The Emperor of Any Place (17 page)

He listens to the night, the cicadas, the distant drone of the expressway, the distinct sound of a car door slamming. He waits, concentrates. Imagines more than hears the back door open and shut.

He closes the book, closes his eyes, and leans back on his pillow. He can almost hear water lapping against the sides of the house. As if they’ve upped anchor and sailed away from civilization. He feels totally out to sea.

He has this weird feeling about the island: the jungle, the wide beach, strewn with bits and pieces of the war, the cliffs and caves, the impressive bamboo fort overlooking the lagoon. He has this feeling that he knows it — not what’s going to happen in the story — but the island itself. He feels almost a sense of déjà vu. Is that possible? He thinks about the ghosts, the good ones, Ōshiro’s companions. Ōshiro considers them children yet to come. Such a strange and kind of cool idea. And if it happened to anyone who landed on the island, then when Griff lands there, will it happen to him? Will Clifford become one of his attendant ghosts? Would Evan be there, too, one of those hopeful hangers-on? He shakes his head. Way too weird.

Then out of the crackly darkness behind Evan’s eyes, a word comes to him: preincarnation. Does such a word exist? He opens his eyes and pushes the book aside, throwing the duvet over it as he climbs out of bed. He’s about to check Almighty Google when he hears something. He cracks his door, listens. Music.

He makes his way down the silent hallway, drifts down the silent stairs, peeks around the wall at the bottom. A memory comes to him of sneaking down at Christmas to see if Santa Claus had been there yet. But it’s not Santa Claus; it’s Griff. And the music isn’t “Jingle Bells.” It’s the same album his dad was listening to, that last night.

Evan can only see the back of Griff ’s head, sitting in Clifford’s favorite chair in the living room. The sweet spot.

Jazz. Miles Davis. “Something Blue.”

Did Clifford leave it on the turntable? The idea troubles Evan; it wasn’t the kind of thing his father would normally do. He was crazy careful about his vinyl. But then that night was going to be the least normal night of his whole life.

Or Evan’s.

If his father left the album there, that was one thing. If Griff found it and put it on — the same album his dad had been playing — that was just plain eerie. Or maybe what bothers Evan is the old man sitting in that chair. The old man touching his father’s precious records.

He has a glass of scotch in his hand; the bottle sits on the side table next to him. The amber contents are an inch or two lower than the last time Evan saw that bottle.

“I guess he changed,” says Griff. Evan pulls back, freezes. “This isn’t the kind of thing he used to listen to.” Evan’s face is pressed against the cool plaster of the wall. The old man is talking to himself, he thinks. And then Griff says, “Come on out, son. I know you’re there.”

Evan steps from behind the wall.

“I wouldn’t consider espionage as a career path,” says Griff.

“I thought you were hard of hearing,” says Evan.

“If I’d had to rely on my ears, boy, I’d’ve been dead a hundred times over.”

Then Evan sees his own reflection in the darkened picture window, his eyes meeting the reflected eyes of his grandfather, keen as an eagle, despite the scotch. Evan had put on pajamas when he went to bed, not sure if the old man was going to make a habit of walking in on him. He stands there feeling vulnerable, his scrawny legs hanging out of his cotton shorts. The jazz fills in the silence between them.

Then Evan says, “Well, good night,” and turns to go.

“Hol’ your horses,” says Griff.

Evan stops but doesn’t turn.

“You’re up. I’m up,” says Griff. “Stay awhile. Talk to me.”

He turns his head, but only enough for Evan to see his profile, his broken nose, his jawbone hard under his leathery skin. “We haven’t exactly been hittin’ it off, have we, son.”

It’s not a question, so Evan doesn’t answer, not even so much as to shake his head.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” says Griff, exasperated. “Get your sorry ass in here.”

Reluctantly, Evan finds his way around his grandfather and sits across from him — perches on the couch under the picture window. It’s leather and cold on the back of his thighs. He has no intention of making himself comfortable. He has a feeling Griff doesn’t either.

The old man casts a bleary kind of smile his way and then stares off into the semi-darkness of the room. There’s only the one table lamp on, beside Griff ’s chair, and the array of lights on the console of the stereo unit. Evan sits mostly in shadow. Griff ’s eyes are closed. Evan thinks the old man is wrapped up in the music, but he’s not, not really.

