Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (13 page)

“I'm not sure,” I said. “It was on the way home from the beach. The wind was blowing and I couldn't tell whether it was
blowing
him or he was
flying
. But all of a sudden, he swooped right into my mouth. And before I could think to spit him out, I swallowed.”

“Good heavens!” said Aunt Catherine.

“But do you
guess
he was alive?” Ben persisted.

“I don't
know
. I
just said
, ‘before I could
think
.' ”

“Why was your mouth open and your mind closed?” asked my father.

“I guess I was just breathing,” I said, fearing that the subject may have run its course.

Ben didn't let it. “Do you
have
your mouth open and your brain turned off when you breathe?”

“I don't usually think about breathing when I do it,” I argued back happily.

“For heaven's sake!” Aunt Catherine shuddered retroactively.

Ben struck a dramatic, contemplative pose. “Actually, there isn't anything very world-shaking about swallowing a flea,” he declared with the full authority of a professor. “Even a live one. When you think of the number of microorganisms all of us must swallow every day. The classified germs alone probably run into the thousands. And when you consider the
un
classified ones…”

“Lord have mercy,” Aunt Catherine murmured.

“That'll be enough, Ben,” my father said.

And that's when the door-buzzer sounded. For a second we weren't certain it had sounded. It was the barely tapped timid note struck by
a stranger who isn't sure he has the right house or that he isn't awakening sleeping occupants. My father ambled to answer it, and at once, we saw that it wasn't a stranger but was two—both quite young, quite nervous—men, one a head taller than the other. The taller one carried a large, cardboard-packing carton, and the shorter one held a dull, metal pistol in his right hand, pointed straight at my father's wide chest.

Without a word, they all moved into the living room, the young men advancing, my father backing up. Maybe it was the shock, but the robbers struck me as ludicrous—like puppet mice forcing an oversized puppet lion, my father, to retreat in some kind of make-believe puppet show. It was so silly I might have giggled if Ben hadn't suddenly dropped his professor pose and stopped acting, and Aunt Catherine's face hadn't gone whiter than the curtains in our shared bedroom.

As if by unspoken agreement that we too were puppets in this show, Ben and I simultaneously stood.

“Everybody go over to that side of the room and nobody gets hurt,” the short one said.

In one perfectly choreographed move, my father backed up all the way to the mantel and Ben and I joined him, nobody taking their eyes off the robbers.

“I said
everybody
!” barked the short one, bobbing the gun at Aunt Catherine who seemed to be glued to her chair. With a jump, she came unstuck and ran on bird-toes to my side, where she reglued herself to my shoulder.

The taller robber wandered casually around the room, swinging his carton. “C'mon. Let's get going,” he said to his partner.

“Okay,” the short one replied. He kept his stance facing us, the gun aimed at my father, but his eyes scanned the room, lighting on a huge, rectangular, seventeenth-century French tapestry on the one unornamented wall. “Get that,” he ordered the tall one.

Like a monkey after a banana, the tall one scaled the bookcase to reach the tapestry's hooks. He released them, and he and the tapestry dropped with two thuds to the floor. Then grabbing two corners of the heavy cloth, he started to fold.

“You don't fold that,” said my father, loudly, agreeably, only slightly wavering. “You roll it, son.”

The monkey-man froze, squinted at my father, then looked to his partner.

“Do like he says,” said the short one. “You gotta treat this stuff right.”

“Why does that tapestry always have to be rolled?” Ben asked my father, in the curious, conversational way he might have asked such a question at any time.

“Because those threads have been stretched for more than three hundred years. They're liable to break if they're bent sharply,” my father replied, the waver gone.

The monkey-man spread the cloth on the floor and fell to all fours, rolling it. “C'mon, what else?” he said, breathing heavily. “This could take all night.”

Our short, armed supervisor looked far right and left. “That over there in the corner,” he ordered. “Get that.” He gestured with his eyes at an enormous, tarnished serving tray that Fred customarily grumblingly stored on the floor since no pantry cabinet was large enough to house it, and no shelf was strong enough to support its weight. For years, he'd been after my father to sell it.

