The End of FUN

by Sean McGinty

  A moment of silence, no tears that I could see, and then the old lady stepped forward. She pushed back her hat, cleared her throat, closed her eyes, and began to sing. It was “Amazing Grace.” It’s a slow song, and her interpretation was even slower than usual. I mean crazy slow. And her voice? How can I describe it? She hit the notes OK, but it was like her throat was full of gravel, and listening to her I realized that this was about the last place I wanted to be, and so I tried to bring up Tickle, Tickle, Boom! (YAY!) but Homie™ popped up and was all,

  > access denied!

  u r a FAIL!

  Right. I’d almost forgot. So I stood there and listened to the old lady sing. She kept stopping to cough and clear her throat, and it was like, hurry up, hurry up—and yet by the end of the song, she kind of had me. I hadn’t known him very well, not really, but after all he was my grandpa, and now here he was under my feet. It’s weird what music can do to you. YAY! for “Amazing Grace.” It’s a pretty powerful song. One moment I was all, This sucks I’m cold hurry up let’s get it over with, and then suddenly it was like: Holy shit, we are burying one of our own.

  After it was over, we walked back to the cemetery gates, and the priest and the funeral rep shook everyone’s hand and got into the same car, and it was just me, my dad, and the little old lady. Dad was ready to go, but I told him I’d catch up. I didn’t feel like leaving yet, and I didn’t feel like walking with him for ten blocks, because then we’d have to talk, and I didn’t feel like talking.

  He gave me another one of his looks. “How do I know if you’re telling the truth?”

  “Where else am I gonna go?”

  “Just come over, OK? I’ve got something I need to show you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You come over, you’ll see it.”

  “Just give me a while.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Don’t take all night.”

  So then it was just me and the little old cowboy lady. Turned out she was my grandpa’s neighbor. I’d never met her before. Like I mentioned, she was short. Probably no more than 4 feet 9 even with the hat, but otherwise fairly normally proportioned—not like a gnome or anything—except that her skin was kind of gnomelike, all wrinkly like an old glove left out in the sun.

  “Do you believe in Jesus?” she said.

  The question caught me by surprise. I didn’t want to offend her or anything, so I said, “Yeah, sure.”

  “Your grandfather didn’t.” She had a voice like a frog, like you might hear a frog singing across the swamp, all low and gravelly.

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. He was a smart man, but he didn’t believe in Jesus. I told him he better get himself straight before he died. We used to joke about which of us was going to go first….I used to tell him, ‘Henry, when I die just dump me in the river. Just roll me into the water. That’s all I ask. No service, no burial. Let the Lord take me as I am.’” The woman coughed. “Know what he would say? ‘Well, what if it’s winter, Anne?’”

  “OK…”

  “If it’s winter, the river’s frozen. I hadn’t thought about that.” The woman coughed again. “I told him, hoist me up into a tree and let the vultures have me, then. Know what he said? ‘There aren’t any vultures in winter, Anne.’ He was a smart man, your grandfather. But he didn’t believe in Jesus.” The woman paused to hawk a speckled loogie into the snow. “Tell me your name again?”

  “Aaron.”

  “I’m Anne,” she said. “Anne Chicarelli. And are you Catholic, Adam?”

  “Not really.”

  She nodded. “It’s a dead end if you ask me. A husk with no kernel. Tell me, Adam. Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord and savior?”

  “It’s Aaron.”

  “Yes, and have you asked him to come to you and light you on fire so that you, too, may come stumbling out of that cave on the third day, clapping the dust from your hands?”

  I try to respect my elders, because they’ve been through a lot and supposedly know all about life—but mainly because I don’t want to deal with their shit. Better to just mumble something and let them go on with whatever it is they’re doing, but this was getting ludicrous.

  “Can I pray for you, Adam?”

  “Pray for me? I guess…”

  What I didn’t understand was that she meant pray right now. She took my hands in hers and bowed her head. Tiny bones squeezing me tight.

  “Lord, we thank you for this day and all your blessings. Adam, here, is still young, oh Lord, and thinks he may live forever, but the truth is death awaits us all, and only those who have accepted your son as their savior will live again to see your eternal kingdom. The rest, have mercy on their poor, tormented souls. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”

  Damn, lady. So what did that mean for my grandfather? Endless fire? It was weird that someone who could sing such a beautiful song could also at the same time be so full of it. Join our team! And if you don’t join our team, burn forever in hell! Some team. If that’s how the game works, I don’t want to play.

  “Um, thanks,” I said.

  “No problem. Nice to meet you, Adam.”

  The woman, Anne, shook my hand one more time, stepped up into a big white truck, gave a wave, and drove away.

  So then it was just me out there. Still, I wasn’t ready to leave yet. How can I explain it? It was freezing, but I just didn’t feel like leaving. The funeral had left me in a strange mood. I wandered back into the cemetery and stood under the oak tree not far from my grandpa’s grave. The leaves were gone and it loomed overhead, a giant schematic of a circulatory system, gnarled branches veining a pale sky. A storm was moving in. The first flakes were beginning to fall.

