I started for the house, running questions and answers through my mind, readying myself for whatever he might ask. But would anything give him clarity, or comfort, now that he knew?
I was almost to the door when I saw them. The front of our house is a couple of steps up to a large porch and the front door. There are metal chairs on the porch set back a ways where Lily and I often sat in the evening and chatted when she returned from work.
Two little boys were sitting on these chairs. I stopped, startled to see anyone up there, knowing our family was gone.
“Hi, Mr. Fischer!”
“Hey, Mr. Fischer!”
It was two of the Gillcrist boys from down the street. Nice kids, about nine and ten years old. You always saw them hanging around together.
“Hi, guys. What’re you doing up there?”
“Edward dared me to come and sit on your porch.”
“What did he dare you?”
“A quarter.”
I reached into my pocket, took out one, and handed it to him.
“How come you’re paying? Ed lost!”
“Shut up, Bill! If he wants to pay, he can.”
“Did anyone come into the house since you two’ve been here?”
“No, sir. We’ve been around, I don’t know, half an hour?”
“You didn’t see Lincoln?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. Well, I guess you’d better head on home now. It’s getting pretty late.”
Edward got up and gave Bill a shove when his brother was slow in rising. Bill poked him back. Edward poked—
“Hey, guys!”
“He’s always starting!”
“’Cause you’re stupid!”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
I watched and thought what if they were Lincoln and me? Kids, brothers, two years apart. I blurred my vision and made believe. My brother Lincoln. Little brother Lincoln, who followed me around and was a pain but also was my best friend. Oddly, when I brought my eyes back into focus, the Gillcrists still looked like us. I had to blink and blink to make the picture go away.
Edgy, I unlocked the front door and walked in. Quiet, still, the rooms smelled warm and stale. The normal wonderful comfort one feels walking in the door of your own home was gone. I lived here, but so did he. Everyday objects, the things I knew and normally used without thought, seemed larger and all cocked at strange angles. Like a picture that’s been bumped crooked and needs straightening. Our whole house felt crooked and… expectant. Was that the right word? As if it were waiting to see what I would do next. A car drove by out on the street. Freezing, I waited to hear if it would stop or pull into our driveway. It didn’t. I figured I had about half an hour before Lily returned.
“Lincoln? Are you here?” Walking slowly through the house, turning on lights, I was full of the absurd idea that if he were here, he’d be hiding from me, ready to jump out and pounce when my back was turned. Although that was more Greer’s style than his, still I moved cautiously, waiting for him to spring out of wherever. My son the Jack-in-the-Box.
I did a general careful look around before feeling a little more at ease. I smiled at myself for having checked behind the couch in the living room and in a too small closet in the laundry room. But fear comes from noticing the normal has suddenly grown fangs. After today’s revelations, that space behind our couch was no longer the innocent place where Greer’s tennis ball had fallen.
I got my key to his room from its hiding place taped to the bottom of an unused kitchen drawer. In stockinged feet I walked the long hall to the back of the house. At his door I knocked and again called out his name a few times to see if he was in there. No answer. I had no more time to waste. Opening it, I reached in and switched on the light. Once again the stark white emptiness and order of Lincoln’s room was in such sinister contrast to what had probably gone on in there and what was hidden, like the infected peace of an empty prison cell or room at an asylum.
His chest of drawers was five or six inches out from the wall. Squatting down, I tilted my head and slid my hand along the back of the thing. Bingo, there it was. Smooth flat wood for a foot, then a suspect curl of tape peeling up off an edge. Further, the hard angles of a gun.
“Thank God. Thank God.” I pulled it off and slid it over. Other than what I’ve seen in movies, I know nothing about guns, but I did recognize the shape of this one—it was a forty-five. Whether it was real or not was the next question. I knew the Japanese made remarkable full-scale models of guns detailed enough to fool the experts. This one was surprisingly light and either coated or constructed of some kind of rubber or plastic. A plastic gun? How could that be? Engraved on the left side was “Glock 21 Austria 45 AUTO.” On the right was the name “Glock” another time, a serial number, the address of the firm in Smyrna, Georgia. It was so light. I’ve never felt comfortable around guns, but this one was compelling in its simple roughness. I turned it around and around. Carefully, after much figuring and noodling, I managed to release the clip from the bottom. It was full of twelve beautiful gold bullets. It was real. Nothing was more real than that gun.
Before doing anything else, I picked up the phone on his desk and called Mary Poe. While it rang, I held the Glock in my hand and turned it from side to side, sighting down my arm at it from different angles. What an instrument. What a singular piece of machinery. Bang. That’s it. That’s all it was made to do. Bang—one big hole. Mary wasn’t home, but I told her tape I’d found the pistol, that it was very fucking real, and read the serial number off the side. I’d be home for a few more hours in case she wanted to get back to me.
Then I did a queer thing. I put the clip of bullets in my pocket, the pistol in the middle of the floor. Why not just shove the whole thing in my pocket? Because I didn’t want it in my pocket. The bullets were bad enough, but as the ugly heart of the gun, without them it could do nothing lying there but suck up all of the light and energy in the room like a black hole in space.
The silence of heavy machinery turned off a moment ago, or of a major highway at three in the morning when no cars have passed for minutes. The quiet of an airplane miles above you trailing its white thread of vapor. There is so much noise in these things that their rare stillness sounds a million times quieter. It is a hush of waiting, not completion. Any minute the noise that is the thing will come back with a roar. That was the silence in Lincoln’s room after I put the phone down.
Closing my eyes tight, I made fists and lowered my head to my chest. “I hate this. I hate it.” Then I began to search.
In one drawer were three packages of condoms. How wonderful! He took precautions! If only it were so tame and simple. I smiled, thinking that in the old days a parent would have had a fit finding rubbers in a son’s drawer. Another held a butterfly knife and a Polaroid photograph of Little White, topless. She had lovely small breasts and looked cute with both arms up, in the classic “make a muscle” pose. What was her name? Ruth. Ruth Burnett? Burdette? What would her parents say if they saw this photo?
Here is what else I found. A postcard of a penis and hairy balls with a pair of black eyeglasses over the dick so that the combination looked like a man’s face with a thick beard. Written on the back was: “L. You can suck my dick when I’m dead.” Another knife and bullet in his desk drawer, two blurry Polaroids of other handguns I assumed belonged to either Lincoln or his friends. Nothing else.
The phone rang. I shuddered and had to lick my lips before answering. “Hello?” They hung up. Whipping it from my ear, I shouted into the receiver, “Fuck you, asshole! Fuck you!” People like that should apologize! Say something. Say, “Excuse me, sorry, wrong number.” Something at least so I’d know—”
“Mine. Oh God, my room!” Looking through the house before, I’d ignored my study, taking it for granted Lincoln wouldn’t go in there because he never did. Putting the phone down, I looked at my watch, checked around to be sure I’d not disturbed anything so he’d know I was in here. He was so secretive and scheming that I was sure he’d placed hairs across doors or other traps to find out in a minute if anyone had been snooping in his room, but I couldn’t worry about it. Things looked good enough. One last eye check around. Drawers closed. Photos back. Closet door closed. Nothing on the desk. Okay, let’s go. Whoops, the pistol! I’d forgotten the goddamned gun on the floor and was seconds away from leaving it there and turning out the light.