After Silence

by Jonathan Carroll

  But he surprised us.

  “Max, I was trying to tell someone today how many newspapers run ‘Paper Clip.’ Isn’t it around three hundred?”

  “Yes, a few more, but that’s good enough.”

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Lincoln! Hi! Come, sit down.”

  “Hi, Lincoln. Wanna sit next to me?”

  “Hi, Grrrr-eer. Naah, I want to sit next to Dad. Right in the heart of the old fam.”

  The chair to my right slid out noisily. Sitting down, he slapped me on the shoulder. “How’re you doin’, Max? How’s the old provider hanging?”

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  “I said before I wasn’t hungry. I only came by to see you guys.” Patting out a beat on the table, he started singing a song about “raising my fam-uh-ly.” We watched and waited but he didn’t stop. He sang louder. People at other tables started staring and gave him a long once-over. He sang on while we three went back to our dessert.

  Greer said she had to go to the toilet and Lily took her.

  Lincoln smiled at me. “Hey, Max, what’s the difference between a refrigerator and a homosexual?” He said it too loudly, wanting people to hear.

  “I guess you’re going to tell me.”

  “A refrigerator doesn’t fart when you take your meat out.”

  A woman at the table next to ours shook her head and said, “Jesus Christ, crude!”

  I sat forward and put my hand on his forearm. “Lincoln, stop it. What are you trying to prove? You know you shouldn’t talk like that here. It’s offensive and totally inappropriate.”

  Instead of answering, he put a thumb in Greer’s peach ice cream. Sticking it in his mouth, he sucked the finger. It was so incongruous seeing this mess of a kid sucking his thumb. He closed his eyes in exaggerated delight. I realized it was the first time in all our years together I had seen him make that innocent gesture.

  “Lincoln! What are you doing? What is the matter with you? Why do you make trouble every time you are coming in now?” Ibrahim marched over, seething. He was a kind man but had had enough of the boy’s behavior. Our son had caused a number of scenes and near-fights here in the last two years. Cruel comments, jokes as gross and loud as this one, rotten things that he shouted at us about how much he despised the restaurant and all those connected with it. Long ago we had given up asking him to join us, but many times he chose to tag along and then usually wound up making trouble. None of us knew why, other than his very aggressive homophobia. The only reason I’d wanted him along tonight was so I could be sure he was away from the house when I went searching for his gun.

  “This is the end. I have had enough of you now. You have no right to treat us like this Lincoln, you are making everyone who loves you crippled. You cut off our legs and then cut out our hearts. Love goes very far, mister, but it is not the universe. Someplace it stops and then that is the end.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  When Ibrahim was gone, Lincoln asked if we could go outside and talk alone. I agreed and, walking out, asked a waiter to tell Lily we’d be back in a few minutes.

  Standing in front of the restaurant, the boy shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I know, Maxie. I know everything! I found it all out today. Tonight. It’s so incredible how in one second your whole life can move from here to way way way over there. Unbelievable. A real mind warper. But I know every one of your dirty fucking secrets!” He was so happy. If I hadn’t known what was going on, I’d have been shocked by his face of pure joy. “I cannot believe it. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me anything all these years. Would you have? Would you ever have told me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Fuck you, Max. Fuck you for the rest of your shit-ass life. Fuck you and Lily and all the lies and everything about you two. You want me to do something for you? You’re gonna pay for it. You’re going to pay for everything now, cocksucker.”

  “How do you feel?”

  He thought a moment. “I feel… I feel weird. Like my life, um, has been lived on another planet till now and it just landed here. Something along those lines. I’m sure you can understand what I’m saying, Dad.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “I bet. Well, good. I wanted to tell you that, Max. But I don’t think I want to inform your wife for a while because, um, one ‘parent’ at a time’s enough.”

  I didn’t understand what he meant but had no time to ask. A beautiful silver Mercedes pulled up across the street and stopped. The horn honked. Lincoln waved to it. “Gotta go now. I’ll, like, talk to you later, okay?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Got some stuff to do with Elvis.”

