Revolution #9

by Peter Abrahams

  They started downhill, Klein about fifty yards in front, a sweat stain growing in the middle of his back. Ahead, the bay was baby blue in the early light, and fog was stacked up over the city across the water like whipped cream on a wedding cake. Klein ran all the way down to Shattuck, then turned left, completing the rectangle. People were on the streets now; a few of them greeted Klein, looking up at him with smiles on their faces. Charlie couldn’t see Klein’s expression: he could only observe how he lifted his knees a little higher, pumped his arms a little faster, each time someone said hello, the sweat stain spreading across his back. Klein picked up speed as he neared his office. He was almost sprinting when the young man in the three-piece suit opened the front door and let him through.

  Charlie stopped on the other side, breathing hard, hard enough to want to hold his sides. He resisted. The young man looked up and down the street, as though storing mental images of the outdoors for the long office day ahead, and closed the door. The city hummed.

  Charlie stayed where he was. His pulse and breathing fell to their normal rates; only his mind kept racing. He watched Klein’s office, hoping the door would open, hoping Klein would come back out, hoping for something. But Klein didn’t come out, and Charlie began to doubt that he would until the end of the day. Charlie didn’t want to wait all day. He took off his shoes and socks and started walking.

  He walked along Shattuck, up Bancroft Way, past the university; then up the hill, and left, retracing Klein’s run along the green and pleasant street until he came to the house with the palm tree and the tin 227 on the doorpost. The old Ford was still in the driveway, but the blue Tercel with the red rose on the backseat was gone.

  Charlie stood before the house, shoes in hand. He heard a trumpet playing, not far away. The song was “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” but the tempo was very fast and the tone was honking, rude, funny. Technically the player wasn’t bad, almost good enough to bring it off. Charlie listened as the trumpeter tried one thing, then another, moving farther and farther from a simple tune about streams and dreams. The music died abruptly, leaving various ideas unresolved. It was only then that Charlie realized that the sound had come from inside 227.

  Charlie had moved onto the driveway and now stood by the old Ford. His mind was back in the spring of 1970, watching Rebecca. She was running toward him across the central quad, her eyes excited and happy. But she wasn’t running toward him at all: past him, unseeing, and into the arms of her father. Hugo Klein, smiling with pride, handed her a bunch of red roses. Hadn’t there been another time when he had seen Rebecca with red roses—or perhaps a single one? When?

  The night of the bombing.

  The door of 227 opened. A young man came out. He had a duffel bag in one hand, a trumpet case in the other. He might have been twenty or twenty-one. He was almost as tall as Charlie, almost as broad; his hair and skin were a little darker. Charlie registered all that, but not consciously. His conscious mind, so recently full of images of Rebecca and red roses, was now absorbing the fact the young man looked just like him; or just as he had looked when he was twenty or twenty-one—say, back in 1970.

  The young man, carrying the duffel bag and the trumpet case, walked toward the beat-up Ford. Then he noticed Charlie standing at the edge of the lawn, shoes in hand. He gave Charlie a pointed glance, perhaps expecting he would go away, opened the trunk of the car, then glanced at him again and saw he hadn’t.

  “Something I can help you with?” asked the young man, laying the bag and the trumpet in the trunk. Charlie saw a rugby ball and pair of cleats beside the spare tire. They didn’t look like baseball cleats, but he was too far away to be sure.

  “What’s your name?” Charlie said. It was the first question to separate from the wriggling nest of questions that had risen in his mind; the words popped out before he could stop them.

  The young man straightened. His chest swelled, in the inflationary manner of threatened mammals. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I heard you playing. You play well.”

  “Thanks.” The young man closed the trunk with a bang.

  Charlie stepped forward, onto the lawn. He felt the grass under his feet, drier and coarser than the outfield grass on the ball field at Morgan, and wished his shoes were on. “I …”

  “Yes?”

