Father’s Drawer

I spent the afternoon begging god. I was crying for a reversal of fate. My pacing was lit only by the grey window. Leaves fell in a steady rain with the moldering scent of decay already begun. Just as the factory had washed away the fields of the ward, so did the scent of motor oil vitiate the air of my father’s workshop. His grinding wheel was solid amid a sea of tools. I would return here day after day to attempt some sort of necromancy between saints and forgotten gods of the old world. But they were as lost as my father who lay in wake for his last journey home.

He was gone so suddenly that it could only strike a child as a dream, a dream in which his mirage would haunt me in the weeks to come. I had no idea these apparitions were part of mourning, rather I imagined a conspiracy that sequestered him in a new life. The visions continued with pilgrimages to Holy Sepulcher as I wandered the tombstones shadowed by factory chimneys. Their culpability was not lost on me and it would fester. My parents room, surrendered to me, was where I sat and stewed in anger. I saw clearly now, the careless nature of man, poisoning workers, neighbors, Johnny from Scared Heart, my aunt sickened in that brown ground, and my father. I saw a world drowning with injustice. I longed for the old country I never knew, a land my father never wanted to leave. The weight of exodus had killed him in the land of the free, his grand plans halted.

Forays began into the top drawer of my fathers dresser. A pharaoh’s tomb lay in wait. The drawer held myriad treasure; coins, slides of our family, and books I never knew my father read. There was a collection of Thomas Moore poems and the banned Tropic of Capricorn. In corners lurked caches of jewelry he had made, Canadian souvenirs and flag stickers of the land that had made him a refugee. Under one sarcophagi was a little black book . I thought I might find mysterious addresses there. His Polish drinking buddy, Leon was the only friend that had ever stepped foot in our house. At his death, my father was a sober man, fond of his reluctantly adopted home. All too late.

I retrieved the book, looking to see if I was being observed. I still believed that a cast of dead relatives sat in judgement. Like my arousal at the Henry Miller, curiosity overrode guilt and I put it under my pillow. It was forgotten in the days that followed, distracted by well wishers until we entered that post-mortem period when you are left utterly alone. My mind would wander to random of memories. My father popped in on me and my sister recording music on a cassette player. I obsessively sought the recording for his brief utterance, knowing I would soon forget his voice. Sadness gave way to a comfortable smoldering rage which became my baseline. I imagined myself the man of the house and rightful heir to all things my father.

So, I returned to the journal beneath my pillow, thumbing the soft skin of the cover. In my room with just a sliver of street light I pivoted to illuminate the smooth worn cover. When opened I saw my fathers name written on the inside. The round cornered pages were a graduated yellow that whitened toward the center. The first few looked like hieroglyphs, a scribbling of measurements. This was disappointing. There were names and numbers of a few people, no mystery, just men from work or the pub. My hope for some grand revelation was evaporating, a rage percolating within me. I wanted something to be returned. I wanted my father to speak to me. I flipped the tiny page, tearing the corner in my haste. I felt I had desecrated the relic, so I tried to collect myself, proceeding methodically. I began again.

There was a page that listed books and author; Joyce, Ellison and Greene. The next was a list of music; Cole, Cash, Ray and Ella. The following page had a list of images corresponding to his slides. The last two pages had my uncle’s address in County Laois and a rough sketch. I turned the page, hopeful, squinting for translation. There was a vague reminiscence in the lines and I sat up, flicking on my table light. My mind jumped to the maps my father would draw for me. After reading Treasure Island together, he brought the story to life for me by drawing treasure maps of our house. The landmarks were a chair, a bush, my room. My eyes watered remembering the hours of play, wondering how we had strayed from that intimacy. I looked at the drawing through blurry eyes, trying to see markers, a discernible image but my mind collapsed with the weight of memory. I quit and put the journal in the box beneath my bed with all the relics that would one day find their way to my top dresser drawer.

The memories of those weeks seemed a lifetime ago, a lifetime of emulating my father’s mistakes to know him, a lifetime trying not to emulate him as a father, mainly by staying alive. Looking back it was someone else’s play and not until I had my own children did I begin to understand anything about my father.

