Part 17 (1/2)

Since I had no idea if they still lived there, the next step was to call New Jersey information and ask if Anwen and Gregory Meier still lived in Somerset. They did. G.o.dd.a.m.nit, they did. In that strange and spooky house that was supposed to be a replacement for their lost child.

I sat and thought, then hopefully called a couple of different charter airlines listed in the phone book to ask how much they charged to rent a private plane and pilot to fly East. The prices were insane, but I was willing to do it until they said they'd need at least three hours, minimum, to arrange it. I called the airports in Burbank, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Nothing worked. There were flights to New York from these places but not the right connections to get me to them in time.

Seconds after I put the phone down after the last futile call, it rang again. Praying it would be Lincoln so I could tell him the one essential thing he didn't know, I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. Only to hear Mary Poe's voice.

”h.e.l.lo?”

”Max, it's Mary. I'm calling from the car phone, so it'll be a bad connection. Lincoln's gun is definitely real, and it's stolen. The serial numbers say it's part of a s.h.i.+pment of guns from a truck that was hijacked in Florida six months ago. It's also a major league weapon, very highpowered s.h.i.+t. Terrorists love Glock guns because they're made mostly out of plastic and can be snuck by airport metal detectors.

It's no Sat.u.r.day night special, Max. It's the kind of piece that gives you the w.i.l.l.i.e.s even when you carry a gun yourself. But you say it's still there? Then it's all right. Just take it down and hold it in your lap, or stick it in a safe till boyo gets home.”

I got off as quickly as I could, after asking her to be sure not to tell Lily about the gun. Having no idea how long I would be in the East, I went into our bedroom and packed a small bag with jeans, a couple of s.h.i.+rts, underwear... enough for three or four days. I knew I had to write Lily a note explaining some of this so she wouldn't go mad with worry when she returned and found both of us gone. But what could I say? ”I am running after our son, who has discovered he was kidnapped...” What could be said? There was no time to think about it. I wrote that he had run away, possibly with Elvis and Little White. I was going to try to find him before anything bad happened. That was why I'd run out of the restaurant earlierbecause he told me he'd had enough of us and was going to go and live life on his own.

It was the kind of lie that left out enough to be almost true. She would go for it and that was all I could hope for at that moment. Lily was stubborn about Lincoln, but not stupid. She knew how angry he was and how unpleasant he could be. Hearing he'd flown the coop would not surprise her. I wrote I would call her the minute I knew anything.

I ran out of the house, locked the door, and unthinkingly looked through the livingroom window and saw that I'd left on a number of lights. One memory flicked through my mind of changing a bulb in one of those lamps, calling to Greer to please go to the kitchen and get me a new bulb. ”Yes, Daddy.”

The soft sound of her slippered feet racing down the carpeted floor and in a far part of the house asking her mother for a light for Daddy. What would our lives be like the next time I changed a light bulb in our home? How long would it be before that happened?

In contrast to all the frightening possibilities, the Los Angeles evening was lovely and fragrant. It would have been pleasant to sit out on the back patio, drink a gla.s.s of brandy, and talk quietly late into the night. We did that often. Greer would fall asleep in one of our laps as Lincoln had years before. We wouldn't disturb them. It was too nice being there together. When he was still alive, the greyhound would lie on his side near our chairs, his long legs stretched out straight. He was still around when Greer wasvery young. More than once we'd enter a room and see this tiny girl standing close but never actually touching him.

”Cobb! Oh my G.o.d.” I remembered something intriguing when I thought of our dog. Lincoln was the only human being the old eccentric let touch him. Until one day the boy ran into the house in tears, wailing that Cobb had just snapped at him. Neither of us could believe it, knowing their special relations.h.i.+p. We rea.s.sured him, saying the dog had probably been sleeping and was in the middle of a bad dream or whatever. The three of us went out to find him and see what was up. He was in his favorite placelying in the sun on the warm stones of the patio. We told Lincoln to go try petting him again. When he bent down to touch the gray giant, Cobb either grumbled or growled. The sound was not friendly.

That was the end of an era. From that moment until he died, he didn't want any of us touching him, not even his young pal. He still stuck his tongue out in those long, slow swipes Lily insisted were kisses, but he wouldn't be touched. When was that? Walking to the car, I tried to figure out exactly when the change happened in him. It seemed to have been after Lincoln and I became blood brothers. Or it could very well not have. My mind was racing so fast and trying to tie so many different strings together that it was unhelpful and dangerous. I made up a line that has become a kind of allpurpose prayer for me: ”I want calm and not control.” As I backed out of the driveway, window down for the cool air needed across my face, a part of me still couldn't believe I was about to fly across country chasing a son who'd found out too much too soon and was doing exactly what he shouldn't.

Turning the steering wheel, I started repeating over and over, ”I want calm and not control.” Down Wils.h.i.+re, weaving through the red and yellow taillight traffic, I said it. Down La Cienega Boulevard out to the airport: ”I want calm and not control.”

