The Cabin at the End of the World(13)
Eric says to Andrew, “Did you check your cell phone?”
“No bars. Nothing. Fucking nothing.”
Eric says, “Wen, can you get your phone, turn it on, and tell us if it works?”
Wen scoots off the love seat and instead of running to her room for her phone, she walks in front of her retreating dads. She screams at the front door, “Leave us alone, Leonard! You’re scaring us! You’re not my friend! Go away! Just go away!” She hopes she sounds in control and angry instead of frightened. She likes to believe that she has Daddy Eric’s voice inside of her somewhere.
Eric and Andrew step forward together and crouch down to Wen’s level. They both hug her, squeezing her between them, and they say what are supposed to be soothing things. Eric’s arm is sweaty on the back of her neck and Andrew is breathing fast, like he’s been racing her around the cabin. Wen doesn’t listen to her dads and instead strains to hear Leonard’s response.
Leonard says, “I know, and I’m sorry, Wen. I am. I truly am. And I am your friend. No matter what happens. But we can’t leave. Not yet. Please tell your dads to open the door. Everything will be easier if they do.”
Andrew shouts, “You don’t get to talk to her!”
As Eric is shushing her, Wen yells again, “Why do you have those scary weapons with you? Why do you need those?”
Leonard says, “They are not weapons, Wen. They are—tools. If you open the door now, we’ll drop them on the ground and leave them outside. And—please believe me—I promise they are not weapons.”
The other man yells, “Don’t worry. They’re not for you.”
Her dads quickly confer, speaking so quickly and in hushed, grunting tones Wen can’t tell who is saying what:
“‘They are not for you?’”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“I—I have no idea.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“No phones.”
“Check the cell again.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Stay calm.”
“We’re not letting them in here.”
“No. We’re not.”
“No way.”
The man named Redmond, the one who sounds like he’s enjoying this, he shouts, “Yo! Hey!”
Andrew and Eric stop talking.
Redmond says, “Just do as Leonard says. Open the goddamn door. We’re coming in either way.”
Andrew yells over Wen’s head, “The fuck you are! I have a gun!”
Her dads drop Wen from the group hug. She stumbles and almost falls to the hardwood. They were holding her so tightly between them, they lifted her off the floor. Neither of them noticed.
Andrew
Eric says, “What are you doing?”
Andrew ignores him and shouts, “I’m not just talking shit!”
Andrew’s father used to say anyone who says they’re not talking shit has a mouthful. Clay Meriwether (never “Daddy,” only later in life did “Hey, Dad” have an honest ring of affection) was a mechanic/handyman from central Vermont. One morning there was a woman named Donna waiting outside the garage affixed to Clay’s parents’ old farmhouse. She lived on a commune in the microtown of Jamaica and she had a beat-up Datsun (that wasn’t hers) the color of a banana bruise. Clay worked on the car for two weeks and for free, and they got married four months later. A true odd couple: Donna, a vegetarian since her early twenties, keeps a small garden at the house and sells some (but never enough) of what she grows, and she used to read palms and auras and now is practicing holistic healing as her gig (her word); Clay, despite being in his early seventies, is still a full-time handyman and an avid hunter on most weekends, and while he’s softened his political stances in some ways (and hardened in others) he’s generally as conservative as Donna is not. Both Donna and Clay have always been voracious readers, and their shared favorite authors include Tom Robbins, Daphne du Maurier, and Walter Mosley. Donna and Clay always got along and they never left Vermont. Although nostalgia has dulled the edges of growing up in near isolation at the family farmhouse, Andrew couldn’t leave Vermont fast enough, and he managed to do so at age eighteen.
Eric pulls Andrew away from the front door, more urgently this time, grabbing and pulling his right arm, and he says, “No, don’t. Stop, wait a—”
Andrew doesn’t stop. He’s so scared and angry, and though he’s never pointed a gun at a person in the almost thirty years he’s been on-and-off-and-then-on-again handling and shooting firearms, he imagines opening the door and pointing the little, unblinking black eye of the barrel at the forehead of the mostly formless shapes of Leonard or Redmond or whoever shows first. No, it’s Redmond he imagines as the target. In the glimpse out of the window Andrew saw Redmond in his obnoxious red shirt, his squat, stocky build, his linebacker stance dripping macho bravura, that always-burning fuel of violence and calamity. In his head, Andrew points the gun at him, the guy who looks and sounds like so many of the hate-filled, ignorant cavemen he’s had to deal with his whole life. Whenever Andrew is in a public place he is aware of their eyes and ears. That he is made to feel like he needs to make accommodations or adjustments to how he acts, to who he is in order to be left alone, to be safe, fills him with shame, guilt, fear, and anger. This Redmond might as well be a cipher, a standin, a representative for all of them: good ole boys, frat boys, card-carrying members of the old boys’ network, hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner God-fearin’ boys; they’re all of the same species. When Redmond speaks, he sounds so familiar; even if they haven’t met before, they have. Andrew would have no trouble pointing the gun at Redmond and he may even delight in watching the fear glaze over his dumb, animal eyes. If only Andrew actually had the gun on him.