Close to the Heel (6 page)

I saw Brynja through the window of the gas station. She was holding a mobile phone to her ear while she glared at me.

“Lady, I really have to—”

“She knows. I know she does. Or her father knows. Please.”

I glanced back at Brynja. She put the phone back in her pocket and pushed open the gas station door. She wasn't looking at me; she was looking at a car that was pulling into the gas station.

A police car.

It pulled up behind the woman just as Brynja reappeared, and two cops got out.

The one who had been riding shotgun sprang out of the car and strode over to Brynja. Maybe I was reading it wrong, but it seemed to me like he wanted to be the first to get a handle on the situation. He listened for a moment and then turned to the woman and spoke to her. She looked frightened and replied in the same whiny voice she had used on Brynja. The second cop took his time getting out of the car. He was taller than the first one. He watched for a moment before approaching the woman. He bent down and said something into her ear. When he straightened again, she stared up at him. Then she slunk away. She vanished into a grocery store across the street.

“Jeez, what did you say to her?” I asked. He'd gotten action and he'd gotten it fast.

The second cop looked me over. Cops are always doing that—sizing people up before they speak to them. It didn't bother me. I lived with the Major.

“I told her if she made a nuisance of herself again, I'd have a word with her boss. It's a tough economy these days, and it won't be easy for a woman her age to find another job.” He spoke even better English that Brynja, with an accent that made me think of New York. Maybe his teacher had been from New York. Or maybe he'd lived there for a while.

Brynja said something in Icelandic.

The first cop scowled his disapproval and spoke angrily.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“I told you to get in the car,” Brynja said.

The tall cop grinned. “Sounds like she's got you on a short leash, son.”

“Shut up, Karl,” Brynja said.

The first cop clucked his disapproval. Brynja growled at him in Icelandic.

“Mind your manners, Brynja,” the first cop said in English, glancing at me.

“At least Karl got her to go away,” Brynja said. “But you, Tryggvi? You're useless. She only moved here so that she could harass us—and today of all days. But you do nothing.”

“The minute she breaks the law, we'll deal with her,” Karl said smoothly. Tryggvi shot him an annoyed look. “But she's crazy, not criminal, and everyone knows it. And being crazy is not against the law.”

Tryggvi broke in. “She's been warned. If she sets foot on your property again, I'll arrest her for trespassing. Other than that, there's nothing I can do.” I noticed he said
I
, not
we
. “She'll eventually give up and accept what happened. She'll have to.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“That's none of your business,” Brynja said. She opened the driver's-side door. “Get in the car, Rennie.” Her tone was warning. She sounded eerily like the Major.

I counted to five before climbing in beside her, so she wouldn't think I was going to jump every time she yelled at me.

“What was that all about?” I asked as she put the engine in gear.

No answer.

“What's with those cops?” I asked instead.

“What do you mean?”

Where should I start? “You talk to cops back home the way you did just now, and they'd bust you out of spite.”

“Tryggvi is my uncle.”

“You talk to your uncle like that?”

“It's more accurate to say he's my ex-uncle. He used to be married to my father's sister. If you ask me, he's an ass, not to mention an arrogant one. My aunt agrees with me.”

“And your dad?”

“You know what men are like. They stick together.”

In other words, the brothers-in-law had remained tight.

“Tryggvi thinks he's a big deal because he's a cop and he got his training in America at the FBI.”

“He trained at Quantico?” Not bad. If I'd liked cops, which I didn't, I might have been impressed.

“He thought he would come back here and be made chief of police in Reykjavik. But instead he's stuck here. It drives him crazy.”

“And the other one?”

“Karl? Karl drives him even crazier. Tryggvi thinks he doesn't understand the way things work over here. He's always competing with Karl. He says the only reason all the bosses like Karl is because they're so flattered he decided to come back here.”

“Back?”

“His grandfather was Icelandic, but Karl's father emigrated before Karl was even born.” That explained the American accent. “He spent most of his summers over here when he was a kid. A few years back, he came for a vacation and decided to stay.”

“What did he do in the States?”

“He was a cop.”

And
that
explained Tryggvi's annoyance. After his time in Quantico, he probably thought he had it all over Karl. But Americans…well, let's just say they never seem short on confidence, and I bet Karl didn't take well to Tryggvi insisting he didn't understand people over here.

We drove in silence for a few moments. I kept waiting for Brynja to explain what had just happened, but she didn't, which meant that I had to take the bull by the horns.

“Brynja, what happened to that woman's husband?”

There was a long pause before she said, “I have no idea. But I sincerely hope he's dead.”

She refused to look at me again. I guessed there was no point in asking her what was so important about today of all days.

Fifteen minutes later, we turned onto a graveled laneway and drove across a narrow bridge. We passed a tiny church, a barn and a few other smaller buildings, then stopped in front of a white house with red trim.

“Who lives here?” I asked.

“We do.” She spat the words at me. Still angry, I deduced. “My dad, my afi and me.”

I considered asking about her mother but, given her mood, decided not to push my luck.

But there was one question I had to ask.

“Um…” I admit it. She had me walking on eggshells and choosing my words carefully so she wouldn't give me more attitude. “Could I maybe settle in first?”

“Settle in?” She spoke the words as if she didn't know what they meant.

