Close to the Heel (3 page)

“I want you to know that of all the joys in my life, you were among my greatest. From the first time I met each of you to the last moments I spent with you—and of course I don't know what those last moments were, but I know they were wonderful—I want to thank you all for being part of my life. A very big, special, wonderful, warm part of my life.”

Okay,
that
didn't refer to me.

His hand shook as he took a sip from a glass of water.

“I wanted to record this rather than just have my lawyer read it out to you. Hello, Johnnie.”

I glanced at Mr. Devine. He was smiling fondly at the image on the screen.

“Johnnie, I hope you appreciate that twenty-year-old bottle of Scotch I left you,” he said. “And you better not have had more than one snort of it before the reading of my will! But knowing you the way I do, I suspect you would have had two.”

Mr. Devine chuckled.

“I just wanted—needed—to say goodbye to all of you in person, or at least as in person as this allows.” His hand was still shaking as he took another sip from his glass.

“Life is an interesting journey, one that seldom takes you where you think you might be going. Certainly I never expected that I was going to become an old man. In fact, there were more than a few times when I was a boy that I didn't believe I was going to live to see another day, never mind live long enough to grow old.”

I knew what he meant. He'd told me a lot about his life. He'd been a pilot during World War II and traveled a lot after that. He'd been in more than a few scrapes, and the way he'd described them, most of them had been more serious than any mess I'd ever been in.

“But I did live a long and wonderful life. I was blessed to meet the love of my life, your grandmother Vera. It's so sad that she passed on before any of you had a chance to meet her.”

He didn't mean
my
grandmother. He meant the woman he'd actually been married to. That was okay too. He'd been pretty upfront with me about her. He'd told me how much he'd loved her. He'd met my grandmother after his wife died, and he'd loved her too. But she didn't want to get married, not then anyway, and she'd never told him that she was already pregnant when she left him. He didn't know about my mom at all until he read about her death in the national newspaper and saw my grandma's name. Then he'd done the math.

I zoned out after that because he wasn't talking about my grandma; he was talking about his wife. I didn't tune back in until he said, “You boys, you wonderful, incredible, lovely boys, have been such a blessing…seven blessings. Some blessings come later than others.”

Did he mean me? So now my cousins knew about me too. Interesting.

“I've done a lot, but it doesn't seem that time is going to permit me the luxury of doing everything I wished for. So, I have some requests, some
last
requests. In the possession of my lawyer are some envelopes. One for each of you.”

I glanced at Mr. Devine. He nodded. There was one for me too.

“Each of these requests, these tasks, has been specifically selected for you to fulfill. All of the things you will need to complete your task will be provided—money, tickets, guides. Everything.”

Guides? What would I need a guide for?

“I am not asking any of you to do anything stupid or unnecessarily reckless—certainly nothing as stupid or reckless as I did at your ages. Your parents may be worried, but I have no doubts. Just as I have no doubts that you will all become fine young men. I am sad that I will not be there to watch you all grow into the incredible men I know you will become. But I don't need to be there to know that will happen. I am so certain of that. As certain as I am that I will be there with you as you complete my last requests, as you continue your life journeys.”

Grandfather lifted up his glass.

“A final toast. To the best grandsons a man could ever have. I love you all so much. Good luck.”

The screen went black.

I felt like I had been encased in concrete. I could see. I could breathe, but just barely. But I couldn't move.

The old man was dead.

He'd died over two months ago, and no one told me.

“Was there a funeral?” I asked.

Mr. Devine nodded.

“And?” I said. Anger and resentment collided inside me, the two emotions that caused me the most trouble. “They didn't want me there, is that it?”

“No, that's not it,” Mr. Devine said. “As soon as I got the news, I made every attempt to contact you. But you had moved, and ever since the nine-eleven attacks…” His voice trailed off. He didn't have to explain. I'd been hearing that phrase for practically my whole life. It was as if the whole world had been turned upside down on that one day. Nine-eleven explained a lot of the stupid rules the Major had to follow. It explained the ridiculous level of security on every base I had ever been on. It even explained why I'd been hauled out of line in front of all the other airline passengers once, ordered to remove my shoes and stick my arms out so I could be wanded like some kind of wannabe jihadist. “Let's just say that I had to jump through a few hoops before I could locate you and your father, and by the then it was too late for the funeral. As for my mission at this time—your grandfather specified a meeting in person, and since you were, uh, unavailable…” He paused. He was referring to the wilderness boot camp the Major forced me to go to. “Your grandfather thought highly of you, Rennie.”

