Gentlehands (10 page)

THE ONLY THING MY MOTHER SEEMED TO CARE ABOUT
was whether or not our name would be brought into the “scandal.” She wasn’t interested in anything I had to say about Grandpa Trenker’s innocence.

“He was
there
, in Germany,” she said. “None of them were innocent.”

“He didn’t have anything to do with those concentration camps,” I said.

“Oh Buddy, he was a German!”

“Loyal to his own,” I said, “just the way you claimed you were loyal to your own, the other night in Montauk, when we were talking about the Vietnam war!”

“Loyal to his own?” She gave a snide hoot. “His own were over here in America scratching for a living!”

“You know what I mean,” I said. “He was loyal to his country.”

“Some country!”

“You once said you’d have disowned me if
I’d
refused to go to Vietnam!”

“Buddy, this is not the same thing,” she said.

“Why isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry I ever went to Montauk and sat down at his table!” she said, ignoring my question. “I did that for
you
, Buddy. Now you do something for me. Stay away from him! I don’t want to hear his name in this house!”

“We’re great Americans!” I said. “He’s guilty before he’s had a chance to prove he’s innocent!”

“You heard your mother,” my father said. He was strapping on his gun, getting ready to leave for work. Big deal, I thought as I watched him; a lot he knows or cares about the law!

Streaker was curled up on the couch biting his nails, pretending he was watching a rerun of
Sesame Street
.

This time I didn’t even try to reason with my mother, or try to make it all right with Streaker that I was leaving. I waited until my father drove off, and my mother carried a load of wash down to the basement. Then I took off for Fireplace Road, hitching a ride to the parking lot behind the A&P where I’d left the jeep.

It was about two thirty when I got to Beauregard. It was one of those fantastic summer days, and I didn’t wait for Peacock to let me in.
I knew everyone would be sitting around the pool. I walked down the side of the house, and called Skye’s name. I had no intention of staying there that afternoon. I wanted to be with my grandfather, and I wanted Skye to go to Montauk with me.

Og Pennington saw me coming, got up from a chaise, and walked toward me. He was in swimming trunks, rubbing some Bonnie Bell Sure Tan Gel into his chest. “Skye isn’t here, but I’d like to talk with you, Buddy.”

“Where is she?”

“She rounded up some kids at the beach to take to Sweet Mouth for sundaes. Did you get off early?”

“Sort of,” I said, and he put an arm around my shoulder, an unusual gesture for him, and steered me down the walk to the pool. “You’d only miss Skye if you tried to connect with her now. I’d like to say something.”

Lennie Waterhouse was down at the other end of the pool. He looked up from a copy of some paperback he was reading, gave a wave, then flopped over on his stomach and fixed the book under his nose.

“We can talk privately,” Og said, pointing to a director’s chair. “Sit down, Buddy, would you?”

“I can’t stay.”

“I don’t blame you for being upset. I read
The Citizen
.”

I sat down.

“It isn’t my grandfather,” I said. “It’s a mistake.”

“I can see why you’d want to think that, Buddy.” He stretched his long legs out in front of him, and ran his fingers through his coal-colored hair.

“I think that, because it isn’t my grandfather,” I said.

“Buddy, you might not like De Lucca, I don’t
like
him, either, but I respect him because he’s sharp, too sharp to get
The Record
or
The Citizen
into a libel suit.”

“Well that’s what he’s done.”

Og reached out and picked up a folder from the wrought-iron table in front of him. “I just read a copy of his article in
The Record
.”

“I don’t care what you just read.”

He slapped the folder across his bare knees. “A man can’t print this kind of material without being absolutely sure, Buddy! Don’t you think
The Record
checked the story out?”

“There’ve been mistakes like this before,” I said.

“I wish you’d read just a few things. I’ve marked a few things.”

“Why should I read lies?”

“Read this,” he said, “unless you’re afraid to read it. Here, where I’ve marked it in red.”

