The old man was a creepy feature in our house that summer.
Each morning, after breakfast, my mother would wheel him out onto the landing
outside our kitchen door, and there he remained for most of the day.
His eyes
were sunk deep into their sockets. He was nearly blind; supposedly he could see
only shadows. His nose was bony and hawkish, jutting out from a face that was
just a mass of wrinkles. His pale skin appeared paler under the early morning
sun, and no matter how warm it was, a heavy afghan lay across his lap and over
the arms of his wheelchair. His lips were always parted, and sometimes you
could catch a glimpse of his two remaining front teeth. The only time he ever
spoke now was to ask for water. “Cold, cold water,” he rasped softly whenever
he was thirsty. It never sounded like a request, but an observation, as though
he was seeing in his mind some mountain stream whose crystal clear water was
babbling through a formation of rocks. He would repeat the words at almost
exactly intervals, never certain anybody was close enough to hear.
I was
fourteen then, and every time I had to pass him to enter through the kitchen
door, my scrotum shrunk slightly, as if the temperature on the landing was
hovering just above zero. “Cold, cold water.” His eyelids drooped a bit, so you
could see only a sliver of green and white. I knew he couldn’t see me, but the
way his eyes appeared made me feel that he wasn’t blind, but that I was
invisible.
That was the
summer my brother, Ricky, decided to kill the Greek. I never for a moment
believed he would actually do it. He had changed quite a bit in the last year;
he had developed opinions-- on just about everything, it seemed-- started to
pass judgment on everything and everybody. But he had not changed that much. So
when he told me his plans, I was sure that it was all talk.
We sat on
out on the back stairs of our house. He was sitting on one of the higher
stairs, as though that somehow reflected that he was older than me and
therefore ought to be elevated. On the landing the old man loomed over us, a
silent sentinel.
“Why would
you want to kill him anyway?” I asked.
He took a
moment to answer. He looked over the railing at our small backyard, which, no
matter how our mother tried to dress up with annuals each year, still managed
to appear sad and pitiful.
“It’s just
the way it has to be,” he said. “There’s an order to things, and the Greek is
out of order.”
I considered
this, but it just didn’t make any sense to me. The Greek had bought the neighborhood
candy store last year. It was true that
he was not as likeable as Mr. Bellini, the old owner who had dispensed candy to
the kids and milk and bread to their parents for about a hundred years. He
always seemed sullen, walking around in a dirty t-shirt. His black hair was
receding and slicked back and his dark eyes were somewhat protuberant, as
though he was always on the verge of losing his temper. He was not the nicest
human being, but I couldn’t see that he was worthy of being killed, and I told
Ricky as much.
“He beats
his wife and daughter, you know,” he said curtly.
“Oh, his
daughter…” I said knowingly. Ricky had had a crush on the Greek’s daughter,
Lori, since he first laid eyes on her. I couldn’t blame him, really; she was
quite pretty, with long wavy dark hair and the kind of face you’d see on a
cameo-- and her body wasn’t bad, either. For some reason, though, Ricky,
lately, had lost interest in her.
“Don’t give
me ‘Oh, her daughter’ like you know everything,” he chided me. “She’s aside from
the point.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he
said in a brooding tone.
“You don’t
like her anymore?”
“I like her
just fine,” he said, but the way he said it led me to believe that what he was
saying wasn’t quite the truth.
“But you’re
not interested in her anymore,” I pointed out.
“No.”
“Then you
don’t mind if I took a try at her.”
“Yeah, I
mind,” he snapped.
“What?”
“You just
stay away from her.”
“Why?”
“Just stay
away from her-- that’s all,” he said. He stared over the railing again. In the
yard birds were swooping down, landing in the lawn and pecking at the grass
seed our mother had spread yesterday. It was no wonder why the lawn always had
the scruffy look, with tiny bare spots here and there. You just couldn’t put
down enough grass seed-- there were just too many birds. On the landing the old
man started to murmur, “Cold, cold water,” but neither one of us took much
notice.
“You know I
nearly got her,” Ricky said in a mischievous way.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he
swore.
