race is over, win or lose.
Inside the house, I hung my keys on a small brass hook screwed into a wooden heart painted red with white piping. There’s another hook right next to it, just as scratched and dull as mine, but it’s empty.
On my way through the kitchen, I dropped my hat over the same chair back that I’ve used nearly every day for the last forty years. In the living room, the TV tray that I had set out next to my recliner was still there. My old Browning M1911 was on it, waiting for me. I sat down in the recliner with a familiar creaking of wood and springs and looked around at the room, at the walls.
Everywhere my eyes touched, there was a part of my life. Of our lives. Every picture and figurine and knick- knack had a story behind it, some that would take hours to tell in order to explain who the people grinning in black and white were to us, or where we had been, or why we had gone there. It was hard to look across them and not be overwhelmed by the past they represented, an entire lifetime compressed and separated into picture frames. Parts, all in a heap.
I picked up the Browning, the first and last gun the US Army had ever issued me back in the Second World War. Another thing that never failed me, that old.45. I had a sentimental fondness for that gun, and I don’t mind saying that I felt a little bad about how I was going to end its years of faithful service.
I put the barrel under my chin and didn’t flinch at the cold touch of the metal. I felt it distantly, the chill steel on someone else’s skin. I pulled the hammer back and the click was loud and wrong in the still, comfortable house. I squeezed my eyes shut, though I don’t know why. I know it won’t make any difference, but I do it anyway, and Margaret’s face appeared as I remembered her, back in her prime and glorious. She looked at me in shock and disappointment.
I opened my eyes to clear the image, and my guts knotted up. I tried to get the detachment back that I’d worked so hard to earn for the last year, and I managed to keep my face calm, even if some tears leaked out. Nobody could see them anyway.
The gun was rock steady as I put my finger through the guard and laid it on the trigger. The flesh of my fingertip started to whiten as I put slow, relentless tension on it.
The doorbell went off.
I froze, willing the intruder to leave. The flat bong of the bell struck at me again.
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
