I Am Radar

by Reif Larsen

  He picked up the figurine. Carved-out eyes, the hint of a mouth. A ghastly little thing.

  “Charlene?”

  “Radar?” said a voice.

  He whirled around, the flashlight beam finding her squinting at him from the doorway. She was holding a candle in one hand and a fire poker in the other.

  “Jesus, Mom. You scared me.”

  “There’s somebody out there!” she hissed.

  “Where?”

  “In the shack. I can see their lights. I was too scared to go outside.”

  He peered out the window. Sure enough, he could see the glint of light through the shack’s open door.

  “Maybe it’s Kermin,” said Radar.

  “It didn’t look like him, but I couldn’t be sure,” she whispered. “There’s at least two of them.”

  They watched the shack but didn’t see any movement.

  “You didn’t find him, did you?” she whispered.

  Radar shook his head. “I looked everywhere.”

  “What should we do?”

  Radar took a breath. “I’ll go down.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s better if you stay here.”

  She grabbed his wrist. “I’m not letting you go out there alone!”

  And so—she with fire poker and he with a flashlight and a hastily retrieved coatrack that he was brandishing like a spear—together they cautiously ventured through the sliding double doors and into the backyard.

  As they approached, a figure emerged from the shack. He was carrying a box in his arms.

  “Halt!” called Radar. “Who goes there?”

  Who goes there? What was this, Medieval Times?

  “It’s me!” said the man.

  Radar peered into the darkness. The voice, familiar.

  “Who’s me?”

  “Lars.”

  “Lars?” Radar sighed. He put the coatrack down in the middle of the grass. “What’re you doing here?”

  “You know him?” said Charlene.

  Lars approached, box in hand.

  “I’m terribly sorry to barge in on you like this. As you can see, we’re in a bit of a rush.”

  “What is that?” said Radar, pointing at the box.

  “Well . . . After you left, Otik and I had a little . . . tête-à-tête. And we agreed that, despite the circumstances, all of the work we’ve done up until this point—including that by your father—really deserves to see the light of day. And it’s true this ship that leaves . . . well, now it’s this morning . . . this ship could really be our only chance for a long time. So I—” He stopped himself. “Apologies. You must be Charlene Radmanovic.” He put down the box and held out his hand. “Lars Røed-Larsen.”

  Charlene, who was still holding the poker with two hands, did not return the handshake.

  “You know my husband?” she said.

  “Kermin’s been a longtime colleague, hero, and mentor of mine,” said Lars. “You and I have actually met once, long ago. In Norway. I was ten at the time.”

  Charlene blinked, squinted. “That was you? The blond boy?”

  “No doubt I was probably up to some mischief when you saw me.”

  “Lars and I met tonight,” said Radar. “At Xanadu. They’ve been working with Kermin on a show.”

  “Kirkenesferda,” Charlene said slowly.

  “Wait—you know about them?” said Radar.

  “I’ve lived with the man for thirty-five years. Some things you can’t keep secret forever.”

  Otik appeared in the doorway of the shack.

  “Hey!” he hissed. “What are you doing? There is like eight hundred fifty-five more birds!”

  “Otik,” said Lars. “Come out and say hello.”

  “What is this?” said Otik. “We need to move!” He ducked back inside.

  Lars held up his hands. “And that’s Otik,” he said.

  “I know Otik,” said Charlene. “Has he had his heart attack today?”

  “Most probably.” Lars smiled.

  “So you’re taking the birds?” said Radar.

  “If we can manage to find them all. Your father caused quite a mess with that little experiment of his.”

  “But you’re taking them without his permission?” said Radar.

  Lars bowed. “I realize this isn’t ideal. Believe me, I wish things could be different. In truth, I’m not sure how we’re going to pull it off without him.”

  Otik waddled up to them, his flashlight bobbing.

  “We will,” he said.

  “Will we?”

  “You make it with what you have. This is always how we do it.”

  “Yes, but this is Kermin we’re talking about,” said Lars. “These are his birds.”

  “But after today there is no more ship!” said Otik. “You said so yourself. If we don’t go, we kiss all of them goodbye.”

  “But say we leave and he shows up tomorrow,” said Lars. “What would you tell him? ‘Sorry, we didn’t know where you were, so after ten years of planning we decided to abandon you’?”

  “First off, he will not show. You and I both know this.” He swung the flashlight to Charlene’s face. “No offense,” he said. The light swung back to Lars. “On second hand, he would also do this. ‘The project comes first,’ he said to me. Always, always, always. It is like this. If I would disappear like him, I would also want you to go without me.”

  “We couldn’t do the show without you,” said Lars. “You know that. Or without Kermin, for that matter. We need three people, minimum, to pull it off. Probably more.”

  “Not true,” said Otik. “I could do whole show myself.”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “I could.”

  “What about Radar?” Charlene said suddenly.

  Everyone turned and stared at her.

  “What about him?” Lars asked.