“What
happened?”
A look of
disdain passed over his face. “I’m not sure I should say.”
“Well, I’m
not going to beg you,” I told him.
“Cold, cold
water,” came from the landing above.
Ricky
glanced up at the old man, and seemed disgusted.
“We were
alone in the Greek’s apartment, right above the store while the Greek was
working,” he said.
“And, what,
the Greek caught you trying to do his daughter? That why you want to kill him?”
Ricky
snorted. “You don’t know nothing,” he said, and sounded just the way adults
sound when they’re talking to kids sometimes. “No, he didn’t catch anything.”
“Then what
happened?” I asked.
“I’ll tell
you, if you just shut up and let me tell you.”
“All right,
all right,” I said.
“She started
taking off her clothes,” he said slowly, too slowly.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and
her body was-- perfect-- I mean, perfect. You know? She got down to her
underwear and then she takes me into her bedroom. So I’m getting excited, you
know, like we were really going to do it and somehow that seemed so unreal--
like it was a dream. We were going to do it while the Greek was down stairs,
right under us, putting price tags on the canned food. So I start getting
undressed. She took off his panties, and that was that-- I’ll tell you,” he
said with great disdain. “She had this-- I never seen anything like it. You
know, it wasn’t anything like the girls you’d see in the Playboys dad keeps
hidden from mom in the back of the closet.” He leaned down closer, and lowered
his voice, as though afraid the old man on the landing might hear. “She had this
bush-- it wasn’t a bush; it was the whole freaking forest, you know. It was
totally gross. The hair went almost up to her navel-- I’m not kidding. Well, I
just couldn’t deal with that. I could never be that horny-- no way. It was
disgusting. I was totally pissed. It could have been perfect, but she ruined
it.” He shook his head, as if he still couldn’t believe it. “You know, I went
through a lot of trouble to talk her out of her clothes. You’d think she’d have
the decency not to show me something like that, you know. I mean, her old man
sells razor blades downstairs. How much trouble would it have been-- you know?”
I was
confused. “So that’s why you want to kill the Greek?”
“No, no, no,
I told you she was aside from the point. I was just telling you what happened,
because you asked. Can’t you remember anything?”
“Oh,” I
said. “Then why do you want to kill him?”
“Cold, cold
water…”
Ricky paused
to look up at the look up at the old man.
“Why is he
living with us, again?”
“I guess
nobody else would take him. Grandma and grandpa are getting too old to take
care of him anymore.”
“So we get
stuck with him?”
“I guess.”
“See, that’s
what I mean about people being out of order. Nobody ought to live that long. A
person’s great-grandfather ought to be underground somewhere-- not put out on
the landing every day, like… like a potted plant or something. The same thing
with the Greek; he’s out of order. Old Mr. Bellini was fine; he really liked
the kids. The Greek just pretends. He actually hates the kids. He just takes
their money-- that’s all. He doesn’t care. He gloms money, and beats his wife
and daughter. He doesn’t fit.”
“A lot of
people like him,” I pointed out.
“A lot of
people have eyes but how many of them see? It’s funny. When you’re a little
kid, you accept everything you see, whether it’s good or bad. But you get to a
point where you see that some things just aren’t right and that something ought
to be done about it. So, yeah, the Greek should die. He should die and his wife
should get everything. That would restore order--”
“Cold, cold
water--”
Ricky
finally lost it. He jumped to his feet, and bellowed toward the kitchen window.
“Ma! Ma! Get
out here and water your plant, will you please?”
A moment
later, our mother walked out onto the landing with a glass of water. She gave
Ricky a sour look-- I could hardly blame her-- and then she held the glass up
to the old man’s wrinkled lips. He slurped the water, which started to run off
at the corners of his mouth, and dripped down onto the afghan. When the glass
was empty, our mother paused to give Ricky another look of disapproval before
going back into the kitchen.
He became
moody, then-- it seemed he was always getting moody these days. He didn’t say
anything more about the Greek.
