Boxes of Broken Men

Grandfather died fourteen days ago on a sunny day in June. It was a weird day when we buried him because dad wouldn’t stop talking about how everyone loved grandfather even though the attendees at the service were his bartender, his barber, and his immediately family. I pointed this out to my younger sister and was promptly told don’t be an ass. Maybe it was rude, but I was pointing out a fact.

Emora Ellison Trask was born into a middle-class family in eastern Michigan back when you could sell microwaves for forty hours a week and have two cars, a house in the suburbs, and put your kids through college. Great grandfather came back from the war shell shocked and never emotionally recovered. Emora described his dad as a nervous, annoying, whimpering man. Emora thought his father was weak of mind in a world that required mental fortitude to survive.

Grandfather excelled at school and took a football scholarship to the University of Michigan. He was too small to play in the NFL but he started for three years at weak-side linebacker, earned his bachelor’s degree, and then took out a business loan to start a textiles mill. He got the mill off the ground and sold it for a profit a few years later. He started a second mill and sold that one for a larger profit and then opened a few car dealerships. He liked to tell people how he majored in accounting, got two textiles mills off the ground, and then transitioned into auto sales seamlessly. He was a renaissance man. A warrior. A thinker. A nose-to-the-grindstone hard worker. He could turn piss into lemonade (a saying he used far too often).

Maybe those things were at one time true, but the guy I knew drank, smoked, belittled his family; he only cared about how big his house was, how green his grass, and how well behaved his dog.

Training a kid is like training a dog he’d say. You start young, you start hard, and you don’t stop.

Grandmother was sweet, but she was too busy hiding from grandfather to have much of relationship with her. It seemed insane the sole reason grandfather was such an awful bastard was because his dad came home from the war shell shocked and nervous and he hated him for it, but what do I know? I’m a millennial who makes close to six figures and can’t afford a house in Seattle and can barely make the payments on my student loans and apparently wanting to be able to afford things means I’m a socialist. When my cousins and I would talk about the cost of houses and tuition, grandfather would tell us we should have gotten a sports scholarship or worked through college. And oh, by the way, he did both and that’s why he never had any debt. Never mind that in 1976 the average cost of tuition for an in-state four-year university was about twelve-hundred, which in 2021 and taking into consideration inflation comes out to just south of six-thousand a year. Each of my three years at the University of Washington have cost me over twenty thousand a year, but try explaining inflation and how college has more than tripled since the seventies to someone past the age of sixty and you’ll find out how your generation just doesn’t want to work anymore.

Grandfather bought a house on Capitol Hill in Seattle with a big yard and a shop and a two-car garage on a private golf course for…ya know what? Never mind. I’m tired of doing the math and having people tell me how good I have it when I can barely afford rent and my student loans because my parents make too much money (they don’t).

The point being, grandfather was a piece and nobody liked him.

Oh. All except my dad.

“My dad was special,” dad said while we sat around the dinner table.

I glanced at my sister, Tessa, and my younger brother, Rodger, and we all made eye contact and rolled our eyes. Tessa would roll her eyes, but she was never vocal the way I was.

“He was always teaching me things,” dad continued, waving a chicken wing around like a lectern stick. “Taught me how to fish, camp, hunt. Instilled in my hard work…”

“With the back of his hand,” I muttered.

“Huh?” Dad said.

“I said what a good man.”

Rodger bit his lip not to laugh and Tessa narrowed her eyes and shook her head. She was younger than me, but nicer. Don’t ruin dad’s memories of grandfather she’d say.

You mean the illusion, right? I’d counter.

She only ever rolled her eyes and ended the conversation. Dad had Stockholm syndrome, plain and simple. Grandfather was a sociopath and an asshole (maybe those mean the same thing, I’m not a literature major) and if dad’s coping mechanism was to think he was Jesus “Emora” Christ, maybe I should just let sleeping dogs lie but I didn’t really want to.

“My dad was the best man,” dad continued, his cheeks a little rosy from red wine. “We were great friends.”

My uncle Elvis—ya, that’s his real name—sighed with a bit of salad hallway to his lips.

“You remember that time he took us camping,” dad said to Elvis. “Up near Cripple Ridge?”

“I remember,” Elvis said while he slowly wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You broke you fishing pole and he yelled at you for forty-minutes.”

“We were up near that copse of those giant oaks,” dad said, unperturbed by uncle’s comment. “And I casted underneath that rock ledge and nailed that huge trout.”

“Fifteen inches,” Elvis said. “Decent sized.”