My father shook his head. “Frankly, I think it would be ill-advised to take that,” he said reasonably.

Our shorter visitor braced his thick legs further apart and lifted his aiming hand an inch. “Why?” he demanded.

“Because, son, you'd have a very difficult time carting it in that carton.” My father spoke patiently, almost kindly. “And an even more difficult time selling it.”

“Oh, I don't know,” the short one said suspiciously. “We got a guy—”

“I
know. Of course, it's up to you, but I can tell you a little about it. That's an authentic Cellini, all right…” He hesitated, thoughtful. “Real silver, that is. But nobody wants to buy it. I've tried to sell it all over the world.”

“So, if it's real authentic silver,” said the squat young man with the pistol, “why don't nobody want to buy it?”

“Because it's probably the one downright hideous Cellini piece in existence.” My father spoke confidently. “If you look at it, really look at it, you'll see that it could have been made by any third-rate, sixteenth-century silversmith.”

The young man with the gun glanced at the tray again, now in the straining arms of his associate. “Yeah. It
is
ugly. Okay. Put it down, Frank.”

“What?” Frank said, incredulous. “Hey, listen. We gotta get goin'!”

The short one waved the gun impatiently. “I
said
put it down.”

Aunt Catherine clutched my arm in a death grip as she bit her lower lip and blinked hard to clear the fast-coming tears.

“Ow,” I murmured as she dug her nails into my bone, and Frank banged the heavy tray to the floor.

“Jeez!” he grunted angrily. “And what's the idea callin' me Frank?!”

“Shut up and pack those,” the short one said, indicating an assortment of silver forks, demitasse spoons, and carved-handled knives tied together with narrow silk ribbon and employed as a paperweight for the day's newspapers on the marble coffee table.

“You had no right to call me by my name,
Sled
-boy,” Frank spat viciously.

“All right. So, you called me
my
name,” Sled-boy said.

“But that's not a real name, like Frank.”

“Everybody
calls
me Sled-boy, don't they?” the short one reasoned. “And
we
know
their
name's Briard, don't we?”

“May I present my son, Ben, my daughter, Lucresse, and my sister-in-law, Mrs. Tippet?” said my father, as though he were hosting a dinner party.

“How do you do?” I said.

“Oh, Walter,” whimpered Aunt Catherine, sucking in a sob.

Ben stepped forward extending his hand. “Glad to meet you, Sled-boy, Frank.”

With a hurried, embarrassed motion, Sled-boy transferred his gun to his left hand and gave Ben a fast handshake.

“For Chris' sake, are we doin' a job here or not?” said Frank.

“Say, you know what you
could
sell easily, and would be no trouble carrying in that carton?” Ben said to Sled-boy, as if collaborating with a best friend or a brother on a household chore.

“What?” said Sled-boy.

“Books!” said Ben brightly. “There are lots of
very
valuable books here. And we've been in stores where they'll buy
anything
.”

“That's true,” said my father helpfully, “but before you get in a rush about it, I think you ought to give books more careful consideration.”

“How do you mean, Mr. Briard?” said Sled-boy, looking at my father with an expression I couldn't quite understand. Admiration? Fascination? Affection?

“Perhaps if we all sat down,” suggested my father congenially, “we could analyze the problem properly.” And he gestured for our visitors to make themselves comfortable.

“Walter! Really!” Aunt Catherine gasped.

Frank shot her a commiserating look. “Yeah, lady. You'd think this was a tea party or something.”

In response, Aunt Catherine dug her bony fingers even deeper into my skinny arm. I wiggled with pain, and she gave me a withering look.