I wondered
why he thought he had to do something about the Greek. I was sure other people
saw things that they didn’t think were right, but few people ever did anything
about it.
I was sure
that it was all just talk, and remained convinced of that, until he actually
got a gun.
************
He showed it to me only once. It was an automatic-- a 9mm--
and the handle and barrel were covered with tiny scratches, as though it had
been dropped many times. After he showed it to me, he hid it somewhere in his
bedroom. After that, I didn’t have to see it again; it was enough to know that
it was in the house.
I should
have told my parents then, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. I
really still didn’t think he would go through with it. His reasoning for
wanting to shoot the Greek didn’t seem sound to me, and I was sure that he
would see that, too, and forget about the whole thing. So I just kept my mouth shut.
A few days
passed, and nothing happened, and then a few weeks, and still nothing happened.
Ricky never said another word about the Greek, and I knew that I had been
right-- he wasn’t going to do anything, after all.
One day my
mother took the old man down the stairs, so that he could spend the day on the
small patio in the yard. She wheeled him out onto the landing, and then
awkwardly turned the wheelchair so that it faced the stairs. She tipped the
chair back slightly, which was easily because the old man was so light, and
then slowly lowered the chair down the stairs. Every time the large, rubber
rimmed wheels hit a stair, there was a low thump and the wood of the stair
would creak, as though it was some kind of warning that something unnatural was
occurring. She got him out to the patio, and arranged the wheelchair so that it
was facing the yard. She seemed irrationally particular about how the
wheelchair was positioned as though she was unaware the old man was blind and
was concerned about him having a good view of her flower garden. At lunchtime,
she brought him a bowl of apple sauce and spooned it into his mouth. Whenever
some of the apple sauce escaped his mouth and slid down his chin, which was
often, she scrape it off it the spoon and fed it to him. After she had finished
she retreated to the house, and settled herself in the living room to watch
soap operas, as she did every day.
Later, with
my father home from work, we all sat down at the kitchen table to have dinner.
This was always an oddly quiet time for us; nobody ever spoke, and all you
could hear was the soft scraping of folks on our plates. Nobody much looked at
each other, either, but I noticed, now and then, my parents pause and frown
slightly, as if wondering whether all the windows were closed because it had
started raining pretty hard outside. All of a sudden my mother shot up from her
chair and said something. It came out garbled, but sounded like “Oh, my God!”
She raced toward the back door, and I followed her.
The old man
was still sitting out on the patio. He was soaking wet by now. His head-- so
remindful of a baby bird’s, for some reason-- was slightly tilted up toward the
gray sky as the rain struck his face. His mouth was slightly opened as though
he was trying to catch the raindrops.
My mother
tugged him back up the stairs. As she wheeled him through the kitchen, I could
hear him murmur, “Cold, cold water.” It was hard to tell if he was thirsty or
complaining about the rain.
“I can’t do
this anymore,” my mother said in dismay.
“He belongs
in a nursing home,” my father said, chewing his food, having never left the
table.
My mother took
the old man into the small bedroom to change his wet clothes, still moaning
that she couldn’t take it anymore.
After all
the ruckus had died down, I sat down to finish eating. Ricky looked at me. Like
our father, he had not left his seat. He said one word: “Soon.”
Ricky was
spending a lot of time in his room. There were some days I didn’t even see him.
I could hear music playing from his stereo, and sometimes he was watching the
small black-and-white television that was atop his dresser. It seemed unhealthy.
He barely ever went outside. During previous summers he would seldom be at
home; he would go to the park to get into a pick-out baseball game, or hang
around the street corner with friends, or just go for a walk-- anything to be
outside. Now he was content to be holed up in his room, with the door always
shut. I could picture him lying there on his unmade bed. He never made his bed.