  What had Malik said? Rebecca, pregnant with Malik’s child, had left Toronto in late summer or early fall of 1970, gone to San Francisco for an abortion. But Malik hadn’t known that the child wasn’t his, and he hadn’t known that the abortion never happened. Wasn’t that the only explanation of what he was now seeing with his own eyes? That left the question of how to begin.

  “I knew your mother,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah?” replied the young man. “She’s not home.”

  The next question, had Charlie still been following Mr. G’s agenda, was: where is she? It remained unasked. Instead, Charlie heard himself say, “What about your father?”

  “My what?”

  “Your father.”

  Charlie, almost without realizing it, had begun to cross the lawn. The young man squinted at him over the top of the car. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Blake Wrightman,” Charlie replied.

  The young man’s face, healthy, unwrinkled, unlined, still partly the face of a boy, didn’t change expression. “I think there’s some kind of mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother never mentioned you. And I don’t have a father.”

  “Everyone has a father somewhere.”

  “Mine died in Vietnam.”

  “Who told you that?” Charlie’s voice rose despite himself.

  The young man’s voice rose too. “What do you mean, who told me?” He looked closely at Charlie, his eyes coming to rest on the shoes in Charlie’s hand. “I’ve got to get going,” he said, and opened the car door.

  Boy, it was your grandfather who died in Vietnam: that was Charlie’s thought. He almost said it out loud. Then the lines of the young man’s family tree began to come in focus. Everyone had two grandfathers. The young man’s other grandfather was Hugo Klein. What were the implications of that?

  The young man was getting into the car; the conversation was over for him, one of those chance urban encounters with a crank. Charlie walked around the car.

  “Wait.” Afraid of causing damage, he’d been too oblique.

  The young man paused, halfway into the car. “Why don’t you get out of the sun for a while? You’re a little mixed-up.” He sat in the driver’s seat and started to close the door. Charlie grabbed the inside of the frame. The young man pulled; Charlie resisted. The young man was strong, Charlie stronger. As soon as Charlie realized that, as soon as he realized what he was doing, he let go of the door. It slammed shut. Too late. The young man was looking up at him through the open window with animosity, his tolerance for street-crazy behavior exhausted.

  Charlie stepped back. “It’s a mix-up,” he said, “but not the kind you think.”

  “No?” said the young man, sliding the key into the ignition. “Who is it you’re looking for exactly?”

  “Your mother. Rebecca Klein.”

  “That’s not my mother’s name.” The young man turned the key and shifted into reverse.

  “Look at me,” Charlie said. “Look at my face.”

  The young man looked at him, looked at his face. What was obvious to Charlie was invisible to him. “You’d better get some help,” he said. “Try the Med Center.” He stepped on the gas. The car squealed out onto the street, swung around, stopped with another squeal, then jerked forward and sped away. In a few moments it rounded a leafy curve and vanished.

  Charlie stood on the grass, looking at nothing, smelling exhaust. He sat down and put his shoes on. He was lacing them when he saw a man coming along the sidewalk. The man had long gray hair, a full gray beard; he wore sandals and a blue robe that reminded Charlie of some Saharan tribe. He was reading a book, reading aloud: his mut
tering grew audible. As the man came closer, Charlie could make out the title. It was Dune. The man drew alongside Charlie, raised his hand palm up like a priest of some ancient and orthodox cult. He spoke. “How does your garden grow?”

  And then walked on. Just another urban crank.

  Charlie rose. The questions raised by the sight of the young man with the trumpet coiled and uncoiled in his mind. He had no answers. All he knew were two things: Hugo Klein had dropped a red rose into the blue Tercel, and the young man looked just like him. But could he really be sure of the second? Maybe it was his imagination, coming up with possible complications on its own. Charlie walked up to the front door and knocked.

  No one answered. The house was silent.

  Charlie opened the mailbox beside the door. Inside were two envelopes and a Sears catalog, all addressed to “Resident.” Charlie replaced them and knocked again. Silence.

  He glanced around, saw no one, then pressed his face against the half-moon window in the door. He saw an entrance hall with a dead plant in one corner and a coatrack in the other. A black T-shirt bearing glittery writing hung on the coatrack. He could read “Paco’s.”