The car was almost out of gas. I drove into a station and stopped by a selfservice pump. The man in the cas.h.i.+er's booth looked at me through a pair of binoculars. No more than thirty feet away, he used binoculars to see if I was going to rob him. It was a great idea for ”Paper Clip,” but the life where I did that job now seemed as far away as the Ivory Coast. I went to the booth and slid a twentydollar bill beneath a bulletproofgla.s.s window thick enough to stop a Cruise missile. The man held the bill up to the light to see if it was fake. His face was all suspicion. How many times had he been robbed, or simply scared to the bottom of his bones?

”We get a lot of counterfeit twenties.”

”I can imagine.”

My mother used to say, ”You feel black, you see black.” The drive to LAX that night was one scene after another of worry or angst or h.e.l.l, beginning with the man with his binoculars. Was it coincidence that I saw a drunken man standing in the middle of the street screaming, or two police cars screech up in front of a house and the officers jump out going for their guns? Further on, a gang of black kids stood in front of a Fatburger all wearing the same blackandwhite Oakland Raiders baseball caps and windbreakers. There must have been fifteen of them in this uniform and they all looked ready for murder. The road widened out and began to rise toward the oilwellcovered hills. Streetlamps dumped their fake orange glare over us. I looked to the side and saw ugly, sinister faces in the cars pa.s.sing mine.

Drivers with narroweddown heads like weasels, bald rats, and lipless ferrets pointed forward, so eager to get somewhere that even their heads were squeezed down by the G force of antic.i.p.ation. A young child in the back seat of a Hyundai had its hands and open mouth pressed to the window. A beautiful pa.s.senger with long blond hair looked at me with such burntout, nothinginterestsme eyes. Was she dead?

Was the world I knew suddenly so macabre and threatening because of what had happened tonight with my son? Or had it always been this way and only now was I able to see it with understanding eyes?

I sped up. It was a long time before my plane left but I needed to be at the airport. Needed those clean long boring halls and plastic chairs where you sat looking at nothing, waiting for the time to pa.s.s until you could get on a plane and continue looking at nothing for a few more hours.

Before you see L.A. Airport, you see the planes gliding in over the highway to land. They are enormous there, eighty feet above the ground and sinking. Larger even than when they are parked at the terminal. They dwarf everything as they drop slowly in toward earth; you love their size and the fact they're tame, that you can ride in one anytime you want.I left the car in longterm parking and walked quickly to the terminal. It was an evening in the middle of the week and traffic was light.

So much emotion at the doors of an airport. Hugs and tears, the joy on the faces of those who've just landed and are coming out into the real air after so many hours on the plane. Cars pull up, pull away.

Above all else, everything is rushed. A rush to get there, to get out of here. The world on fast forward.

Where was Lincoln now? Rus.h.i.+ng across the country toward two people ”Call them! Just call them up!” Whatever is most obvious hides when you're stressed. Two steps into the building, the idea to call and give them some kind of warning came to me. I looked around wildly for a telephone. Over there! I'd taken a load of change when I left the house, which was good because this was going to be one expensive call. I dialed New Jersey information and for the second time that night asked for Gregory Meier's number. Those blessed pushb.u.t.ton telephones. How long it took when you were in a hurry but had to twist and twist the wheel of the old machines. Now stab stab stab... and you're through. It was ridiculous feeling so pressed for time when Lincoln was still four hours away from landing, but I did. The connection was made and their phone began to ring thirtyfive hundred miles away.

”Hi. You've reached the Meiers, but no one's home now. Please leave your name and message and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks for calling.”

There was a peep and the demanding silence that expects you to talk. I couldn't think of what to say. In one minute? If I had told them, ”Be careful of a boy who's coming. He thinks you're his parents and could be dangerous,” they might have called the police or gotten scared enough to make things even more confusing and difficult. What if someone I didn't know called and told me that? I'd think either that it was a bizarre prank or that the speaker was a s.a.d.i.s.t. I tried calling four more times before taking off, but their machine always answered. What did that mean in terms of Lincoln? Would they be home by the time he reached them? If not, if they were out of town and not due back for days, how would that affect him? What would he do? Wait? Take his anger and frustration, get back on a plane with it, and fly somewhere else? Knowing our son, he'd wait a short time and then return home. I didn't know which was worse.

Although the plane was half empty, I got stuck next to a woman who began talking the instant I sat down and didn't stop until I got up again, told her I had a great deal of work to do, and changed seats. I wasn't in the mood to be civil. There were only so many hours before New York and I wanted to try to figure out as much as I could. After we landed, there wouldn't be time for thought.

