Hearts Left Behind (23 page)

The grandfather clock in the corner
donged
.
  How many times I did not notice, but
it felt like it was counting backwards.  Suddenly the walls were covered
in clocks.  I snapped my head around and locked on each one in succession. 
So much inconsonant ticking and
tocking
that there
was no sound space left for quiet.  No room for stillness or the still.

The clocks grew louder.  Behind the sound of
their taunts I could hear the faint sound of Grandpa’s voice.  A hand
clasped around each of my wrists and gently attempted to release hands from
neck.  The clocks grew louder and drowned him out completely.  I
looked him in the eye and he loosened his hold on my wrists.  I thought
about Katie and tightened my grip. I thought about Ethan and squeezed until his
face was purple and bruised. 
Until blood poured from
his nose and onto my fingers.
 
Until blood shot
from ears.
 
Until vomit shot from mouth.
 
Until eyes popped out of sockets.
 
Until all of life left him.

I’
m the
silent killer.
  That was the
thought that was echoing through me when I awoke the next morning.

I’m the silent killer.

The dream had been so real. 
The
kind of real that has you wondering when you wake up whether it really happened
or whether you had been blessed with a nightmare.
  You don’t get
out of bed.  You don’t mind-check for pain or soreness.  You don’t
even open your eyes.  You think about your bloodied fists and you don’t
dare raise hand to eye.  And for just a moment, you wonder if maybe it all
really did happen.  But what you don’t wonder about anymore is whether you
could.  You know now that it is within you.  You can do it.  You
can kill.

Something electric and wiry snaked its way through my
brain.  Lips dry and tongue thick, I reached blindly to my nightstand for
the glass of water that wasn’t there.  I squished my head between both
hands to suppress the pain that came from sitting up too quickly.  I
rubbed my eyes and remembered the night before.

Tammy and Tory had packed up and gone to Mom and
Larry’s.  I was alone in the house for the first time since coming
back.  Its emptiness was haunting and for the first time in my life, I was
afraid to be alone here.  I made myself a vodka tonic. 
Then chased it with a second and a third.
  I drank them
in silence in the chair that had been Grandma’s.  Knitting needles and
yarn stuck out from the bag beside the chair, an almost finished white and blue
baby blanket crumpled inside.  On the end table was a TV Guide with an
unfunny sitcom star on the cover. 
A universal remote.
 
A coaster.
 
A rotary phone.
 
A lamp.
  A distorted version of me sat and stared
at me from inside the turned-off television.

Around me the walls were covered with photographs of
family - living and dead.  Known and not known.  Loved and not
loved. 
The picture of Grandpa and Grandma on their
wedding day in the center of one wall, surrounded by
everyone who ultimately came from them.

The roomful of clocks ticked and
tocked
in their offbeat rhythms.  In synch with none of it, my heart still
beat. 
Chest rising and
falling unnaturally, forcing the air to leave me.
  Blood
pulsated through my body in a fury, making muscles throb and fingers curl.

And then finally the sound of
something heavy on the steps of the back porch.
  I counted the
steps until the screen door squealed open and my grandfather stepped
inside.  He said
hi
and I said something back
that came out slurred and unintelligible.

“You’re drunk,” he said immediately and with a hint of
approval.

“Worse things to be.”

I finished my drink and slurped the ice cubes,
swirling them around the inside of my mouth slowly before crunching them to
water.  I set the drink on the table and stared outside through the
picture window in front of me.  The same window Grandma had stared through
as she lay in bed dying.

“Hey, it was just an observation.  Not a
judgment.”

I looked up at him.  “Judge not lest ye be
judged, right?”

He looked at me sideways,
wolfy
eyes narrow and probing.  I had seen
this in him once before.  It was the night he went searching for Katie
Cooper with the rest of the town.

“Think I’ll make myself a drink,
too” he growled.  “Seems like a good night to
get drunk.”

He came back a couple minutes later with four fingers
of Scotch
in a tumbler, no ice.  He
sat down in his chair, the chair opposite from me and took a sip.  With a
fiery exhale, he said, “Where are your ladies at? 
In
bed already?”

“I sent them to my mom’s.  They won’t be coming
back.”

I stared at him hard, but he held my gaze.  No
hints revealed in the eyes of the wolf.

“That’s too bad.  I liked having them here. 
Helped fill the emptiness your Grandma left.  I suppose that means you’ll
be going soon, too.”

“Why didn’t you visit Grandma more in the nursing
home?”  I had meant to ask him why he killed Katie Cooper, but this is
what came out.

Grandpa leaned forward in his chair and hung his
head.  “I know.  I know, Tuck.  I should have, but I just…I just
couldn’t stand seeing her like that.  I know it wasn’t right, but your
Grandma understood.  Believe me, she understood.”

“Understood what, that you put your own feelings ahead
of hers as she lay on her deathbed?”

“I suppose you could put it that way.  I
ain’t
justifying it, Tuck.  I’m telling you I was
wrong.”

“You knew it was wrong then, but you did it anyway.”

“
Yes, I suppose
I did,” he said dismissively.

I stood up
too
quickly.  Blood and alcohol raced to my head and I stumbled slightly.

“You knew it was wr
ong
then, but you did it anyway,” I repeated.

“I heard you the first time,” Grandpa said with a hint
of defiance.  “What do you want me to say?  I’m sorry, okay?”

