Kill Switch

Bruummm.

Da beams. “Just have to be nice to her.”

“We are going to all have to go back to the mansion,” says the boss cop.

“Right,” says the burly one. “I’ll drive this.”

He tries to sit in the Rambler, and Da gives him a two-forearm blast; if he had a hockey stick he’d be in the penalty box. The cop laughs at him in a way that’s both unamused and seriously unamusing.

“Listen,” Zeke says, warmly and all too helpfully, “come ride with me, Darius. It’ll be like old times.”

“No,” Da snaps.

“That or the squad car,” the big cop says with satisfaction.

“No,” Da insists, sure for all the world that he’s got choices here.

“Come on, Pop,” Dad says, defeat already in his voice. “You don’t want to be stuck in a police car. How embarrassing would that be? This will all be sorted out soon if you just-”

“No,” Da says.

“What will the girls say?” Dad says, getting visibly distressed over the thought.

“Come on.” Zeke shows impatience.

“I’m going in my car,” Da insists.

I look at my father, the man here who I am thinking should be taking charge, taking care, of the old man, of the situation, of me and everything.

And I am thinking, how did he ever get so weak? I am sorry for thinking it, and I love the man, I do. But how did the man who had Da for a father become this man?

“Officer,” I say, stepping right up to the boss man. “Listen, let us take the car back. Please? You see, right? You see what he’s dealing with, his condition. We’ll follow you, or you can follow us… He’s a good man. He’s on the wrong side of the slope now, but he shouldn’t have to have it any worse. Please? My Dad will drive the car. Please?”

He stares at me. He hears a lot of stories, of course, a lot of them crap, of course, so this look would be the law-enforcement, I-am-processing look.

Then I do something I would not expect me ever to do. I reach out and squeeze his forearm. With two hands, like I am kneading bread dough. I am a little stunned with what I am doing and a little disgusted too. “He was my granddad,” I say.

Cop looks away, looks at Da, looks straight up in the air. “Aw, cripes,” he says. Then he pokes me right in the stomach with his finger. “If you guys don’t drive straight and very carefully right back to the mansion, I will throw the old guy in jail and pistol-whip his grandson.”

That worked out better than I expected.

The big cop passes my way as the other one walks away. I think he’s going to just slip by but I feel my biceps squeezed like I am getting my blood pressure taken by a boa constrictor.

“My mother has dementia,” he says, close, understanding, quietly furious.

I do not know what to say. I do not know what he wants to convey to me or squeeze out of me. I do not get the sense that he quite knows either. But if he does not let go in the next few seconds, I am going to lose this arm.

“I understand,” I say, as close to understanding as I can come.

He lets go, just before I produce tears.

The two policemen climb back into the cruiser, and I tell Dad the deal.

“I’m driving this?” Dad says.

“Like hell you are,” his dad says.

“Dammit, Darius,” Zeke says, “just come with me.”

“Listen, Da,” I say, “there is no way they are going to let you drive, certainly not before we have sorted the whole thing out back at the mansion. So your choices are: cop cruiser or Zeke or ride in the old-”

“My old…”

“Your old Rambler. As a passenger.”

Zeke lets out a small, almost screechy growl down low in his throat, like an animal in a trap. “Darius,” he says, and it’s pure menace. He gives me a chill.

“This is a family trip, sorry,” I say to Zeke as Dad and I link arms with Da. You cannot force my grandfather into anything. But I think we just about managed to charm him.

We climb in and set off, a ways behind the cops, a short distance ahead of Zeke. Dad is driving, and smiling broadly as he comes to grips with the old car.

“I feel like… a kid, I guess,” Dad says. “Like I am back driving my first car.”

“You never drove this machine, fool.”

It is a strange combination of stiff and bouncy, but the car has a cool of its own. A frumpy cool, unlike what a convertible usually shows you.

“Neither did you, old-timer,” Dad says, actually playing with his father. Strange, stranger, strangest, what is happening here, but bone me if I am going to get anywhere near stopping it. They have had a hard time, these two, for as long as I can remember, and certainly since before that. They both love me, and it shows. They both love each other, and it, dammit, never ever does.

But now.

“I drove it for ages,” Da squawks.

“If by ages you mean the time between when you committed grand theft auto and the time the police caught you, then yes, you drove it for ages.”

We are just about to exit the cemetery, and Da does what would have been unthinkable before everything became thinkable. He goes for the wheel.

“Pop!” my father screams, and tries to outmuscle the still wiry Da.

“Da!” I shout, trying to get out of my seat belt but not quick enough.

We swerve hard left, over the oldest part of the cemetery, the place with all the famous pre-Civil War graves and even pre-Revolution ones, where all the stones are famously soapstone and ring-fenced and do-not-touch.

Before Dad gets us to a stop, we have touched-up quite a few of them, as well as laying smushed-up waste to their protective fences. I jump out and run to the front to see what the damage is, but the rugged, heavy old frame of the Rambler has done most of the damage, while the dead soldiers are just as dead as before, only now unidentified.

“Pop!” my dad says again, pushing his father away from him and holding him firmly by the arms. The way he would sometimes do to me when he was furious and I needed a shake as well as a talking-to.

No longer full of fight, Da just says, sadly, “My car.”

Zeke is now standing lordly over the mess of us. “Cripes,” he says. “This just got a whole lot more expensive, didn’t it?”

We all slump in embarrassed silence.

He’s an embarrassment. My mighty, almighty Da has become an embarrassment.

“This was when an automobile dealer treated a man correctly,” Da says in the passenger seat, stroking the green, leatherish dashboard. “They had respect. There was respect all over the damn place, and nobody ever talked about it. Not like today. Not like today. The word is everywhere, but that’s it. Just the word, “respect” with a whole lot of nothing behind it.”

“Okay, no more screwing around,” Zeke says, opening the door and helping Da out. The old man puts up no fight. “Gentlemen, it is a good thing this man here is so loved by so many people in so many places. We will sort this out, don’t you worry. But I’m going to take Darius to the station myself. Follow right behind, carefully, before we call any more attention to all the havoc.”

“Thank you, Zeke, thank you so much. Sure. We will,” Dad says, a little weaselly. “Right behind you.”

“They would do anything for you,” Da says, leaning back over the side of the car, rubbing his hand down the back of the chair, along the top of the half-down passenger window. The window even has its own chrome strip across the top. “They would make buying a new car almost as much fun as driving it,” he says, and suddenly snaps the latch on the glove compartment, giggling like a toddler making mischief, before Zeke impatiently tugs him over to his own big, expensive, charmless, boring machine.

I take my seat riding shotgun.