I sleep late and wake up with a knot of worry in my stomach. AmberLea’s mom invited me to go skiing with them again today, but I said no thanks. I wanted to be by our landline in case Bunny got a chance to sneak another phone call. He might forget my cell number, but he won’t forget our home one.
I shower, telling myself that things are good—Bunny will be free soon. We’ve done everything the SPCA wants. They’ll let Bunny go when Aiden Tween sings their anthem tonight. All I have to do is hang in. By the time Jer and Deb get home, Bunny will be back and due at Creekside. They can believe us if they want to. Maybe Deb will when she sees the mess in her office. Speaking of which, I can kill time before tonight’s concert by getting O’Toole Central back in shape. I should text Jer, too, and tell him that the van won’t start, so I can’t meet him at the airport.
I make oatmeal for breakfast, with lots of brown sugar, and pour a big glass of orange juice. I’m Healthy Spencer, go-to guy, man with a plan. After breakfast I tidy the kitchen. Then I go upstairs, wipe the bathroom mirror and sink, stuff towels and dirty clothes in the laundry hamper and straighten up things the SPCA guys must have moved when they searched. By now I’m on a roll, so I go all out and take the hamper to the basement and put in a load of laundry. While it’s churning I head back upstairs, haul out the vacuum and attack the living room. I plump pillows, pile magazines and clear away a fresh frosting of snack bags and drink tins. The place looks pretty good, but the worry still coils in my stomach like the vacuum cord at my feet. I tell myself there’s no reason they wouldn’t let Bunny go. Is there? We helped them. All that blotzing stuff was just a threat. They’re freedom fighters: desperate, maybe, but not cold-blooded killers. They’re supposed to be the good guys, for crying out loud.
I drag the vacuum into the hall and go at the stairs as if lives depended on it. The wall as you go up the stairs is filled with family pictures. It’s the usual stuff, I guess. There are a few ancient people in old-fashioned clothes. There’s Deb and Jer at their wedding, embarrassing baby shots of Bun and me. There are aunts, uncles and cousins, Grandpa Bernie and Granny Carol looking spry on Salt Spring Island, and in makeup doing their mime act on Haight Street in San Francisco in 1964. A two-year-old Jer sits in a stroller beside them, looking bored. Then there’s a studio shot of Deb and her sisters as kids in matching dresses, and a snapshot of their mom, who died when they were young.
Beside these are two pictures of Grandpa David. One is black and white, from World War II. Grandpa and his crew are posing in front of their bomber, in flight gear, arms over each other’s shoulders, grinning. Grandpa has a white scarf like Scratch’s knotted at his throat. He’s squinting a little, and a cigarette dangles at a smart-aleck angle from one side of his mouth. Above them, on the fuselage, is a stencil of a cartoon mosquito with a cigar and a machine gun, over the words Together We Fly.
The other is a color shot of Grandpa in his seventies, maybe. The only way you can tell is by how veiny and spotty his hands are. He’s hefting a big fish by the gills, smiling under his floppy hat as he stands on the cottage dock. He’s wearing his orange plaid shirt over shapeless tan pants and blue canvas deck shoes. There’s a streak of fish blood or something across one pant leg. His clear gray eyes look right at you.
It hits me that both pictures are about killing. Are those the eyes of a killer? I feel myself frown. Dropping bombs in a war, catching fish and contract killing with exploding golf balls are not exactly the same. Anyway, the pictures aren’t really about killing. You could just as easily say they’re about good times: friends and sharing. Grandpa was always giving away fish he caught. I look back at the war picture. All those guys are barely older than me. Could I do that? I can’t imagine myself there. Those guys must have been the best buddies in the world. Were some of them jerks? The good guys are the ones on your side. But what if you don’t know for sure who’s on your side? I remember the end of The Ipcress File, where Harry has to figure out which guy is the traitor who set him up, his gun swinging back and forth between two men. You are a traitor, said the note. Did it lie? Was it for real? Was Grandpa a hit man for the CIA? Was he a traitor? If good guys have to do bad things, does that make them bad guys? Does anyone ever think, Hey, my side is the bad guys?
I unplug the vacuum. The phone doesn’t ring. When I finally leave for the concert, my shoes are still a salty, soggy mess. I pull on the cowboy boots again. Then I clomp to the cookie jar, take out the Colt .45 and slip it into my pocket.