The Tramp (The Bound Chronicles #1) (14 page)

Poison berries.

He glanced reflexively toward the neighboring McBride house and wondered if Candy was at her grandma’s that night. Probably not, and he was beat anyway from the long drive.

He turned his attention back to the long gravel drive approaching the familiar old Robinson homestead, a sprawling two-story country house with a wrap-around porch on both levels, their white slatted railings like a set of smiling teeth, and tiny twin attic windows peering like a nearsighted granny above them. All entrances were shut tight, too early in the season for cool, bug-free nights, and only the bay windows downstairs were lighted. He told Grandma Pearl that he would be arriving alone, his dad staying on one more day in the city to finish up some last minute paperwork. He had hoped the welcome party would be saved for the weekend.

Looks pretty quiet. Good.

John wanted nothing more than to pass out in a cozy upstairs bed. His grandma always kept the bedrooms immaculate, with fresh white linens and a well-worn, incredibly soft, down comforter rolled up at the foot of each four-poster. He loved to get tucked in, toasty up to his chin, and let the ceiling fan overhead freeze his face on high speed. He didn’t really hope for dinner (his grandma wasn’t really that into cooking anymore, after years of feeding everyone everyday for most of her life, she said), but that was fine with him.

She was no chef anyway. He smiled when his stomach growled despite memories of her less than enthusiastic cooking. Over-cooked meat, plain potatoes, and iceberg lettuce side-salads. Left-overs, stretched to their limits. Store-bought lasagne for Christmas dinner.
Sure I’ll find something.

He parked in front of the garage door, never used anymore since they had turned the space into an entertainment room that was half television room and half bar. His grandma’s sewing room was off to one side and Grandpa Joe’s workshop was in another corner. The family simply called the compound room ‘the den.’ There used to be a need for increasing space, with grandkids around all the time, but the den was silent that night. With a nostalgic twinge, he shut off the engine and swung up out of his seat to have a look around.

There’s nobody here. How eerie.

Thinking he’d just get his bags later, he headed for the front door, brushing his fingertips over the rosemary bushes and clusters of overflowing potted oregano. He knew the door would be unlocked, and it was. He rapped on it, turning the handle at the same time, and pushed it open.

“Hello? Gram?”

“Hello, dear,” Grandma Pearl’s voice echoed from the kitchen. He was surprised to see her come walking out, wiping her hands on an apron. “I thought I heard you pull up.” John walked towards her through the dimly lighted, and rarely used, formal sitting room with his arms held out to her. She hugged him and kissed his cheek, “So good to see you, sweetie.” He felt a prickle and guessed Grandma was getting a little whiskery in her old age.

How long have I been gone?
“You cookin’ for me?” he asked, pulling back with a shocked expression.

“Oh, hell no.” She turned back to the kitchen, motioning for him to follow. “You know the whole clan will be here tomorrow ready for a feeding, and I’m not about to slave away in the kitchen with everyone running underfoot.”

Passing through the doorframe, John was welcomed into the heart of the house—a cavernous, stone walled kitchen with wide marble countertops surrounding an enormous wooden butcher’s block. A simple chandelier blazed overhead, gleaming off the brushed metal refrigerator and massive gas oven. Copper pots glinted over the spotless enameled sink. The ultra-modern kitchen was Grampa Joe’s brainchild, since his restaurant was the crowning glory of Buffalo Square and the main source of his wealth, though he rarely cooked for the family at home.

Grandma had been chopping carrots and onions, their decapitated tops piled in a heap on one corner of the chopping block. Potatoes awaited dismemberment in a mesh sack hanging from one of the hooks under the wooden platform, and a cauldron of a crockpot crouched on the countertop.

“Pot roast?”

Easy guess. It was one of her signature dishes for a house full of family, made with plenty of potatoes, and as little actual roast as she could get away with. Though she was quite wealthy in present times, as a small child his grandma had lived through abject poverty on a failing farm in northern Iowa. She had stinginess etched into her at an impressionable age.

John looked toward the pantry.
Probably has a couple dozen brown-and-serve rolls ready in there, for soaking up juices and filling up bellies.