I took the folder from him. Halfway down the first page, he’d drawn a line beside this paragraph:

“This hasn’t got anything to do with my grandfather,” I said.

“All right then, read it,” Og said. “It won’t take long. I’ve marked some passages.”

I glanced at another on the second page.

I let out my breath and said again, “It wasn’t him.”

Og pointed to a passage at the bottom of the page.

I handed the folder back to Og. “I’m not going to read any more.” I thought I might get sick, and I felt like just puking in their pool.

“Buddy,” Og said, “if there’s a chance, as you claim, that this Trenker isn’t your grandfather—”

I didn’t let him finish. “It isn’t!” I said.

“Let me finish—even if it isn’t, this is very strong stuff. There’s more, much more. How do you think people are going to react when this comes out on Sunday?”

“What do you want from me?” I said. “I’m telling you my grandfather had nothing to do with that!”

“What I want from you is some consideration for my sister.”

“How about some consideration for my grandfather?” I said.

“We’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, innocent until proven guilty,” Og said, “but why drag Skye into this? Skye could get hurt, do you realize that?”

“Your family doesn’t want me to see her, is that it?”

“We don’t want her going there,” Og said. “Don’t take her there, even if she wants to go.”

“I wouldn’t let anything happen to her,” I said.

“You wouldn’t be able to prevent it,” he said. “Don’t take her there.”

“All right,” I agreed.

“We like you, Buddy,” he said.

“Oh thanks,” I said.

“Don’t be sarcastic. You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

“He never did anything to Skye,” I said, “but
try to please her; make her dinner, play tapes for her.”

“She told us all that. That isn’t the point.”

“The point is now he’s in trouble because some friend of your family’s made a mistake, so the hell with him!”

“De Lucca’s not a friend of our family’s,” Og said. “Mother hardly knows him.”

“But you all believe him.”

“We believe Skye could be in danger going there,” he said.

Then Peacock appeared to see if I wanted something cool to drink, which I didn’t, and I stood up. I could see Mrs. Pennington, in a blue-and-white sundress, stepping out from the pool house, glancing up in our direction, then moving back in, out of sight.

“Tell your family not to worry,” I said.

“Let’s shake on it,” he said, and he pumped my limp hand up and down, let go, and I left.

When I arrived in Montauk, my grandfather was working in the rock garden, down by the steps to the ocean. There was a copy of
The Citizen
on the table beside his chair.

I watched him for a while, from the window. I wanted to go out and say something to him…that I was there for once because he needed me, not because I needed him…and that all
the way out there I’d been remembering a poem I’d memorized once for English. At the time I’d thought it was a little hysterical, or heavy—it certainly wasn’t something I automatically identified with. Suddenly it had meaning, and I knew it by heart, and I wished I could just for once in my life use something I’d learned for school, for real. It was called “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

That was the first verse. The point of the poem was that if you could manage to do all those things, and a lot more described in the other verses, you’d come out a man. A lot of the guys thought it was too macho when I read it. I’d really just picked it out because I knew it was the kind of thing my teacher, Mr. Kersen, would go for. But that afternoon I was glad I still knew it, because it said a lot to me about Grandpa Trenker.

The only thing I could think to do, since I
couldn’t say the things I wanted to say to him, was carry on the way we always had. I took a shower and changed into clean clothes, and I played with Graham. When the phone rang, I answered it for him. I could see him through the window as he heard the ring and headed up to the house. He probably didn’t know I was there.

“Hello?” I said.

“I hope you burn in hell the way you burned the Jews, you filthy Nazi!”

There was a click, then the dial tone. I put the phone down.

“Well, hello, Buddy! Who was that?” he said as he came inside.

“Wrong number,” I said. My insides were still twisted with shock.

“Another one of those calls, hmmm?” He took off his gloves and sighed.

I nodded.

“Take the telephone off the hook,” he said. “Put the pillow over it.”

He rubbed his eyes with his fingers a moment. “Does your family know you’re here?”

