John Katzenbach - Just Cause

Inside the house, he hung his shoulder holster on a hood next to two book bags stuffed with notebooks and loose-leaf papers. He removed the pistol and, as was his habit, first checked the chambers. It was a.357 magnum with a short barrel, loaded with wadcutters.

He hefted the pistol in his hand and reminded himself to book some time at the department's shooting range. He realized it had been months since his last practice session. He opened a drawer and found a trigger lock, which he slid around the firing mechanism. He put the gun in the drawer and reached down to remove his backup pistol from his ankle holster.

He could smell bacon frying in the kitchen and he walked that way, past Danish furniture and framed prints. He stood for a moment in the doorway to the kitchen watching his father, who was bent over the stove, cracking eggs into a skillet.

'Hello, old man,' he said quietly.

His father didn't move but cursed once as some bacon grease splattered onto his hand.

'I said, good morning, old man.'

His father turned slowly. 'I didn't hear you come in,' he said, smiling.

Tanny Brown grinned a greeting. His father didn't hear much anymore. He went over and put an arm around the man's wide shoulders. He could feel the old man's bones beneath the thin cotton of his faded work shirt. He gave his father a small squeeze, thinking how skinny he'd become, how fragile he felt, as if he would break under the pressure of his son's hug. He felt a shadow of sadness inside, remembering a time when he thought there was nothing those arms couldn't lift and hold, now realizing there was little they could. All that strength robbed by disease. He thought, You grow up angry and pushing for that day when you're stronger and tougher than your father, but when it comes it makes you embarrassed and uncomfortable.

'You're up early,' the son said as he released his grip.

His father shrugged. He hardly slept anymore, Brown knew. A combination of pain and stubbornness.

'And what you calling me "old man" for? I ain't so damn old. Still whup you if I had to.'

'You probably could,' Brown replied, smiling. This was a lie both enjoyed.

'Sure could' insisted his father.

'The girls up yet?'

'Nah. I heard some shifting about. Maybe the bacon smell will wake 'em. But they're soft and young and don't like getting up none. If your mama was still with us, she'd see they got up right and smart first cock crow, yessir. It'd be them in here fryin' this bacon. Making biscuits, maybe.'

Brown shook his head. 'If their mama was still here, she'd tell them to sleep in and get their beauty rest. She'd let them miss the school bus and take them herself.'

Both men laughed and nodded their heads in agreement. Brown recognized that his father's complaints were mainly fiction; the old man doted on his granddaughters shamelessly.

His father turned back to the stove. 'I'll fix you some eggs. Musta been a tough night?'

'Wife shot her ex-husband when he came looking for her with a handgun, Dad. It wasn't anything unique or special. Just mighty sad and bloody.'

Sit down. You're probably beat. Why can't you work regular hours?'

'Death doesn't work regular hours, so neither do I.'

'I suppose that's your excuse for missing services this past Sunday. And the Sunday before that, too.'

Well…'he started.

'Your momma would whip you good if she were alive today. Hell, son, then she'd whip me good for letting you miss services. It ain't right, you know.'

No. I'll be there Sunday. I'll try.'

His father scrambled the eggs in a bowl. 'I hate all this new stuff you got in here. Like this damn electric stove thing. Nuclear food cooker, whatever the hell it is.'

Microwave.'

'Well, it don't work.'

"No, you don't know how to work it. There's a difference,'

His father was grinning. Brown knew the old man felt a contradictory superiority, having grown up in a world of icehouses and outhouses, well water and wood stoves, having made his life out of an old, familiar world, and finally, been taken in his old age into a home that seemed to him closer to a rocket ship than a house. All the gadgets of middle class amused his father, who saw most of them as useless.

'Well, I don't see what the hell good it's for anyway, 'cept maybe for thawing stuff out.'

He thought his father correct on that score.

He watched as the old man's gnarled hands swiftly dished the omelet into the skillet and tossed the eggs, folding them expertly. It was remarkable, the son thought. Arthritis had stolen so much of his mobility; old age, much of his sight and hearing; a bout with heart disease had sapped most of his strength, leaving him gaunt with skin that used to burst with muscles now sagging from his arms. But the old tanner's dexterity had never left him. He could still take a knife and slice an apple into equal pieces, take a pencil and draw a perfectly straight line. Only now it hurt him to do so.

'Here you go. Should taste good.'

'Aren't you gonna join me?'

'Nah. I'll just make enough for the girls. Me, just a bit of coffee and some bread.' The old man looked down at his chest. 'It doesn't take a lot to keep me going. Couple a sticks on the fire, that's all.'

The old man slid slowly, in obvious discomfort, into a chair. The son pretended not to notice.

'Damn old bones'

'What?'

'Nothing.'

They sat in silence for a moment.

'Theodore,' his father said quietly, 'how come you never think of finding a new wife?'

The son shook his head. 'Never find another like Lizzie,' he said.

'How you know if you don't look?'

'When Mama died, you never hunted out a new wife.'

I was already old. You're still young.'

Brown shook his head. 'I've got all I need. I've still got you and the girls and my job and this house. I'm okay.'

The old man snorted but said nothing. When his son finished, he reached out for the plate and carried it stiffly over to the sink.

'I'll go wake the girls,' Brown said. His father only grunted. The son paused, watching the father. We're quite a pair, he thought. Widowed young and widowed old, raising two girls as best we can. His father started to hum to himself as he scrubbed away at the plates. Brown stifled a sudden, affectionate laugh. The old man still refused to use the dishwashing machine and wouldn't allow any of the others to use it either. He'd insisted that there was only one way to tell if something were truly clean, and that was to clean it yourself. He thought that proper, in its own way. When the girls had complained, shortly after his father had moved in, he'd explained only that his father was set in his ways. The explanation had sat unquietly in the household for a few days, until the weekend, when Tanny Brown had loaded both girls into his unmarked squad car and driven north fifty miles, just over the Alabama border to Bay Minette.

They drove through the dusty, small town with its stolid brick buildings that seemed to glow in the noontime heat, and out past a long, cool line of hanging willows, into the farm country, to an old homestead.

He'd taken the girls across a wide field, down to a little valley where the heat seemed to hang in the air, sucking the breath from his lungs. He'd pointed to a group of small shacks, empty now, staggered by the passing of time, faded reds and browns, splintered with age, and told them that was where their grandfather had been born and raised. Then he'd taken them back toward Pachoula, pointing out the segregated school where his father had learned his letters, showing them the site of the farm where he'd worked hard to rise to be caretaker, and where he'd learned the tanning business. He showed them the house their grandfather had purchased in what had once been known as Blacktown, and where their grandmother had built up her seamstress business, gaining enough of a reputation that her talents cut across racial boundaries, the first in that community. He'd shown them the small white frame church where his father had been deacon and his mother had sung in the choir. Then he'd taken them home and there had been no more talk of the dishwasher.