“Those kids are ravenous, I tell you. They devour absolutely everything you put in front of them—or anybody else, for that matter,” she said, referring to John’s five cousins, The Bennetts, begot by his Aunt Beth and her ultra-religious husband, Uncle Dan. John could never figure out to what religion they actually conformed, and they had switched from one warehouse church to another over the years, but at least one of them seemed to be born again at all times. “I just give them plenty of potatoes.” Pearl ticked off her fingers like a memorized grocery list, walking back to the butcher’s block to resume chopping. “Lots of bread, got some rolls. Plenty of onions—they’re cheap, have Vitamin C, and they’re good for flavoring. Not that they care, they eat anything. Anything and everything.”

John could tell she was getting tired and crankier by the second just thinking about the welcome party the next day. “Grandma, let me?” he asked, motioning to the formidable chef’s knife and the sack of potatoes.

“Oh, honey, thank you.” She surrendered the knife instantly, handle first. “You’re a dear.”

“No problem, Gram. You already wash these potatoes?”

“Of course, I did,” she said, throwing up her hands and plopping onto a nearby stool. “One of them is always sick every time I see them. Beth says, oh, it’s because there are so many of them that by the time everyone catches the bug, it’s already mutated again. That’s ridiculous. I had five children of my own and was raised in a family of nine during the war, mind you…”

“Yeah, you guys didn’t have much,” John supplied, knowing where this story led and playing his role in the script like a gentleman.

“Well, we didn’t. And I don’t have a problem with large families, provided you can afford to—honey, cube those a little smaller, they’ll cook faster—provided you can afford to feed them adequately.”

“Of course.” John nodded, his brows threaded in theatrical concern. He used the wide blade to help shovel a handful of potatoes, and walked over to dump them in the crockpot, keeping his attention trained on Grandma Pearl.

“I mean, I love all my grandchildren, and I love my daughter, Beth…”

She went on and on without a break (he didn’t even know how she breathed with so much talking), and John was happy to supply the necessary dialogue conjunctions.

Wow.
He felt the steady rhythm of the knife in his hands and the clicking swoosh of the blade cutting through raw potatoes. Lulling him like a dream.
It’s like I’ve never even left.

He glanced around the room as his grandmother ranted, companionable in her way. The house was just like he remembered it; only small improvements here and there. He noticed the new coo-coo clock hanging next to the entryway to the den, and he knew Grandma Pearl had a story on deck. The nook to the left of the clock was still filled with the old-fashioned diner table and wooden benches whose seat cushions were embroidered by Grandma Pearl’s own hand thirty years before. She was reticent to speak of love or show overt affection, but the love she had for her family was threaded into those cushions. He hoped they would be able to get a card game together sometime soon, like they had done in years past. Pearl played a mean canasta, just like all her sisters from up North.

It was oddly peaceful for John to listen to her familiar complaints, and he could tell that she didn’t have many people that just listened those days. He waited for an appropriate pause to ask the obvious next question.

“So, how’s Grandpa?”

“Well … he’s not so good, John.”

John concentrated on the potato cubing; her sympathetic expression and gentle tone was out of place from a woman who loathed showing her soft side. She was thoughtful while they both watched the steady roll of the chef knife.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about the stroke, and all that went with that,” she said, in a tone more like the one he remembered.

John nodded encouragement and turned calm features towards her to show that he was ready for whatever she needed to say.

“Well, I think we were all lucky for that minor stroke, because he had no lasting harm from it. He regained his ability to speak within a couple hours. And you know he hadn’t been in for even a check-up in so long.”

“Grandpa…”

“I know. You have to force the man to do anything out of his regular daily routine,” Pearl said, exasperated. They both laughed, lightening the mood. “I mean, if ‘Dr. Visit’ was on his daily schedule, then he’d have no problem going to the doctor.”

“Yeah, Mr. Two-Eggs-And-Spam.”

“Spam and eggs is part of the main problem, of course. You’ve probably heard that while in the hospital for the stroke, the doctors decided that your grandpa will need bypass surgery on his heart, as soon as possible.”

