The Emperor of Any Place

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  Evan’s not quite sure he gets it.

  Griff ’s expression is wry. “It was a little piece of history your daddy knew would not be lost on an old soldier.”

  Oh. Now he gets it. “Nice one, Dad,” he mutters.

  Griff reaches to an upper shelf. “Here it is,” he says.

  For a moment, Evan is confused. Then he gets it. “You sent it back?”

  “I did,” Griff says sternly. “I don’t like games.” He turns to look at Evan, to make his point perfectly clear.

  Evan nods. No jokes. Check. No games. Check. And not easily intimidated. Check.

  Griff finds his way back to the chair behind the desk. Evan grits his teeth, not wanting to see this man sitting there — not wanting to see anyone sitting there. No, that wasn’t it at all. Wanting so much to see one person sitting there.

  “You no doubt are cognizant of . . . of your father’s and my . . . problem with each other.”

  Problem, thinks Evan, as in “scornful intolerance.” Got it.

  He nods his head, even as Griff shakes his. “It seems foolish now,” he says. “The two of us going on like that.” He pushes the chair back from the desk, knots his hands together in his lap. The liver spots on his broad hands look like lichen on granite. “Acting like . . . well, like a hippie son and his grunt of a father. The dove and the hawk — that’s what he called us back when he was your age.” He casts his assessing eye over Evan again, as he did last night. His eyes say shabbiness.

  “So you don’t have a summer job, son?” he says. “A boy your age?”

  “I had a job. But no, I don’t have a job.”

  The old man nods as if he’d have guessed as much. “Getting up early too much for you?”

  Evan is stunned. “Excuse me?”

  Griff taps the face of his watch. “I thought we had a date,” he says.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Griff shakes his head. “I’m not a man who kids. What are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your age, boy.”

  “Seventeen in November.”

  “That’s what I thought. When I was seventeen, I had already signed up. It was 1941. There was a war happening in Europe, and although we weren’t in it yet, we were going to be and I wanted a part of it. Had to lie about my age, mind you, but I was big for my age and the marines were hungry.”

  Evan crosses his arms and leans against the door. He’s fuming. He wants to say, Stop with the lecture, already, school was out five weeks ago.

  “I spent my seventeenth birthday on a firing range in California. They had bundled us into cattle cars that morning and took us one hundred and seventy miles up the coast to this range near San Luis Obispo. Bundled into those cars like so much cattle. But that was the marines for you; that was boot camp.”

  Now Evan has this terrible urge to clap. He resists.

  “I had this M1 Garand, clip-fed, semiautomatic. It still reeked of Cosmoline, the gunk they greased ’em up with for shipping. I tell you, I’d sat for hours on my bunk scrubbing that damn rifle to make her fighting ready.”

  Evan’s pulse is beating like mad. His breathing is getting ragged, but the old soldier hardly seems to know he’s there.

  “Some wag pinned a lizard to my target. Dead center. I reduced it to lizard dust.” He smiles to himself, then pins Evan with his gaze, just as if he were a lizard on a bull’s-eye. “There were five possible results on the rifle range, Evan,” he says. “You could, one, not qualify; two, qualify; three, prove yourself a marksman; four, a sharpshooter; or five, an expert. That last result was what I was aiming for: expert. It meant a lot. It meant five dollars more pay, for one thing. A lot of money, back then. And it meant respect.” His eyes tell Evan that, in case he hadn’t noticed, there is a point about to be made. “You see it was what my daddy expected of me — nothing less. And in my day, you didn’t disregard what your daddy expected. His respect was your aim and your honor to achieve.”

  Here endeth the lesson. Evan wonders if he’s supposed to say amen. Instead, he’s tempted to yawn. He shifts, stands straight, drops his arms to his sides, squeezes his hands into fists. “Why are you here?” he says, his voice hanging on by rubber bands.

  “Because you asked me, I believe.”

  “And why did I do that? Ask some guy I never met, who never so much as sent me a birthday card? Why would I want to see him?”