“Rock and roll,” he says. “That’s what your daddy listened to. Day and night, night and day.” He pauses. “What was that one band called?” Evan doesn’t answer; doesn’t really think the question was meant for him. “The Doors. That was it. The damn blasted Doors.” Griff shakes his head. “God, what a racket.” He opens his eyes only long enough to make contact with Evan, who refuses to make the slightest gesture that might be interpreted as agreement. “I swear he’d put that band on the minute I walked in the house, just to get my goat.”

Griff closes his eyes again, and Evan thinks about escape, assessing his chances of getting out of the room without the old man noticing. They aren’t going to talk. Griff will just riff on his differences with Clifford. And Evan is too tired to rise to his father’s defense tonight — too wary, knowing what he knows. Not that he really knows anything yet, except that there is suddenly a monster in the book — one that Evan left Ōshiro and Kraft stranded with.

He should go, but he decides against it. Why be on the defensive? So the old man knows that he has the book? Fine. Maybe he can get him talking. He clears his throat.

“He still has all the Doors’ albums,” he says.

Griff opens one eye under a steel-gray eyebrow arched like a pup tent. “Ha! Must have bought them all over again when he got here. Damn well didn’t take ’em.” He maneuvers himself upright in his chair. “Didn’t take much of anythin’.” He sips his drink, crunches on an ice cube. “Took just enough to let us know what he thought of us — thought of me.” Griff pokes himself in the chest. Then he shakes his head and stares into the middle distance at something only he can see. A red light, on the stereo console, fires up in his eye like a small and angry planet. Then he snaps out of it, leans back again, and the planet veers off into darkness. He swivels his head on his stringy neck until he has Evan in his crosshairs.

“You know what I did, Evan? When he left?”

Evan doesn’t answer. Three leisurely, four/four bars float by.

“I got all those records together, all those albums — the whole stinking lot of them — and took them out to my workbench in the garage.” His eyes almost twinkle. He’s enjoying this. “And then you know what I did?”

Evan doesn’t acknowledge the question with so much as a gesture. He knows where this is going. Recognizes the cadence of the story without knowing exactly how it ends.

“I’ll tell you, son, since you’re obviously so interested. I took each one of those records out of its . . . whatever you call it . . . sleeve. And I broke it over my knee.”

He mimes the breaking, bringing his fists down hard on either side of his bony knee. Evan can almost hear the crack.

“Every dang one of ’em.”

Evan feels the anger welling up in him, pushing aside the weight of weariness. He feels it pulsing through him. He doesn’t like this. It’s not the anger he doesn’t like; it’s the lack of control. The old man is staring at him as if he’s just made a move in some chess game from hell and he’s waiting for Evan to clear the pieces from the board in his fury.

He’s playing me. He’s testing me like this is some kind of fucking boot camp.

Evan swallows. His mouth is dry — too dry to respond, at least not in words. But he’s not going to bite. He’s not going to clear the board with his arm. He’s not going to run. He’s going to make his move. What move is that? Then it comes to him. Something he had wanted to do in their very first run-in. He claps.

Three. Slow. Times.

The old man shakes his head. He waves his hand in the air as if at a fly buzzing around his head.

“You finished?” says Evan, his voice betraying him, frayed as a rope about to break.

The old man shakes his head. Then suddenly he puts on the full-out glare.

“What’d your father have to say about me, son?”

Evan clocks the change in Griff ’s voice, the focus, the intent in his eyes. If the drink seemed to have mellowed him a few moments ago, he’s dead sober now.

Evan shrugs. “Nothing much.”

“I’m serious, now, boy. In case you didn’t notice.”

Evan dares to look Griff directly in the eye. He’s serious, all right.
You’re a murderer,
he thinks.
That’s what he told me.
He looks away.

“Throw me a bone, son.”

Evan swallows. The game has changed, just like that. Here he was congratulating himself on making a strong move, and Griff ’s gone and replaced the board game. More like Chutes and Ladders, now. Just when you think you’ve climbed to safety, down you go.

“You see, I’m at a disadvantage here, Evan. I feel like I’ve landed on this hostile island, and I’d kind of like to know what the odds are. Where the snipers are hid. You know what I’m saying? Where the trip wire is.”