“Yeah…”

“So, we’re planning on
that
,” she said using her hands for emphasis. “At least when that’s done, he won’t be on the verge of a surprise heart attack. Not that a heart attack would have been a surprise, in the shape he’s in…”

A little kick when he’s down probably means that she’s defending herself against something worse.
John knew Grandma Pearl’s usual defense mechanism was meanness. “But?”

She paused a beat. “Well, he’s having a hard time with the recovery. You must be famished after that drive. Can I make you a sandwich or something? Salami? Bologna?”

“Sure, whatever you’ve got sounds great, Grandma.” John’s stomach had actually begun to cramp.

“I’m sure we have bologna, always do—ugh.” She yanked open the heavy refrigerator door and her small frame was jerked towards the icy interior. The old nursery rhyme, ‘Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean,’ had worked in reverse on his grandparents. John remembered remarks by aunts and uncles, whispered under a hand, about how quickly a shrew mouse burned calories, as she sorted through the meat and cheese drawer mumbling about how kids ate her out of house and home. “Of course, it gets more troubling, the longer your grandpa stays in the hospital,” she resumed her story without missing a beat, emerging from the fridge with bologna, sliced cheese, and Miracle Whip. “More people die in hospitals from infections they get there, than from the problem they actually went in for.”

“Why can’t he come home, then?”
Did she actually just say ‘die,’ in reference to her husband of almost fifty years, without flinching?

“He’s still too weak, dear.” She opened the breadbox and John recognized the familiar smell of spearmint gum and licorice candy that his grandma had stashed in there for decades. “And he’s been having…”

John stopped slicing and turned to look at her after a few moments, and he found her studying her hands, pensive. Trying to decide whether or not to say more.
Am I the first to hear what comes next?

“He’s been having hallucinations, John. He sustained quite a concussion from the fall, but there’s no evidence of any further brain bleeding. Could be they’re just nightmares. He sleeps a lot and sometimes it’s hard for me to tell if he’s awake or asleep.”

“Well, that would be pretty normal, on pain medication—the sleeping, I mean. I read that morphine can cause hallucinations, too. Is he still on that stuff?”

“Oh, plenty, I’m sure. He is still in a lot of pain, he says. I guess some people can handle pain better than others.” She slathered two slices of Wonderbread with Miracle Whip.

“What is he hallucinating—or dreaming—about?”

“Masks, if you can imagine.”

“Like, gas masks? Grandpa was never in a war, was he?”

“Too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. No. More primitive, more like African or maybe American Indian masks. He made some drawings of them after he woke up. The nurse tells me he wakes up wailing in the most dreadful way, saying all sorts of incoherent things, and he won’t calm down until she gets him a pen and paper.”

“Shouldn’t someone be with him during the night?” John knew his grandma could be pragmatic to the extreme, and expect toughness when most wouldn’t consider it necessary.

“He’s in the intensive care, honey. No visitors at night.” She walked over and began rifling through some papers on top of the phone stand, then opened the little drawer underneath, where they usually kept pens and markers for taking messages or keeping score in a card game. “Here’s one, look.”

She flicked on the wall sconce and John set down his knife. His grandfather wasn’t one to sketch or draw. John imagined the scene of Grandpa Joe waking in a fever and frantically needing drawing utensils, and felt embarrassed for him. He sat down to take a look at the evidence his grandma offered him, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“They look like … animal faces. There’s a bear. This one looks like a snake?”

Crude faces were scattered randomly on the page, without thought to illusory space or narrative, but with an urgency to record as much as possible. The drawings reminded John of times when he had had a particularly vivid dream and he would grab a notebook to write it all down before it faded into memory. Candy was big on dream journals and she always liked for him to turn the best dreams into campfire stories. Some of them became famous epics between them, like their own personal folktales.
That was a long time ago, though.

And their stories were light compared to the darkness of his grandfather’s drawings; they had sharp, hard lines and fractured edges. He had been so savage with the pen that the page was torn in places. Fangs, pointed feathers, a ragged mane, screaming mouths.