They weren’t there because they were in Hawaii on vacation and didn’t want to spend the extra cash to fly home early, which tells you a little something about my son, but I understood what my father was saying, so I nodded.
Then I added the old man’s World War II dog tags to my lucky Vietnam dog tags, rubber-banding the four of them together and then threading my silver chain through all four holes. I showed the old man.
He nodded.
I tucked them into my shirt.
He closed his eyes.
When the good-looking nurse began posing the million-dollar question with her eyes, I nodded again, which meant more morphine. Legal murder. Only no one will say it. It’s supposed to be for the pain, but really you just help the dying overdose out of mercy. We made the decision without words. The little blonde was smart. Had murdered her share of old people already, and I admired her professionalism. If she had said the words, asked if we should kill my father, I’m not sure I would have been able to go through with what we both knew was the right thing to do. But she only asked with her eyes, which was classy and made the nodding easier. Helped me do my duty.
The old man whispered “Eve, Eve, Eve” for a while when he was morphine high. Barely audible. Eve was my mother’s name. She died of a stroke several years before.
When the deed was done, I transferred my father’s gold watch from his wrist to mine as the little blonde called the boys from the crematorium.
Two big guys finally showed up. One black. One white. The black guy had a panther tattooed on his neck. The white dude was pierced just about everywhere. His face looked like a fucking pincushion. Once they had my father on the stretcher and under the white sheet, I said, “Are you two Philadelphia sports fans?”
“Hell yeah!” the white one said.
The black guy just nodded enthusiastically.
“You like the Eagles, then?”
“Bleed green,” the black guy said.
“Let me tell you something,” I said, putting a finger in each of their faces. “The old man goes into the fire wearing the tracksuit and the hat. I catch either of you wearing my father’s clothes, and I’ll put a fucking blade through your esophagus and watch you choke on your own blood. Understood?”
I pulled out my military-issue switchblade I got off this Iraq and Afghanistan war vet I met at the VA. He was a true American hero, by the way. Three tours. Gave his legs for his country. He’s got prosthetics now. Completes goddamn marathons on those things, and could still kick your two-legged ass in five seconds flat.
But the knife he gave me, you stick the handle between the target’s ribs and hit the button. A spring-loaded blade pops out and shoots into the heart, killing instantly. Imagine what it could do to a throat.
I hit the button.
The blade shot up into the air between us.
The white one said, “Yo, man,” and then started talking about how people shit themselves when they die, which was supposed to prove he wouldn’t steal my father’s kelly-green Eagles tracksuit. As if this kid didn’t have access to a washing machine.
I told him I didn’t give a fuck about all that. “My father goes into the fire, as is.”
“Got it,” the spade said, and when I looked into his eyes, I knew he did. You can tell a lot by looking into a man’s eyes. I liked this black dude. He was honest. He understood the importance of my father being cremated in his favorite outfit. He was gonna do the job right, I could tell, so I let him and the other clown take away my old man’s corpse.
The next day I called my father at 6:30 a.m., like I had done for the past four decades, to discuss the day’s newspaper headlines and the sorry state of the world over coffee.
I had momentarily forgotten my father was dead.
I remembered just as soon as his answering machine picked up. His voice was the same as always. He sounded welcoming and at ease and a little excited that someone had called.
“Leave a message at the beep!” my dead father said.
I didn’t say anything on the tape, but I called back several times, just to hear the old man’s voice. It was a strange thing to do, and it was hard to reconcile the fact that we had killed him with morphine the day before with the fact that his voice was so alive on the machine. I kept calling back just to hear it, over and over again. I couldn’t stop.
Around ten, I went to his place and disconnected the machine. I threw it away just so I wouldn’t be tempted to play the message again. I had his dog tags. I had his watch. There wasn’t anything else I wanted, so I started stuffing trash bags, most of which were snatched up by the black ladies who worked at his retirement home. I have no idea what they did with all of my father’s junk. I didn’t care.
In my father’s wallet I found three pictures.
A tight-lipped black-and-white head shot of his best friend from high school, George Esher, who parachuted out of a plane back in World War II and was never seen again.
A grainy picture of me on my wedding day. I’m in a dark-green tuxedo, wearing a huge velvet bow tie. Jessica’s standing next to me, wearing a white dress and holding a bouquet of light-blue flowers. Hank was in her belly. But I don’t want to talk about Jessica right now. I’ll talk about Jessica later.
The third picture is my son, Hank, when he was playing Little League. Maybe ten years old. He’s holding a wooden bat and wearing a navy cap and uniform. It’s supposed to look like an official baseball card. The bat is resting on Hank’s shoulder because he wasn’t even strong enough to hold it up in the air for the time it took to snap a photo.
Your son and granddaughter need you, I heard my father echo once again from beyond the grave, and I knew it was true.
4.
June 6 was my father’s favorite, favorite day of the year. After I got back from Vietnam, the old man opened up a little more about his wartime experience. Soldiers can talk to soldiers. D-day was his big day. The only thing he felt he did right in World War II. He lost a lot of time over there, and he got very emotional about it. But my father liked to recite General Eisenhower’s D-day message:
Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
My old man knew the whole speech by heart. I think he had a drinking problem in World War II. I know he felt he had gotten men killed in an effort to secure booze. He never told me the whole story, but that’s why he never drank once he came home. Not even a drop of alcohol. He was sober on D-day.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.