“Dad? What the fuck?” June looked at Peter. “I made that terrarium when I was like ten.”
The Yeti gave her a stern look. “Language, Juniper, please. What would your mother say?”
“Dad,” she said. “I’m thirty years old. Mom’s dead. She was killed by a plumber’s truck in San Francisco.”
A spasm of grief washed across his face like rain across a plate-glass window, then drained away. “No,” he said, filled with conviction. “We’ve talked about this, Junebug. Just because your mother’s away on a trip doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you. She loves you a lot. She just has to be away right now.”
June opened her mouth and closed it again. She was trembling. Peter put his hand on her arm.
He was thinking about his own grandfather.
At first they’d thought his age was catching up to him in fits and starts. He’d have calm weeks of fishing in the bay and splitting firewood, then misplace his checkbook and storm around thinking someone had been in his house. He’d come for dinner, then stand up after coffee, pat his pockets for his keys, and accuse Peter’s dad of taking the car without permission when the keys were still hanging in the ignition of his old Buick.
He’d work himself into a rage, this old man who’d been a paratrooper in the Second World War at nineteen, and was still strong and fit at seventy-nine. He became furious at the Russians and spent most of his eightieth summer hand-digging the foundation for a bomb shelter behind his house. This almost half a decade after the wall had come down in Germany.
When Peter’s aunt discovered the giant hole in his yard, she made an appointment in Rochester and the pieces fell together. Alzheimer’s wasn’t any less difficult, but at least they knew what was happening. His grandfather would call Peter by his dad’s name and leave the stove burner on all day, but he could still rebuild old boat motors and lawn mower engines in his garage, which was both retirement income and a survival strategy, a way to plant himself in the living moment. He’d died of a heart attack on the cracked floor of that garage during Peter’s first tour, with a newly rebuilt Mercury twelve-horse clamped to a sawhorse and ready to be picked up by its owner.
Peter didn’t know anything about the Yeti, but the man wasn’t just paranoid. He was trapped in his own past, or maybe had locked himself away there voluntarily. In the days or years when he still had a wife and daughter, before his mental disorder had driven them away.
He said, “Hello, sir, I’m Peter,” and put out his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Likewise,” the Yeti said, and shook.
Peter’s big hands were strong and calloused from his years as a Marine and carpenter. The Yeti’s were on another scale entirely, more like a catcher’s mitt left out to bake in the sun. But he didn’t crush Peter in his grip the way some giant men might have. Instead it was the handshake of a minister at a joyful occasion, two-handed and full of kindness.
“I just got back from a long backpacking trip,” said Peter. “You know how you can lose track of time in the mountains. Can you tell me, what day is today?”
The Yeti shook his head and chuckled. “I stopped keeping track myself,” he said. “That’s one thing I love about living in this valley. Time just about stops here.”
“Actually,” said Peter, “I was gone so long I missed the presidential election, and I haven’t seen a newspaper. Who won?”
The Yeti looked thoughtful for a moment. “I thought it was George W. Bush,” he said. “But it seems like he’s been president forever. Did some black guy win, can that be right?”
June clutched Peter’s arm, tears streaming down her cheeks.
The man wasn’t faking it.
Peter had thought the Yeti was a chess player, ten steps ahead of him.
Peter was wrong.
But if this wasn’t the Yeti’s play, whose was it? Chip Dawes, trying to hijack some technology? Maybe so. He wouldn’t be the first. But how did the Yeti come into it?
Maybe he’d never know. Maybe it didn’t matter. He still had to shut down whoever kept coming after them. If it was Chip Dawes, he’d be along anytime. Then they’d figure it out.
He said to June, “You need to talk to Sally.”
“She was hinting at this, wasn’t she?”
Peter nodded.
This whole time the Yeti hadn’t let go of Peter’s hand. Now his grip tightened. Peter looked back and something had changed in the big man’s eyes, as if an infinitely thin film had been momentarily peeled away. He peered intently at Peter’s face.
“I know you,” the Yeti said quietly. “You’re the man by the river, in California. With my daughter.”
“Yes,” said Peter. Very aware of the size of the man, how close he was, and the fact that he seemed to have just awakened from a long sleep. His grandfather had gone in and out of the present, too. Peter had learned to recognize these moments of clarity, of connection. “She asked me to help her,” he said. “Was that you, watching? Overhead?”
The Yeti smiled, just a little. “Son, you don’t have the clearance for this conversation.”