The Book of Otto and Liam Read online

  THE BOOK OF OTTO AND LIAM

  THE BOOK OF OTTO AND LIAM

  PAUL GRINER

  SARABANDE BOOKS

  Louisville, KY

  Copyright © 2021 by Paul Griner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Griner, Paul, author.

  Title: The book of Otto and Liam / a novel by Paul Griner.

  Description: Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, 2021

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020016775 (print) | LCCN 2020016776 (e-book) ISBN 9781946448767 (paperback) | ISBN 9781946448774 (e-book)

  Classification: LCC PS3557.R5314 B66 2021 (print) LCC PS3557.R5314 (e-book) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016775

  LC e-book record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016776

  Cover and interior design by Alban Fischer.

  Illustrations on pages 16, 45, 82, 105, 148, 264, 271, 291, and 355 by Cassidy Meurer.

  Illustrations on pages 30 and 31 by Laura Hill.

  Illustrations on pages 69, 179, 248, and 352 by Paul Griner.

  Printed in Canada.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  Contents

  Third Anniversary—Leather

  Interim 1

  Incoming

  Mystery Woman

  The Full Catastrophe

  Radio Static While Picnicking beneath a Clear Blue Sky, Two Years Before It Happens

  Kate

  Letters

  Hands-On Learning

  Uncle Sam Smackdown

  Home Visit Checklist, Two Years Before It Happens

  In the Beginning

  Kate

  Escaping Education’s Death Valley

  Letters

  The Bakery

  Interim 2

  Boo Humbug

  The Kindness of Strangers

  Interim 3

  Ball Breaker

  Crash Course in Anatomy and Physiology

  First Texts from a Stranger

  Liam at Three

  Kate

  The Fishermen of Souls

  Letters

  Limbo of the Infants

  Note to Self, after My Most Recent Move:

  Retain the Covenant of Light

  Boo Humbug

  Kate

  Wine on the Lees

  First Date

  Palmer in the Morning—Before She Dressed and Before I Made Her Sad

  Pluses and Minuses

  Letters

  Liam at Five

  Burger King

  Thursday

  Tatts, Temporary and Everlasting

  Three Knocks on the Window

  Kate

  Through The Years

  Faulty Memories

  Letters

  My Benbow Hurts

  Cheese

  Walk On By

  The Price Is Right

  Letters

  A Beginning

  Jazz

  Mist World

  Eternal Mysteries beyond the Grave

  Last Will and Testament

  AIDS Cures Fags

  Wild One

  Kate

  LBTS So It’s Not for Sale, I Swear to You

  Christmas for Beginners

  Letters

  Saffron and Saltpeter

  The Wondering

  Words of Sorrow, to Which Neither May nor I Replied

  Letters

  Interim 4

  Wild Again

  To Do List:

  Jazz’d

  Good Will to All

  May Calls—Schism or Reform?

  More Texts from Strangers

  Letters

  Another Beginning

  Liam at Eight

  Letters

  Silent Night, Holy Night

  A Second Beginning, Folded and Doubled

  Letters

  Carjinx

  Fallow Fields

  Swag

  Be Mine

  The Beginnings of Baggy Bronchi

  Opportunity Knocks

  The Line Was Totally Worth It

  Half a Truth Is Often a Great Lie

  Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

  Letters

  Kate

  Cattle and the Wild Beasts, All the Birds of the Air, Your Whales and All That Swim in the Waters

  If Only

  Liam at Four

  Letters

  Fails

  Incident on 7th

  Conflict Resolution

  Interim 5

  Saudade

  The 10 Questions Cowards Like You Never Answer

  Birthday Fungo

  To Do List, Revised:

  Letters

  Club Lucky

  Gradually, and Then All at Once

  Kate

  Hemodynamic Stability

  Traveling Through the Dark

  The Song of the Three

  Liam at Seven

  Bycatch on the North Ship

  Almost the Same Beginning, Backwards

  Bound for Glory

  May’s Craigslist Missed Connections

  Stretched Out, Held Flat, Pinned Down

  Letters

  April Is the Cruelest Month

  Interim 6

  Nash Calls Me In to Call Me Out

  First Anniversary—Paper

  The War on Easter

  Followers Over Friends

  Two Hearts Beat as One

  Fever Dream

  Letters

  Pain Releif

  Jesus Nut

  Nearer My God to Thee

  Self-Medicating

  A Gift for Homer Brannock, to Assuage His Anger at HAVING BEEN LET DOWN

  Two Cats Away from Insanity

  Extra Loudly Rumbling Engine Wakes Me at Dawn

  The Symbolic Will Have Its Say

  Well-Meaning but Stupid, One

  Belated Gift to Shooter’s Mother in Response to Her Letter Years Before

  Letters

  Well-Meaning but Stupid, Two

  Bass Player Hunk Mail

  Holy Spirits

  Kate

  Letters

  Stop Signs

  Eating Life, Drinking Time

  Phone Calls

  Jonesing For My Groove

  With Contrite Heart and Humbled Spirit

  Filched

  The Comforts of Home

  A Gift for May

  I Do the Math

  Empty Barrel Birthday

  Letters

  Liam at Five

  River of January

  Home Alone

  Interim 7

  Interim 8

  May in May, Twelve Years Before

  Social Media Updates

  Ghosting

  Interim 9

  Interim 10

  Letters

  Stupid Things People Say in the Months after Funerals

  Letters

  Three Years After

  To Do List, Further Revised:

  Letters

  Interim 11

  Monday, or, America’s Longest War

  Liam, Me and My Grandfather, All of Us at Eight

  Colonel Mustard Did It

  Interim 12

  Ghostbusted

  Missing May

  Doub
le Indemnity

  Letters

  The Valley of the Sun

  Letters

  Interim 13

  Phoenix

  Letters

  My Only Swerving

  Fevered and Fretful, Lord Knows I’d Like to Smile

  Departures and Arrivals

  Liam chose Yes no Yes no Yes no Yes no Yes and Yes and Yes

  The Lazarus Taxon

  Acknowledgments

  BB

  AAF

  Third Anniversary—Leather

  OCTOBER 10, 2018

  I drive my usual three loops around the high school parking lot, windshields flashing in the sun, cars baking in the surprising October heat, on my final pass five late boys slow-walking their way up the massive granite steps toward the stone columns and big white doors. Freshmen, probably, thirteen or fourteen, their bodies still all angles and flat planes. Younger, they’d run, but they’re old enough now to be abashed. One in a blood-red shirt laughs.

  When I was a boy, my school looked just like this, brick and stately, and the doors were wooden and always unlocked, but now if you arrive after the start of school you have to be buzzed in and they’re made of steel. Behind them a row of metal detectors.

  Two patrol cars in the lot, which is usual, one parked, the other circling, which is not. I pass the second, heading in the opposite direction, nod at the driver, eyes invisible behind his blue-lensed Oakleys, drive on. Birdsong, from the cluster of maples where the leaves are beginning to orange—a late fall this year, as it was then—the muddy scent of the creek, high from the recent rains, and the long thin shadow of the flagpole and the broader rippling one of the flag, the flag at half-staff.

  When I’m done with my final circumnavigation, the second cop rolls up behind me, following me the last fifty yards past the long brick front of the school and out the tree-lined drive to the stoplight. I turn right, past the Wendy’s, where the shooter got a drive-through coffee after circling the high school parking lot three times, spooked by a single parked cop, before changing his plan and heading to the elementary school.

  The coffee they found in his cupholder, still warm, next to two Remington 870 Wingmaster pump-action shotguns. He brought a third one with him, along with two Glock G17 Gen4 MOS’s and an AR-15, this one sawed-off, stuffed into a blue duffel bag. The two shotguns in the car were propped up on the passenger side, beside ten boxes of red shells, low-bottomed brass and with a tendency to jam; some had spilled onto the floor.

  At the next light I flip on my blinker, turn. Behind me blue and white lights flash on, though the cop doesn’t sound his siren, and I pull into the post office parking lot, nose in, to show I won’t flee. Car angled in behind me, so it would be hard for me to get away, he makes me wait, the giant flag’s undulating shadow passing over the car again and again. Full staff, here.

  I lower my window to the smell of baking pavement. He puts on his hat like he’s crowning a Pope, steps out, shuts his door and approaches in my sideview mirror, backlit by the early morning sun. He rests his hand on the butt of his pistol as he walks, and it surprises me when he kneels behind the car for a few seconds, before standing and coming around to the driver’s side.

  Hello, sir, he says, his voice unexpectedly high. He squares his shoulders as if he knows that, making himself taller, and his leather holster creaks under the pressure of his hand; pink grips on the handle of his Glock, cancer in the gene pool.

  He says, Do you know why I stopped you?

  No sir, I say. I don’t.

  That school? We like to know who comes and goes. Keep everybody safe.

  That’s good, sir. I understand.

  Do you have any business there?

  Not really.

  I see. And are you in the habit of driving around school parking lots?

  Some of them, sir. On certain dates.

  Today, for instance, he says. It’s not a question, more an expression of disdain, which I understand. Most of the cops around the school I know or have met; not him.

  Yes sir, I say. Today for instance.

  And is there any reason you’d cover up your license plate before doing so?

  I’m sorry?

  Your license plate. He nods toward the back of the car. It’s covered by a red rag. That’s usually a sign of gang activity.

  Hoaxers, I say. Assholes.

  Excuse me?

  Sorry, sir. Never mind. I grab the door handle to get out and check but, alarmed, voice raised, he tells me to stay where I am and clamps his left hand to the door frame, the right one gripping the butt of his gun, his knuckles white. He leans closer, his shadow passing over me, and goes rigid when I shiver, wondering what’s got me spooked, his glance darting from me to the seat beside me to the art supplies piled in the back, for work I’m supposed to get done today but won’t. A new urgency to his voice when he speaks next. Do you have any weapons, sir?