  Charlie left the front door, walked around the side of the house. A picket fence enclosed the tiny backyard. The gate hung on one hinge. Charlie pushed through.

  There was nothing in the yard: no trees, no flowers, no bicycles, no lawn furniture, no barbecue; just a distant and partial view of the bay. Charlie went to the back door.

  He looked in, saw a washer and dryer. A brassiere and panties were spread on a towel. Through a doorway beyond he saw into the kitchen: a refrigerator with nothing tacked on it and a bare table.

  Charlie tried the door. It was locked. He leaned his shoulder against it. The door gave slightly, as though the lock were loose or the materials worn and second-rate. He glanced around again. No one was watching. He was free to do a criminal thing. And why not? He was a criminal, and he had enemies—yes, why not call them that?—who were prepared to commit violent crimes. Still, Charlie almost turned and walked away.

  But in the end he could not. He lowered his shoulder and drove it into the door. Wood splintered around the lock, making a sound like crashing surf. He fought off the urge to glance behind him and hit the door again. It swung open and he went in.

  And once in, he searched the house without compunction. He checked the sizes of the panties and brassiere, not quite dry, on the towel. Medium and 36C, but what did that mean? People change shape in twenty years, and he didn’t think Rebecca had ever worn brassieres. That didn’t stop him from opening the dryer and examining everything inside: all of it women’s clothing, all of good quality. He checked the pockets, found nothing but a dollar bill, wadded in a tight, clean ball.

  Charlie moved into the kitchen. Searching the dryer had reminded him of Malik, stuck in red ice. He opened the refrigerator. The only corpse was on the bottom shelf, a plastic-wrapped fowl. The perp was Frank Perdue.

  The coffee in the coffeemaker was still warm. Charlie took a mug marked with two Chinese characters from the dish rack, poured some and tasted it. Very good. He wondered whether the young man with the trumpet had made it.

  In a drawer beneath the wall phone was a phone book. Charlie leafed through it. There were no handwritten numbers inside, no messages, nothing underlined. He went into the dining room and then the living room. There was furniture, but it hardly seemed used; there were books, but they didn’t look read; a desk, but no bills, letters, bank statements, address books, or anything with a name on it in the drawers. Charlie went upstairs.

  On the second floor were two bedrooms and a bathroom. Charlie went into the bathroom first. There was a wet towel on the floor, and water drops still clung to the inside of the stall shower. A blob of shaving cream lay on the counter by the sink. Charlie opened the mirrored cabinet. Inside he found soaps and cosmetics in fancy packages with European names on them. Charlie closed the cabinet, and saw a tired and troubled face in the mirror.

  He went into the first bedroom. It had a single bed, stripped, and nothing in the chest of drawers but a few worn sweatshirts—size, men’s X-large. Charlie opened the closet. On the single hanger was a purple satin jacket of the size a big twelve-year-old might wear. On the back was stitched in gold thread: “East Bay Little League Division One 1982 Champions.” On the sleeve: “Malcolm.” There was nothing else of note in the room except a black-and-white poster of Wynton Marsalis.

  Charlie went into the second bedroom and stopped right away. He knew. It was the bed that did it, a big bed with a painted headboard, carved posts, a canopy like soft pink clouds. For a moment he thought it was the princess bed, but it was not. Charlie remembered fat putti on the headboard of the princess bed; the painting on this headboard showed a Tuscan landscape in the evening. But close enough. He knew.

  Charlie checked the walls. There were no posters of Marx, Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, La Pasionaria, Mao, Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, General Giap; just restful European landscapes, bathed in soft Mediterranean light.

  Malcolm X, Charlie thought. He stood in the doorway for a long time.

  After a while he searched the room. He found the predictable: clothing, shoes, bedding. The unpredictable: a black, luridly detailed vibrating device. But nothing with a name on it.

