The Next

by Rafe Haze

  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.

  Mr. Palmer was watering the begonias in his garden. He observed Mama Duck and her armed ducklings beeline past his porch. After Grandfather had passed, he nodded hello to me. Once again I’d been singled out, and I had no idea why.

  Because every curtain was closed, the trailer was dark when we stepped up the stairs and through the screen door. Grandfather turned one lamp on and opened one curtain. Six curtains could have been opened, including two that would have faced Mr. Palmer’s trailer, but only one on the opposite side was opened. Through the window we could see the trailer parked parallel to ours. Specifically, its kitchen window, but it was dark. Nobody was home.

  Grandfather heated up a can of beans and hotdog chunks in one pot on the stove. He stirred, plopped our meals on plates, and handed them to us. Like the trailer, like my Grandfather, like everything Paul and I had experienced that day, there was no joy in the meal. No embellishment like a sprinkle of chili pepper. No hospitality in spooning the food onto the plates. It was merely a perfunctory provision of carbohydrates and protein to his two wards. Nothing more.

  We devoured the beans and meat in silence as Grandfather waited patiently, eating nothing himself. We licked the plates clean, and Grandfather washed the dishes. The lights flicked on in the window of the mysterious trailer. Paul and I saw Grandfather pause and glance over at it. There in the window, a figure passed through the kitchen. It was Graves.

  Grandfather saw that we recognized him. He returned his full atten
tion to the sink, drying the plates with a white towel and placing them in the cupboard. He picked up our rifles and put them in the hall closet. We heard a dangling of keys followed by the distinct sound of the closet door being locked.

  The bed was pulled out, the lights were turned off, the front door was locked, and Grandfather exited down the hall without a word. Without a goodnight. Without a wink of acknowledgement, much less affection. We had no racetracks to play with. No familiar state park to sneak out to. Just an expectation we’d fall asleep with very little choice to do otherwise.

  We lay in the darkness watching the light from Graves’ living room form a square against our wall, occasionally interrupted by the shadow of the old man passing through. Frogs croaked in the pond in a vast hoarse chorus. Crickets advertised their presence with high-pitched ascending scales.

  The square of light flicked off, and in the blackness I began to process the day of silence. Why hunt? Why on our first day? What was the old man’s relationship to my Grandfather? Why had Grandfather kept every curtain closed that evening except the one facing Graves’ trailer? Was that deliberate?

  I heard a click on the hardwood floor where I sat with my back against the door. I opened my eyes. Glasses. Broken. I’d been holding them since Marzoli left, but they’d slipped out of my hands as sat there. I picked them up again, staring closely at the cracks in the lenses as my brain waffled between the past and present.

  Like an apparition, Graves’ gaunt face appeared through the glass. Its sudden appearance was so startling my body went rigid and my blood froze. I felt my fingers tingle like tacks were being shot through the veins to their tips. From his shadowed sockets, his blue eyes pierced the hazy dark on the other side of the window, strafing our bed like two searchlights.

  Paul and I were exposed: our shins, our thighs, our underwear, our abdomens, our chests. Our white teenage skin reflected what little light crept through the window and slipped onto our mattress.

  After a minute of breathless stillness, I redirected my eyes to Graves. He was staring right back at me.

  Jesus!

  I braced myself on the mattress with my hands but ended up gripping Paul’s elbow. Paul stirred and rolled over, his firm bottom exposed to the night air, clad only in the loose, stretched white underwear he’d had for years.

  Graves squinted, bringing several new wrinkles to the ridges of his sockets. He swiftly moved to the left and disappeared. I felt queasy.

  I squeezed Paul’s elbow more tightly than I’d intended. I felt wetness. I lifted my hand to my eyes. I’d crushed the lenses of the glasses with my fingers. Shards were sticking out from my palm. Blood was running down my wrist…

  Suddenly I realized something that vice-gripped my heart and wacked me back to the hardwood floor of the present like Mohammed Ali’s last blow at his first World Heavyweight fight.

  The cracked designer glasses impaling my hand were Ruben’s!

  Chapter Sixteen

  Marzoli would not return my phone call even after I’d rung him three times.

  He must be pissed at me. But why? I needed to know why Marzoli needed to be in my apartment? What did he need from me in particular that I hadn’t already revealed to him? Why did he need to be covert about asking me? Did I really present myself as some temperamental son-of-a-bitch he had to seduce into revealing whatever the hell he needed to know?

  Errr…yes.

  The bear trap gouged its rusty teeth into my gut even deeper.

  The sun had set, and the courtyard was hushed with the Sunday evening activities serene people of the earth do: Downton Abbey, steaming tea kettles, foaming candle-lit baths, Eat Fifty Shades of the Bridges of Madison Pray Love.

