Bad Radio (2 page)

I’ve spent the last year cutting all my ties. Nobody was looking for me. Nobody needed me. I had dropped my phone service months ago, cancelled my mail. I paid a lump sum to my utility companies with instructions to terminate service when the money ran out.

I did this because connections to things bring obligation. Obligation is like a piece of fishing line with a barbed hook in the end. These ties are hard to see coming, hard to break, and impossible to ignore. Friends and family are the worst, but even casual friends can snag you tightly.

But after a year, I was clean. No hooks. Now, when I can finally go out on my own terms, I get this determined visitor. If I pull the trigger, they get to hear the shot, make a horrifying discovery, and deal with the image for the rest of their lives. I couldn’t do that, not even to some stranger selling magazines. I felt the hook bite.

The doorbell rang again, followed by sharp, determined knocking. A young woman’s voice penetrated the door. “Hey! I know you’re in there, I saw you drive your truck into the garage! I have to talk to you!”

The hook sank all the way in, barb and all. I untucked my shirt and put the pistol behind my back, my belt pressing the now-warm steel into my spine. I didn’t want whoever it was to see the gun laying around.

I went to answer the door.

2

I
pulled the door open and fresh morning air rushed past me into the stale house. Standing under the covered porch and on top of my ancient daisy-printed doormat was a young woman in her late twenties. She had auburn hair and dark eyes, and she was rubbing the knuckles of one hand.

“Hi,” she said, before I could speak. “I’m looking for Abraham Griffin. Is he here?” As she spoke she tilted her head slightly to peer behind me into the house. I could feel my face hardening up. The dismissive glance around me, her bright clothes, even her quick, focused movements grated on me.

Against the softly faded backdrop of my farm, she was too vivid, like a color cutout pasted on an old photograph. Her presence felt inappropriate, like a party dress at a funeral.

“I’m Abe.”

“I meant Abraham Senior, I guess. I’m the granddaughter of one of his old army buddies, Patrick Wolinsky.”

“There’s no other Abe Griffin.”

She glanced behind her at the long driveway. “Is there another Griffin residence around here? The man I’m looking for would be really old. He was in the second World War with my grandfather.”

“You have the right house. I know Patty, what does he want?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” She touched a hand to her mouth. “Did he pass away? He must have been your grandfather.”

Assumptions make for the best lies, second only to ambiguity. “What can I help you with, ma’am?”

“Can I come in?”

I tried to be gracious as I stepped back from the door and waved her into my living room, but I probably looked as irritated as I felt. She stepped past me trailing crisp fall air and too-sweet lilac perfume. The room was dim and cave-like, so I opened the curtains to let the morning sun flood in. I kicked myself as habit took over and I said, “Can I get you some coffee?”

She looked relieved at this first sign of civility and nodded. I spent few minutes in the kitchen glaring at the percolator, and when I came back she was sitting in my easy chair. She had a picture frame in her hand, taken from a shelf across the room. It was, of course, of my old squad. “You look so much like your grandfather.”

I ransomed the picture with the cup of coffee and delivered it back to the shelf where it belonged. I stood for a moment after setting it carefully back in the dust-free rectangle it had left behind and locked eyes with myself. That poor sap grinning back at me from under his steel pot helmet had no idea what was going to happen to him three months later. I silently communed with him, feeling for that sense of rightness, when everything was still fine and I knew everything there was to know about the world. I didn’t find it. I turned my back on that smiling soldier and faced my visitor.

“What brings you all the way out here?” I had turned off my phone and mail service to discourage casual contact from my few surviving friends. I had no idea where this girl lived, but last I heard Patty was stuck in a VA retirement home Alzheimer’s ward on the other side of the Minnesota border from me. That was a good four-hour drive from here, so I had a sinking feeling that this was one of those “last request” visits.

“My grandfather is very sick,” she said. Here it comes. “Physically he’s in good shape for a man his age, but mentally … Well, I’m worried that he’s going to hurt himself. He can’t walk, you know, since the stroke, but he’s been having these episodes lately where he’ll try to get out of bed and crawl out of the room.

“One of the night nurses actually caught him in the lobby not ten feet away from the entrance. Can you imagine what could have happened to him if he had managed to get out into a dark parking lot, lying there on the ground?”

I could see in her face how much the thought upset her, which earned her a few points. The thought upset me, too.

“Isn’t that common?” I asked, as gently as I could. “Sometimes Alzheimer’s patients become confused, don’t they?”

