erstwhile_pen

Otto


Nobody heard him leave the house through the back door that night. He snapped up his flannel coat, pushed the screen open and held onto the railing as he took the three steps down to the driveway. The wood on the steps was still rough, unfinished. Someone could fall here, or one of the children could get a splinter caught in their foot. He would never have left it like this if he could still see enough to fix it. It was dangerous. And why they had to buy another place with so many steps he could not understand. Steps, steps. Not good for old people. When they lived in that stupid apartment there were so many steps, a thousand steps. On Christmas he had to pull Mama up the steps like he was a mule on her cart. Her legs were worse than his, much worse.

Actually, he could always walk, he thought to himself as he stomped across the driveway to the ragged grass of the backyard. He walked home from Russia when he was seventeen. In the snow of winter, with no shoes on. He used to tell Max the story, how they ran out in front of his tank and screamed at him in German-stop, stupid. The war is over. But he still tried to keep going till the gas ran out. Then it was back through the snow, going toward the border of Chechen. He took a dead Russian's uniform and asked a nice woman for bread. He could still walk all night in the snow if he had to-singing, even.

Out in the backyard it was quiet, just a few lights on at the neighbor's. He could see someone--the woman-- doing something at the sink, washing up from dinner maybe. They were good people over there. They took care of each other. The children were wild-the one dirty little boy, always coming over the driveway, trying to play with their hose. A bad one-but not really bad children. The older one was like Max when he was in school, book smart. Looking back up at his own house behind him, he heard Caroline coughing in her bedroom. It's those cigarettes she's smoking making her cough again. She says she's sick. Sleeping all day and sitting on that computer. Not doing anything to look for a job. A devil, that woman.
“A devil, your mother,” he said aloud, pretending for a moment that Max was standing next to him. “She takes everything.” It didn't matter though, not anymore, what she did up there. She'd taken everything from him and he had nothing left to give anybody.

Pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his work coat, he turned his back on the house and walked slowly along the fence toward the back of the yard. He was remembering a boy who stood next to him on the front line in Russia-sixteen, like him. He couldn't remember the name. But the boy couldn't take it; he was too scared to do anything to help himself. When firing started he just stood there and screamed. The boy's arms-Peter? Maybe he was Peter-- were shaking so bad he couldn't load his own shells. He tried to help him but after awhile the screaming was too much. Too much, like a drowning cat, screaming and screaming.
“Max, I told him, you better start shooting or I'll shoot you myself. And he just kept screaming, so I took my gun and put it right to his head. Pow. And I took his shells and kept on going.”
Maybe someone would want to say now that he was wrong, a killer, look at all the bad things he'd done. They don't understand. Especially not these Americans, not them. When he worked at the factory he used to tell them what he learned in Germany. They liked him, and they were always asking him questions.

“When you are in a country, you dance to the tune that they play. The army too, they have a tune and you dance to it right or you die. I do the same thing here and you don't complain. Dance to the tune that's playing.”

In the back of the yard, far from the road and from the windows, no one could see him and he couldn't see anyone else. Really, he didn't know anything about this place, this house. He never wanted to come here. He even liked the apartment better-- it was on a street near his bank, and there were people outside he could talk to. Now no one talked to him. There was nothing left but Mama upstairs accusing him of sleeping with neighborhood girls, and screaming down to Caroline that he was beating her when she got too mad. Nothing left but this house, nothing, shit is what it was.

He never wanted this house. They had stolen everything from him.