“He did?” I'd thought highly of him too, once I'd met him. I'd been thinking it would be nice if he felt the same way about me. After all, we'd sure seemed to hit it off. “Really? He said that?”

“He did indeed,” Mr. Devine said. “And he directed me to give you this.” He picked up the envelope and handed it to me.

I stared at it. I wasn't sure that I wanted to open it in front of the Major.

“You have to read it now, Rennie,” Mr. Devine said. “That way, I can answer any questions you might have.”

My hand actually shook when I ripped it open. I pulled out a typewritten letter and read it silently.

When I had finished, both the Major and Mr. Devine were looking at me.

“He says you have something that he wants me to deliver,” I said to Mr. Devine.

He nodded, opened his briefcase again and pulled out a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. I opened it and stared at the small journal inside. I flipped it open. Dozens of its browned pages were filled with sketches of a woman—the same woman. There was something else—a sheet of pale-blue paper tightly folded and brittle with age. I unfolded it carefully and scanned the writing, but it was old-fashioned, spidery writing and hard to read.

“What does his letter say?” the Major asked.

“He wants me to do something.”

“What?”

FOUR

“No,” the Major said when I told him, making the decision the way he makes all his decisions, without hesitation.

“Mr. McLean made provision for all expenses to be covered and for a guide to take Rennie on this journey, if that's what you're concerned about,” Mr. Devine said. In contrast to the Major, he was almost Zenlike.

“That's not what I'm worried about,” the Major said. “He's
not
going.”

The old me would have been in his face before he finished talking. The old me would have told him where to get off, right after daring him to try to stop me. But I wasn't the old me anymore. At least, I was trying hard not to be.

Instead, I counted to ten slowly—twice. Only then did I say, in a reasonable tone, “But it's what Grandpa wanted.”

“Grandpa!” the Major snorted. “Eight months ago, you didn't know the man, and now you call him Grandpa?”

My cheeks started to burn. My hands started to curl into fists. Those were my warning signs. If I didn't do something right away, my temper would get away from me.

I drew in a deep breath. I forced myself to think of my long-term objective—to get the Major to agree to let me go—and to strategize the best way of achieving that. It sure wouldn't be by yelling and screaming.

“But he
was
my grandfather,” I said in a quiet voice.

“I don't care if he was Père Noël,” the Major said. “You are not going and that's that.”

Mr. Devine gazed evenly at the Major for a moment.

“Mr. McLean made full provision for Rennie's further education,” he said.

“Further education?” The Major stared at him as if he'd said the old man had made provision for my transport to Mars.

“Rennie indicated to Mr. McLean that he wanted to go to university,” Mr. Devine said.

The Major stared at me, waiting for an explanation for this ridiculous statement.

“It's true,” I said, bracing myself for what I was sure would follow.

“You don't have the grades, Rennie.”

“I know. That's why I enrolled in school again.” I didn't mention that it was an alternative school. To the Major, alternative meant phoney.

“You what?” I'd seen a lot of expressions on the Major's face recently, but that particular kind of surprise wasn't one of them.

“I figure if I work my butt off, I can get into Lakehead.”

“Lakehead?”

“They have an outdoor recreation and parks program there. I want to take it.”

The Major was looking at me now as if he was pretty sure that someone or something alien had taken over my body, or at least my brain.

“What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

“Maybe work in a national or provincial park. I don't know.”

The Major let out a long sigh. There it was:
I don't
know
. There was no alien. It was all me.
Monsieur
Je-ne-sais-pas
. That's what he called me—a lot. What are your plans for tonight, Rennie? I don't know. What the hell do you think you're doing, Rennie? I don't know. Where the hell did you get such a stupid idea, Rennie? I don't know.
Je ne sais pas.

“You're not going.”

“But Grandpa—”

“No.”

“Mr. Charbonneau—” Mr. Devine began.

“
Major
Charbonneau.”

The lawyer nodded. “Mr. McLean has made similar requests of his other grandsons.”

“They're all going to Iceland?”

“Not exactly. One is going to climb Kilimanjaro—”

Why couldn't
that
have been me?

“Another is making his way to Spain.”