His room was always a mess, with dirty clothes strewn on the floor. Once, my
mother swore, she found a pair of sweat socks under his bed that were nearly as
stiff as a board, they were so dirty. Sometimes, I could hear the springs of
his bed squeaking, and I know he was doing push-ups; he always did push-ups off
the floor with his feet atop his bed, lowering his face toward the dirty
laundry. Other times, there was no sound at all. Then I’d wonder what he was
doing. Was he sleeping or did he have the gun out of its hiding place, looking
it over, removing and replacing the clip, thinking about his plan? I could
never bring myself to knock on his door. To him that seemed to be the ultimate
affront. If somebody did that, he would start screaming at them through the
door-- even if it was my father, who didn’t like that kind of disrespect and
wasn’t shy about telling him that.
One evening
I noticed his bedroom door was opened. His dirty clothes almost spilled out
into the living room. He was nowhere in the house. My mother told me he’d gone
for a walk. I felt like searching the room to see if he’d taken the gun with
him. But I wouldn’t have known where to start; his room was such a mess, it
might take hours for me to determine if the gun was there.
When I
looked at the kitchen clock and saw the time, I knew he had the gun with him.
It was almost seven o’clock, the time the Greek closed up for the night. I was
struck with the buzzy feeling people get when confronted with something
otherworldly. He was actually going to do it. It seemed so unreal, but I knew
it was true.
The next day the news was all over the neighbor. Even people
who didn’t like the Greek were horrified that he’d been shot dead while closing
up the store. Nobody saw who shot the Greek, but there were police cars
cruising throughout the area all day long just the same.
The old man
sat in his wheelchair in the living room all that day. My mother was afraid
that he would catch a chill and develop pneumonia if she put him outside. She
fed him his lunch, and then took the car to the store to buy groceries.
I sat on the
sofa, and watched cable shows. I tried my best to ignore the old man, but
sometimes I couldn’t help looking at him. His sightless eyes seemed to be
staring at me. I couldn’t concentrate on what was on the television. I kept
wondering what the old man knew, how much he heard and understood-- if anything.
I was sure he didn’t know that the Greek was dead and that his great-grandson
had killed him and that his other great-grandson had known that he was going to
do it but didn’t do or say anything to stop him. Beyond that, the old man could
have been thinking anything, or nothing.
Ricky
wandered out of his room just then. It was almost noon-- he was sleeping later
every day, it seemed. He was wearing sleeveless shirt that showed off his
well-muscles shoulders. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his pants,
and he seemed to be in one of his broody moods. He looked at me briefly, and
then turned to stare at the old man.
“Somebody
ought to put a pillow over his face, really,” Ricky said.
I must have
given him a look of disapproval-- either that or a look of panic at the idea he
might actually do it. I just didn’t know what to expect from him anymore.
He shrugged
his thick shoulders. “There’s definitely a quality of life issue here.”
“Don’t
even,” I said, disgusted. I felt that he had betrayed a trust by actually
killing the Greek. He knew I hadn’t believed he’d do it, and when he actually
did do it, he made me his accomplice. I couldn’t say anything now, and he knew
that-- he wasn’t stupid. I didn’t much like the feeling of being put in that
situation.
“The guy had
it coming,” he said, as if reading my mind. “Don’t sweat it.”
“I didn’t
have anything against the guy,” I said glumly.
“Only
because you’re ignorant. You don’t see things right.”
“Yeah, he
was out of order, but now he isn‘t, huh? I think he just told you to stay away
from his daughter-- that’s all.”
He snorted.
“Think what you want. I explained to you how things were. I can’t do anything
if you don’t understand. Some people are just out of line. Nobody does anything
about it, and that’s what causes the world to go wrong. You think it’s right
for that old man to still be living and breathing? What’s the point of it?”
“Cold, cold
water,” the old man croaked just then.
Ricky
smirked. “You hear that?” he said to me, then turned to the old man. “Dry up
and die, you old fart.”
“Cold, cold
water,” the old man repeated.
Ricky gave
me a crooked look.
“Don’t,” I
warned him.
“Old people
go to sleep, and never wake up. It happens. It’s normal,” he said, and seemed
to enjoy my discomfort.
“What
happened to you?” I asked sincerely, and would regret even asking.
He shrugged.
