Chapter Six - Games People Play

More the rule than the exception, weekdays at Whispering Willow were genuinely boring and uneventful. For a few days after the retail excursion and the unfortunate robbery incident, life became predictable again. Even Neville’s demeanor, in light of the humiliation and pain he must have experienced, was uncharacteristically upbeat, as some of the staff noted.

Of course, they’d never connect the dots that the deaths of the two teens, which police reported back to them, were intentional. So the true reason for the resident grouch’s sudden suspension of outright hostility – his satisfaction of knowing he still had “the goods” – would never be revealed.

For him, the baiting of the hooligans along with the reactive chemical detonation, was further testament to his sharper-than-ever intellect. Through his long life, never feeling the most comfortable in his own skin, he had leaned on his brain to help him accomplish everything he set out to do. Most of what he set out to do remained a secret to the Whispering Willow constituency, except for a former intern who was now missing in action.

On Wednesday afternoon, he heard an unusually high amount of screaming. However, unlike many of the screams he’d encountered through the years, these were not in response to any actions of his own. During this particular afternoon, the squeals, shrieks and yells were associated with arranging coins on a game board and calling out “BINGO!”

Neville sat along the outer wall of the activity room, alternating between his newspaper, the television and the group of twenty or so residents lined around the tables. He kept his eye on his roommate, Duncan, who seemed out of sorts, calling out “Bingo” multiple times, while consistently being disproven. Today’s personality, Neville thought, must not be familiar with the game. But at least he was fully clothed.

“Bingo!” yelled his roommate again. He watched as one of the staff came over and traced his coins while another recalled the numbers. It was another false alarm. And even the sweetest, kindest elderly game players were wondering if they could keep him from showing up next time.

“I could’ve swore I had it that time,” he said.

When Clara walked by and asked him how he felt after the fall and if he was getting used to his walker, Neville surprised her with the simplest of responses – “fine.”

“Wasn’t it horrible what happened to those two boys?” she asked, expecting him to agree.

“Was it?” he responded. Her brow tightened and she blinked. He folded up his paper and looked at her.

“They were rude and obnoxious,” he said. “They pushed me to the ground.”

“I’m not excusing it,” she countered. “But they’re still somebody’s babies.”

“Somebody could have done a better job at parenting,” he concluded. “If you are looking for tears in these eyes, you won’t find any.”

By now, he was tired of talking and rubbed his eyes. Clara had no clue of his involvement in the explosion, but still, her response was a pretty poor thank you very much, he thought. That frustration with what he felt like was the shallow hypocrisy of human emotion was one of his largest obstacles to true social interactivity. Neville truly believed that deep down, Clara was relieved the hooligans had received their just desserts, but she wasn’t honest enough with herself to admit it. He was. And yes, that made him a more advanced person.

Morals were not the heartbeat of his decision-making. His storied life had been more marked by the lack thereof. In similar situations played out dozens of times prior, the targets receiving the brunt of his rage were not necessarily hooligans but many were law-abiding, good-hearted citizens who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For him, it was nothing personal, most of the time, just business. A means to an end.

He preferred well-timed explosions as weapons, which allowed him a safe distance from the victims, saving him from the spectacle that is desperation. Up close, his targets would bargain, beg and recount all the multiple reasons for him to deliver mercy. It never swayed him but like a broken record, melodrama that was grated on his nerves.

One middle-aged man nervously explained that was on the verge of greatness, soon to sign a recording contact that would make him a superstar. If Neville would allow him to go free, he said, he would be a much more valuable asset to draw from. Calling his bluff, Neville humorously demanded an impromptu audition, enduring as many sour notes as he could before administering the cruelest of all rejections.

How he reconciled that relentless aggression toward the innocent was the simple fact that he believed, if the roles were reversed, with the power and gold in sight, they might also make the same choice. They were not that different from him at all. His gift, his brain, afforded him a vantage point only a few others would ever see.

His most gratifying coup, carried out decades prior, was more personal than business. It involved a major player, a giant of a man getting in the way of his business. More than that, his victim was someone who believed in leveling the playing field, siding with the underdogs instead of profiting from them. Like Neville, he towered above the others in abilities and intellect, but his weakness was the incredible guilt Neville assumed he must have felt in his superiority that prompted him to surrender his ambitions to their service. And they manipulated him like a child, cheering when he got it right and verbally tearing him apart in the public square when he didn’t.

Sure, when Captain Horizon was finally gone, the world stopped, sobbed and carried on a big program. Memorials were constructed, documentaries were devised and even a federally-mandated holiday was instituted, right alongside Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. Socially speaking, however, humankind got along just as well without his interference as it did with. Even some of the worst elements he faced seemed were gone, with at least one living a long, quasi-normal life surrounded by fellow geriatrics and an occasional homicide.

It was ironic that a life like Neville’s would be slowly fading away. He had always fancied himself as one who would be carried away in a blaze of glory. Fate, he surmised, had other plans. Although the home had its prison-like qualities, he had escaped the possibility of spending the remainder of his life on display for fellow hardened criminals and studied by the national media. After the “final conflict,” so to speak, he was barely left standing and nursed back to health by a wife who had been otherwise naïve. Her lack of protest in discovering the previously-hidden layer of his life was due as much to fear as it was love. But it was all just as well.

The battle had nearly destroyed him as it did his nemesis, yet for some reason he was spared. He crawled away from the wreckage after examining his opponent for any signs of life. It would be years until he would regain the strength to consider his health normal again, but by that time, age was catching up, bringing about its own set of obstacles. Ultimately, however, he found he had nothing left to prove. Unlike the fallen hero, he didn’t perform for the masses.

As it was with other residents of the home, he had his own story of loss, although his story remained hidden. He privately recalled the day cancer finally claimed the life of his Catherine. Her passing sealed his anonymity and she took the small piece of what she actually knew of his history to her grave.

Years later, connected only to a single nephew and requiring more care than anyone was willing to give, he retreated to the halls of a quiet, unassuming assisted living facility.

The irony of his environment was not lost on him, especially in light of the history of his residential manager, a subject he knew far more about than he revealed. Neville’s health was now supervised by a woman who received a second chance from a savior Neville ultimately destroyed. The world is full of “what ifs,” but it the dynamics of his life truly hung on a thin thread of surprising coincidence. These were the secrets that would ultimately perish with him.

He’d never expose the details of the mystery to Carol or anyone else, not out of panic of getting caught, but to avoid a confrontation his opponent would ultimately lose. He knew the odds of getting a replacement less intrusive than Carol were slim and in his cranky old age, he truly despised change. The devil he knew would suffice.

His reluctance to publicly revel in his wickedness also had nothing to do with any type of fondness for her. For him, it was, as it had been throughout his life, business. Still, he amused himself in his dreams, imagining pulling the proverbial curtain back to reveal who he truly was. Within a feeble shell of wrinkles and brittle bones, he was the one person who had rocked the world and Carol’s life in particular, not only having extinguished the bright hope that was Captain Horizon but serving as the cruel architect of the explosion that sent her family’s car plummeting off the bridge.

The blood of the two most important men in Carol’s life was on his hands. Unlike him, he knew she wouldn’t appreciate his amusement at one of life’s most astonishing coincidences.