The Emperor of Any Place (18 page)

“Because you were a subject we had words about, your daddy and me.” Evan makes a face. “I tell you true. He wouldn’t let me near you, son.”

Evan stares at the old man. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said. I tried to see you any number of times.”

“Oh, really?” says Evan, but it’s the kind of “really” you say when some kid at school tells you they drank a two-four and washed it down with a thirty-ouncer of Grey Goose.

“It’s the Lord’s truth.”

“That’s sure not how Dad remembered it.”

“I can just bet it isn’t. But the truth . . . well, that’s another matter.”

“Is that right?”

“Damn straight. It’s bigger than the stories people tell themselves. Bigger than the lies they live with. So out with it: What’d your daddy have to say?”

Evan can’t stop himself. “When he wrote to tell you I’d been born, you didn’t even reply.”

“There you go,” says Griff. “Ancient history again. But a perfect example of what I was saying there about the truth. Perfect!” His eyes are all sparkly again. “Maybe he didn’t tell you what exactly was in that letter of his, announcing your joyous arrival into this harsh and inhospitable world. Yeah, there was a letter and, yeah, there was a picture of this ugly little critter with a knitted hat on his bald head.”

“Jesus!”

“Oh, don’t get your shorts in a knot; every newborn is plumb ugly — something only a parent could love. That’s not the point. There was the picture and the ‘good news’ that he wanted you to have the family name. Clifford Evan Griffin IV. Why it might almost have been a letter of reconciliation, except for the part in the letter . . . Let me see if I can recall the exact words.” Griff rests his head on the back of the chair. He raises one finger. “Yeah, I got it. Your daddy wrote, and I quote: ‘My fondest hope is that this beautiful boy will grow up without the tyranny that shadowed my childhood, knowing he is free to have his own thoughts and follow his own dreams.’ End quote.”

Evan stares at the man with the smug grin on his fleshless lips. In this light he might be a
jikininki.
“There’s only one thing I can tell you for sure that you and my father had in common,” says Evan. “This big, fat, ugly hatefest.”

“Ooh, I am feeling the disgust.”

“Can’t you just let this go?” says Evan. “The war is over. You won. My father is not only out for the count — he’s dead. Isn’t that enough for you?”

For just an instant Evan almost thinks he sees a flicker of something in Griff ’s eyes. Something like confusion — like maybe nobody told him the war was over.

Or is it something like grief?

Not likely. Evan shakes his head wearily and starts to leave.

And the old man grabs him.

Grabs him by the wrist. So fast, Evan doesn’t see it coming. So tight, Evan actually yelps.

“Tell me,” says Griff, his voice low, his eyes sharp as lasers.

“Let go of my fucking arm!”

“Sit!” Griff says.

“I’m not a dog!” says Evan. Then he whips his arm free, steps back, trips on the corner of the coffee table, and almost falls. Collects himself and rubs his wrist with his hand.

“Tell me what you know.”

Evan sees it. Sees the difference. He’s not fishing for what Clifford might have said to him. He’s asking straight out. Well, fuck him.

“You’re crazy,” he says, his voice on the brink of tears. “That really hurt.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, sure you are! You want to know what Dad said about you? That you’re a bully.”

“Nothing new in that.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

Griff leans back. His left arm falls into his lap, covered over by his right, but not before Evan notices how badly it’s shaking. The hard hand that grabbed him, shaking.

“Because you’re hiding something from me,” says Griff. “Hiding something important.”

Evan looks down, afraid to give anything away. Really afraid now. “I’m going to bed,” he says, his words not much more than a hoarse whisper. He makes a wide circle around his grandfather, his arms held high so he won’t get grabbed again.

“And there he goes, folks. Truly, his father’s son. No
cojones.
”

“Fuck off.”

“Yes sir, when it comes to fight or flight, Clifford could always be depended upon to choose the latter.”

