What my father left me

I gave the thing a nudge with my foot.

Okay, maybe it was more of a kick. A small kick. Jamie looked over my shoulder. I didn’t have to see her face to see the frown.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Don’t know.”

“What’s in it?”

“Assorted… things, I guess. From my dad.”

“Was he a hoarder?” She was already moving on into the kitchen.

“No. He was an anti-government paranoid who believed he was being spied on by the FBI.”

“Well, who isn’t?” She called back.

“Indeed.”

I had let the box sit for a month near the side of the couch after my sister had dropped it off. The side near the wall, where Jamie wouldn’t see it. Oh, she knew it was there, she always knows stuff like that, but she didn’t say anything about it until I dragged it out in front of me. Mostly so I could stare at it. Beat up dusty cardboard, taped shut with strapping tape, my name written across it in shaky ballpoint lettering. Could be anything in there, possessions prized and jealously guarded, secrets the cabal of feds tried to pry out of dad with their constant surveillance and desire for his mimeographed knowledge, or junk.  

I always go with junk myself, save wear and tear on the imagination, and the heart.

So. Box. I had my keys in my hand to poke through the tape, as I didn’t feel like walking the 50 feet or so to the kitchen, and then have to dig through the junk drawer looking for the box cutter that Jamie probably used to cut flowers again and left god knows where. Shouldn’t be hard, jab the tip of the car key through, run it down the seam, should pop the flap right open. No problem.

 I’ve now been staring at it for ten minutes; the unused keys are digging divots into the palm of my hand. I better sit down.

He was a good guy, dad. A carpenter for 30 years, working construction jobs, private gigs off the books and away from the union, and for himself when he could. He had to put away his tools over 20 years ago as his eyes failed and he couldn’t ignore the arthritis in his hands anymore. He’d worked at one job or another since he was eight. In his family’s store, on the little farm they had, summers doing construction, and then the 30 plus years shaping wood into various objects.

Lots of objects.

He loved to build boxes. He always said ‘The most useful thing in this world is a good box, a strong one, one that will hold whatever you want to put in it. Thousand and one uses, a box.” And he made nice ones, mostly for the family and sometimes to give friends to sell for him at flea markets. He used nice wood, old seasoned wood when he could get it, beautiful dovetail joints, tight fitting seams, stained and varnished with lids that fit so close you couldn’t pry them out without using the handle. They were made so well they could hold water, if needed.

I picked at the corner of the cardboard with a finger. It looked like someone had sat on it, the top concaved and the sides rumpled and crushed. The tape here was loose, popped off on one side and flapping on the end. I stopped picking at it.

After he retired, well, was forced to retire, dad was at loose ends not really sure of what to do or where to do it. Construction had made him restless and years of working with his hands made him fidgety when the hands were not in use. Sitting and watching TV seemed more like a punishment than a reward. Drinking never seemed to interest him, and the fishing trips, once every weekend, now dribbled, stuttered and stopped. He didn’t like visiting his old friends, mostly because they had “gotten old” He didn’t like to complain himself, he liked to fix things, and to hear the complaints of others was unbearable. He couldn’t fix them, so he stopped visiting them. There was nothing for him to do except to draw a pension, and social security. And wait to die.

So, he went to church.  

Dad had grown up in one of the Mormon splinter groups that formed when Joseph Smith was killed. He found a branch where we lived and started showing up. Nothing a tiny church likes more than a volunteer who’s handy with tools, even if his accuracy with them had become dubious. He started fixing things around the tiny clapboard building they had, even doing some gardening, something he’d never shown the least bit of interest in. He knew this religion and this type of people. He fell right back into it. He seemed very happy when I talked to him, which wasn’t enough. Yes, I was one of those ungrateful kids, and no, dad never once called me on the fact that I didn’t make much time for him. He should have. I wish he had.

Then, the oddness started. Not all at once, but slowly, building over months and years. It started off with a self published book or two, usually a ‘come to Jesus’ memoir of reformed criminals, or people who learned to use other parts of the body to do things after accidents, like drawing with their toes. There were several by people who used various unusual body parts to draw. They thanked god for the ability to work around their disability, but never blaming god for that disability.

He pressed these books into my hands, lowered his voice as if imparting the secrets of the universe and said, “You should read this. This is important.” I would take the book and give it a try, but really, it was always the same story and usually told in a bland but breathless way, as if you really just couldn’t believe how the story would end, even if you did read it on the back cover. Never finished one. Still feel bad about that.

Then, it was the Book of Revelations, and then beyond the bible, end-of-the-world stuff and off into the vast and boundless universe of photocopied and faded articles, mimeographed sheets of ‘facts’ that proved whoever was in the While House was a communist, anything you might disagree with was obviously illegal, and how, if you didn’t register your car, didn’t get a driver’s license, and you paid for everything with gold and you stockpiled guns, you could protect yourself from the coming… something. It was that something (and it was always a new something each time I saw him) that drove him back to the Midwest and Iowa, where he grew up and where his parents were still living. We were going to slide into the ocean here on the West coast, it was in revelations, in visions, in predictions, written down somewhere. I disappointed him by not heeding his advice to move. I didn’t believe in him. I saw the hurt around the corners of his eyes and the downturn of the side of his mouth. He packed, he moved.  I was his son, but maybe I was no longer his people. He would find them where he left them.

The box looked like it was packed, unpacked, repacked. There are at least two scratched out addresses on it, and one space showing the corrugated paper where a sticker was torn away. It had once housed cans of fruit of some sort, the logos faded and covered. I tapped the corner with my keys. Dad had felt it was important to send me this as he died. He had sent us all boxes. He laid them out, put the names of each of his kids on the boxes, packed them with… whatever, closed and addressed them. His sister, my Aunt June, had mailed them only days before he died.

I got mine a week after he’d passed. They all went to my sister, and she brought this one to me.

That was a month ago. I just let it sit. Sit here, sit on my mind, sit, sit, sit…

…sit. It left a square indentation on the rug when I moved it, scooted, to where it sits now.

It’s probably full of anti-government, who-killed-Kennedy books, or maybe the chunky tape recorders he had, the ones that you shove the old cassettes in, then press ‘play’ and ‘record’ at the same time to work it. Or the binoculars he seemed to collect, so he could look across the flatness of Iowa and see the FBI, the CIA, or maybe Satan’s armies? Sneaking up to grab his guns or his immortal soul.

Books. Maybe tools.

I was now pacing around it, but got tired of that, so I sat down to look at it some more. I wiped off some dirt that covered up the ‘P’ in ‘Paul’ with some spit on the end of my thumb. Dad’s handwriting was always bad, but this was even worse than usual. Dad wrote the names, Aunt June did the address.

Jamie hovered a beer in front of me, ticking it back and forth.

“It’s a mystery.” She sat down next to me.

“It is.” I took a drink. I stood up, and shoved the box back around the corner of the couch, trying to get it into the same indentation. Its ‘spot’, its home. 

“Not today?” Jamie smiled at me. I like that smile.

“No, not today.” I sat back down.

It’s just a box.