Sled-boy remained braced, thinking, contemplative—almost the way Ben had been when playing the professor before our visitors'
surprising entrance. Then, deciding he might as well comply, he sat on the edge of the wing-chair near him and laid his gun in his lap. With a sigh, my father eased himself into his usual club chair and crossed his legs. To restore my circulation, I unclutched Aunt Catherine's fingers from my bicep and sat on the arm of my father's chair while she maintained her rigid stance by the wall. And Frank, almost recalcitrant, leaned against the woodwork of the doorway. Seeing his objecting attitude, Aunt Catherine clamped closed her eyes to shut out the sight of him and all else. Ben, afire with interest in the proceedings, scraped the desk chair over as close to Sled-boy as he could.

“Now,” my father said, as we were all settled, “Ben's suggestion of books has merit. Provided one is aware of the needs and practices of the ‘stores' he has in mind.” He smiled at Ben, who seemed to glow with the compliment, and like a twin brother, Sled-boy seemed to follow suit, leaning in to hear my father's advice. “One practice of dealers in rare books is that they often take years to pay for their purchases,” my father continued. “Which is understandable. It often takes them years to resell a book. Nevertheless, Ben, your idea shows straight and speedy thought.”

As Ben glowed and Frank, still standing at the doorway, listened, his face became more boyish somehow, softer, eager—as though he too had the queer feeling that he was playing in some sort of a show, where he was like Ben, a brother boy puppet, whose father was saying something nice about him and to him.

I had a funny feeling in that place deep inside, that mysterious place behind my eyes where Felicity had once seen me. But I blinked several times and it soon disappeared.

“I must admit,” my father said, returning Frank's soft and interested gaze, “I don't know much about your field of business, son. But yours and mine are both trades, of a sort.”

“And you know
yours
, all right,” Ben said, smiling broadly.

Frank relaxed against the doorpost as the dreaminess on his face
invaded his body. His puppet-brother had said something nice to their father. I, too, felt persuaded that the admiration glowing between Ben and my father was extraordinary and usual with them, although I couldn't recall the last time they had exchanged such open, ready compliments.

“It seems to me that you fellows ought to limit your product to something that is, one, transportable; two, nonidentifiable; and, three, and above all, negotiable.”

“I think you're right, Mr. Briard,” Frank said loudly. “This job sure wasn't
my
idea. Sled-boy says there's a fortune here, and he's got the guy for it. But from the beginning, I says, I don' know.”

“So's what would you limit the product to, Mr. Briard?” Sled-boy spoke up, with newly distinct diction.

My father sat far back in his chair, poked his thumbs through his belt, and smiled. “Only one product I know qualifies. Cash.”

“Cash,” Sled-boy repeated thoughtfully, as though receiving advice from his accountant. “Yeah, you don't need no big box to carry it, and you can spend it right away without waiting around on nobody. That's real good advice, Mr. Briard.” He crossed his legs the same way my father's were crossed. “I don't yen to make a job more complicated than it has to be and maybe get sent up.”

“You are a very sensible young man,” my father said admiringly, and the uncomfortable feeling that I'd blinked away from behind my eyes moved down to my chest.

“Okay!” barked Frank, sounding almost jealous of Sled-boy. “So, it's smart to take cash. So, we take cash and forget about the other junk you were so hot on. Okay. So, let's get the cash. Where is it, Mr. Briard?”

My father looked pained. “That's the only trouble, here,” he said. “I never keep cash on hand. Oh, I must have two or three dollars in my pocket. But that would hardly be worth your while.”

“C'mon now,” Frank said, “how can a man have a million dollars' worth of junk around and not have cash?”

“Dear heaven,” Aunt Catherine muttered. Her shoulders were shaking.

“Because he doesn't
use
cash much,” Ben said, giving Frank the disdainful look he frequently used on me. He turned to Sled-boy. “That's right. Nobody in our house, besides Lucresse, ever has any money because they charge everything. And all she's got is her allowance.”

“You believe that?” Frank said to Sled-boy.

Sled-boy seemed to want to believe it, but sense was getting in the way of desire. He examined my father's face. My father smiled genially. He examined mine. I tried to imitate my father's expression, but it turned weak and stupid as the icky feeling in my chest moved down to my stomach, and I wondered if my father liked these two robbers better than me. What a silly feeling, I thought, but it remained lodged in my stomach like a stone.