Once we were airborne, the stewardess came round asking for drink orders. I would have killed for a double anything, but bit my tongue and asked for a ginger ale instead. I was exhausted and a drink would put me right to sleep. Sitting by a window, I watched as the plane tipped and banked, then found its way and leveled out over the black and yellow twinkling below. I remembered driving over tonight and seeing planes coming in. How romantic and heartlifting the sight. Yet how lonesome and small I felt now, climbing up into that same sky.

We pa.s.sed over a baseball stadium with all its lights still on after a night game. Seeing the field reminded me of an unsettling discussion Lily and I had had a few weeks before.

Like Lincoln, I had always loved baseball. Until I was fifteen or so, the nucleus of every summer was the game, whether that meant watching it on television, playing catch with my friends, talking about it with the barber when I went in for a ballplayer's crew cut, trading Topps baseball cards with others...

The minute I was old enough to play in Little League, I begged my parents to sign me up. They did, and one of the proudest memories of my young life was walking into the living room after dinner one night wearing for the first time my robin'seggblue baseball cap and Ts.h.i.+rt that said the name of our sponsor, ”Nick's Sh.e.l.l Station,” on the front. My team was named the Yankees, thank G.o.d, which made life even better because this was in one of the periodic heydays of the New York Yankees and all of the men who played on that great team were my heroes. Mom put down her crossword puzzle and said I looked ”very nice.” But Dad paid me the supreme compliment. Giving me a careful onceover, he said I looked just like Moose Skowron, Yankee first baseman and my favorite player.

Our first game was also opening day of the season that year and many people came out to watch. I was a.s.signed to right field, the equivalent of Siberia in Little League because no child ever hits a ballthere. However, our coach thought it was a good place for me because I couldn't catch for beans and would do the least damage there. Which didn't bother me a bit because hitting was my dream, not fielding. Nothing felt better than whipping that Louisville Slugger bat around and once in a spectacular while feeling the great ”clunk” of wood connecting with the ball. That's what I lived for, not putting a huge leather glove up in the air to stop a ball from sailing by. Batting was heroic, fielding was only necessary.

Our opponents that first game were the Dodgers, a good team, but fearsome too because their star pitcher was none other than Jeffrey Alan Sapsford. His fastball, even then, would have struck out Moose Skowron.

By the fifth inning we were losing nine to nothing. I'd batted twice and struck out both times.

Besides that, I'd dropped an easy fly ball and been yelled at by half my team. I knew I deserved their hatred. I was a b.u.m, we were losing, the world was doom. Worse, my parents were there witnessing the debacle. I knew my father had skipped meeting the seven o'clock train (his biggest haul of tired customers) so he could be on hand for my debut. Some debut. I'd failed him, my team, the name Yankees.

The last time I got up to hit, Jeffrey Alan Sapsford looked at me with gleeful disdain.

Unforgettably, his second baseman yelled, ”Easy out!” and he was talking about me. The whole world had heard. I, the heir to Moose Skowron's throne, was fixed in everyone's mind as an ”easy out.” Try erasing that kind of mark from your record when you're that age.

Sapsford threw his first pitch and, without thinking, I swung and knocked the ball five hundred and forty miles into deep center field. I hit it so hard and far that the other team froze as one watching the ball soar off into that deep green infinity. The people in the grandstand got up and started applauding before I had even rounded first base. When I came in to home plate, my team stood there waiting for me and cheering as if this were the last game of the World Series and I had saved the day. Pure glory.

We still lost ten to one, but in the car riding home afterward, I was a hundred percent hero and no one could take that away from me, ever.

My parents chattered on about how great it had been, while I sat in the back seat basking in fresh memories and their praise. As we turned the corner of Main Street and Broadway, my father said with a loving chuckle, ”And did you know your fly was open the whole way round?”

”What?”

”Your fly was down.”

”Oh, Stan, you said you weren't going to tell him that.” Mom shook her head and smiled sympathetically at me over her shoulder.

In poleaxed, stunnedstill shock, I looked down at my blue jeans. I'd hit a home run in these pants.

They were part of the legend's uniform! But there it wasthe accusing white slip of my underpants beaming out through my fly. Not much. Not enough to really be seen unless you looked hard or someone drew your attention to it, but there nevertheless. The apex of my lifeand my zipper was open!

I honestly don't remember if I got over it quickly or if that moment's brainblasting embarra.s.sment lasted a long time. Until I told the story to Lily, it had been a fond smile from way in my past, the kind of childhood memory you like to tell your partner so they can share a piece of your past few others know. I finished telling her the story with a smile and a shrug. ”Max hits a homer.”

”That's despicable. Your father is a real a.s.shole sometimes.”

”Why?”

”Why ? Why'd he tell you that? What was the point? You had your home run. It was yours, nothing could take it away from you. But he didhe spoiled it forever by telling you about your zipper.

Listen to the way you tell it nowlike it's only a funny little amusing story. Right? 'Max hits a homer.' You should have heard your voice. It wasn't only that, it was one of the supreme moments of your childhood.