  “Elvis? That’s him in the car? He doesn’t own a Mercedes.”

  “It’s a friend’s.”

  “Lincoln, don’t! We have to talk—”

  “The fuck we do!” He ran into the street without looking. Yelling over his shoulder, he stopped in the middle of traffic, turned to me, then to the Mercedes, to me. “Now we do things my way, Daddy-o. Now that I know the big secret. Just today. It’s like my friggin’ bar mitzvah! Today I became a man!” He threw up both arms, hands in fists, and, waving them at the sky, howled like a wolf. Cars slowed to look. One driver howled back at him. Another sped away from this raving punk. Elvis honked and honked the horn. I stepped into the street but was stopped short when a motorcycle came zooming by. On the other side, Lincoln rounded the Mercedes, ducked, disappeared, and the silver car roared off before I heard the passenger’s door close.

  Running back into the restaurant, I told Lily I had to go home right now, no explanation why. I had to get to his gun. What might he do on the day he discovered who he was? Maybe go crazy. Or do something crazy. Forget what Mary said. I had to get to that gun before him and put it someplace safe. Then we would talk. Talk and talk until I’d made things as clear as I could to him.

  There was a bad accident on Wilshire Boulevard, and the familiar ominous mix of whizzing lights on police cars and ambulances, plus a sputtering orange flare lying on the ground, made the early-evening scene even more neon and ugly. For the first time in years I remembered a day from childhood. On a summer Sunday before Saul was born, my parents took me to Palisades Park in New Jersey. I was about seven and had never been to an amusement park before. The day was a complete success and should have been one of those cherished memories of childhood because I had enough fun and excitement to exhaust ten boys. But fun isn’t often as memorable as death.

  On the ride home, once across the Tappan Zee Bridge we were immediately stopped by a giant traffic jam. The line went on for miles and was so slow moving that several times my father turned off the engine to keep it from overheating. But there was a baseball game on the radio, my mother had her knitting, and if anyone got hungry there were still a couple of sandwiches left in the picnic basket. We were happy. Dad and I listened to the game for a while, but tired from the day and the sunburn it had given me as a going-away present, I lay down on the wide back seat and fell asleep.

  I don’t know how long I was out, but I awoke to the sound of Mom’s voice. “Just don’t make any noise and he won’t wake up.”

  Dad made a long quiet whistle. “I haven’t seen one that bad in years.”

  I opened my eyes, but with a child’s intuition knew a moment before she turned that Mom was about to check me. When she did, I pretended to be fast asleep.

  “Max’s all right. Still snoozing. Oh my God, Stanley! Oh my God!”

  I couldn’t stand the mystery. What was happening? It probably wouldn’t have made any difference if I had sat up and exclaimed too, because both parents were transfixed by the scene outside. I slid across the seat and, peeking through the window, saw a smoking battlefield of wrecked cars, flashing lights, fire engines, people running around. Police blue, firemen yellow, doctors white.

  There were bodies. First I saw two together covered by a blanket, their feet sticking meekly out. N
ext, and most amazing, was the child launched halfway through the windshield of a car. This was in the time before unbreakable safety glass was standard in automobile windows. It was a child; I was sure of that because despite being almost entirely covered by a coating of shiny blood, the visible part of the body was short and thin. The upper torso stuck up through the windshield like it had been shot from the back seat but stopped halfway out. A small arm wearing a wristwatch hung down. I could see the white watch face. That small spot of white in all the streaked, glaring red. A perfect white circle. The rest was blood and crushed, formless chaos. I absorbed it all in seconds. When my mother began turning around again, I zipped back to my sleeping position and wasn’t caught. I was too scared to try for another look, and a short while later we were past the wreck and sped up.

  “Roll it up, pal.” Four decades later, a helmeted policeman held a flashlight and waved it across my face. “You’ve seen the show. Move on.” I accelerated, thinking about my seven-year-old self in a back seat, the dead child through the windshield, and my son.

