Authors: Don Hoesel
Graham, who had been watching this progression of thought on Sal’s face as if the man’s skin were a movie screen, could see the pleasure in the old man’s eyes. But it lasted for only a few seconds before his brow furrowed. He gestured for Graham, and did not say a word until his grandson had leaned down, his ear close to the old man’s mouth. When Sal spoke, it was clear that his words were for Graham alone.
“Don’t let Weidman take them away,” Sal said.
Once the words had passed Sal’s lips, Graham straightened but only pulled far enough back to look Sal in the eyes. After a few moments, the target of Sal Sr.’s last instruction as head of the Baxter household gave a slight nod.
“I won’t,” was all he said.
When death finally came for Sal, on the heels of his grandson’s response, it came quickly. It was almost a surprise to the old man, who had forgotten about the lingering specter while enjoying the brief flash of clarity these last minutes had given him. He almost felt his heart beat its last, his chest lock down. But there was no pain. And as the room slipped away, he thought to wonder if the shrewdest of his relatives was speaking the truth.
When Sal had been dead for a full minute, George released the breath he’d been holding and leaned back against Sal’s dresser, his body shifting the dresser and causing the single framed photo on top of it to topple over. Graham reached behind his father as if to right the picture, but instead he lifted it and brought it close for inspection. Graham held the picture up and looked at the familiar face—his brother’s face—looking back at him. After a while, he lowered it and sighed.
Franklin, Tennessee
When CJ arrived at the house, the Jaguar wasn’t in the driveway. He pulled the Honda into the spot where he normally parked the Jag and, with the engine running, looked at the house, which would be buttoned up tight with Janet gone. He felt a twinge of anger as he sat in the car, pondering his wife’s absence as sports talk played as background noise. She’d told him she would be here at one o’clock and stay for an hour, giving him time to pick up his few remaining possessions—the last of the things he wanted to take, and that she saw no reason to contest in court. As such, his belongings weren’t much to speak of: clothes, golf clubs, assorted mementos to which she could affix no significant cash value, and his library. He’d thought she’d challenge the latter, as his collection was extensive with some of the titles valuable, but she’d let them all go. It was the last of his books that he was supposed to pick up, books that were inside the house behind the freshly changed locks.
One day. One day was all it had taken her to change the locks.
His—Janet’s—home was a sprawling ranch-style house with a large front porch, situated on enough property, and with a sufficient number of strategically placed trees, to make it look as if they had a lot more. CJ had sold Janet on the house as a fixer-upper, as something for him to do in his spare time, when he needed a break from writing. What he hadn’t counted on was just how much work the house had needed. There had been a great deal of what CJ called cosmetic work: replacing cabinetry, hanging drywall, running power to additional outlets. But he’d also had to replace two floor joists. And in the bedroom, a part of the floor, a section directly in front of the bay window, was almost rotted through. When he and Janet had done the walk-through, the owners had covered that area with cardboard boxes, so they hadn’t noticed any telltale creak that might have made CJ look more closely. A pre-purchase inspection would have caught these things, but then Janet would have talked him out of buying the place, and he wouldn’t have had the fun he’d had restoring it. Now it was going to belong to Janet, and he found that he didn’t much care.
He just wanted what was his.
He’d tried to take Thor the night he left, even though he didn’t have any clear idea where he was headed, but Janet had come near to hysteria as he collected the dog’s food and water bowls and Thor’s favorite chew toy. He’d left the dog with her that night, and she’d kept CJ from taking him on those occasions when he’d come to strip the house of all evidence of his having lived there. The last time, when he was getting ready to take Thor, she’d abruptly tossed aside the hysteria and threatened to call the police.
He could see the Lab at the side door, his nose pressed against the glass, tail wagging slowly. The dog recognized the car, so he didn’t bark, but CJ knew he’d be scratching at the door, adding to the considerable damage he’d already inflicted on the wood.