  Griff lowers his head but not his gaze. “I seem to recall you were needing some help settling things around here.” His hands open like a magician’s over the folders before him on the desk, the screen of the computer now a swirling galaxy far, far away.

  “Why?”

  “What’s this about, son?”

  “Just answer me. Why?”

  Griff looks well and truly pissed. Good! “Because your daddy passed on.”

  “Exactly!” says Evan, jabbing the air with his finger. “And that’s why I don’t have a job. That’s why I quit my job! Not because I can’t get up in the morning. Which is none of your fucking business, anyway!”

  “Mind your tongue, Evan.”

  “No, you mind yours. You’ve got way too much to say!”

  The sergeant major sits up straight and leans forward, his huge hands resting on the top of the desk, his fingers splayed, ready to leap. “Is this how you talked to your daddy?”

  “No, sir. It is not how I talked to my daddy. Not ever. And you know why? Because I loved him like fucking crazy.” His voice has pretty well given up the ghost, but it doesn’t stop him. He blunders on, his finger jabbing the air and tears springing to his eyes. “I loved him, okay? And respected him. He was the best damned father in the world. Unlike you!”

  Then Evan storms out the door, heaving it shut behind him, and races down the stairs and out of the house. The Dockyard sign falls to the carpet, making no sound at all.

  He half expects to find the doors locked — to find himself barred from his own home. It’s after eight in the evening. It doesn’t matter where he’s been; eventually he knew he would have to come back and face the music. What’s the man going to do, court-martial him? He stands just inside the kitchen door, listening. He hears the sound of the television funneling up from the den. Judging from the volume, the old soldier must be hard of hearing. All those bombs bursting in air. Ninety. Evan has done the math. Griff is ninety years old; Clifford died at sixty-two. Evan shakes his head at the unfairness of it all. He looks at the muddied orange clogs of his father, his decomposing Birkenstocks. He looks at his own torn-up Emerica Heretics with the yellow laces, piled with his soccer cleats, one flip-flop embalmed in spiderweb. And there beside them sit Griff ’s shiny black outdoor shoes. Even his shoes stand at attention.

  Evan heads down the stairs. He knocks on the cracked-open rec room door. There is no answer. Evan pushes it open. Shhhh. The old man is sitting in the green wingback chair watching a baseball game on television. The infamous Griff does not look amused. Evan checks out the TV, the Dodgers and the Cardinals. He returns his gaze to Griff. He wonders if it’s only the game that is making him frown. Evan pictures the old aluminum baseball bat sitting in the corner of the carport and wonders why he didn’t grab it on his way in. Just in case.

  There is a newspaper on the old man’s lap, folded so meticulously it appears to have been ironed, like the olive-green golf shirt and ivory chinos the man is wearing.

  Evan clears his throat, his left hand still on the door, in case there’s some kind of weapon hiding under that immaculately folded newspaper and he needs to beat a hasty retreat.

  Griff looks up at him. Nods. He picks up the channel changer from off the side table and mutes the game. There is a tray on the hassock in front of him with the remains of a meal on it. The marines have landed and apparently made themselves at home.

  “I found a copy of your father’s will in his files. Apparently, it has been updated some.”

  Evan sees this for what it is: a chance to move on. He steps farther into the r
oom.

  “I couldn’t contact his lawyer, on account of it being Sunday. I’ll try phoning tomorrow. I highly doubt he’ll be able to give me any specifics since he’s unlikely to have my name on record acknowledging me as legal guardian.”

  Evan nods. “So, we’ll have to go together,” he says. Griff nods. “Okay, thanks.”

  “That will depend, of course, on your schedule,” says Griff.

  He can’t resist it, thinks Evan. Has to get the dig in — let Evan know he hasn’t forgotten the scene in the Dockyard that morning. It makes Evan glad, in a way, or at least relieved. There will be no need to apologize for what went down this morning. For sassing an elder. He doesn’t need to care about this man, to feel sorry, to get close to him in any way. In less than twenty-four hours, Griff has lived up to everything his father ever said about him. It gives Evan the courage to say what he wants to say.

