Chasing the Monsters: 56

The rain fell in sheets, and it was as unexpected as it could have been.  One minute, the boys and Todd were playing touch football, and the next, they were running toward the house, a mess of muddy shoes, wet hair and dripping clothes.  

Blair said, "Oh, get in here, guys, don't want you catching cold!"  She and Bitsy had gathered some towels together, and everyone was drying off.  "Okay," she ordered, "Strip off those wet clothes and put them into that hamper off the laundry room, go on!"  She ushered them off to the hallway leading to the mudroom and came back to the kitchen, Bitsy and Jewel.  "What a mess!"

"That's boys for you," Bitsy said.

"Oh yes, and Todd's just one of them," she rolled her eyes playfully.

"He's such a good father, Blair."

She stopped and reflected a minute.  "I know."

"Despite his life as a son."

She nodded, and Bitsy smiled softly, a shimmer of water in her eyes.  In moments, Jack and Ray reappeared, dried off and in other clothes.  Jack said, "Lucky, we just did some laundry, and it was there already."

"Jack, can you help me out and put Ray and Jewel down for naps?"

"Sure, Mom," he said, taking Jewel from her.

"Where's your father?"

"Still in there, not sure what he was doing.  Sam's with him."

"All right."  

Blair and Bitsy went into the living room and started looking at old photos, with Blair filling in her mother-in-law on the growing up of Jack and Starr.

Todd and Sam were still in the mudroom, and both were finally getting into clean dry clothes.  Sam said, "Mine don't really match."

"That's okay, we men don't care much about that when we're hanging around the house."

"Yeah, we men don't care."

"Right."

"Right.  Dad, what's that?"  Sam said, pointing.

He turned.  "It's an old trunk."  Something felt lumpy in his gut.

"From where?"

"From Chicago," and he headed toward the short length of stairs.  

Sam was still staring at it.  "From when you were little?"

"Yeah, I guess so.  If I ever was."

"You were, everyone is, sometime."

"Yeah, I guess so."  He suddenly felt cold.  "You want to go upstairs now?"

"Can we open it?"

You spent all those hours telling the kid that the past is dead.  Do you want him to be afraid . . . ?

"Ah, it's probably boring."

"No, it's not."

He remembered then, Blair telling him that kids had a certain curiosity about their parents as children.  That's what Sam was feeling.  He didn't want to shut him out.  There was nothing in that trunk that could hurt either of them; Peter was dead.  "Okay, sure," he said, going toward it, and turning on the light in the storage room, he took the dark out of the room.  He knelt in front of it, and Sam did, too.  Touching it, he realized how much it could transport him back, with just the feel and the smell of it:  rough but smooth, somehow, and leathery and worn.  In one place, he'd written with magic marker, "Todd."  It had a lock, and taped to the front were the two, small, brittle keys.  He took one out and gave it to Sam.  "Go ahead, then.  Careful, the keys are delicate."

Sam gently turned the key in the lock and sat back, looking at his father.  "It's your trunk, Dad, you should be the one to open it."

In other words, you look at your own shit, first, and deal with it.

He lifted the top and pushed it back, and it hung, suspended and open.  Inside was a myriad of things, thoughts, smells, feelings and memories that rushed at him as if in attack.  He took a breath and lowered his head slightly.  Sam's hand went to his shoulder, and he said, "You don't have to Dad, sorry."

"Nah, you think something in this old trunk will upset your old dad?"  he said, sitting up more straight and sure.   

"No, Dad, but you don't have to," Sam said, getting nervous.

His instincts kicked in.  "Sam, it's okay, nothing to be nervous about.  Peter can't hurt anyone anymore."  He moved a few books off the top and placed them on the floor.  He took hold of an Ernie doll, that he remembered like it was yesterday.  It was a puppet, and you could put your hand into it and make it talk.  He lifted it out of the trunk and did just that.  "See, Sam," he tried to imitate Ernie from Sesame Street, and Sam just looked, puzzled.  "Didn't you watch Sesame Street?"  

"Not really, Dad."

"I'll have to have a word with your mother on this," he said, setting Ernie down on the floor next to the books.  Next was a football, a small one, slightly deflated.  A lump formed in his throat as he remembered Peter's voice commanding him to throw and catch over and over until he got it right.

Run out for a pass, and catch it this time, Butterfingers. 

He dropped it.  Peter made him take it, and run it back to him, and then go out again.  This happened more than ten times, and Todd, out of breath, said, "Dad, can I rest?"

"No.  Get your pansy ass straight and run like I told you," and he threw it again, Todd running as fast as he could to try and catch it.  His fingers just grazed it, as he lost his footing and hit the ground hard.

"So much for you being a college football star someday," Peter had said, and walked over him to get into the house.

Todd knew what was next.  He was only seven, but he knew.  If he didn't get up fast and follow, he'd be locked out of the house for the rest of the night, and have to sleep in the shed.  He hated the shed; it was always dark, clammy and filled with bugs.  He pushed himself up, and noticed his shin was bleeding, from having scraped it on the way down.  