She nodded. “Yes, but this is different. He might forget where he is, or who you are, but he’s never acted like this before. He’s desperate and frightened, like he’s reliving the war or something.”

“I’m not sure what I can do, Ms …?”

“It’s Anne. I’m sorry, I never told you my name.” She rested her head on her hand for a moment and laughed softly, embarrassed. “I’m not usually like this.”

I knew that name. I hadn’t spoken to Patrick in over a decade, but I remembered that he had mentioned Anne, full of the pride of a grandfather. I guess I should have realized she’d be a grown woman by now. “I understand. You were saying?”

“Well, when Patrick has one of his attacks, he’s shouting for your grandfather. That’s who he’s trying to reach. He’s calling out ‘Abe’ at the top of his lungs, and dragging himself along the floor.”

A sick, awful feeling turned in my stomach. The image of one of my oldest friends scrabbling on the floor calling my name filled me with shame, even though I didn’t have anything to do with it. Right there with it was the guilt that I did deserve, as a fleeting feeling of relief passed over me at the thought that I had been spared the horrors of old age that Patty was suffering.

“So I came out here hoping to bring Abraham to my grandfather. I thought that maybe if he could make that connection, then he would be okay. If he could just deliver that message or see that his friend was all right, he could rest. I know what it sounds like, but I have to try.” Her breath hitched and she pressed a finger under one eye.

I went to the bathroom and got her a box of tissue, but when I returned she had regained her composure. I put the box down on the arm of the easy chair.

Anne gave me a sharp, shrewd look that made me rethink my initial impression of her. “Can I ask you something? While you were gone I was looking at that picture, and I had a thought. Please don’t think I’m a bad person, okay? But my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s is very advanced. Sometimes when I visit, he calls me by my mother’s name. He doesn’t always know what part of his life he’s living in, if that makes sense. I know you don’t know me, but would you help me? Will you come with me to see my grandfather?”

This was exactly what I didn’t want. I wanted to escape all these strands of obligation and care and heartbreak. After five years of grief and mourning, when I was finally ready to lie down and rest, I deserved to be left alone. She must have seen something in my face because she stood up and put one hand on my arm.

“I know it sounds horrible, lying to an old man, but at this point I’ll try anything. He was always there for me and my mom after my dad left. I need to do this if there’s any way at all it could help. Please?”

I closed my eyes, thinking of what I owed Patty “Cake” Wolinsky. Some debts, no matter how much we may wish otherwise, must be repaid. No matter the cost.

“I’ll come. Let me pack an overnight bag, and I’ll meet you at the VA home tonight.”

“Thank you so much.” She stood a little taller as some of the tension left her.

She wrote down directions and an address for me, as well as her phone number. She thanked me two more times on her way out the door, and then waved as she drove off. I watched her little blue Japanese sedan disappear down my quarter-mile-long driveway in a cloud of dust.

Just one more day, one more obligation, and then I could rest. I went back inside and closed the door. For the first time in a year, I noticed how silent and empty the house was.

3

I
threw my duffel bag on the floor of the truck and put my gun in the glove box. I don’t travel unarmed, I guess that’s out of fashion these days. The house had only needed to be locked, having been ready for a long absence for weeks now. I turned the key in the ignition and the truck jumped to life like a dog hearing the pantry open.

The house receded in the rearview mirror, blurred by the vibration of the gravel driveway passing under the tires. Getting back on the road was an unexpected pleasure, one that I savored with the windows down and the radio on. I hadn’t asked for it, but now that it was here, I couldn’t see a reason not to enjoy it. I wasn’t planning to check out because I was sad, just because life as I knew it had ended, all my friends, family, and world were in the past. I was just the last one, turning out the lights. I could enjoy this last road trip and still finish up tomorrow.

It was late afternoon by the time I crossed the Minnesota border and dusk when I rolled into Eyota. Anne’s directions got me to the Brightwater Retirement Village, which turned out to be a collection of small bungalows clustered around a large central dining hall and medical facility. The low buildings were tidy and brown, surrounded by a carefully tended landscape looking desperately cheerful with too many holly bushes and small evergreen topiaries lining the walkways, all laboring in vain under the gloomy feel of the place. I saw Anne’s car in the otherwise empty parking lot and pulled into a nearby space.

She came out of the lobby and hurried to meet me as I locked up the truck. Looking anxious and relieved at the same time, she took my hand in both of hers and squeezed. “Thank you so much for coming, Abe. I really appreciate it.”