  “My father and I had a road trip planned.”

  “What’s that?”

  At first Evan thinks maybe he’s never heard of the concept of a father and son going on a road trip. Then he realizes Griff didn’t hear him. He steps farther into the low-ceilinged room.

  “My dad and I. We were going on a road trip,” he says loudly. Griff nods. “Down to Cleveland to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” He waits, watches Griff ’s eyes stray back to the silent image on the television. The Dodgers are up to bat, two men on base, tied three to three in the top of the ninth. Griff shakes his head.

  “We were thinking of catching a Blue Jays away game there. You know, sometime when they were playing the Tribe.”

  Griff ’s eyes find him. “The A.L.,” he says. “Pfhu.”

  Evan’s jaw drops a little, and then he catches something that might actually be described as a twinkle in the old man’s eyes.

  “You got a problem with the American League?”

  “I most certainly do.”

  “Let me guess. You don’t buy the whole designated hitter thing?”

  “You can bet on it,” says Griff. He sits up a little straighter in his chair. “A pitcher’s got to be able to step up to the plate like the rest of his teammates. No sitting it out.” He stops, his thin old lips tight. “No running away,” he says.

  Evan rolls his eyes.

  Just then the old man groans and switches the sound back on. Gonzalez has hit a line drive to right, bringing in the runner from second and ending the tie.

  The Dodgers are beating the Cardinals.

  The irony of it suddenly occurs to Evan. “Boy, those Dodgers, huh? I mean they really are something, aren’t they?” he says. “Gotta love those Dodgers.”

  A rusty scraping sound comes from deep in Griff ’s throat, vaguely recognizable as being of the same species as laughter. He turns off the sound again. Then turns off the game.

  “I took Clifford to a game up in Baltimore once. Not Camden Yards, the old Memorial Stadium. A road trip, as you call it. Quite a hike from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, which is where I was stationed at the time. Took ’bout eight hours in those days.”

  “Baltimore’s in the American League.”

  “Baltimore was the closest venue. There wasn’t a team in Atlanta back then. The Braves were still up in Milwaukee.”

  “Was it a good game?”

  “Can’t rightly remember the game. The boy went on and on about wanting this and that, cotton candy, Coke, and whatnot.”

  “That must have been tough,” says Evan. “Kids, eh?”

  He meets Griff ’s eyes. They look like a bull’s eyes, a bull that just noticed the matador’s pants are down around his ankles. Evan is surprised at what is coming out of his mouth. This is suicidal.

  “He loved the game,” says Griff. “Never played it, mind you. Not the sporting type.”

  “Not the sporting type” comes out sounding like his dad was some kind of a Froot Loop in a tutu.

  Evan is not going to put up with this. But another scene right now just seems too hard to deal with. “Yeah, well, he’s . . .”

  Why is it so hard to say it? “. . . was . . .”

  There. Done.

  “He was a big-time Toronto fan. We never got, like, season’s tickets, or anything, but we’d always catch a few games.”

  Griff nods. He looks as if he’s about to say more, but Evan interrupts him.

  “I’m going to get something to eat,” he says.

  “You do that, soldier,” says Griff.

  Evan turns to leave. Then he turns back. “I haven’t been sleeping so well,” he says. “I’m usually up by about nine.”

  Griff has turned the game back on, but now he turns to Evan, his gaze level, giving nothing away. Marine blue, Evan’s father whispers to him. Griff got his eyes issued along with the rest of his kit. Now the old man squints as if he has seen something unexpected. He sticks his old head out on his wattled neck, waggles two fingers, beckoning Evan closer, never taking his eye off him. Evan hesitantly approaches, stops just out of arm’s reach. The soldier is staring at Evan’s neck, frowning.

  “What happened to the .44 caliber love letter?” he asks.

  For a moment Evan feels like he just stumbled down a rabbit hole. Then he remembers the tat. “Oh, yeah. That.” He feels his neck. “It was just a transfer. There was this concert . . .” He stops himself. No need to explain. As if the old man would know Alexisonfire. “I rubbed it off.” He stares at his grandfather. “I’m amazed you remember what it said.”