I lied and said they did.

“They don’t approve of your being here, do they?”

“They left it up to me,” I said, wishing that were true, wishing they were any way but the
way they were. As far as I was concerned, right then and there, my grandfather was the only family I cared about anymore, and I cared about him a whole lot. I wanted to try and give back a little of what he’d given me, even if it just meant being with him as much as I could, letting him know that way I was sticking by him.

We sat around for a while talking about letting Graham go. He wanted to do it right away, that night. I knew we should, but I hated putting Graham out at a time when everything seemed to be going against my grandfather. Graham had become like his lapdog, and he followed him around and watched him, and even carried over tapes to my grandfather for him to play, and stroked his cheeks sometimes when he listened to opera on the back of my grandfather’s chair.

“We must do it, Buddy,” said my grandfather. “There’s something else, too.” He stood up to let Mignon out, then paced around the room as he talked. “If anything should happen to me, remove the animal feeders. It’s still summer, and there’s still time for them to look in new places for their food. When it gets colder, there isn’t time for that, nor for them to find new territories. Do you understand?”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I said
flatly. It was as close as I could come, I guess, to telling him I loved him.

“I said
if
, Buddy.” He smiled and touched my head gently with his hand. “There’s an
if
in all our lives.”

My grandfather broiled some flounder for dinner, which we had with fresh corn from his vegetable garden. He poured me a glass of white wine, and we didn’t talk a lot, but listened to music and watched the ocean. We were just finishing when we heard a car horn honking.

“Skye?” he said.

“I don’t think so,” I said, but even though I knew the sense to what Og had said, I hoped it
was
her.

There was a more persistent honking then, and both my grandfather and I went to the back door. It kept on, and we walked out into the yard together. The sun was setting, turning the sky bright pink and deep blue.

“That sounds like the horn on my Alfa,” said my grandfather.

As we went down toward the driveway, we heard tires squeal, and a car took off.

I think we both thought someone had stolen his car. But as we walked closer we saw both the jeep and the Alfa Romeo. The door of the Alfa Romeo was open, and its sides were soaped with swastikas.

In the front seat, her fur soaked with blood, was Mignon. Her throat was slit. Her dead eyes stared back at us. Above her, attached to the steering wheel, a crude sign hung: NAZI DOG!

AFTER WE FOUND MIGNON DEAD, MY GRANDFATHER
insisted that I pack my things and go home immediately. He was afraid for my safety.

“What about you?” I said.

“I’ll take care of myself, but I can’t do that as well worrying about you, Buddy.”

“Isn’t there something I can do?”

“One thing,” he said. He wrote something on a piece of paper. “I’ve been late getting off something to someone. I’ll give you this number in New York to call. Make the call in the morning.” He reached into his pocket, then put a five-dollar bill in my hand. “Tell whoever answers the phone that the package from Trenker is on the way. I don’t want to use my own phone. It may be tapped. There’s no sense involving innocent people in all this.”

I pocketed the money for the call, and the slip of paper with the number on it. “Can I call
you
tomorrow, too, to see if you’re okay?”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Buddy, for the same reason.”

“Can I come here after work?”

He shook his head from side to side. “I’ll be all right, though. This thing will run its course. We’ll wait until it does, and meanwhile, enjoy the jeep.”

I tried to get him to let me stay long enough to help him bury Mignon, and set Graham free, but he was firm. He put his long arm around my shoulder and walked me down the driveway. Before I drove off, I wanted to put my arms around him, although I didn’t even do that anymore with my father. We stood there for a moment, then he stuck out his hand and we shook.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said. “Nothing better happen to you!”

There were tears starting to roll down my cheeks, and he stopped one with his finger. Then he put his hand down.

I saw him, through the rearview mirror, watching me as I pulled away.

When I got home, my father was still on duty. My mother made me take the jeep up to the next street, park it there, and walk back, so my father wouldn’t know I’d run off.

