Montaro Caine A Novel - By Sidney Poitier Page 0,4

face his grandfather afterward? “It’s the man’s choice,” P. L. Caine had said. And now Montaro asked himself, what would a man do? He weighed his fears against his grandfather’s wishes until deep down inside himself he decided on the course that he had to take even if it would kill him. There was no escape; he could not disappoint his grandfather.

Montaro took a deep breath and rushed the door, which flew open from the forward thrust and threw him into the room. His father’s open coffin stood in the center of the study surrounded by pink and white flowers. Montaro shut his eyes tight and put his hands to his face to cover them. Then slowly, hesitantly, he squinted and peeked at the body through the openings between his fingers.

Montaro was surprised and relieved to find that his father looked alive. There was no blood. Robert Caine was wearing his blue suit with matching tie—he just seemed to be sleeping, Montaro thought as he moved a cautious step closer. His fears gradually subsided, allowing room for his grief to emerge. Montaro wished he could do something to wake his father up, make him breathe again, but he understood that he had lost him forever, that Robert Caine had passed from this world into another.

Now that he was no longer quite so afraid, Montaro became ashamed of the fear he had felt. He hoped that wherever his dad was, he would never know how frightened he had been. He made a silent vow to himself that he would never feel such fear again, that from now on, he would face every challenge life presented him like the man Robert Caine had wanted him to grow up to be, like the man his grandfather knew he was already becoming. “The difficulties of life can lick a man or they can strengthen him,” his grandfather had told him, and no, Montaro Caine would not let himself be licked.

Three weeks later, at his grandfather’s insistence, Montaro found himself with his mother and grandfather seated around the desk in his father’s study. On top of the desk was his father’s black leather briefcase. It had survived the plane crash intact, with only telltale scars from the impact. Montaro’s mother, who had wanted to wait until more time had passed before dealing with such matters, had raised a timid objection to her father-in-law, but the man had forcefully overruled her. He knew that the locked briefcase might well hold substantial evidence as to how his only son had spent his last three days of life, and he said further that he didn’t want to open the briefcase alone.

Montaro watched his grandfather unsuccessfully attempt to crack the lock, first with a screwdriver and then with pliers, while Sarah Caine began to cry softly. Hearing his mother’s stifled sobs caused Montaro’s eyes to cloud up in spite of his effort to tough it out. Montaro held his mother close—he felt that comforting her had now become his responsibility. Finally, using the screwdriver as one would a crowbar, P. L. Caine popped the latches on the battered case.

Inside the case, along with other personal effects, was Robert Caine’s Dictaphone and two medium-size leather-bound journals containing the notes that Robert had written while he was in New York. There were comments on his trip, mathematical equations, calculations, projections, conclusions he had reached, and drafts of paragraphs for the paper he planned to write. There were also extensive notes about both Tom Lund and Luther John Doe. Sarah Caine took one of the notebooks, and, frequently interrupted by her own sobs, read some of her husband’s notes aloud to her son and his grandfather. Through it all, P. L. Caine sat quietly, his face a wrinkled mask of sadness.

After Sarah had finished reading, the three of them began to listen to the tapes. Sarah wept openly while hearing her husband’s voice, but Montaro was already learning to control such outward expressions of emotion the same way his father had and the way his grandfather still did, even at this very moment.

As Montaro listened to the recordings, he saw images in his mind of the way his father had spent his last day less than a month earlier. He could hear the urgent footsteps of his father and Dr. Andrew Banks pacing briskly along the corridor of the hospital in New York City. And he could hear the voices on the tape, speaking to him now, almost as if they were