Evan swallows again, clears his throat. “We didn’t talk about you at all,” he says.

Griff chuckles. “Aww, shucks. Why, I am truly hurt to hear that.”

“Not once.”

Griff glares at him. “Well, isn’t that somethin’.” He sniffs, takes another sip of his drink. Refuses to be dismissed. “You see, boy, a marine coming ashore on a hostile island doesn’t need
much.
You learn to live with whatever intel you can get
.
The quality of it.”

“‘Intel’?”

“Intelligence, son. Information: the stuff that gives a soldier the drop, the ability to understand and deal with a new or trying situation. You hear what I’m saying?” Evan nods slowly, feeling as if he’s being led toward some hidden trap. Griff holds his hand up and points at a corner of the room up where the walls meet the ceiling, as if there is something there. Evan turns to look, sees only darkness. “You spot a glint up in the trees,” says Griff. “That might be the sun reflecting off the lens of a pair of binoculars. Just that one little glint. See what I mean: quality intel.”

Evan shrugs again, but inside he shivers. He’s thinking of Ōshiro up in his tree on Kokoro-Jima. He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Griff levels him with an expert marksman’s gaze. “Y’all do. Y’all know exactly the hell what I mean.”

He was listening. He heard me talking to Leo.

“What does any of this have to do with 123 Any Place?”

Griff looks taken aback. “Where the hell’s that at?”

“It’s this place, the address Dad and I gave it.”

Griff sits up higher in his chair. “It is, is it?”

This seems neutral territory. Evan sits up a bit. “Dad used to laugh about how everything around this neighborhood was, like, ‘crescent’ or ‘drive’ or ‘circle’ or ‘close’— you know — all those fancy-sounding words. Thought it was pretentious.”

The old man nods. “Well, I gotta say, since you brought it up, this place sure surprised the hell out of me. This room alone, for God’s sake! It’s straight from the catalog of that damn chain store . . .”

“Ikea.”

“Right. I-kee-yuh.” Griff manages to make it sound like something you need to take a week’s worth of medicine for. “The way Cliff talked when he was your age . . .” He shakes his head. “He was this high-minded somabitch. A radical. A hippie, a ‘Student for a Democratic Society,’ or whatever the hell they called themselves.” Griff makes quote marks in the air with his free hand. “The whole nine yards. He thought he was going to set the world on fire, and instead he ends up in this clapboard, ticky-tacky backwater.”

“Thanks,” says Evan.

“You’re welcome.”

“But you know, it’s funny,” says Evan.

“Is it, now?” Griff rivets him with his eyes. “What exactly did you find funny about what I was saying?”

“The thing about Dad setting the world on fire. He always told me it was you who was doing that. Literally.”

The old man has his glass halfway to his mouth, but he stops and glances at Evan, a dark look under his lowering brow. Then he takes a sip, which becomes a slug, and downs the glass. “So you did talk about me? Thought as much. Knew you were lying. But that — what you just said. Now there — that’s exactly the kind of thing I was after. What he told you about me. He thought I was the enemy, didn’t he? He thought America was the enemy.”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters one helluva lot to me, soldier,” he says, pounding himself in the chest with his fist. “I spent a lifetime defending my country — and yours, too, for that matter.”

“Whatever. Dad looked at it differently. But listen, he’s dead, okay. In case you hadn’t noticed. And all that political stuff . . . that was, like, a long time ago. By the time I was born, Dad was this civil servant working nine to five for the local government.”

“Okay, okay.” Griff wipes his lips and leans forward, pulling at the knees of his chinos so as not to spoil the knife-blade creases. “We’ve gotten off track here. Ancient history. What I want to know is what he told you recently.”

Evan suppresses a shiver. He leans slowly back on the couch, covers his chest with his arms. “I’m kind of tired,” he says.

“Oh, well, pardon me for asking.”

Evan gets to his feet. “No, really. It’s been a long day.” Griff sneers. “I’ll see you in the morning,” says Evan.

“And away he goes,” says Griff, his palm zooming off the runway of his knee and into the air like a wobbly plane taking off. Evan hadn’t noticed that before, the way Griff ’s left hand wobbles.

Evan stops. There is no more strategy left in him. “You and my dad didn’t get along. I get it. It’s got nothing to do with me, okay?”

“Well, it should.”

“Why?”