Streaker was in bed. I sat down in the living room and told my mother what had happened to Mignon. I thought I was going to bawl again. I hadn’t cried so much in front of my mother since I was Streaker’s age.

My mother waited for me to finish and just looked at me for a minute.

“Do you expect me to feel sorry for his dog after what he let dogs do to human beings?” she said. “Oh,
Buddy
.”

“Can’t you get it through your head it isn’t him?”

“Frank O. Trenker is him!” she said. “Tomorrow, you take that jeep back to the A&P parking lot where it was this morning, and stay out of his life!”

“He said I could use it.”

“I don’t care what he said. We don’t want anything from a Nazi!”

“Now I can’t talk to you, either,” I said.

“Why do you always give
him
the benefit of the doubt?” she said. “Why is it your father and I are always wrong and your grandfather can do no wrong in your eyes?”

“Because I
know
him!” I said.

“Oh and you don’t know us?”

“I’m beginning to think I don’t.”

“Go to bed, Buddy,” she said. “If your father comes home and hears that kind of talk, he’ll
knock your block off.”

I stood up.

“Don’t discuss this with Streaker,” she said. “I’m worried about him. He’s heard Nazi this and Nazi that, and you’ve been running off whenever you’ve felt like it. That kid’s going to be a mess if this doesn’t stop!”

“That’s right,” I said. “Let’s all worry about Streaker for a change.”

“We worry about you, too,” she said. “Your father fixed everything with Kick. You’ll still have your job tomorrow.”

“That’s just what I feel like doing tomorrow,” I said.

“And Buddy, don’t mention any of this to Kick or Ollie or anyone! We don’t want our name involved, do you understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said.

“It’s bad enough that the Penningtons know our connection by now,” she said. “Well, I’ve never met your girlfriend, anyway. I’m not good enough to meet her, I guess. We don’t travel in the same circles.”

“You could say that,” I said.

“I could care less about
their
circle,” she said. “That’s
your
hang-up, Buddy Boyle!”

I almost knocked Streaker over when I opened the door to our bedroom. He’d been crouched there listening to everything.

“Who killed the dog, Buddy?”

“People,” I said, getting out of my clothes. “Get up in your bunk, Streaker.”

“How did they kill her?”

“They killed her. Isn’t that enough for you? Do you want all the gory details?”

“Were they Nazis, too?”

“What’s a Nazi, Streaker?”

“A killer!”

“How do
you
know what a Nazi is?”

“Because your grandfather is a Nazi and he killed people. He’s a German!”

I put out the light and got in the bunk under Streaker.

“Listen, Streaker,” I said. “He’s our grandfather, not my grandfather,
ours
. We’re
half
German.”

“He’s not my grandfather.”

“And he’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known!”

“But he’s not my grandfather and I’m not half German.”

“You’re half German, all right. Mrs. Schneider up on Underwood is German. You better not eat those fudge brownies of hers anymore, they might be poisoned.”

“She’s not German.”

“Yes she is, Streaker,” I said, “and your grandfather is a very good man people are telling lousy lies about!”

“He’s not mine and he’s not good,” Streaker said. “That’s
your
hang-up, Buddy Boyle!”

Kick wasn’t there when I got to Sweet Mouth the next day. We were getting another rainy day, so business was off: people were sleeping late. I waited until nine thirty, then got some change and went down to the telephone booth in the A&P parking lot. I fed the toll and waited for the ring, and a woman answered.

“Stanton Stamp Shop.”

“Is this 212 324-4513?”

“Yes.”

“The package from Trenker is on the way.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Even though he’d told me not to, I stuck another coin in and dialed my grandfather’s number. I got a busy signal. I figured he probably had the phone off the hook again…. It was too early to call Skye.

Kick came in about quarter to ten, smiling and relaxed, high again. He began talking with a couple who were trying to eat their eggs in peace.

