The spider’s webs trailed in
wild crisscross patterns across the small dark basement. Barry bumbled through
them as they broke. He spit and hacked his way through the sticky and
surprisingly resilient webs toward his father’s old work bench. The old
overhead bulb was barely bright enough to light his way. The afternoon sunlight
streaming in from the ground level windows was nearly all Barry had to guide
his maneuvers around the clutter his father had collected and stored. Barry hated
spiders and their webs. They made him
feel unclean somehow. The musty, dirty basement didn’t help that feeling.
He never liked the basement.
When he was a child he would never go down there, yet his father loved it.
Barry’s father was down their all the time, tinkering and fixing various broken
trinkets he found in alleys and at garage sales. Barry’s mother hated it too, but she never
said anything. She just left one day and didn’t come back. Barry moved an oil stained cardboard box out
of his way with his foot and tried not to imagine the millions of spiders
scurrying from underneath. He didn’t dare look down at it.
Barry had to find a key to a
safety deposit box. He had been told by the executor of the estate that there
had been some mention by his father of the key being on or in the work bench.
The executor, the lawyer, had been the only one present when Barry’s father
died last week. Barry was in San Francisco with his own wife and daughter,
trying to forget the house on Melrose in Indiana. Barry couldn’t imagine what his father, the
drunken handyman of Calaveras County, could have possibly had in a safety
deposit box at the bank. He had nothing but the house, the mountains of junk in
the dank basement and furniture from the 1960’s on the main floor. Some of the
furniture still had the plastic covers on them, from the sixties.
The work bench was mildly
organized. The tools were put away on their pegboard hooks, matching their
carefully traced outlines. Barry remembered that his father was meticulous
about his tools. They had to always be in good working order and easy to find.
The workbench counter top was a mess however. There were obsolete TV parts, a
washing machine motor, and part of an oscillating fan, coils of wires, nuts,
bolts, screws, nails, a Band-aid box, C-clamps, and three different tape
measures. There were piles of warranties, instruction manuals, and receipts
from the old hardware shop that had been out of business since the 1980’s and
tubes of super glue.
Barry sighed at the mess and
brushed his hair off his forehead. The basement was stuffy and warm, which
seemed odd since basements were usually cooler than the rest of the house. He
pulled the small worn green bar stool out from under the edge of the work
bench, dusted it off, and sat down in front of the mess. He was sure his father
had some organization in mind but to Barry it was just clutter. It was a
mountain of unfinished attempts and half completed goals. It was the perfect
description for his father.
His father wasn’t a mean man or
a bad man. He never got into any fights with anyone in town. He never started
any real trouble. But he was a drunk. He was one of those happy drunks who sang
songs about Ireland even though he’d never been, talked about politics with
anyone who would listen but never made any real political affiliations known.
He never made unwanted passes at women or tried to force himself into any
conversations. Yet, he was a drunk. He never raised a hand to Barry yet he
never pulled him in for a hug either. To Barry, his father was the man who wasn’t
there, but was there. A shadow of a man; or at least the shadow of what might
have been at one time something like a man.
The funeral was very small;
Barry and a few other townsfolk. The bartender at The Easy J came but Barry
thought that was only to possibly collect on any inheritance that might help
pay the bar tab Barry’s father had left. His mother did not come. Barry didn’t
even know if she was alive or dead herself. She was too big for Barry’s father.
She was a woman of large character, too big for the small town life, but too
small town for life in the big city. The rumor was she’d run off with the town pediatrician
but Barry didn’t really believe that. He figured she was tired of trying to
clean up the happy drunk who had nothing but a pile of trash in the basement.
Barry started shuffling through
the pile of old crusty paperwork on the work bench. It was mostly receipts that
Barry’s father should have written off on his taxes as business expenses but
never got around to doing. There was nothing on them but dust and oil stains. A
few of the receipts had his father’s oily fingerprints pressed into them. They
were smeared in some places and clear in others. It looked like the
fingerprinting department at the police station had gone insane. Barry ran his
own thumb over the dried oil stained fingerprint of his father. He thought he
should feel something. He thought he should feel sad that he and his father
never had the relationship like the ones on TV or movies. But he didn’t feel
sad. He didn’t feel anything.
They hadn’t spoken much more
than the casual Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday’s since Barry stormed off to
college as soon as he could. He was ashamed to be the town drunk’s son. He
wanted to get as far away as possible. Barry’s own daughter hadn’t even ever
met her grandfather. Yet, it wasn’t hate that kept Barry away. It was the fact
that his father never made any effort. He never tried to clean up, or show
Barry that he was capable of something more than just drinking and tinkering
and occasionally fixing the boiler at the High School. His father, just never
tried anything.
Barry didn’t know if that was
hate or not and that’s what bothered him most. He didn’t even have a close
enough relationship with his father to consider their rift anything more than
casual indifference to each other, or at the very least, an incapacity to
express any love. Barry just knew that he hated coming down to the damn
basement. That was for sure.
He felt the warmth of the dark
basement. Its dingy overwhelming heaviness seemed to be creeping in over his
shoulders. Barry leaned forward on the old workbench and closed his eyes. He felt an anger in him he had pushed down a
long time ago bubble to the surface. He clenched his teeth and balled his hands
into fists. He stood up and with all his might swiped all the parts and tubes
and papers off the workbench in a furious tornado. He pounded on the old bar
stool and tossed it to the far side of the basement knocking over old boxes and
crates. He kicked old boxes and pushed over piles of magazines and newspapers
until he stumbled on a coil of industrial cable and fell into a pile of old
clothes in big black plastic garbage bags.
He lay there panting and
sweating. The basement was filled with old dust swirling in clouds in front of
the window. They danced in a confused swirl trying to understand why they had
been so unceremoniously startled from their untouched slumber. Barry put his
hands to his face, as if the clouds of dust might somehow turn into the ghost
of his father. He put his forearm over his eyes and felt the sting of ancient
tears on his cheek. He waited. He caught his breath and lifted himself up from
the pile of old bundled clothing. He suddenly got the Heebie Jeebies and
thought he was probably covered in spiders. He started bushing himself off,
grabbing at every tickle or itch like a black widow was about to chomp down on
his skin.
Barry looked at the mess he’d
made. The mess his father had made. He decided that he’d had enough for today.
If there was a security deposit box key somewhere, it was probably long lost.
He’d have to try again tomorrow. He wanted to take a shower more than he could
ever remember. He trudged up the old stairs and flicked the switch to the old
overhead bulb and the basement fell into darkness.
http://haszczu.deviantart.com/art/cellar-light-102450508
No comments:
Post a Comment