  Griff smiles. “I never forget a caliber, son.”

  There’s a text from Rollo on his cell phone.

  — How goes the battle?

  He sits on the side of his bed to answer.

  — I think I’ve found a use for that pit in the back garden

  — Lol — do it *soldier*

  Evan almost phones, but he’s talked out. He’d spent most of the day with Rollo, on Rollo’s last day of freedom before he starts work at the Pulse, the new health food store in the mall. “Making the world a better place for vegetables,” Rollo has taken to saying at annoyingly regular intervals.

  There was, however, some news about making the world a better place for Evan: a girl. Specifically, a girl who wants to meet him. A friend of a friend of a friend. “She saw us play,” Rollo said that afternoon. “She thought you were somewhat cool.”

  “Her exact words?”

  “She might have said ‘moderately cool.’ No wait, I remember. She said ‘not entirely a douchebag.’”

  “Sweet.”

  The idea of a girl who actually saw the band play and still wanted to meet him was within spitting range of astounding. He is supposed to phone her. He has her name and number somewhere on his phone. He starts scrolling, when suddenly the landline starts ringing the place down. He jumps to his feet and tears to the door.

  “I’ll get it,” he shouts. The game is still on downstairs. He doubts Griff would hear the phone anyway; there’s no extension in the rec room. Breathlessly he picks up the receiver on his dad’s bedside table, standing in the darkened room. It’s Leo Kraft. He asks after Evan. Evan says he’s fine.

  “It’s not too late, is it?”

  “No, sir,” says Evan, catching his breath. He keeps his voice low, despite the fact that Griff is two floors away.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, again, but by any chance is —”

  “Listen,” says Evan. He sits on the bed. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.” He swallows. “My father . . . uh . . . My father passed away.”

  Evan counts: one steamboat, two steamboats, three steamboats —

  “Did you just say what I thought you said?”

  “Yeah. I’m . . . I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when you phoned the other day.”

  “Oh, jeez. I’m . . . I don’t know what to say.”

  Welcome to the club, thinks Evan.

  “God. I feel . . . I’m so sorry. I won’t bother you anymore.”

  “No, wait. It’s all right,” says Evan. “I mean I’d li
ke to help, if I can.” What he wants to say is that he’d love to have some task to perform that there was actually a chance in hell he could accomplish.

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “Except I don’t really know what you’re after.”

  “It’s . . .” Again, Leo’s voice falters. He’s really shook up. “Under the circumstances, it’s —”

  “I’m reading the book,” says Evan. “I’m a few chapters in.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s pretty amazing. I mean kind of crazy.”

  Leo doesn’t speak at first. “Evan, forgive me if this seems tactless, but are you in touch with your grandfather Griff at all?”

  Evan actually laughs, although it’s more like a seal’s bark. Then he has to quickly put a lid on it for fear he’ll go ass-over-brain-stem hysterical and alert the troll in the rec room. “There has been this very weird development,” he says, as steadily as his voice will allow. He looks at the door, sees the light in the hallway, no looming shadow. Dimly he hears cheering from the tube.

  “He’s here.”

  “He . . .”

  “Griff. He’s here.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Yeah, well . . . He came up to help me with, you know, the legal stuff . . .”

  “Right. I see. Oh, boy.” Evan can imagine Leo shaking his head. “Excuse me, but I was under the impression your father and grandfather were not on speaking terms.”

  “They’re not. I mean they weren’t. Maybe they talked about this thing . . . the book. I don’t know. Anyway, people had been telling me I should get in touch with him — my grandfather — since he’s about the only relative I’ve got and I didn’t know what else to do, so . . . That was before you called. Before I found out about the book.”

  “Amazing. And you’re reading it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was there a letter with it?”

  “Uh-huh. I read that, too.” Evan looks up anxiously at the bedroom doorway again. “Mr. Kraft —”

  “Call me Leo.”