He was doing a monologue. “…so these Nazis surrounded this old Berlin Jew and said, ‘Tell us, Yid, who caused the war?’ Well, the old Jew was no fool, so he said, ‘The Jews,’ and then he added, ‘and the bicycle riders.’ The Nazis were
puzzled. ‘Why the bicycle riders?’ The old Jew shrugged his shoulders. ‘Why the Jews?’”

Kick laughed for a long time at his own joke, and then he said to the man, “We’ve got an SS guy right out here in Montauk. How do you like that?”

“I read about it,” the man mumbled. The woman’s expression was getting more and more steamed.

“They always have gardens,” Kick said. “Did you ever notice? They have gardens and an American flag waving in their front yards and people say, ‘Why Mr. Puffundstart couldn’t be a Nazi! He grows these lovely red roses and his petunia beds don’t have a weed in them!’”

The woman looked up then and said sharply, “We’re on vacation. We don’t care to hear unpleasant things on vacation.”

“Please excuse me,” Kick said. “And excuse me for the rain, too.”

He walked back to where I was standing and whispered in a falsetto, “We’re on vacation. We don’t care to hear unpleasant things on vacation.” He gave my ribs a nudge with his elbow.

I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock.

“That was a great joke,” I said. “They’re jackasses, aren’t they? Can I please use the phone in your office?”

“That was a great joke, they’re jackasses, can I please use the phone in your office? You
are
a
gozlin
, Buddy…. Use anything you want. This is my last day here!”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“No you’re not, and no, I’m not,” he said.

It took Skye about five minutes to get to the phone.

“Where
were
you last night? Your grandfather’s number was busy and I couldn’t find your father listed in the local directory.” We have an unlisted phone—a lot of policemen in Seaville don’t list their phones because of crank calls—but I didn’t have to explain because Skye went right on, as always. “I was worried, Buddy. Og told me he talked to you, and I want to tell you right now that I’m going anywhere I feel like going, including out to Montauk with you.”

“My grandfather doesn’t want us out there. He doesn’t think it’s safe for us right now.”

“Daddy just brought home a copy of
The Record
, Buddy, and I could die!”

“I haven’t seen it.”

“Your family isn’t mentioned, Buddy. De Lucca told my mother he purposely kept your family’s name out of what he wrote because he was aware of the estrangement.”

“De Lucca’s all heart,” I said.

“Oh, Buddy, there are photographs and everything. It
has
to be a terrible mistake!”

“It is, and my grandfather’s going through hell because of it.”

“Would you tell him for me I don’t believe it, not a word of it?”

“Okay,” I said. “Pick me up after work?”

She said she would, and then Kick appeared in the office. He had an envelope in his hand.

“A small boy just delivered a billet-doux,” he said. “Mr. William Boyle, Jr. That’s
you
, isn’t it,
Gozlin
?”

I took the envelope from his hand.

“I remember when I used to be young and eager, too,” Kick said. He sat down and began to roll a joint. “Do you know when I decided I preferred pot to marriage, Buddy-O?”

I hoped it wasn’t going to be one of his rambling pot stories. I started to tear the envelope open.

“I decided I preferred pot to marriage when my sweet wife said this SS fellow living out in Montauk was only doing his duty. That’s what Mrs. Townsend said. Oh they never call her Mrs. Richards and I’m damn glad, because I told Mrs. Townsend that her mind stinks! Wouldn’t you say that her mind stinks like a manure heap, Buddy?”

“Okay,” I said.

“What does ‘okay’ mean?”

“I think somebody ought to be sure he’s named the right person,” I said.

“Ah!” Kick said. “You’re from the ‘it-couldn’t-be-him-he-grows-such-lovely-roses’ school of thought.”

“I’d like to read my letter, Kick.”

“Go ahead,” Kick said, lighting a match. “I’m going to escape these harsh realities. Grass will put you on your ass and make time pass.”

I went into the Men’s and opened the envelope.

The message from my grandfather was short, and very clear.