  When I got home there were no cars in the driveway or in front of the house. Good, but that didn’t mean anything. He could have been dropped off already and could be inside. I parked on the street and, standing next to the car, took several long, deep breaths before moving. What should I say if he was there?

  I started for the house, running questions and answers through my mind, readying myself for whatever he might ask. But would anything give him clarity, or comfort, now that he knew?

  I was almost to the door when I saw them. The front of our house is a couple of steps up to a large porch and the front door. There are metal chairs on the porch set back a ways where Lily and I often sat in the evening and chatted when she returned from work.

  Two little boys were sitting on these chairs. I stopped, startled to see anyone up there, knowing our family was gone.

  “Hi, Mr. Fischer!”

  “Hey, Mr. Fischer!”

  It was two of the Gillcrist boys from down the street. Nice kids, about nine and ten years old. You always saw them hanging around together.

  “Hi, guys. What’re you doing up there?”

  “Edward dared me to come and sit on your porch.”

  “What did he dare you?”

  “A quarter.”

  I reached into my pocket, took out one, and handed it to him.

  “How come you’re paying? Ed lost!”

  “Shut up, Bill! If he wants to pay, he can.”

  “Did anyone come into the house since you two’ve been here?”

  “No, sir. We’ve been around, I don’t know, half an hour?”

  “You didn’t see Lincoln?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. Well, I guess you’d better head on home now. It’s getting pretty late.”

  Edward got up and gave Bill a shove when his brother was slow in rising. Bill poked him back. Edward poked—

  “Hey, guys!”

  “He’s always starting!”

  “’Cause you’re stupid!”

  “I know you are, but what am I?”

  I watched and thought what if they were Lincoln and me? Kids, brothers, two years apart. I blurred my vision and made believe. My brother Lincoln. Little brother Lincoln, who followed me around and was a pain but also was my best friend. Oddly, when I brought my eyes back into focus, the Gillcrists still looked like us. I had to blink and blink to make the picture go away.

  Edgy, I unlocked the front door and walked in. Quiet, still, the rooms smelled warm and stale. The normal wonderful comfort one feels walking in the door of your own home was gone. I lived here, but so did he. Everyday objects, the things I knew and normally used without thought, seemed larger and all cocked at strange angles. Like a picture that’s been bumped crooked and needs straightening. Our whole house felt crooked and… expectant. Was that the right word? As if it were waiting to see what I would do next. A car drove by out on the street. Freezing, I waited to hear if it would stop or pull into our driveway. It didn’t. I figured I had about half an hour before Lily returned.

  “Lincoln? Are you here?” Walking slowly through the house, turning on lights, I was full of the absurd idea that if he were here, he’d be hiding from me, ready to jump out and pounce when my back was turned. Although that was more Greer’s style than his, still I moved cautiously, waiting for him to spring out of wherever. My son the Jack-in-the-Box.

  I did a general careful look around before feeling a little more at ease. I smiled at myself for having checked behind the couch in the living room and in a too small closet in the laundry room. But fear comes from noticing the normal has suddenly grown fangs. After today’s revelations, that space behind our couch was no longer the innocent place where Greer’s tennis ball had fallen.

  I got my key to his room from its hiding place taped to the bottom of an unused kitchen drawer. In stockinged feet I walked the long hall to the back of the house. At his door I knocked and again called out his name a few times to see if he was in there. No answer. I had no more time to waste. Opening it, I reached in and switched on the light. Once again the stark white emptiness and order of Lincoln’s room was in such sinister contrast to what had probably gone on in there and what was hidden, like the infected peace of an empty prison cell or room at an asylum.

  His chest of drawers was five or six inches out from the wall. Squatting down, I tilted my head and slid my hand along the back of the thing. Bingo, there it was. Smooth flat wood for a foot, then a suspect curl of tape peeling up off an edge. Further, the hard angles of a gun.

