carpet between its wire-guard, propelling a severed chunk of it into the air like a streak of dried blood.

  “My carpet!” he yelled. “Quick! Unplug the monster!”

  I ran to the wall and yanked the fan’s cord from the outlet. I half-expected to find it still going now that it had gotten a taste of blood, but its blade slowed to a stop.

  “Goodness,” Grandpa said, retying his robe. “That thing is a safety hazard.”

  “You think?”

  Still flustered, Grandpa carried the fan into the other room, leaving me to examine the jagged woodchip on the couch. When he returned, we both looked skeptically at the injured chair, which now leaned to one side.

  “So does this ruin your test?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, the test!” He had been looking at the chair as if unsure how it had gotten there. Then he became serious, crossing his arms and saying, “The test is a simple one. There are no wrong answers. I want you to clear your mind. Look at this as a search for the truth. Are you ready?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now …” he said, pointing dramatically at the chair. “Tell me what you see.” Then he added, “Tell me all you see.”

  “I see a chair that just got its leg chopped off by your killer fan.”

  Grandpa said nothing.

  “Is that it?”

  “It is if that’s all you see.”

  “What else would I see? It’s a chair.”

  The teacher stood watching me. His silence made me uneasy, like I was failing at something.

  “Sorry, but that’s all I see. I don’t really know what—”

  “Why don’t you stand up?” He motioned for me to get off the couch. “Stretch your legs a bit. You’re too comfortable sitting down. Comfort dulls the mind. Now tell me, what runs through your mind when you look at the chair?”

  I reluctantly got up and took a few steps forward. The teacher watched stoically, his arms crossed.

  “I see the chair, but it looks a little out of place,” I said, proceeding cautiously. “I’m used to seeing it in the kitchen. I guess, like most of your stuff, it’s been around for years.”

  “Many years indeed. Since before you were born.�
�

  “Okay, so it was around when Grandma was still alive. She probably sat in that chair.”

  “She did indeed.”

  “I see her sitting there eating her breakfast. Her eggs and Raisin Bran—”

  “Cheerios. Your grandma always ate Cheerios.”

  “Okay, her Cheerios. She’s eating her Cheerios while you’re getting ready to go teach at Franklin.”

  “Great! Now keep going.”

  I was walking then, pacing really, not in any particular direction, but stretching my legs in the spacious room like Grandpa had suggested, my eyes never leaving the chair.

  “Of course it wasn’t always in your kitchen. It had to come from somewhere. Maybe Grandma picked it up at an antique shop.”

  “Myer’s Antiques, just down the road.”

  “Myer’s Antiques. There you go. So it’s probably really old. Mother is always buying antique stuff. She likes things with history. Maybe … maybe someone important once sat in it.”

  “Yes! Yes! A very important ass sat right there in that chair!”

  “I see … I see an inventor sitting on it in his garage while he’s hard at work.”

  “What’s he working on?”

  “I don’t know. What’s he working on?” I asked myself. I started circling the chair then, looking at it from all angles, making a wide loop around the teacher and the object of discussion. “The rubber band!” I said, snapping my fingers. “He’s inventing the rubber band. He created the rubber band while sitting in that chair.”

  “Where would we be today without the rubber band? What about before that?”

  “The rubber band inventor bought the chair new, so before that it was … nothing. Well, not nothing, but a tree. Its pieces were in the thick trunk of a tree.”

  “What kind of tree?”

  His question quivered in the air, became not a question posed by the teacher to the student, but a question voiced in my own mind.