  “He could go instead of Kermin,” she said.

  A moment of silence.

  “Where is this show, by the way?” said Charlene.

  After a pause, Lars said, “The Democratic Republic of Congo.”

  “The Congo?” she said, eyebrows raised. “Wow. Okay.”

  “Wait, Mom, what’re you talking about?” said Radar. “I can’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know I can’t go. I have to find him.”

  She looked at him. “He would want you to go.”

  “He would?” The words quarrying something small and dense from the depths of his body. He contemplated his mother, wondering if she could be serious. What could compel her to make such a ludicrous suggestion? She needed him. And yet, his fingers began to tingle with current. At the mere possibility of going somewhere. He had never been anywhere.

  “No, no,” said Otik, shaking his head. “No, that is not option. I’m sorry, he cannot. He would be like child out there.”

  “Hang on,” said Lars. He turned to Radar. “Would you consider it? Kermin always said you were the most talented in the family.”

  “He did?” said Radar. He tried to adjust to this piece of news. Kermin said that about him? “Well, to be honest . . . I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Otik. “Everyone, hold on to your horse. Let me just say I am lodging immediate formal complaint. This is not how we are electing team members. This is very important position. I have no idea about this man’s strength in his mind or—”

  “Shut up,” said Lars. “Radar? What do you think? Seriously. You could really save us here.”

  All at once, Radar remembered Ana Cristina. The feeling of sitting beside her in the store, of her lips, the temperature of her hands on his. Of course he couldn’t go. There were so many reasons he had to stay her
e, he was surprised he had even entertained the possibility of leaving.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I would love to help you out, but . . . I don’t think I’m your man. I can’t.”

  “You see?” said Otik. “Even he knows this is not good idea.”

  “Why not?” said Charlene. “Why not you?”

  “I can’t, Mom,” he said. “You know I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Give me one good reason. And don’t tell me you have to find Kermin, because I can do that by myself. I’ve been looking for him my whole life.”

  “Why do you want me to go so badly?” he said.

  “I don’t want you to go. You want to go.”

  “No, I . . .” He began to protest and then stopped. He thought of Ana Cristina again. “You really think I could do Kermin’s job? Me? Radar?” He had intended to say his name as a protest, but it came out sounding like a superhero.

  “Of course,” said Charlene, smiling, hearing this. “You’re his son.”

  He blinked. His eyes burned.

  “I’m his son,” he repeated. “Radar.”

  When he said this, it was as if the needle had finally found the groove. A gear shifted, and the machine came to life. Of course. He was Kermin’s son. It was meant to be. They all saw it then.

  “Okay,” said Radar.

  “Okay what?” said Lars.

  “I’ll go. I’ll take his place.” He felt the tingle of leaving already spreading through his bones. He was terrified, quivering in his boots. He hooked his hands in his belt loops to keep them from shaking.

  “You realize what this means?” said Lars. “Once you’re in, you’re in.”

  Radar nodded. He feared he might collapse, but instead he closed his eyes and said, as coolly as he could manage: “I’m in.”

  When he opened them again, he saw his mother dropping her poker and coming to him. Her arms drifted around his neck, and her face came to rest on his shoulder.

  “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered.

  Otik clapped his hands. “Fine. If it means we go, then okay, he comes. But just know I am still lodging formal complaint, and I am not responsible for him.”

  “Formal complaint noted,” said Lars. “And you are responsible for him. We’re all responsible for each other. This is how it works.”

  Radar was looking at his mother. “What’re you going to do?”

  “What I’ve always done,” she said.

  “It could get bad here if the power doesn’t back come on.”

  “Oh, I’ll be fine,” she said. “I have the Oldsmobile, don’t I? And they’ll figure it all out eventually. To be honest, I could use a little life without electricity. Maybe I’ll even read some poetry. Go back to Coleridge. It’ll be good for me. As long as I get my smell back, I don’t care about the rest.”

  “But what about Tata? And his vircator? We need to hide what he’s done.”

  “We can take care of that,” said Lars.

  Radar nodded, though he was not sure what that would entail. “And what about him?”

  “Kermin?” said Charlene. “Don’t you worry about him. When he comes back, I’ll give him a piece of my mind. I’ll let him know where you went. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  “But he is not coming back,” Otik said, and with that, he turned and headed back to the shack.

  • • •

  SO WENT THE NIGHT. Radar helped them load the van with the rest of the bird bodies. There were well over a thousand, and each needed to be hung up in a precise way, according to Otik’s instructions. When they were done, the back of the van resembled an avian congregation frozen in time.

  “We’ll cover up the vircator in case anyone comes looking. You’d better get your things for the trip,” Lars said as they slammed the van doors shut. “Pack lightly.”

  “Lightly?” Radar realized he had never packed for a journey before.

  “Does your mother have a cell phone that works?” said Lars.

  “I can give her the one I found in Kermin’s Faraday cage.”