  “Thank God. Thank God.” I pulled it off and slid it over. Other than what I’ve seen in movies, I know nothing about guns, but I did recognize the shape of this one—it was a forty-five. Whether it was real or not was the next question. I knew the Japanese made remarkable full-scale models of guns detailed enough to fool the experts. This one was surprisingly light and either coated or constructed of some kind of rubber or plastic. A plastic gun? How could that be? Engraved on the left side was “Glock 21 Austria 45 AUTO.” On the right was the name “Glock” another time, a serial number, the address of the firm in Smyrna, Georgia. It was so light. I’ve never felt comfortable around guns, but this one was compelling in its simple roughness. I turned it around and around. Carefully, after much figuring and noodling, I managed to release the clip from the bottom. It was full of twelve beautiful gold bullets. It was real. Nothing was more real than that gun.

  Before doing anything else, I picked up the phone on his desk and called Mary Poe. While it rang, I held the Glock in my hand and turned it from side to side, sighting down my arm at it from different angles. What an instrument. What a singular piece of machinery. Bang. That’s it. That’s all it was made to do. Bang—one big hole. Mary wasn’t home, but I told her tape I’d found the pistol, that it was very fucking real, and read the serial number off the side. I’d be home for a few more hours in case she wanted to get back to me.

  Then I did a queer thing. I put the clip of bullets in my pocket, the pistol in the middle of the floor. Why not just shove the whole thing in my pocket? Because I didn’t want it in my pocket. The bullets were bad enough, but as the ugly heart of the gun, without them it could do nothing lying there but suck up all of the light and energy in the room like a black hole in space.

  The silence of heavy machinery turned off a moment ago, or of a major highway at three in the morning when no cars have passed for minutes. The quiet of an airplane miles above you trailing its white thread of vapor. There is so much noise in these things that their rare stillness sounds a million times quieter. It is a hush of waiting, not completion. Any minute the noise that is the thing will come back with a roar. That was the silence in Lincoln’s room after I put the phone down.

  Closing my eyes tight, I made fists and lowered my head to my chest. “I hate this. I hate it.” Then I began to search.

  In one drawer were three packages of condoms. How wonderful! He took precautions! If o
nly it were so tame and simple. I smiled, thinking that in the old days a parent would have had a fit finding rubbers in a son’s drawer. Another held a butterfly knife and a Polaroid photograph of Little White, topless. She had lovely small breasts and looked cute with both arms up, in the classic “make a muscle” pose. What was her name? Ruth. Ruth Burnett? Burdette? What would her parents say if they saw this photo?

  Here is what else I found. A postcard of a penis and hairy balls with a pair of black eyeglasses over the dick so that the combination looked like a man’s face with a thick beard. Written on the back was: “L. You can suck my dick when I’m dead.” Another knife and bullet in his desk drawer, two blurry Polaroids of other handguns I assumed belonged to either Lincoln or his friends. Nothing else.

  The phone rang. I shuddered and had to lick my lips before answering. “Hello?” They hung up. Whipping it from my ear, I shouted into the receiver, “Fuck you, asshole! Fuck you!” People like that should apologize! Say something. Say, “Excuse me, sorry, wrong number.” Something at least so I’d know—”

  “Mine. Oh God, my room!” Looking through the house before, I’d ignored my study, taking it for granted Lincoln wouldn’t go in there because he never did. Putting the phone down, I looked at my watch, checked around to be sure I’d not disturbed anything so he’d know I was in here. He was so secretive and scheming that I was sure he’d placed hairs across doors or other traps to find out in a minute if anyone had been snooping in his room, but I couldn’t worry about it. Things looked good enough. One last eye check around. Drawers closed. Photos back. Closet door closed. Nothing on the desk. Okay, let’s go. Whoops, the pistol! I’d forgotten the goddamned gun on the floor and was seconds away from leaving it there and turning out the light.

  “Smart, Max. Very smart.” Picking the Glock up, I flicked the light and left the room. Outside, I locked the door again and walked down the hall. How dangerous and wrong that must have looked. What’s wrong with this picture? Why is Max Fischer charging through his house with a .45 pistol in his hand? Who does he plan on shooting?