  Nothing with a name. The phrase stuck in his mind, blocking other thought. He was tired. When had he last slept? In Toronto, or before? Charlie sat down on the bed, trying to remember. He couldn’t. He sat there for a long time. Should I be sitting on this bed? Why not? It’s just a bed, isn’t it? And he felt like sitting.

  Shadows slid slowly across the floor. The bed was soft, the Tuscan landscape a sleep-inducing sfumato-land of crumbling statues and dying light. Maybe if he put his head down, just for a second, it would come to him, whatever he was trying to remember.

  Charlie put his head down.

  33

  There was a knock at the door. “Don’t even think about it,” Pleasance said in a low voice, up off his chair and onto his feet with the speed and silence of a forest creature.

  Emily thought about it anyway, but what could she do? She was in the broom closet, bound to a chair with duct tape; there was another strip of it across her mouth. Pleasance shut the closet, and then there was nothing to see but a keyhole-shaped piece of daylight.

  Emily didn’t hear Pleasance’s footsteps, but after a moment or two she heard the front door open. Then came a voice: “Is Emily in?”

  A man’s voice, and not just any man’s, but the first man’s voice she had known. Still, it was so unexpected she almost didn’t recognize it at once: her father’s voice.

  “Emily?” said Pleasance.

  “Emily Rice,” said her father. After a slight pause that was full of meaning, although perhaps meaning undecipherable to anyone but Emily or her mother, he added: “Or she may be calling herself Ochs now.”

  “Emily,” said Pleasance. “You betcha. The thing is she’s not here right now.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “He’s gone too.”

  “When will they be back?”

  “Hard to say. I’m kind of … house-sitting, see? While they’re away.”

  “Where are they?”

  “New York.”

  “They are? Emily hates New York.”

  “Me too,” said Pleasance.

  There was another pause, longer this time. “You’re a friend of Emily’s?”

  “My connection’s more with Charlie, if truth be known. But she’s a fine gal, just fine.”

  “I’m her father.” His voice was cold.

  “Jack Pleasance, captain, U.S. Army, retired. Pleased to meet you.”

  Another pause. Emily had the horrid thought that the two men were shaking hands. “Did I see you at the wedding?” her father asked.

  “Couldn’t make it, to my great sorrow. Heard it was quite a bash.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “No? Well, everybody ha
s their own idea about fun, right? I saw things in Saigon you wouldn’t believe.”

  “You were there?”

  “ ’Sixty-five to ’sixty-seven. It was the biggest fuck-up there ever was.”

  “I won’t disagree with that.”

  “You were there too?”

  “Twice. With the Marine Corps.”

  “Well semper fi, you ol’ son of a gun,” said Pleasance, and there was another pause. Perhaps they were shaking hands again.

  “Charlie didn’t strike me as someone with military friends,” her father said. Did his voice seem less cold? It did.

  Pleasance laughed. “Those fucking radicals,” he said.

  “Charlie’s a radical?”

  “Oh, not now. For sure not now. Now he fits right in like you don’t even see he’s there. But me and Charlie go back some, way, way back.”

  “To Pittsburgh?”

  “Pittsburgh?”

  “He came from Pittsburgh, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, sure. Steel City. Right. But we hooked up a little after that. In college, it was.”

  “Charlie went to college?”

  “Hell, yes. How do you think the fucker ducked the draft?”

  Come on, Daddy. Pick up on it—he’s no friend.

  Her father said: “I knew it.”

  “Huh?”

  “But you’re friends.”

  “Why not?”

  “What you said. The draft.”

  “All that’s water under the bridge,” Pleasance said. “Spilled milk, if you know what I mean. Violence is as American as … what is it again? Anyhoo, you gotta love Charlie. Shit, you must know that. He married into your family, right? Draft dodger or no draft dodger.”

  “Right,” said her father; his voice was grim.

  Daddy: look at what’s in front of your face. But she knew he wouldn’t. Pleasance had found his blind spot.

  Pleasance said: “Well, then. Anything else I can he’p you with?”

  “I don’t think so,” her father said. “When did you say they’d be back?”