“That was the thing about dad,” dad continued. He reached for the wine bottle and splashed some more into his glass. “He was a teacher. Taught me how to fish, camp, hunt—”

“You said that earlier dear,” mom said.

“And it didn’t stop when I was a kid, neither,” dad said. “After college he took me under his wing and taught me the business.”

Dad learning the business was grandfather working him hundred-hour weeks and telling him everything he did was wrong. Uncle Elvis opened his mouth to respond and then decided against he. He looked over at me and we shared an understanding; he shrugged and picked up his fork again.

“What do you think is in the box, dad?” Tessa said.

I perked up at that. Dad’s never-ending stories about the Tyrant of Torrance Street (that’s what grandfather’s neighbors called him) were something to tune out, but the brown paper box, now that was interesting.

“I’m sure it’s something special,” dad said proudly. “My dad was one of the neatest people I ever met. His will said that the boxes contained what he cared for the most.”

Grandfather’s will was sort of what everyone expected. He didn’t like his family but he also didn’t like anyone else enough to bequeath his wealth to. Me and my siblings (and my cousins) all have seventy-five thousand ready for us in personal accounts when we turn twenty-five. My parents and my uncle Elvis will be set for life, and the bar my grandfather hung around in all hours of the day was getting a new roof. But the brown paper box…that was weird. Elvis and dad both got one from the lawyer after the funeral. The package was shoebox sized and wrapped in plane brown paper with simple twine. It was light as a feather and felt empty; I assumed it was just a letter or something. I could feel the box’s eyes on me and glanced over my shoulder to where it sat on the back bar. Plain and square and unprepossessing.

Earlier in the day dad was showing off his mysterious box as if it was filled with gold; Elvis had taken his and tossed it into the back of his car and it was still there. When I asked if he was going to open it he said maybe. Uncle Elvis and I understood each other. I was afraid of grandpa growing up, and even if Elvis may have loved Emora in an odd way because he was his dad, uncle most certainly didn’t like the guy.

“Special like what?” Tessa said. She too turned around to look at the box.

Dad took a sloppy sip of wine and shrugged. “I don’t know, but let’s open it, shall we? It’s about time. It’s been a few weeks.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea right now,” Elvis said.

I glanced at my uncle; something told me he knew exactly what was in that box.

“Let’s look,” dad said, standing up and taking a few clumsy steps over to the bar. He picked up the package and shook it in his hands a few times as he wandered back to his chair. “Feels light as a feather, whatever it is. Dad used to draw sometimes. He was one of the best artists I’ve ever seen.”

Elvis rubbed at his eyes.

Dad looked around expectantly, like we were supposed to do a drum roll or something but nobody was moving.

“Well,” dad said. “No time like the present. Get it? Because this is a present?”

Rodger nodded. “Good one dad.”

“Thanks, Rodge,” dad said.

The twine came undone in an instant, followed by the brown paper. Dad slid his hand through the seams just like—you guessed it—his dad taught him to do. Why are you making so much noise ripping the paper? Grandfather would say. Slide your hand through the seams, god damnit.

Dad tossed the paper to the side, his hands holding a plain, brown box. He set it on the table as gently as if it was a block of explosives and lifted the lid. “Here goes nothing.”

Everyone tensed and Rodger stood up to see what was in the box. Dad froze, his eye starring down into the box. I couldn’t really see so I stood up, too. Mom couldn’t see either over the lid so she stood up as well, followed by Tessa, but Elvis stayed seated.

“It’s empty,” mom said, leaning as far over the table as she could.

“It’s empty?” Tessa said, looking from me to Rodger.

Uncle Elvis just sighed.

Nothing I thought. Why that rotten bastard on his way out the door gave them a box with what he cared for most that was empty because he didn’t care about anything.

“Damn,” dad said.

“Honey,” mom said, reaching for dad.

“Damn what a man!” dad said, his face beaming. He held up the box for all to see. “Look. It’s empty! Dad didn’t care about worldly possessions, you see. Even after he died he’s still teaching us a lesson. What a great man.”

Grandpa had a dozen cars, a house five times the size of what he needed, and a swimming pool he bragged about to everyone. He liked things more than, well, anyone.

“Dad,” I said. I couldn’t believe he was this fucked in the head. “That’s not what that means. It means he didn’t care about anything.”

“Ah, you just didn’t understand my dad,” dad said, looking fondly into the empty box.

I turned to my uncle for help. He smiled sadly and shook his head. I looked at Tessa and she was starring me down. Rodger just shrugged.

“What a great man,” dad said again.

I sighed. “Ya dad. What a great man.”

The End