Andrew Klavan - The Identity Man

He went back to the white clapboard house the next Saturday morning, walking up the front path carrying the canvas bag he'd bought to hold his sculpting tools. He felt good. He felt excited. He told himself it was because he was glad to get back to carving. But it was the girl, too-he was excited about meeting the girl.

She wasn't there this time again. Neither was the kid. Frederick Applebee was in the house alone. As Shannon approached the front door, he saw the old man through the mullioned sidelight. He was sitting in his armchair, reading the newspaper, smoking a pipe. Shannon thought he looked just like the kind of professorial dad who was in the black-and-white movie about the angel.

Shannon and the old man set up a workplace in the backyard. It was a narrow strip of ground closed in by a diamond-link fence. Before the disaster, there must've been other houses on either side of this house and other backyards alongside this one, but there was only ruination now: empty lots, some strewn with garbage, some overgrown with weeds; lopsided houses, battered and shifted by the floods; blackened shells of houses that had been burned. In the near distance, there were other streets lined with old cars. There were surviving structures and the frames of new buildings just rising from the mud. Farther away, the city's damaged skyline rose black against the blue sky.

At the end of the yard, there was a good flat portion of ground. Shannon and Frederick Applebee put a bench there to hold the altarpiece and a three-legged stool for Shannon to sit on. They carried the altarpiece out together and set it on the bench. Shannon had brought a canvas tarp. He laid this on the ground and arranged his tools and his wood on top of it. He'd used a band saw at work to shape the new wing piece to his measurements. He put the piece to one side on the tarp.

Shannon went to work. He smoothed a surface for the wing attachment. He drilled a hole for the dowel. It was a pleasant, involving business. He could focus on it but still enjoy the sweet, energizing spring air. Applebee wandered into the house for a while and Shannon lost himself in fitting the wing to the broken angel. Then Applebee wandered back out again to watch. He smoked his pipe as Shannon smoothed the new piece onto the old. Now and then, he made what Shannon thought of as "old man conversation."

"Look at this," he said, peering out over the weeds toward the skyline. Biting on his pipe stem. Shaking his head. "It's a shame. It's like we've gone back to the jungle out here. I had to buy a gun. I did. A forty-five. I keep it in the closet in my bedroom. Half the time I'm terrified my grandson'll find it and blow his head off. But what else can I do? We have packs of predators roaming the street at night. Attacking anyone that moves. Breaking in and attacking women right at home in their own beds. Setting cars on fire, houses on fire. The media don't even report half of what goes on. How can they? They're too busy glamorizing slut actresses and gangster music stars. It wouldn't be good for business if they told people what really happens in a neighborhood when morality breaks down. We've got girls here getting pregnant at thirteen without husbands. The fathers taking no care of them or the children. And the sons become predators and it starts again. So help me, all it takes for the world to crumble to nothing is for women to lose their virtue and men their honor."

Shannon gave a sort of smile to himself. It was the usual old man complaint: the world's not what it used to be. It's all going to hell. Back in the day, everything was better. Blah blah blah. As if there was ever much honor or virtue in the world. Holding the angel's new wing piece on his lap now and sanding the edges, Shannon tried to humor him out of it. "I thought you said you weren't a preacher."

But Applebee didn't get the joke. He just went on. "A high school math teacher. Retired now. You can't teach children if they have no discipline. They won't let you discipline them yourself and they get no discipline at home. So it just gets worse. My daughter found that out-yes, she did, for all her idealism."

It was his first mention of his daughter and it turned Shannon's attention. He wanted to find out more. "Your daughter-is she a teacher, too?"

"Teaches the little ones. At least there's still some hope with them. But she finally gave up even on that. In the neighborhood, the thugs come younger and younger. Even the little ones can't be controlled anymore. Now she teaches on the west side, in a private school. That way, Michael can go there free of charge."

Shannon nodded. He liked the image of her teaching little children. It struck him as very womanly. It touched him somehow.

"Oh," said Applebee then, "a preacher." He suddenly got Shannon's joke. He gave a good-natured chuckle. "No, no, no. I guess I was going at it though, wasn't I? But no."

"A teacher not a preacher," said Shannon with a laugh.

"Exactly. This house did used to be a rectory, though."

"Oh yeah?" Shannon wasn't exactly sure what a rectory was.

Applebee must've picked up on that. "It was a preacher's house. The church used to stand right there." He pointed with his pipe stem to a field full of garbage. "It burned down years ago. That altarpiece-it was the only thing that was saved."

"Well, I guess the house must've had an effect on you," Shannon kidded him. "Cause for a teacher, you preach it pretty good."

Frederick Applebee laughed. "I'm just a cranky old man, that's all. But cranky old men know a thing or two. That's what makes them so damn cranky. Fact is, I'm no churchgoer and never have been but…"

Shannon had risen from his stool and was attaching the wing again. He took a pencil from his pocket and began to sketch an outline of feathers on the wood so he could carve them to join properly with the broken stump. He didn't notice that Applebee had gone into a fugue state and fallen silent.

Then Applebee said quietly, "You ever study calculus?"

"Oh, sure," murmured Shannon, sketching away. "Calculus? That's all I ever do."

"Yes," said the old man, almost to himself. "I understand. No one does anymore. But there's a lot of mystery to it. Infinite limits… a lot of mystery." He shook his head slowly. "Sorry. These things-they run around in my brain and I've got no one to tell them to."

"That's all right. I don't mind. It's interesting."

There was no answer. Shannon came out of his focus on the wing long enough to glance at Applebee. Applebee was holding his pipe to his mouth and tapping the stem against his lower lip. He was looking thoughtfully over the arches and jumbles and lopsided spires of the debris lying in the high weeds. Shannon figured he was thinking about the old days. He smiled again. He liked Applebee. He was a good old guy.

Coming back to himself, Applebee noticed Shannon watching him. And he noticed the wing Shannon was working on and how well it fit to the stump on the broken angel and how perfectly and gracefully Shannon had drawn the feathers. "Look at that," he said, perking up, delighted. "Why, that's wonderful. Where'd you learn to do that?"

"I just can," Shannon said with a shrug. "I've always been able to."

At that moment, the little boy-Michael-came bursting out of the house into the backyard. All his earlier solemnity was gone. He was running full speed, squealing with laughter.

"Ho!" cried Frederick Applebee as the boy darted behind him and clutched at his legs, hiding. "What's this?"

Michael's mother cracked open the screen door behind him, peeking around the edge of it with bright, mischievous eyes.

"Where'd he get to?" she said. "I know he's here somewhere."

The little boy giggled behind his grandfather's legs as the woman came out of the house and crept steadily toward him like a stalking cat.