The Double-Edged Heirloom

Owen Lebach was leaning against his kitchen island, surveying several local pizza joint menus in a deep meditation of price comparison, when a dead dog was unceremoniously dropped on his doorstep.

He didn’t hear the exhaust of the USPS truck, or take notice of the crunch of gravel up his walk. Even if he had, maybe he would have assumed it was Felicity, his girlfriend of ten months, who probably hated him, or at least had begun an affair, which Owen well knew were two sides of the same coin. At forty, he was too old to sit in the dark anticipating her return, and had never been the type to savor the drama of swiveling around and clicking on a lamp to startle her. Anyway, he needed her to stick around to make rent for their townhouse.

When the postman beat on the screen door with his palm, Owen started. It was early evening, a strange hour for deliveries, and Owen had no friends or even associates in the town of Cobleskill yet. He had told no one his new address. Well, no one but Ma, who was an hour away in Albany nesting with her new man. By rights, he shouldn’t have anyone at his door. Something hot and nervous stung his insides: Couldn’t be Russell.

Russell was Owen’s old man--biologically, and not much else. He had left Owen’s Ma when she was seven months pregnant, after a sudden rash of erratic behavior, paranoia, and inexplicable secrecy. The most Russell ever told her was that they were in danger, but he couldn’t say why. In Ma’s version of events, she had told him to leave, forced him out (“I didn’t want the mafia on my tail”), but Owen suspected Russell probably just wasn’t there one morning, and his Ma remembered it her way to give herself some dignity.

Crickets from Russell for thirty years, and then-- out of true nowhere-- he had started calling Owen’s cellphone. All hours of the day and night, leaving voicemails about needing to talk, monitors beeping faintly on the recording. Owen had stopped listening to them, just deleted them as they came in. No calls today, yet-- Russell must’ve finally given up.

Owen peered between his window shades to case his front walk. No car in the driveway but his own, and no Jehovah’s witnesses on the step. Instead, a large cardboard box sat, lit up like a treasure chest in the filtered golden sun. He shouldered the screen door open, bending to retrieve the box. When he lifted it, he was rendered so unsteady by the package’s surprising weight that he caught the screen door with his ankle, stumbling backwards into the foyer. He tripped over his own dormant sneakers and the box skidded across the laminate.

Owen moved to deadbolt the front door, an instinct that he trusted, before crossing over to where the box lay on its side. The label’s penmanship was delicate, rife with flicks and flourishes. The return address read:

On behalf of Patient Russell Lebach

Lehigh Valley Hospital

1200 South Cedar Crest Blvd

Allentown, PA, 18103

So the miserable prick was in the hospital. Owen poked around in himself for pity or sadness, but felt only an incredulous curiosity. Russell had always been broke, struggling to pay even the lowest rung of his son’s child support, and his carpentry gigs had paid cash-- who knew what he made? Owen imagined Russell lowering a Faberge egg in a Folgers can, recessing it deep within his cupboard. This was a joke, but it must’ve ignited something in him, because suddenly he was tearing at the packing tape with real urgency.

Owen flung handfuls of baby pink packing peanuts aside, disregarding the mess. His hand raked and plunged until it made contact with something cool and furry. He hesitated for a moment, but gripped decisively, lifting it out of the box.

It rose from the peanuts in all the horror and melodrama of an RKO monster: first, the erect, bat-like ears, then, the two black eyes set deep in a whimsical bearded face. Through his disbelief, Owen numbly uncovered the large trim torso flecked with grey and white hair, its pert hindquarters, and finally, the puffy trunks of its feet. He almost dropped it. It was a dog--one of those Schnauzers. It was completely rigid, its expression wise and serious. A stuffed, dead dog. Heavy, too-- the thing had to be over fifty pounds. Owen set it on the rug, stepped back, and fell against the couch. The dog stared back at him disapprovingly.

Once the disbelief wore off, all Owen had was indignity and bitterness. The man hadn’t been in his life for thirty years, and he checked in to disappoint his son one last time. The biggest kicker was that Owen had let him, had believed for a minute that Russell could surprise him, could give him something of real value. Guess some things you never grow out of.

Owen tried to picture Russell’s face, and the resulting mental portrait was a sorry amalgam of Sam Elliott, and a meat counter employee from a deli in Albany. He grew angrier and angrier, once again left without answers, once again presented with one of his father’s presumptuous little dips into his life, into his peace of mind, just like that hopeful day in Newburgh when he was ten. He has no right. He sat, bouncing his leg, simmering, for the better part of an hour. No right at all.

Before Owen knew his plan, he was shrugging on a coat. He strapped the dog into the passenger seat initially, and then realized what he was doing, and relocated it to the trunk. He stuck the return address slip onto the dash with its wilted tape, some pieces skimmed with cardboard remnants. Going to Allentown, he texted Felicity. See you tomorrow.