“
You knew it was wrong then, but you did
anyway!”
I shouted.  And in
the heavy quietness that followed, I realized that I was standing above Grandpa
now and pointing out the window behind him. 
Pointing at
the Cooper’s house.

Fear in those wolf
eyes now, they darted around. 
Then a slight shift of
his head as he started to look over his shoulder at what I was pointing at.
 
What he already knew was there.  He recovered quickly and rose from his
chair.

“I’m getting another drink.  Maybe you ought to
do the same.”

As he tried to slip by me, I grabbed his shoulder and
turned him back around. 
Shoved him back down into his
chair.
  “I’m not finished.”

I must have hit him somehow because his nose started
bleeding.  He squeezed at it gently, wiped a bare arm across his face and
smeared the blood.  “What the hell are you doing, Tuck?” he whispered.

“Just trying to figure some things out, Grandpa,” and
the word hung on my lips like a dying breath –
Grandpaaah
…
- and what that word carried. 
My
father’s father.
 
His blood in my blood.
 
The weight of it all sunk me and for a second I considered forgiveness because
it seemed like the best way to be able to love myself.  But it was just a
moment and in the end I decided that it was my fate to love us both less.

“Grandpa
,” I
repeated, just to check the taste of the word on my tongue.

All tenderness drained from the word now and in its
place all things wicked. 
All things unnatural.
 
All things heinous.

“Why did you tell Alvin Keller that you saw James
Johnson with Katie Cooper the day that she was killed?”

“What?
James who?”

“Johnson.  That was Slim Jim’s real name.  James
Johnson.  Now, why did you tell Old Man Keller you saw him with Katie?”

“How the hell-?
Who told you
about
that.
  Alvin
tell
you that?”

“Never mind how I found out, just answer the damn
question.  Why did you say you saw them together?”

“Because I did.”

“No.  You didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did, Tuck. 
I seen
them as I was coming back in from town.  I had run out to buy some
liquor,” he said lifting his glass of Scotch to me as
evidence of the claim.  “I know I shouldn’t have left your sister like
that, but I did.  And
I seen
them when I come
back into town.”

I told him about Slim Jim’s late night snack at the
Halpern’s
that very night.

“Does that sound like the actions of a man who’s just
raped and killed a little girl?”

“How the hell should I know?  That Slim Jim was
nutty as a fruitcake, everyone knew that.”

He stood up again and pushed his way past me, the
blood on his arm smeared across my shirt.  I wanted to believe him and it
would be so easy to.  I could end all of this right now and go on
pretending until I forgot it all together.  I looked at the burnt red
streak on my shirt, dabbed at it, and held it to my eyes.  Grandpa’s blood
stains on my hand. 
His blood on me.
 
His blood in me.
  I wanted it to be good blood.  I
turned from him and my eyes landed on the day’s mail piled on the dining room
table.  I looked again at the blood on my hand.

An idea.

After a moment, I said, “He was a little touched in
the head.  That’s true.”

He let out a deep sigh and after a moment said,
“I always felt kind of sorry for the guy, wondered if
maybe there was some way we might have helped him that could have prevented
what happened.”

Broken parts, I thought.

Grandpa moved in close to me and cautiously rested a
hand on my shoulder.  “Hey, what say I get us a couple more drinks?”

When he left the room, I grabbed the mail from the
dining room table and pulled out one of Grandma’s hospital bills that had come
in the mail that day.  I slid it into my back pocket and sat back down in
my chair.

Grandpa came back into the room and handed me my
drink.  “Here you go.  Made it just the way you like it – extra
strong.”  He took a big drink of his Scotch, exhaled an approving hiss,
and holding the half-empty glass up to his eyes said with a wink, “And mine,
extra stronger.”

I smiled weakly.

“You’re running with the big dogs now, Tuck.  Be
careful,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I said, but he waved it
off.  “No, I am.  It’s just…I started getting these anonymous letters
out at the cemetery saying Slim Jim didn’t kill Katie.”

“That’s what set you off on me? 
A letter from some anonymous crackpot?”

“Sounds stupid, I know.  I guess I’m still not
quite in my right mind yet.”

He gave me a grandfatherly grin that told me I was
forgiven and then took another swig of Scotch.  Looking over the top of
the glass at me, he said “So
you been
talking to Alvin
Keller, huh?”

“Yep.”

Then he lifted the glass again and poured the
remainder of that firewater down his throat, gulping it down in three easy
gulps - mouth open wide, eyes like saucers, features exaggerated by the glass
in front of his face and the alcohol inside of me.

My what sharp teeth you have
, I thought.

My hands caressed the rim of my own glass and I
twirled it slowly around on the table.  “It took a while, but he
eventually showed himself – it was Keller writing the letters.  That’s how
I found out that he was the anonymous tipster.  Told me that
story of you leaving Heather alone, but I was thinking
Heather was with us in Glidden.  Now, that I think about it, though…I
guess I’m not so sure.  That was an awfully long time ago.  Anyway,
you can see how that got me to wondering, right?”

“Yeah, sure.
  I can see
that, but…Christ, Tuck, I’m your Grandpa. 
Hows
‘bout a little benefit of the doubt?”

“I know, I know.”  Then staring at the floor I
said, “
Anyway, that
Old Man got me so screwed up with
some of the shit he was telling me….I just wasn’t thinking straight. 
Crazy old man, small town rumors.
  I should know
better.”

Then I led him out a little further.

I lifted my face to meet his gaze, contrived a look of
embarrassment and said, “The thing is…the thing is, Grandpa…”