He struggled to his feet, just in time to hear the latch to the door to the house click.  This meant he had a choice: go into the shed, or worse, go into the cellar.  He hated the cellar; he couldn't even think of it.  He swallowed and headed instead to the shed, pulling open the doors, and finding a tarp to rest on, he settled into his place for the rest of the day and night . . .

"Dad, I mean it, we don't have to," Sam said, noticing his father's lost expression.

"It's okay Sam, I was just . . . remembering."

"I know.  I could tell in your eyes."

"Remembering is part of life, like anything else," he said, trying to center himself.

"It's like, totally okay, Dad.  I do it too, sometimes."

"Yeah, I know."

"Like this trunk, it reminded me.  When I first saw it, that's what made me want to see it.  It made me remember something."

"Really?"  He was reeling and trying not to reveal it to his son or lose control of himself.  For a moment, he could feel the cold dampness of the shed around him.  He took a deep breath and said, attempting to distract himself, "What did it remind you of?"

"My other Dad Zeus' magic trick trunk," he said.

***

"Oh, hey Broderick, I wasn't, uh, expecting ya."

Timothy assessed the man: disheveled, clothes unwashed, unshaven, and a bit of a pasty palor.  Looking beyond him, he sized up the situation further, spotting the disarray and the food containers.  "Ya weren't, eh?"

"No, I was just, uh, reading."

"The journals, I take it."

"Yeah, the journals."

"Ya missed y'ar wife's burial yesterday," Timothy said, abruptly.

"No, I didn't.  You have that wrong.  It's not until the end of the week."

"The end of the week came and went, Mate.  Ya missed it.  No one could find ya.  Y'ar son and his wife, and the little ones, all there, without ya."

He saw Jack Ribsky falter, and swallow.  "You're wrong."

"No, I'm not.  And ya know it."

The man squinted as if wincing in pain, and said, "That . . . it just can't be."

"It is."  Ribsky went back into the room, leaving the door ajar.  Timothy took this as an invite and followed him.  Timothy said, "Have ya been drinking water?" he asked, knowing from experience that too much alcohol and no water for days could lead to dehydration, delusion, even bring a man near death.

"I don't know," he said sitting down at the table, and putting his head into his hands.  "Can't be.  She just . . . died."

Timothy rested a hand on Ribsky's shoulder.  "She died 6 days ago, Man."

"I still have time," he said.

Timothy went into the bathroom, and ran the tap, putting the coldest water he could into a plastic cup.  "Here," he said, "drink some."

Ribsky looked up from his hands, and his expression, coupled with his ragged appearance, gave Timothy the image of himself, years back.  He didn't move the cup away and held it out toward Jack.

The man took it, and drank it, all the way to the bottom without stopping.  "I guess . . . maybe I was thirsty . . ."  He fumbled with the journal he was reading.  He'd gone through three volumes.  

Timothy sat across from him.  "So, ya've been reading."

"Yeah, these journals, you know, to get to the bottom of things.  Who ignored your son, which lead to . . . the events that . . ." his voice faded off.

"Y'ar in the fourth one, then?"

"Yeah.  Yeah, the fourth one."  He opened it to the page he left off on and started glancing through it.   "There's . . . nothing in these damn books so far but a cataloging of what a bastard Peter Manning was.  A sexual pervert.  Lots of other things.  I just," as he spoke, he turned pages, scanning them, "can't put them down, ya know, until I'm done.  Just looking for a clue to who . . . who let this guy get away with all this for all those years.  If he'd been caught, if he'd been brought in, so much would be . . ."  he stopped.   "My God."

"Are ya all right?"

"I'm . . . it's here, she . . . she met a friend of his."  He turned the page.  "He's a cop."

***

"What about his magic trick trunk?"  Todd said.

"He used to have one, it had a lot of tricks.  I always wanted to see inside it.  So I used to go in his room with him and look at it.  And he would lock it up, and I would want to see the other tricks, the good ones."

"Did he let you?"

"No, he mostly didn't.  One time, he got so mad at me because of it."

"What do you mean?"  Todd said, unpacking little items from the trunk and examining them as Sam spoke.  Each one had a special meaning in his life and brought back something to him.  Most of it, he noticed, was painful or made him sick.

"One day he left it open, because he got a phone call, and I went in and looked.  I was playing with some of the stuff, like this really cool set of rings he had, that joined, and these handcuffs and stuff.  He . . . came back in, and he was mad."

"Probably, he seems like the type."

"Yeah.  And you know what he did, Dad?"

"No, what did he do?"  He was still having trouble shaking the cold, damp feeling.

"He put me into the trunk and closed it.  He said I'd learn my lesson, sooner or later, and I'd stay away from his stuff.  I was scared, and he made me stay in there for a while."

You'll learn.  Get in there!  Peter sneered and the shed doors closed with a metallic bang.

Before Sam could understand what was happening, Todd was up the service stairs to the roof.  He called after him, "Dad?  DAD!" but Todd kept moving until Sam's little voice disappeared behind him.

It was enough.  He'd waited, and now, there was no more patience.  

He was going to wring Zeus' freaking neck.

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