Emmett Raymond

English 101

Sister Bowman

5 / 11 / 2011

Misery and Fear

Frank Cain was dead to begin with.  My grandmother and I were down in Long Beach to tidy up

my great-grandfather's estate.  He had died after a long life and there was a lot to clean up.  Old books

lined the walls and bits of woodworking paraphernalia seemed to cover every surface.  The dust and

grime filled the house with a dank, musty smell, and my grandmother with unease.  The garage was

protected by an honor guard of black-widows and contained tools that were so old and arcane that

mankind no longer had a name for them.  Massive metal wrenches with cutting edges around the

outside, immense steel punches, rasps, and hand drills were piled deep around an old Chevy Nova in

mint condition. 

Every once in a while an old friend of Frank’s would come over from across the street to lend a

hand or shoot the breeze, or covet great-grandpa’s tools. He made off with quite a few of them in

compensation for his help. It was sometimes an unspoken race between me and him to see who could

find an old tool or hidden treasure first and declare to grandma that our lives would not be complete

without it. The darn spiders, who had been so willing to stand sentinel, let him get away with it.

Occasionally, another fellow would wander over, cheerfully lost in the haze of senescence. He had also

known Frank a long time, and he tried to strike up conversations with me and grandma. The poor fellow
was so vague that he could only make the most trivial of comments, mostly nodding and smiling in a

pleased fashion whenever we said something to him.

Several days passed as we worked and interacted with the neighbors.  The hot California sun

was kind to neither of us and the labor was backbreaking.  I had just spent most of the day ramming my

ancestor's push mower across three-foot weeds and grass.  We shoved broken furniture around and

scraped and scoured the grime from the walls while performing a macabre triage of great-grandfather's

possessions.  There was a presence of despair that filled the house and refused to leave, however hard

we cut, scrubbed and shoved. Evening fell, bright California continued to bustle outside, but the

oppression of the house had forced us to call it a day.  Scratchy music played over the radio we found.  It

didn't help the mood much, it was far too strange to hear modern pop over the speakers of such an

antique; it was almost blasphemous.  We settled down in the living room, grandma was on the couch, I

was settled into an overstuffed chair. 

That was when the world shattered.

I dove out of my chair for the floor, it had come from over my left shoulder.  Sleep was replaced

with feral panic.  My grandmother scrambled for the hallway, I wasn't far behind.  We looked back,

peeking around the corner.  Glass was everywhere, the window had been shattered.  More frightening

was what we didn't see.  No rock, no brick... Gunshot?  I lowered myself to the floor and snatched a

frying-pan that was just inside the living-room.  I gripped it as though it were my own life, not a single

rational thought could survive in the boiling pit of fear and aimless hatred that was my mind.  It was an

animal moment.  My grandmother was on the phone calling for the police, I was braced to kill anything

that came through the front door, but unwilling to venture even an inch out of cover.  It was a long
moment that lasted a dozen minutes, adrenaline eating my veins like acid, muscles bunched and

screaming with the pain of restraining a pounce, a leap, a strike, a sprint.  Finally we ventured to the

other parts of the house, securing the other entrances.  The police arrived and told us nothing, told us

that they knew nothing, that there was nothing to be afraid of.  They told us it was probably some kid

who had thrown a chip of ceramic at the window.  They told us not to worry.  Right.

Soon after, Frank’s friend, the one who wasn’t senile, stopped by to see if we were alright. I

feigned bravado, having exchanged the frying pan-security blanket for a vicious looking, and even more

comforting, hunting knife. He blustered and blathered about how Long Beach had never been so

dangerous back in the day, how immigrants had ruined it and exactly what he would do to someone

who would violate private property or dare to look remotely un-American.

My grandmother and I didn't spend another night there.  We took a hotel room in the Marriott. 

It was a second floor suite with soft beds and a fresh smell, clean and well provisioned.  Two televisions

and comfortable couches helped release a tiny fraction of the stress.  I still didn't sleep well that night. 

The terror was still too fresh.  I went over what had happened in my mind.  I couldn't make the cop's

story jive with what had happened.  When the glass shattered it had been too loud, gunshot loud.  Also,

the pane had been ancient and warped, definitely not tempered and far less likely to shatter when hit by

a flake of ceramic than modern glass, an interesting consequence of its lower total strength.  The only

problem with either story was that we had found nothing, no bullet, and no broken bit of ceramic.  I told

myself it must have been a bullet.  I couldn't have panicked so completely over ceramic.  No way.  A

broken spark plug casing would not have frightened me.  It had to have been a bullet. 
 I finally drifted into a fitful sleep, still wrestling with my pride, knife under my pillow. The next

day grandma called a large-scale cleaning company and had them finish the house the same day.

Grandma was resolute and determined to be out of L.A. as soon as possible. I was conflicted. I hadn’t

seen much of Long Beach and I was anxious to look around, but that was not going to happen. Also, as

miserable as the house had been, cleaning it and sorting his possessions had made me feel a little closer

to this man I had never met. Frank’s buddy hauled away almost all the loot he could carry, grandma was

more than happy to let him have it, if it meant we could leave a little faster. Most painful of all, she let

him have the Nova. It wasn’t highway-worthy and repairs would have taken too long. Part of me

wanted the cops to be right. It was a harmless prank. We could have stayed and gathered the last of his

belongings. Part of me hoped they were wrong. It was a gunman. Our lives had been endangered, and

my ancestor’s estate had been robbed from us, however indirectly, by marauding criminals. We had

been right to leave with our lives. At very least I can take comfort in the fact that those useless spiders

who had twice failed in their duty to protect my ancestor’s home had been routed and sent fleeing in

panic by the cleaning crew.

The drive back to Oregon was long and punctuated by interesting stops, including Yosemite.

Grandma’s anxiety to get home had seemed to disappear as soon as we had crested the pass outside

L.A. For the first day we didn’t say much, but as the distance grew, my grandma’s spirits rose. I hadn’t

seen her so cheerful in more than a week. For me it had been about the window, but for her the entire

trip had meant something far different.