FOR THIRTY years my father anticipated his impending death—at any time!—and suggested that family members earmark objects in the house by taping our names on them. None of us did. For me it felt morbid, as if competing with my siblings for threadbare rugs might hasten his demise.
In 1998 I relocated to Kentucky one last time, filled with optimism and hope. I bought a house high on a hill with a long balcony overlooking several acres and a pond, the nicest home I’d ever had. Prior to this, my wife and young sons had lived in a string of cheap dumps rented over the phone, moving our increasingly battered secondhand belongings. Although I didn’t know it yet, my marriage was deeply troubled by the itinerant lifestyle of a perpetually visiting writer at various universities. We made seven interstate moves in four years, saving the boxes each time. As the adventure wore off, so did the sheen of marital bliss.
This was intended as the final move—back to Kentucky at age forty for a permanent job at my alma mater, Morehead State University. We needed furniture, and I decided to take my father up on his largess. He always said I could have anything, but I had never asked. This would be a first.
Visiting my folks’ house was always fraught with tension from the onset. When was the best time? How much notice did Dad need? Not too early, not too late, no time was ever ideal. If I took my sons along, I left them in the car while I entered the house and put the guns away. Dad didn’t like that. He suggested I should’ve taught my sons not to touch guns.
“They’re little kids,” I said. “They might accidentally run into the shotgun by the door.”
“They won’t run in my house!”
“I don’t meant run literally, but you know how boys play.”
“Then they can play outside.”
“Mom might want them to come in and eat.”
Dad walked away without speaking. I knew that evoking my mother had won the initial skirmish, but he would resent it for the entire visit.
Next came the production of pouring bourbon. It was best if Dad picked the glass, because any I chose was deemed inappropriate: too old, too new, reserved for special occasions, or a longtime favorite now retired. Preparing drinks gave my father the opportunity to talk nonstop while establishing dominion over the kitchen, the house, and the glassware—but mainly over me.
Equipped with whiskey, we went to the living room, where I listened to his criticism of politics, my siblings, and TV programming. I gulped my drink, which Dad would comment on—chip off the old block, son—and at the slightest lull in his monologue, I hurried to the kitchen, tossed back a shot of liquor, filled my glass, and returned to the living room. Dad resumed talking at the precise point he’d stopped, often in midsentence, a trait I found impressive.
Years back, Mom had replaced the dining room set and gotten rid of the old ladder-backed chairs with seats woven of rush. I’d grown up with five chairs at the table instead of six because Dad used one in his office. My parents had enclosed the side porch for storage, and suspended by a hook on the wall was the last dining room chair, dusty and laced with cobwebs. Dad raised the inevitable subject of what I’d like from the house. I suggested the chair, believing there’d be no conflict, since it was clearly not in use.
“What chair?” he said.
“On the wall out there.”
“No. That one has to stay.”
“Does Mom want it?”
“No, I do! That was John Cleve’s chair. He retired and his chair did, too. Ol’ John’s gone. That chair deserves a rest.”
After Dad died, I cleared the storage room but left the chair on the wall. Mom mentioned it and I reminded her it had been John Cleve’s and she dropped the subject. My sisters talked of burning it. I considered a formal pyre, but the outdoor fireplace had long since collapsed, and the living room contained a woodstove that hadn’t been used in so long, it contained the mummified corpses of eleven birds. My brother was surprised I wanted to keep the chair, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. It was less a case of loyalty to my father than to the chair itself and, in a circuitous way, to literature. The chair deserved more than flame. It had served. Two months later I moved it to Mississippi.