  The Broadway Dancer stood in front of a mirror, plucking his eyebrows. He turned to the side and observed the ever-so-undetectable bulge of his belly. He sucked in his stomach and held the pose for a few seconds before releasing it. He must have an audition in the morning. Dancers are more prone to harsh self-critiquing before auditions than before curtain calls. The dancer threw the tweezers onto the coffee table and shoved the coffee table out of view. He propped himself on his elbows and toes and suspended his body in plank position, maintaining the pose for two minutes as he breathed steadily in and out. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

  How much fat did he think he’d lose between now and tomorrow morning by planking? But I understood. Obtaining a zero-fat ratio wasn’t really the point. He wanted to feel the satisfaction of actively bettering his life. He was fighting the feeling of futility by engaging in the one thing in his life he had power over—his body. He was just like all the fighters in New York, trembling and sweating in a planked position, struggling to maintain any kind of elevated leveling in life before the collapse, the release, the expiration.

  And me? I pined like a lover for Marzoli to merely be in the same room with me. What did it say about me that when he showed enthusiasm to be here, I showed him to the door? What result had I achieved? I was extracting from my palm shards of the concrete proof of Ruben’s murder, and I could not inform the one person who could do anything about it. I’d planked, but just gave up. Just collapsed.

  I extracted the last and largest shard from the side of my thumb in an unenthusiastic act of self-preservation.

  What the fuck was wrong with me?

  My phone rang.

  It was not Marzoli.

  “Who’s this?” I asked after answering it, smearing a drop of blood on the screen.

  “It’s Rebecca. Didn’t my name come up?”

  “Why would it? I deleted your contact info after you failed to sell any of my songs for a year.”

  I said it in a chiding tone, but in fact I had.

  “I got your song.”

  “Oh, you got ‘Obsession’?”

  “Yeah, it’s fantastic.”

  “It’s called ‘Paralyzed.’”

  “Well, I like it. Have you got any other material?”

  That single question could indicate one of two things: one, she cannot push “Paralyzed” because it sucks, or two, someone liked it so much they wanted to hear other songs by the same writer. I guessed the former due to the fact that she hadn’t remembered the name. If she’d forwarded it to more than one person, even two, the name would have been reinforced by typing it multiple times. Obviously, she hadn’t.

  There was a burst of activity in the kitchen of the Layworths. The kids just came home, tossing their snow gear and jackets onto chairs and scrambling around in frenetic disorder. Mrs. Layworth entered as well, calm and a trifle distant, placing her leather computer bag on the table. She exchanged a brief, steely look with her husband and proceeded to pull spaghetti noodles out of the cupboard.

  “Yes, I have other songs. You’ve got copies of my other songs.”

  “But do you have any new stuff?”

  Stuff. I bled creating stuff.

  “Rebecca, who rejected ‘Paralyzed’?”

  “One of the American Idol runner ups.”

  “What place?”

  “Seventh. I think. Maybe eighth.”

  Little Miss Felicity Perfect ran to the parents’ bedroom. Mrs. Layworth dropped spaghetti noodles onto the floor and ran after her. The dry noodles spread all over the tile. Little Mr. Hunter Perfect laughed hysterically and danced all over the pasta in delight, sliding from one side of the counter to the other. Mrs. Perfect retrieved her daughter, closing the bedroom door tightly behind her. Mr. Perfect rolled his eyes at his wife and put his hands up as if to say, “What’s your problem?”

  And what exactly was her problem? Why were the children forbidden to enter the bedroom when they’d always had free reign of it before? What ought they not to encounter? Was Ruben’s body in the bedroom? And if so…where? Could I not see everything in the bedroom there was to see?

  I heard Rebecca Stray cough over the phone, reminding me she was still on the other side of the satellite.

  “Are you upset?” she asked.

  “
Why would it upset me to be rejected by the eighth place reject of American Idol?”

  “You’re upset.”

  “Which season?”

  “Does it matter?” she said.

  “You got a song on Saturday and a rejection on Sunday. If you were me, would you think you’d given it a fair chance?”

  “You’re telling me you know how to do my job better than I do?”

  If there’s anything I’d learned over the years, it’s that pissing off your agent does no good for you ultimately. A healthy antagonism keeps it peppy. Being offensive, even if you’re inarguably justified, magically vaults your songs in a lost ark nailed inside a crate stamped “top secret” and shoved somewhere in a mile-wide warehouse full of identical crates.

  The bitch doesn’t even play the piano! How the fuck does she know ‘Paralyzed’ wouldn’t move?

  “No, Rebecca, I don’t have any other songs.”

  “What the heck are you doing with yourself?”

  “Spying on the neighbors.”

  Mr. Perfect bent down and spoke to his daughter directly. He pointed toward the bedroom door. The girl walked to it, opened it, and entered the bedroom. Mrs. Perfect followed her with her eyes, consternated, and then darted a look of irritation at her husband. Or was it a look of horror? The girl proceeded to the bathroom, retrieved a Little Mermaid doll from the side of the bathtub, and returned to the kitchen. Mrs. Perfect made an exasperated sound, closed the bedroom door, charged back to the kitchen and pointed her finger to the spaghetti mess on the floor, commanding her husband to clean it up.

  Where the hell was Ruben?

  “Well, I hope your neighbors inspire you. I can’t sell this song, and they’ve all seen your old stuff. Maybe it would’ve moved if Whitney was still with us.”

  “Whitney wasn’t with us when she was with us.”

  “But her people bought your songs.”

  “She never recorded them.”

  “She bought them.”

  “And you got your commission.”