A Tooth for a Tooth

by Ben Rehder

  Yeah, there are problems, I thought.

  That was made even more obvious by the fact that church started at nine and it appeared we weren’t going. Mom hadn’t even knocked on my door to get me up for breakfast. I didn’t smell bacon frying or coffee brewing. In fact, I didn’t hear any movement or talking at all in the house.

  I lay there for several minutes, just feeling crummy. To be honest, I was kind of enjoying leaving Matt hanging. He was always doing stupid stuff and somehow getting me involved. Like this thing with the drill. So I texted him back.

  Cops came this morning

  His reply came within fifteen seconds:

  Srius?

  I could picture the panic he was feeling. Pretty funny.

  I denied evrythng

  Not funny

  Not a joke

  I put my phone on silent mode because I knew what he’d do next, and sure enough, it rang. I let it go to voicemail. Thirty seconds passed. Then he sent a text:

  Where r u

  Cant talk now

  Im freaking out whats happening

  Cops r chcking the nborhood door 2 door

  U r lying

  Wish i was

  OMG 4 a stupid drill?

  Doesnt mttr its stil theft

  The door was open

  Rmembr whn ur bike was stolen?

  Now there was a long pause and I realized I had a huge smile on my face. I was getting him good. Last year, somebody had taken Matt’s mountain bike when he’d left it in front of a convenience store. His dad had been really pissed that he’d left it unlocked and wouldn’t buy him a new one. That’s why we walked everywhere now—Matt had no bike.

  Finally he said: Shld we put it back?

  That caught me by surprise. Put the drill back? I thought about it, then said: Door wont be unlocked now

  Cld leave it on back porch

  Might get caught

  We’d b careful

  Not we, u

  U wont go?

  No

  Plz go w me

  U stole it u return it

  I need a lookout

  Good luck

  Y r u being such a jerk

  Was I? Maybe I was. Regardless, I was tired of stringing him along. And he deserved to know what was really going on, since he was my best friend. So I said:

  Think my g’father is dying

  ~

  Later, I found Mom in the living room, folding sheets and watching Pat Robertson, and she acted as if everything was fine. When I asked why we hadn’t gone to church, she said Dad hadn’t been feeling well when he woke up, so she let him sleep late. Then she asked if I was hungry, and before I could even answer, she said, “Of course you are,” and went into the kitchen to make me some breakfast.

  She seemed awfully cheerful. Maybe I was wrong about Opa. That’s what we called him, because of his mother’s German ancestry. Maybe I’d misheard what Mom had said last night, or maybe they’d been talking about someone else.

  I was even more convinced of that when, a couple hours later, Dad finally emerged from his bedroom—fully dressed, apparently feeling much better—and said, “Grab the keys, Charlie!”

  “Huh?”

  “Time for another driving lesson!”

  ~

  “Parallel parking,” Dad said very seriously, “is the most important part of the test.”

  He was bending down to look at me through the passenger window. It was a long way down for him, because he’s six foot four. I get my size from his side of the family.

  Dad continued, saying, “When I was your age, it counted for a full thirty points. So if you screwed it up, the best you could get was a seventy, which meant you were just one point—one measly point—from a failing grade.” His voice was rising with mock outrage. He was kidding around because he has a weird sense of humor. I think he got it from Opa, who is even more of a goofball. Dad went on. “It didn’t matter if you drove with the precision of Richard Petty and the skill of Dale Earnhardt, if you couldn’t parallel park like you’d been doing it all your life, you didn’t get your license. Personally, I don’t think that’s very reasonable, but that’s the way it was. What’re you gonna do? Bunch of bureaucrats.”

  I couldn’t help grinning at him. “That’s what happened to you, huh, Dad?”

  “Is it that obvious? Yeah, well, my instructor was a hard-ass.”

  He used words like that sometimes when Mom wasn’t around. It was understood that this was a guy thing, only between us.

  “Okay, you ready to give it a try?” he asked.

  We were in the huge parking lot of the exposition center on the east side of town. This is where they held the rodeo, dog shows, tractor pulls, and various concerts, but no events were taking place today, so it was a ghost town.

  The parking lot was basically a wide-open expanse of pavement, with the occasional curbed island of concrete here and there to divide the big lot into smaller sections. We’d come here for previous lessons, and Dad had taught me the basics—shifting gears smoothly, braking hard without locking up the tires, backing up for a long distance—all the things that would be on the driving test.

  Today, Dad had placed a pair of orange traffic cones exactly twenty-five feet apart, with each cone about six feet out from a long, straight section of curb. It was my job to parallel park our Toyota between those two cones.

  I didn’t know why he was making such a big deal out of it. It looked simple enough. He had already demonstrated for me a couple of times. As you back up, he said, you whip the wheel this way, then, at just the right moment, you whip it the other way, and presto, you slide right into the slot. Take it slow. Keep an eye on the cones.

  Piece of cake, I thought. No problem. It’s not trigonometry.

  On my first try, I totally crushed the cone in front.

  Dad was ready with some sound effects. He screamed like I’d just run over a pedestrian. “Aaah! Oh, my god, help me! My leg! You crushed my leg!”

  Yeah, okay, I’ll admit I laughed. Then I pulled out, he stood the cone up again, and I gave it another shot. I whipped it too late and rolled over the rear cone. Another pedestrian. It was like I was playing Grand Theft Auto.