“Check into the motel or whatever, take a shower, maybe catch a nap—”

“Motel?” she said. “What motel?” As if she had no idea what I was talking about. See what I mean?

“Hotel, then.”

“The hotel in Reykholt is booked up for a conference.”

“How about in Borgarnes?”

“You're staying with us until my dad can take you to the interior.”

“Yeah, but I—”

“You Americans are so rude. Someone offers you hospitality—”

“I'm Canadian,” I said.

She didn't even pause.“—and all you do is complain.”

“Fine. Okay.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

“Thank you,” I said finally.

“That's the car you can use,” she said, pointing to an ancient Yaris in the driveway. “The keys are inside. Come on.” She climbed out of the
SUV
, circled around to the back and was halfway to the front door with my duffel bag before I realized what was happening.

“Hey, I can take that,” I said.

No response. She shoved open the front door and disappeared inside. I scrambled after her.

The main floor of the house was large and the kind of neat the Major would have approved of. To the right was a living room, to the left a dining room and behind that, a kitchen. All the rooms were painted a gleaming white. Paintings and photographs decorated the walls between and above bookcases crammed with books. The Major had told me that Iceland had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, due to a combination of the long dark winters and the state religion, Lutheranism, which required that all children be able to read and write in order to make their confirmation into the church.

“Come on,” she said, still toting my duffel bag as she led me up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to the back of the house. She dropped my bag on the floor of an immaculate room. It, too, was painted white and had a large window that overlooked a meadow and, beyond that, a waterfall that started somewhere in the highlands behind the farm. “This is your room. There's a toilet and shower across the hall. You have it to yourself. You can get cleaned up if you want. I'll be downstairs whenever you're ready to meet my afi.”

“What about your dad?”

“He won't be back until the day after tomorrow. He's got a group.”

“Group?”

“Of tourists. That's what he does.”

“Your dad's a tour guide?”

“Yes.” She seemed to dare me to say something about it.

I kept my mouth shut, but what I was thinking was, Terrific, I'm stuck here with an old man and a sour girl. This was not at all what I had expected.

“Okay. Thanks,” I said.

I waited until I heard her footsteps going down the stairs. Then I hiked my duffel bag up onto the bed, dug out some clean clothes and changed. Reluctantly, I went back downstairs.

The house was silent.

“Brynja?” I called tentatively.

“Back here.”

I followed her voice and found her standing in the doorway to a room behind the kitchen. A woman came out. She had an enormous handbag over her shoulder. Knitting needles poked out of it. She spoke to Brynja in Icelandic, and Brynja listened intently. The woman nodded at me as she passed. Brynja didn't introduce us.

“Come on,” she said to me instead.

I followed her into the room.

An old man was lying in a sturdy wood-framed bed that looked enormous in comparison to his shrunken body. But his eyes burned a brilliant and lively blue—Iceland was clearly the land of blue eyes—and his weathered face broke into a nearly toothless smile when he saw Brynja.

“I have a visitor for you, Afi,” Brynja said, in English this time.

The old man's eyes shifted to me. He squinted at me and struggled to sit up.

“David? Is that really you?” he said in a quivering voice.

David was my grandfather's name.

Brynja went to the bedside and propped the old man up with pillows.

“No, Afi,” she said. “It's not David. His name is Rennie. I told you he was coming. David is his grandfather.”

The old man was staring at me the whole time. He said something to Brynja and gestured with a shaky hand to the table under the window beside the bed. Brynja went to it and picked up a silver-framed photograph. She handed it to him, but he waved his hand and said something else.

“He wants you to look at it,” she said. She handed it to me.

There were two young men in the photo, both bundled up against the cold, but both faces clearly visible.

“The one on the left is Afi,” Brynja said. “The one on the right is your grandfather.”

He looked so young. They both did.

The old man said something else.

“He says you look like him,” Brynja translated.

I peered at the picture. If you ask me, I didn't look anything like him. But then I never do see resemblances. When people coo at a tiny baby and says it looks just like its mother or its father, I don't get it. Babies all look like little aliens to me with their big heads, their even bigger eyes, and their bizarre language of gurgles and screams that only their mothers ever understand.

Brynja's grandfather said something else.

“In English, Afi,” Brynja said gently. “Rennie doesn't understand Icelandic.” To me she said, “Come closer so he can see you and talk to you.”

I moved closer to the bed. The old man gestured again, and Brynja pulled a chair over for me to sit on.

“You are David's grandson?” he asked.

“I'm one of them.” I was pretty sure that after sixty years of Christmas letters, he knew about the others.

“How is he?” the old man asked.

I glanced at Brynja.

“I told you, Afi
.
Remember?” she said. The old man looked confused. “He died,” Brynja said softly. Tears welled up in her eyes as the smile faded from old man's face.

“I visited him a while ago,” I said, mostly because no one else was talking. “I spent nearly a month with him.” The old man perked up again, and I told him as much as I could about my grandfather, which turned out to be more than I had realized. Finally the old man asked me what had brought me to Iceland. “He sent me,” I said. “He wants me to go to the interior and do something for him.”

Naturally, Brynja asked what, and the old man looked at me for an answer.

I wasn't one-hundred-percent sure—and I had no idea why—but from everything that my grandfather had said, I assumed that part of the reason I'd been sent here now was because my grandfather thought this old man was dead.