When CJ got out of the Honda, Thor’s tail began to wag faster. CJ walked up to the door and crouched on the step, looking at the dog through the glass. He could hear Thor whining on the other side, and the sound of scratching. Now that the house would no longer be his, CJ didn’t care if the dog carved his way through.
“Sorry, pal,” CJ said. “Nothing I can do.”
As if he understood, Thor gave a single snort and then settled on his haunches. CJ stood and, with his hands warm in his pockets to combat a wind that made sixty-two degrees feel like fifty-two, looked back toward the driveway. Somehow he knew that Janet wouldn’t come, even if he waited for an hour past the appointed time. It would be a game for her, a final dig before the big one, where the judge would tell him how much he would have to pay for the privilege of letting his wife keep most of his worldly possessions. He had these last few boxes in her house—along with his dog—and he was certain that he was going to get none of them. His books and his dog—imprisoned in a house that he had, in many ways, built.
He stood on the step, wondering what to do. Behind him, Thor had renewed his scratching, the activity punctuated by the occasional plaintive whine. It was almost a full two minutes that CJ stood on the step before he realized that he wasn’t building up a righteous anger as quickly as he would have liked. The phone call from his father was responsible for that.
The simple fact that his father had called had been enough to put him off-balance, with how many years had passed since they’d worked opposite sides of the same phone call. But the news he’d called to deliver had been the real blow. Sal had been CJ’s favorite relation, the only member of the family he’d missed since leaving Adelia for college back in ’93. That first year he’d spoken with Sal every few weeks from the pay phone in the student union at Vanderbilt, and his grandfather had always accepted the charges. While that level of communication had tapered off under the weight of CJ’s class load, his commitments to the student paper and the requisite collegiate social schedule, Sal had remained CJ’s only link to the family, which lent the relationship more intimacy than it might otherwise have had. CJ thought too that his grandfather was probably the only member of his family who’d read all of his novels with anything other than a suspicious eye.
The man’s death made all of this business with Janet—these little games she wanted to play just to vex him—seem childish. Which they were, even if they served to cover up the deep hurt he knew she felt over the dissolution of their marriage. He knew her well enough to see
that
, at least, even if one of her accusations was that he didn’t really know her at all.
CJ had canceled lunch with Matt, and true to form, his editor had turned CJ’s loss around until CJ almost felt the need to console
him
. While CJ was in Adelia for the funeral, he would miss two promotional opportunities for
The Buffalo Hunter
. But he’d convinced Matt that the trip might finally get him in the mood to do that piece on his brother that
The Atlantic
had been asking for. It made sense, their asking. How many occasions did a magazine have to publish an article about an exciting young politician, written by an award-winning writer who just happened to be the man’s brother? When they first inquired—more than a month ago—he’d told Matt to extend his regrets, but his editor had been on him at least once a week about doing it, if for no other reason than to position himself to benefit from the publicity associated with rising political power. CJ didn’t seriously entertain the idea of actually writing the article—not with the things that lay between Graham and him—but the possibility was enough for him to assuage his editor’s worries. And he’d assured Matt that when he returned, he would devote himself to the marketing trail with renewed vigor. But he couldn’t return if he didn’t go, and he couldn’t go if he continued to stand on his wife’s porch.
He breathed a deep sigh and turned to give Thor a departing wave. The dog wore a pitiful look, his large head turned to the side as a question. When CJ began to walk away, heading toward the car, Thor uttered the most mournful bark CJ had ever heard.
Before CJ knew what he was thinking, he had passed the car door and headed for the trunk. From inside, he pulled a tire iron. He looked toward the side door, and at his dog on the other side of it. Thoreau had stopped barking and was watching him.
Janet liked to play games; that he knew. He didn’t necessarily begrudge her the need to play them. The problem was that CJ had always embraced his inner child.
He couldn’t go through the door because Thor wouldn’t know enough to move out of the way of the falling glass. And the dog would likely follow him to any window in the house, which would present him with the same problem. But one of the things that came from living with the same person for fifteen years was that one learned the other’s habits, the things they’d likely do as a matter of course. He would bet more than he’d lost at the game last night that the door to the master bedroom was closed. Janet didn’t let the dog in that room, and that would not have changed with CJ’s absence.