I was drawn back to the trips of my youth. The places of peace I had blocked out returned to me as a comfort. I planned redeeming journeys for my own children, rewriting of all our mistakes. We would go to Canada and trek the the Adirondacks, camping the island lakes. We found our promise land in Lake George, just like the Onondaga. Once glimpsed, we knew we would always return. My son and I planted ourselves before our computer months prior to reserve our paradise. It was nestled between Vicar’s Island and the little bay beneath Deer Leap. The scent of pine would cascade down the hillside to overwhelm you in that sublime stratum between mountain sky and the deep waters of Lake George. We waited for our moment and pounced. The island was ours and we basked in our playful victory. I studied the screen, the island laid out in cartoon shapes upon the blue. Something struck a chord. A déjà vu came over me, the shape resonating in my cortices like a forgotten dream. I went to my bedroom and opened the top drawer, digging to the back until I felt the edges of a small book. It was where I had placed it when we moved in and out it came, my fathers little black book. The last page was his map. The palinopsia of the computer screen matched my father’s rendering and a wave of epiphany swept over me. I was Jim Hawkins again.

The following months we plotted. Plans for hikes became secondary to this game with my father. The vacation masked this obsession until we were skimming over the tremulous waters of Lake George. A drizzle that felt more like sand lashed us in our rain gear, heads bowed in monk-like reverence to the grand lake. The journal sat snug within my breast pocket as we spied our glacial tumble of stone in the rain . Dawn found us settled and dry with a mist burning away as I made coffee. I looked out over the water that mirrored Black Mountain and thought of Georgia O’Keefe. I thought of paintings, granite, maps and all those things that perdure. I thought of the pause one takes before some great deed and that anticipation. I waited for the sun to reach its apogee and enlisted the boys to commune with their grandfather and our seance began. The sketch made sense now like the maps my father had left to occupy my days. There was the key, the paces, 25 from the dock to the pine, 4 to the lichen boulder that was the spine of the island. 5 paces beyond was the promontory of the island and the x on the map. I set the boys to work and soon were digging like drunken pirates. I sat, poking at the fire I had made in the stone pit. I watched the smoke curl into the piney breeze allowing my memories to flood back in that redolent air suffused with pine, smoke and water.

My son yelled they had hit something. I turned and watched them dig frantically to clear the edges, the pinging of their shovels against metal as dirt kicked back.

“Grandpa’s box!” one yelled. They were tugging at the container like they might fight each other for it but in tandem lifted it trekking towards me. Clunking it down, they returned to the hole as I sat with the ominous treasure.

“There’s another!” they yelled as they started digging again. Transfixed on the rusted box I grabbed my knife and scraped along the edges of the lid which caused my wife to turn her head from sunning.

“Find it?” she asked matter of factly.

I didn’t answer but kept at the box until its lips parted. I pried the lid open revealing the little muslin covered mummy within. It had gathered the moisture around it and blackened. I peeled away the skin revealing a wax covered dish. A poke from my blade peeled the membrane away. I looked to the lake, the kids, my wife and back. I slid my nails into the crevice and lifted. There, in a square glassine envelope, was a photograph. I lifted it from the box and placed it on the table. The white border of the photo was obvious but the image was an opaque watercolor in the sleeve. I pinched the corner of the paper, wiggling it gently from its bond. Inserting a finger, I separated it from its shroud with bits staying behind. With care I slid the print free. There it was. My father’s game come to light. I could see my little self propped on a picnic table surrounded by my family, all of us smiling in that frozen moment, thinking it would always be that way. I recognized the tree, the hills beyond and the same table at which I was now sitting. I turned it over to see all our names listed there, laughing to myself, eyes tearing in the sun.

While I was traveling with ghosts the boys had fallen upon the second box with less restraint. I heard the clangoring of metal and coins. The boys howled and I placed the photo inside my father’s book. Elated with the posthumous gift, and feeling my father’s amusement at it all, I walked over to the hole. The boys clawed through discolored coins spread out over the grassless earth.

“We’re rich!” they squealed. The coins had no real value, scratched and corroded as they were but I wasn’t going to dampen their ardency. I just relished their fervor, my fathers victory. My wife approached with all the commotion and joined, feigning puzzlement. One of the boys scampered from his trove placing a coin in her hand.

“Here mommy.” he said. My wife smiled at me and scratched her finger nail over the face of the coin. She paused, squinted at the coin and scratched more diligently. She held it up dramatically for me to see without saying a word. The tracks of her nail revealed an obvious clinquant of gold that caught the sunlight.

“What is this?” she asked with an air of disbelief.

“It’s a gold Liberty coin.” I said, recognizing it from my father’s collector book. I called out to the boys, “How many coins do you have, lads?”

“We’ve counted 45, daddy.”

My wife and I looked at each other, at the boys and out over the lake.