  “Good,” said Lars. “You can take this one. It should work where we’re going. You can give her the number in case she wants to be in touch. Here, it’s on this paper.”

  “Thanks,” said Radar.

  “But be quick,” Otik said, emerging from the back of the van. “We have four hours before boat leaves, and there’s still whole house to pack. So no dillydally.”

  • • •

  RADAR FOUND CHARLENE SEATED at the kitchen table, an array of her tea jars splayed out before her.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She looked up at him with sad eyes. “I still can’t smell anything,” she said.

  “I’m sure it’ll come back.”

  She nodded. “You’re leaving?”

  “I don’t have to,” he said, sitting down next to her. “Truly. I can stay here with you. I can help you find him.”

  “No,” she said. “No. Don’t miss this.”

  “Why? What am I going to miss? Everything I want is here. Everyone I care about is here.”

  “Radar,” she said. “One day you’ll wake up and your entire life will have gone by without you ever having lived it. Don’t make the same mistake I did. You have to get out of yourself to know who you are.”

  He thought about this. Wondered if he should add it to his rule book.

  “I’ve never been anywhere before,” he said.

  “It’s not true,” she said. “We took you to Belgrade.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And you’ve been to Norway.”

  The only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the other room.

  “You know, he did it for me,” he said.

  “Did what?”

  “The blackout. He was trying to fix me. My epilepsy, I mean.”

  Her face had fallen. “How?”

  “He built a vircator, like what they used on me in Norway . . . and he thought that if he made another one, he could fix me.”

  “Did it work?” she said after a moment.

  “Did what work?”

  “Did it fix you?”

  “I don’t think I can be fixed,” he said. “But he did manage to break New Jersey.”

  He smiled. She saw this and snorted. Soon they were both laughing. They could not help themselves. The laughter was a substitute for sorrow, racking their bodies, great heaps of it rising from the depths. They were left gasping at the table.

  “That man,” she wheezed. “That man.”

  “He’s a good man,” Radar breathed, head resting against one of the radios on the table.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “He’s the only one we’ve got.”

  “I should go pack,” he said. “Lightly.”

  “Make sure you bring enough socks.”

  In the rush of things, he hurriedly stuffed his backpack full of socks and not much else. A sweatshirt. A cowboy hat. A toothbrush. He saw his pink Little Rule Book for Life and put that in, too. He knew he was doing a bad job planning for the future, but that took time, and he had no time.

  Downstairs again, he saw that his mother had not moved from her spot in the kitchen.

  “I almost forgot,” he said. He took Kermin’s phone out of his pocket. “They gave me one that will work over there. I’ll leave the number here. We can do the text.”

  She smiled. “You finally learned how to say it properly.”

  “Oh, Mom.” He hugged her. “I’ll miss you.”

  She pushed him back. “I wanted to tell you . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “About before. I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea. About . . . T.K., I mean. I’ve no idea if he’s the one or not,” she said. “I just wanted to say that. I didn’
t want you to believe something that might not be true.”

  He was quiet, staring at the twin radios.

  “It’s okay,” he said finally. “I kind of like the idea of having two fathers.”

  “You don’t have two fathers.”

  “I know,” he said. “Don’t worry. I know who’s the real one.”

  He unzipped his backpack again and took out the pink notebook.

  “For you,” he said, handing it to her. “It’s mostly stupid, but there’s a couple of good ones in there. Maybe you can read it while I’m gone.”

  She opened to a page and read out loud: “Rule number forty-five: Cheese is important.”

  He sighed. “Well, maybe not.”

  “Rule number forty-six: Everything happens just once, until it happens again.”

  “Okay, when you read them like that, they sound terrible!” he said. “Just forget it.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want this? You might need it where you’re going.”

  “I don’t think a book could help me now.”

  She smiled, blinked. “I have something for you,” she said.

  “I have to go.”

  “I know; it’ll be quick.”

  He followed her up to the bedroom. The stairs creaked beneath them, strange and loud in the darkness. Radar thought of the heavy toe-heel creaks his father made as he trudged up these same stairs. His mother always took the stairs like a bird, but his father’s footsteps sounded like those of a sullen pony. He wondered if he would ever hear those toe-heel creaks again.

  In the bedroom, Charlene took his flashlight and went over to the hole in the floor. It gaped, darker than the rest of the dark, like a tear in the fabric of the space-time continuum. After rooting around, she came up holding a book.

  “Here,” she said. “It’s for you.”

  The book looked familiar. After a moment, he realized what it was: Spesielle Partikler: Kirkenesferda 1944–1995, by Per Røed-Larsen.

  “I just saw this,” said Radar. “They showed it to me. It’s by Lars’s brother.”

  “I was mailed a copy a long time ago. It’s in Norwegian, so I’ve never been able to read it, but it seems important now, particularly if you’re going to go with them. Maybe you’ll have better luck understanding it than I did.”