  Dad said, “For the love of God, somebody stop this maniac! An ambulance! I need an ambulance!”

  Right about then, I was grateful there wasn’t another soul within a mile of us. It was embarrassing.

  The third time, with some verbal coaching from Dad, I did a little better. Didn’t hit a cone, but wound up parked about three feet from the curb. You’re supposed to be eighteen inches or closer.

  But I got better with each try. After about a dozen attempts, I finally nailed it.

  “There you go! Now you’ve got it!”

  Three more times in a row, I managed to park without sending any imaginary pedestrians to the hospital or the morgue. It felt good.

  Dad climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. “You know what? I’m thinking you should drive us home today.”

  “Really?” That would be cool. I hadn’t driven on any real streets yet, just this parking lot.

  “Yeah, we’ll take the back streets. No highways. Think you can handle that?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “I do, too. You’re getting the hang of it. I’m proud of you. But first, why don’t you cut the engine for minute. We need to talk about something.”

  I knew immediately what was coming.

  ~

  The word “grandpa” might bring to mind a certain image for some people: a little white-haired guy with arthritis and poor hearing. My grandfather wasn’t like that at all. Not even close.

  Yeah, he was sixty-three years old—getting up there—
but he was very active, always running around doing something. Like he was a big-time swimmer. Went to a public pool in his neighborhood four or five mornings a week. He played the guitar and wrote his own songs. He attended political rallies and book signings and all kinds of fundraisers.

  He dated a lot, too. He and my grandmother had gotten a divorce before I was even born, and Opa had never remarried. Instead, he had what my mother called “lady friends.”

  He traveled with some of these friends to other states and even other countries. Just last summer, he went to Ireland with a redheaded woman named Linda. A couple years before that, he went to Africa with a woman whose name I can’t remember. For a while after that trip, he wore a shirt called a dashiki. It had all these wild colors, and I thought it looked pretty cool, but my mom always said he looked like some old nut. Other times, when she was being nicer, she used the word “eccentric.”

  My point is, he wasn’t some decrepit geezer ready for a nursing home. Heck, he had more energy than me and most of my friends. Or he used to.

  ~

  “You know that Opa hasn’t been feeling good.”

  I nodded.

  Dad said, “He...well, for a while, nobody could say what was wrong with him. The doctors didn’t know. He just didn’t feel right, so they ran various tests, and everything looked okay. They said he was probably fine, just getting old, and he shouldn’t worry too much about it. We told you about that. Remember right after Christmas?”

  My face was starting to feel very warm. I nodded again. I did remember. First they told me Opa might be sick, then they said maybe he wasn’t, then, just before spring break, they said it was a “wait and see” type of thing. We hadn’t really talked much about it since then.

  “In early April,” Dad said, “he went to a special hospital in Houston. It’s one of the best in the country. They ran even more tests, different tests, and this time they were able to figure out what the problem is.” He paused for a second. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news. He has a type of bone cancer that is very aggressive. It’s already in the advanced stages.”

  Does it make me a pussy to admit my eyes were starting to fill with tears? A real tough guy, right? Big football player. Macho and all that. But cancer is scary. Everybody knows that.

  I was looking down at my lap. My dad had his arm on the driver’s headrest behind me. Now he placed his hand on my neck, rubbing it, trying to make me feel better, but I was this close to bawling like a baby. Some snot dripped from my nose and landed on my jeans.

  Dad said, “It gets a little more complicated, because Opa has some wild ideas about what he should do next. He isn’t thinking straight. Maybe it’s his age, or maybe he’s just scared, but he’s decided that he doesn’t want to undergo the treatment plan the doctors are recommending.”

  Now I looked up. “Why not?”

  “Well, it can be pretty rough on the patient. And the chances that it would be successful are pretty slim. It comes down to what they call ‘quality of life.’”

  I knew the answer, but I asked the question anyway. “Is he going to die?”

  I don’t know whether my dad had decided hours ago to be completely honest with me, or if he made the decision right then and there. But when I think back on this moment, as painful as it was, I’m glad he didn’t sugarcoat it or give me any false hope.

  He simply said, “Yeah, he is.”

  Now the tears really began to flow.

  He said, “I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m really sorry. Even with the treatment, he...that would only delay it, or maybe it wouldn’t even do that.”

  Now he was getting emotional, too, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I looked down at my lap again, and we just sat there for another minute or two, neither of us saying anything.

  Then, when I thought I could talk without blubbering, I said, “How soon?”

  ~ ~ ~

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ben Rehder lives with his wife near Austin, Texas, where he was born and raised. His novels have made best-of-the-year lists in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Field & Stream. Buck Fever was a finalist for the Edgar Award, and Get Busy Dying was a finalist for the Shamus Award. For more information, visit www.benrehder.com.

  OTHER NOVELS BY BEN REHDER

  Buck Fever

  Bone Dry

  Flat Crazy

  Guilt Trip

  Gun Shy

  Holy Moly

  The Chicken Hanger

  The Driving Lesson

  Gone The Next

  Hog Heaven

  Get Busy Dying

  Stag Party

  Bum Steer

  If I Had A Nickel

  Point Taken

  Now You See Him

  Last Laugh