Evan stops. Stares up at the ceiling. “I’ll tell you something Dad said. He said he had fought all the battles he ever wanted to in this world just living under your roof for seventeen years.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, that’s so.” Evan turns. “We never fought, Dad and I. You probably can’t believe that, but we never, ever once fought.”

Griff turns to look at Evan, the smirk gone from his face. “There are things you can’t run away from, kiddo. There are things a man just has to do.” Evan shakes his head and leaves. “You hear me?” Griff raises his voice. “Things you can’t begin to understand,” he says, and that soft-edged, hard-hearted voice follows Evan all the way up the stairs, along the hall to his room.

“You wanna know who made it possible for y’all to live in such blissful peace? It was soldiers like me. That’s who.”

Evan’s at his room now. He stops, not because there’s anything in the old man’s words but because he wants him to go too far. Say something that would justify caving his cankerous old face in with some blunt object.

And as if he knows that Evan is listening, Griff drops his voice. Not so low you wouldn’t hear it, but low enough that you have to listen.

“You might
think
you know what happened, but you don’t know it all, soldier.”

Evan enters his room and slams the door ineffectually. Wall-to-wall carpeting doesn’t allow for worthwhile displays of temper.

He stands there a moment, breathing hard, trying to calm himself down. He thinks about blocking the door with his chest of drawers. Thinks about leaving altogether — heading over to Rollo’s. No. There is no way he is going to give up this place — this “hostile island”— to the old man. He climbs into bed. Switches off the light.

You might think you know what happened, but you don’t know it all.

What do I know?
Evan thinks.
Not enough.
He switches the light back on. Finds the book where it has fallen on the floor. It opens right where he left off. He looks up at his door again, too edgy to read. He puts aside the book and slips out of bed. At his desk he looks for something, a weapon. This is not a house of weapons, but there must be something. Yes! On the bookshelf beside the desk is something his father brought home from a government business trip to Ponds Inlet in Nunavut.

A walrus penis bone.

It’s the length of a small baseball bat and about as heavy as one, too. A weapon: something to keep nearby, just in case. He holds it down at his side and turns to face the door and the mirror there looking back at him. He wills the door to open. “Go ahead,” he says to the darkness. “Make my day.”

It was so long ago, and yet reading Isamu’s story, I am drawn back down into it, a nightmare so vivid it defies explanation. Delusion? Perhaps. But there is a riddle here: what is a delusion shared by two people? The answer: reality.

I felt the weight of the creature plow me into the soft sand: felt the dampness of its rough hide, the rocklike firmness of muscle sliding under its pelt. I gagged on the swampy odor of the thing. Then came the report of a rifle. The great creature rolled over me, raking my cheek with the claws of its forepaw. I wanted to howl at the pain of it, but the wind had been knocked out of me from the impact. My hand flew to my face, felt the warm blood seeping out through the bristles of my beard. I looked up. The box kite was swirling away into the blue, the aerial snapped and snapping like a manta ray’s tail in the wind as it blew away.

Another shot rang out and the mottled creature recoiled, its massive shoulder bleeding out something black and as viscous as tar. Its body was taut, back on its haunches but rearing, slashing out.

Again the gunman fired and I watched the cheekbone of the creature shatter, but still the thing would not leave. It screamed, opening its wicked beak. Yes, beak — for the face that glared at me from between its hunched shoulders was birdlike: a mammoth quadruped with the beak and fiery eyes of a raptor! I fell back, throwing my arm out toward my pack, scrabbling to pull my service revolver from its holster. But then the gunman was stepping over me where I lay, shouting and firing the semiautomatic at the creature, shot after shot, missing most of the time, the sand exploding like tiny mines going off. But the shots that landed finally drove the creature back, until it took a shot to the eye and reeled, falling on its shoulder, before recovering and bounding off twenty feet or so.

The soldier followed it, screaming some more, his back to me, his entire attention on the monstrous animal, which squealed and squawked, shrill as the grinding of some infernal train wheels breaking on a track. The man fired again and again, and at last the thing took off down the beach, shaking its head as if trying to throw off the dreadful wounds it had taken. It hobbled, then regained its loping gait and at surprising speed took toward the rocks while the gunman aimed and fired again.