  He’s got reason to be afraid; a cop is shot to death every six days. No sir, I say. I don’t like guns.

  I see. And so why is today the day you drove by this high school?

  Because today is the anniversary.

  Of the shooting, he says. But not there.

  No sir. That school doesn’t exist anymore.

  That’s right, he says. They tore it down. And do you know why?

  Oh yes, I say. I do know why.

  For a long time he doesn’t speak, and I swear he’s developed a five o’clock shadow since he stopped me, his beard like dark splinters under the skin. That hyper-masculinity of so many police, which I’ve never liked, though I’ve come to respect. Three cops lay on the ground in their uniforms that day after seeing the classrooms, overcome; they might have passed for dead, except for the lack of blood. Still, as he stares at me with that hard cop look, I think, What do cops know?

  Other cars go by, drivers turning their heads, wondering. At last he nods, straightens up, his breath whistling through his nose, which appears to have been broken and poorly set. Listen, he says. It’s kind of ghoulish, this disaster tourism. Before I can respond he says, I went in to that school that day. You should really let all of this go. He sounds older than my father, older than time, and now his body is generating terrific heat. A wave of it passes over me.

  I say, I was there that day too. His forehead contracts as he tries to place me. That morning, I say. To drop off my son. He was wounded in the shooting.

  Oh, he says, a small sound, but it’s like a big hole in a tiny balloon; he deflates all at once, his entire posture changing. I’m sorry, sir, he says, his hand coming off the gun. What’s your name?

  He’d know if he’d been able to run the plates, though even then I might have made him forget, my new superpower: with a few words, I wipe out memories, though never my own, or my spooky, unsettling thoughts. If I pulled a pistol, I could pop two in your chest before you ever saw it coming. The strangest thing; despite my hatred of guns, I think about them almost daily, and often in the weirdest ways.

  Otto, I say. Otto Barnes. Liam’s father.

  He takes off his hat and puts it on his fist, turns it with his other hand, thinking of something to say. A white tan line cuts straight across his forehead, and his dark cropped hair glistens with sweat. Twice, he opens his mouth to speak, twice he closes it again and remains silent. His forearm twitches when he puts the hat back on.

  Officer? I say. I’m sorry you had to see those things, and I’m sorry my visit brought them back.

  Which is true, I’m sorry, though it’s also true I’m not, two contradictory truths, both parallel and in opposition, as far as the east is from the west: I don’t really want his pain, but I want my own pain even less. The fundamental paradox of my current life.

  No, he says, his voice thick now, like he’s speaking through a mouthful of molasses. He tries to say something else, can’t, shakes his head instead. A tear trickles from under his blue sunglasses. He puts one hand on my shoulder, squeezes, and walks away.

  Back in his c
ar, he tosses his hat on the dash and turns to look out the passenger window. Traffic streaming by, drivers who don’t notice him still speeding, others who catch a glimpse of the squad car at the last second tapping their brakes. I put my car in gear and make my way toward the exit, sure he isn’t seeing a single present-day thing.

  I’m not either, and end up back outside my new apartment without remembering the drive back, how I got there at all, if I even completed my normal route: high school, Wendy’s for a coffee I will not drink, two winding miles to the elementary school, or rather, the patch of landscaped park where it used to stand. I want to understand and doubt I ever will.

  I have a handful of mail, which means I’d gone back to the post office and checked my box. I have no memory of that, either, or of ripping off the red rag and tossing it aside, my building fury at the hoaxers. Most of the mail will be trolls or junk, some of it might be important, but I throw it all away and text Lamont.

  Bring the bourbon, I tap out, knowing he will.

  Interim 1

  Number of school shootings in the three years since:

  142

  Number of school children killed:

  217

  Incoming

  OCTOBER 10, 2015

  May was at her desk when the call came, deep into a manufacturability analysis for a laser-surgery prototype, work she loved—work she got to engineer up, as Otto said—meticulous and specific. She ignored the ringing phone at first, but the light kept blinking and they wouldn’t leave a message, so at last she picked up; she didn’t catch the detective’s name, just his words about Liam.

  Liam’s been shot, he said. I’m not a doctor, but I think he’s going to make it.

  She stood so fast her chair fell over. What about the damn apples? she said.

  Zhao, cubicled beside her, knew something was wrong. He was torn: Leave to give May privacy, or stay in case she needed him? Who could turn away from it? He should, though he wouldn’t. Before he judged himself, he reached over and saved their shared work on her computer with a couple of keystrokes and was glad she didn’t notice. He didn’t want to miss this. What an awful person he was, sitting still so he wouldn’t miss a thing. He swallowed. He would never admit this to anyone.

  The detective was used to people saying odd things. He said his name again and May seemed not to hear him. Who are you? she said. How do you know?

  Call me Nash, he said. I know because I’m at the school.