For the duration of the three-and-a-half hour drive, Owen thought feverishly of what he would say to Russell. Something along the lines of, “you’re not a father, you’re not even a man.” Russell was a coward that had abandoned everyone that ever had the guts to love him, and now here he was, lying in the hospital, all bummed out with no helium balloons-- better call up that son I had once! And then to bait him to answer his calls with the stuffed dog. What a cockroach.

Owen would storm into that hospital room and drop that dog right on Russell’s shriveled testicles. He relished these triumphant vignettes, they busied his mind and fueled him; he didn’t even need to stop for a bathroom break.

At 8:24 p.m., Owen pulled into Lehigh Valley Hospital. Retrieving the dog from the trunk, he suddenly felt very uncertain.

Across the lot, the hospital loomed; its sterile white beams shooed off the navy twilight. One of those rooms contained his father. Owen’s stomach was sinking into his guts, but he carried himself resolutely to the entrance.

He’s just an old man. I’m already here.

“You can’t have dogs in here,” said the woman behind the desk.

“It’s fake,” Owen replied, placing it on the ledge.

The woman squinted at the dog behind the pane of thin glass. It remained dead. Satisfied, the woman asked how she could help Owen.

“I’m here to see Russell Lebach,” Owen said. “He’s my--I’m his son.”

The woman typed. Frowned. Glanced at Owen. Typed. Frowned deeper. Her fingers finally lifted off of the keys and shriveled into her palms. “I’m sorry, sir--uh, Russell Lebach passed away last night.”

Owen must have looked stunned, because the woman said, “we’ve been trying to contact you,” with an air of defensiveness. Her face twitched and she softened. “You’re his next of kin, he didn’t list anybody else. We left messages. I’m sorry.”

“I deleted my messages,” was all Owen could say.

“I’m sorry.” She said again. “It’s good that you’re here, though-- he did have some possessions.”

Owen was staring at the dog on the counter, letting his eyes unfocus, letting his senses melt around him as Russell’s death reached him. It was like someone shot a gun in his ear; he just couldn’t think, couldn’t perceive for a moment. He was faintly aware of the nurse returning to her chair with a small box. When she pushed it through the opening in the glass, he moved his thick head to look at it.

“Here you go.” She said. “I’m sorry.”

“You too,” Owen said absently, looping his arm around the dog. He grabbed the box, light enough to hold in one hand. A few objects slid around inside. Some possessions.

This time, he strapped the dog into the passenger seat and left it there. Owen sat in the glow of the hospital and stared, fixated on nothing, not understanding. His thoughts coagulated into blankness. Time passed.

On the seat, his cell phone buzzed. It was Felicity responding indifferently to his travel proclamation: “Ok.”

The notification illuminated the box containing the apparent essentials of Russell Lebach. Owen reached up to click on the front seat overhead lights, and pulled the box onto his lap. Who was my dad?

Inside was a book of casino matches, a tattered copy of Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum, and small black notebook, the last of which was oddly new-looking, a contrast from its yellowed counterparts. Owen fanned through it with his thumb, and a receipt fell out from the hospital gift shop. Only a week prior, Russell paid $14.99 for the notebook. Writing the great American novel on his way out. Owen smiled in the dimness.

He fanned again, scanning for writing. When he came upon a marked-up page, he stopped and held it up to the light. It read:

There might be a God up there and I figure he might as well hear it from me. The way things are going he’ll know soon anyway.

In 1969 I did an awful thing and I hurt a lot of people, but I didn’t try to and it wasn’t my intention Lord. I fouled up my whole life.

I was workin a job in Albany fixing up the WC for the wife of Bernard Wellbrook, that old money bigwig. Her name was Valerie. Bernard had a stroke and was in his bed all day and she was very lonely. As for me I didn’t know if I loved my wife. That summer we fell in Love. Val said we could leave town together and sell some of Bernard’s stuff and start over. I said good deal. He had more money than he knew what to do with. My wife was a strong lady and I knew she would be ok.

We were sposed to rob him one night while him and his nurse were asleep. His nurse was this black fella who was around all the time. Val packed her stuff and I was gonna pick her up, and help her haul stuff from the house. She told me he got his famous dog stuffed when it died. In secret he put $20k in the dog for his son in case Uncle Sam sent him to Vietnam.

That night went bad. When I got there, she didn’t come outside for a long time, so I went in. I heard her movin around so I went upstairs. I came in the bedroom and saw that black nurse gettin off of Valerie and she was dead, he stabbed her. He said he walked in on Val suffocatin Bernard. Old man was dead too. He said Bernard was his daddy.

I didn’t know what to do Lord. I don’t know why I did it. I grabbed the dog and ran. But in my head I’m still in that room.

I never did have the heart to rip that dog open. Lookin at it makes me feel sick. I hid it all these years.

I hope my boy finds it better luck than I did.