A steely rationality grabbed hold of me. The man’s back was to me, not fifteen feet away. I could shoot him with a very good chance of a direct hit and time to fire again if the first shot didn’t kill him. Any second now this man — my champion! — was going to turn around and see the gun in my hand, at which point the odds in my favor would be drastically reduced.

Were we enemies or allies? In a split second I had to decide.

At the sound of the revolver sliding into the holster, the gunman whirled around, his rifle at the ready. He was breathing hard and his face was filled with the same repugnance and fear as I’m sure my own was. My right hand was already thrust into the air, empty, the fingers splayed. The holstered gun hung from the stub of my left arm. I cringed behind this offering, turning my head. Not wanting to see when he fired.

It was a horrible risk to take. When no shot came, I dared to glance at him. This soldier who had saved my life had been firing in frenzy at the monster. His eyes still looked possessed, his chest heaved with the exertion; the adrenaline would be coursing through his bloodstream as mine was. He could have easily fired at me without thinking, and who would have blamed him. But he did not.

Mercifully, he did not.

My arm shaking, I pushed forward my left arm, to make certain the gunman recognized my intent.
Take the damn gun!
Did he understand? Yes. With his rifle held at his side, he cautiously approached me and slipped the belt and holster off my arm. With the holster clenched in his fist, he scrabbled back a few yards, but he had spied the knapsack lying on the sand behind me. He gestured to it, yelled something in Japanese. I turned and carefully took the pack by the strap and pulled it toward me.

The man barked another command. I dropped the strap. I could only guess what he must be saying.
Be very careful!
With two fingers, I gingerly gathered up the strap of the pack and held it out for the man’s inspection. He shook his head. With his chin he gestured for me to open it and show him the contents. I flipped back the flap and held the maw open for him to see. The man nodded.
Go on,
he seemed to say. And so, with the sack lying on the beach, I produced, item by item, what was in the bag: fresh bandages, a tube of ointment, a water canteen.

I held up the canteen. “Water,” I said. “Water.”

The ragged soldier nodded. He threw the belt and holster behind him, well out of my reach, shoved my handgun into his waistband, and then wiped the wild hair out of his face. He looked back down the beach to where the creature had run and was no longer in sight, then quickly returned his gaze to me. He patted the canteen hanging on his own belt.

“Mizu,”
he said.

“Mizu,”
I said. We both nodded.

So. We had something in common.

Each of us took the top off our canteens — I used my teeth — and took a long restorative swallow. Then I remembered something. I placed the canteen on the beach, hollowing out a hole for it to sit upright in. The soldier had slung his rifle over his shoulder and was taking another long drink, with one eye on me. I pointed questioningly again at my knapsack, and the man nodded at me.
Go ahead.

From a front pocket, I slowly drew out a chocolate bar. The man’s eyes opened wide.

“Chocolate,” I said.

“Choco . . .” said the man.

“Choc-o-late, yes?”

“Cho-co-latu,” said the soldier. He might not have had a word for it, but from the look on his face, he knew what it was.

I handed him half the bar. And while we ate, both of us scanned the cliff for signs of the creature, not quite believing it was gone, and, in my case, not quite believing it had ever been there. A terrible hallucination — a new layer of Hell.

But I was beginning to expect the unexpected. Like myself, this soldier had a little troop of child ghosts, buffeted by the onshore breeze. I had reached the point of not really noticing my own followers, the way you don’t notice blackflies in Vermont in May. They’re just there. Then there were the other critters with the red eyes, although none were around just now. And finally, this . . . this
thing
with hair as oily and matted and as odiferous as a beaver, but
twice
the size of one of my dad’s prized hogs and with a raptor’s beak and claws. Scarcely believable. More like the imaginings of a sick mind. Yet the claw marks on my face were real enough. Tentatively I touched my cheek. The slashing claws had not cut too deep. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.