“I started to understand things, I guess. You know, they try to teach you right
from wrong, but they don’t really want you to know. They want to keep you
stupid. And you know why? Because they don’t want you to know that half the
things they do are wrong. Like last year, when I had to go to summer school.
Remember? They were all concerned about my falling behind, and, oh, they were
going to help, and they were going to take care of me. Yeah, right. Then when
you go, they treat you like you’re stupid. They even call you stupid. What?--
is that supposed to help? They just don’t know what they do to kids. Not me, of
course-- I understand what’s going on; I see their faults. But you take your
average kid. He’s trusting and all, and listens to everything he’s told, and
believes it, and they end up making him feel he’s not even good enough to go to
school. It’s not worth their precious efforts. That’s what they do, every one
of those teachers who teach during the summer at school. They tell the parents
one thing, and then turn round and treat their kids a whole different way-- as
though they’re burdens the teachers have to endure. Well, that’s what they get
paid for, right? It’s their job. But they can’t just do it; they have to mess
with peoples’ minds. I wonder how many kids they ruin every summer, how many
kids never get to go where they’re meant to go, because they’ve been
discouraged, because they’ve been led to believe they’re hopeless. It’s not
right, I’m telling you, it’s not right. If I walked into that school tomorrow
morning I shot every one of them in the head, I’d be doing everybody a big
favor.”
Long before
he finished, I had begun to get a sick feeling in my gut. It wasn’t that he was
getting excited as he spoke; he showed no passion at all, in fact, but just
spoke in a steady, calm drone. That was the creepiest thing about it, really,
the way he said the words as though he was reading off the batting averages of
his favorite baseball players.
I knew he
meant every word he said. The threat was real. He’d already killed the Greek.
He was like a tame animal that tastes blood for the first time, and now he was
ruined forever. Every time he passed judgment on somebody now, it would not be
enough; he would actually want to do something about it. It was madness. I
couldn’t understand how this had happened to him, how he’d had turned into
himself and got so twisted up. He wasn’t even like my brother anymore, but some
stranger that had invaded the house.
Before he
walked back into his room, and shut out the rest of the world, he paused to
look at the old man.
“You’re on
the list, too, Methuselah,” he said coolly, and then closed the door.
I listened
to the hush in the house, then, and wondered what to do.
“Cold, cold
water,” I heard the old man say. At the moment they seemed like the saddest
words in the world. For a change, I went to the kitchen to get him a glass.
************
During the
following few days, Ricky didn’t mention anything about the school or the
teachers or about shooting anybody. He seemed pretty cheery, actually, and
whether or not it was all an act; I had no doubts that he was still dwelling on
some new plan.
At night I had
dreams about him. I couldn’t rightfully call them nightmares, because they
lacked the terror that true nightmares evoked in me. The content of the dreams
were disturbing enough, but it presented itself in such a matter-of-fact way
that I barely found the dreams disturbing. In one of the dreams Ricky had been
wounded by the cops. He was holed up in one of the abandoned factories that
were plentiful in our lower-middle class neighborhood. It was bringing him food
in a large open room that had once been filled with machinery used in the
manufacturing of bicycle parts. Everything appeared in black and white. He was
wearing a sleeveless white tee shirt and the large splotch of blood that showed
at the side of his stomach appeared in dark gray and not red. The beat-up 9mm
poked out from the top of his jeans. He paced around slowly, but not as though
in pain, eating a tuna salad sandwich that looked dull and tasteless. Between
bits, he droned on how the world was filled with wrong that he planned to make
right. He would give his life if he must. He painted himself as some heroic
figure on a noble quest. Then, just as the last crumbs fell from his lips, he
pulled the 9mm from the front of his pants, aimed at me, and fired. The 9mm
bucked in his hand, but made no noise. That was when I’d wake up. I wouldn’t be
soaked in sweat. I wouldn’t feel fear or even dread. I wouldn’t feel anything, in fact, as though
it all had been of little importance. Maybe I felt this way, I thought, because
it all seemed so unreal to me. Maybe Ricky had been right to suggest that I was
blind to things that he could see. I suspected I would be better off to go
through life so unenlightened.
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