CJ left the driveway and crossed the lawn in front of the house. He wasn’t worried about being seen; the many trees hid the house from the neighbors, and the road was quiet. The master bedroom was on the opposite side of the house, and the bay window opened up onto several Bradford pears. When he got there, he saw the blinds were down, which kept him from seeing inside. This didn’t matter, since he’d be inside soon.
He turned his face away when he swung the tire iron, and right before it connected with the glass, he thought to wonder if Janet had installed an alarm system during the last few weeks. But when the glass shattered, there was no electronic screeching. CJ breathed a relieved sigh.
He could hear Thor on the other side of the bedroom door, barking menacingly and scratching at the carpet as if he could dig beneath the barrier. CJ used the tire iron to poke away the jagged protrusions along the bottom edge of the window before reaching his hand through and feeling for the latch. Once he’d raised it enough so he could slip inside, he hoisted himself onto the ledge, careful to feel for glass before trusting his full weight to his hands. The ground sloped down from east to west, and the window was higher here than it would have been on the other side of the house, which meant he had to pull himself up farther. It took two attempts, his feet searching for leverage against the brick, before he could pull himself through the window. He was careful to lead with his foot, even though that meant some minor contortions in order to bring his leg through while he stayed on the window ledge. But it was energy well spent when he heard the sound of glass crunching under his tennis shoes as he stepped down and pushed the blinds aside.
Thoreau continued to bark with fury on the other side of the door. CJ quickly crossed the room, but before opening the door he called out in an authoritative voice, “Thor, cut that out.”
The effect on the dog was immediate. He stopped barking, and only then did CJ open the door. The speed at which the dog entered, and the fact that Labs are well-muscled dogs, meant that Thoreau nearly succeeded in injuring CJ due simply to his exuberance. CJ got down on the floor with the animal, both because he was equally glad to see him and so the dog wouldn’t knock him over.
“How’s she been treating you, pal?” he asked.
He knew Janet would have been treating him just fine. While Thor was plainly CJ’s dog, she was fond of him in her own way.
Once Thoreau had calmed down, CJ ushered him out of the room and closed the door. It wouldn’t have done to have Thor exploring the room with glass littering the carpet.
Now that he was inside, CJ was slowed by the strange sensation of being in a place that he knew like the back of his hand, yet now he was an intruder. Legally, he doubted she had a leg to stand on. There was no court order banishing him from the place; he had as much right to be here as did she. But he also knew that all it took was one 9-1-1 call and a domestic violence charge, and he would be banned from the premises anyway. That thought set him into motion. He was confident that Janet wouldn’t make an appearance for a while yet—when she believed he would have given up and left. Even then, she would probably drive slowly past the house and, seeing his car, continue on, never noticing the broken window, assuming he was exercising a stubbornness equal to her own.
The first thing CJ did was check the refrigerator. Slim pickings. Milk, an almost empty half gallon of orange juice, a half pound of deli meat of some kind, and a few beers that were, aside from the three cardboard boxes filled with books that he could see by the side door, the last indicators that he had once lived here. CJ did most of the cooking and shopping. Without him around, Janet had allowed the cupboards to go bare. She was probably eating out a lot, or eating at her paramour’s. Before closing the door, he took out the package of deli meat—sun-dried tomato turkey—removed it from its bag and dropped the meat on the floor for Thor.
It took him just a few minutes to carry the three boxes of books to the car. Thor was at his side as he stood in the driveway, hands on hips, looking at the boxes in the trunk. Lots of space still. And there was the back seat too. Ten minutes later, his miter saw, drill, and router were nestled in the trunk with his books, and the drawers from his rolling toolbox were in the back seat, along with the TV from the guest bedroom. As he looked on his handiwork, he avoided considering what his lawyer would say.