  Jesus, it was a miserable day.

  By the time I got to my dad’s it had started to snow. I mean really snow: gathering heavy on the bushes and the roof and the bare branches of the elm tree he was always threatening to cut down. I was heading in to warm up, but Dad stopped me in the doorway.

  “Gimme one of your shoes.”

  “What?”

  “Gimme a shoe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. Take it off.” He was sipping something from an old army canteen, one of those metal ones with the chain on the lid. He aimed the lid at my left shoe. “Gimme that one there.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Just do it.” His breath smelled like gin.

  Fine. I gave him the shoe, my green Osmos™IV.

  “Bones!” he called.

  A big gray dog stepped out from behind the recliner. Some kind of Weimaraner maybe. You know the phrase at death’s door? That’s what this one looked like, its front paw wrapped up in bandages, limping over to my dad like a dog in one of those Humane Society ads—one of the real bedraggled ones whose sad orphan hearts have never felt love and whose lips have never once tasted Purina® Ultra all-protein high energy revitalizing dog food (YAY!).

  “Hey! Don’t give him my shoe!”

  “It’s a her.”

  Dad gave the dog my shoe.

  She took it in her mouth and limped back behind the recliner.

  “Why’d you do that? I don’t want her eating my shoe!”

  “She’s not! Look!”

  I found the dog curled up in the corner with my shoe. She wasn’t eating it, but she was licking it, very delicately, like a tender ice-cream cone. Next to my shoe, sort of nestled up against her belly, were two flip-flops and a pair of my dad’s boots.

  “What’s she doing? Since when do you have a dog?”

  “She’s playing mom,” said Dad. “And she isn’t mine. I’m just the one who found her. She was hanging around your grandpa’s place—no collar or tags. That neighbor lady, Anne, she said she hadn’t seen the dog before. So it’s a mystery. No one knows the dog’s real name but the dog. Isn’t that right, girl? We’ve been calling her Bones on account of how skinny she is. But technically speaking she belongs to you.”

  “What do you mean—tech
nically?”

  “You always wanted a dog, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, when I was like, ten. And you wouldn’t let me get one because of your allergies.”

  “What allergies?”

  “You know—how you’re allergic to dogs.”

  Dad blinked. “I’m not allergic to dogs.”

  “OK, so you lied to me. What’s up with the stupid dog?”

  “She’s been through a lot, Aaron. I should never have taken her to the vet—and especially not that incompetent shit Doctor Aguilar. Well, he calls himself a doctor. See, when I found her she was in bad shape. Paw all torn up. Skinny as a rail. Got her here and noticed she was lactating, so I went back to look for the puppies, but I couldn’t find any. I took her to the vet to get her paw checked out, and I told the guy he may as well fix her, too, because I didn’t want any more puppies…so the doctor fixed her.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “She was pregnant, Aaron. That sonofabitch performed a puppy abortion—and the only reason I even know is because he tried to charge me extra for it! I told him, ‘When I said “fix her” I obviously meant tie off her tubes—NOT kill her puppies.’ Your sister was profoundly upset. She thinks the dog has PTSD. She went to the vet’s and read him the riot act….The point is, like I said, the dog—she’s yours.”

  “Yeah—no. I don’t want an old dog.”

  “Well, hold on. You haven’t seen the thing yet.”

  “What thing?”

  “The thing I wanted to show you.” He tipped back the canteen and swallowed the rest. “You thirsty? I’ve got some Sparkl*Juice™.”

  YAY! for Sparkl*Juice™ but not really, because IMHO it’s pretty disgusting actually, and especially the diet kind, which is what my dad had. He poured me a glass and then tipped off his canteen, and then he went to the bedroom to get whatever it was he was going to get, and I sat down on the couch and looked around at the old house.

  Same as it always was. Same furniture, same smell. Except there was one new thing—only it wasn’t new. It was a record player, like an old ancient cabinet set. Sitting in the corner. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. There was also something weird: where the record should go there was a pair of women’s undies.

  Not just any undies, either. Silky red and with black lace around the edges and this sheer mesh—like a screen door almost—in the crotchal area.

  Dad came back down the hall carrying a book.

  I held up the undies. “This the thing you wanted to talk about?”

  “Where’d you get those?”

  “I dig the mesh. You wear these when you go jogging?”

  “Gimme those,” he said.

  He took the undies and handed me the book. “Have a look at that.”

  But I wasn’t ready to look. I wanted to talk about the undies.

  “How’d they end up on the record player?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Well, it kind of is. I don’t know if I want to stay at a place where unsanitary and possibly diseased undergarments are just lying around everywhere—I might catch something.”

  “Just look at the damn book.”

  Fine. It was a yellow-and-blue book with a picture of a man and a treasure box on the cover. True Tales of Buried Treasure by Edward Rowe Snow. It took me a moment to remember where I’d seen it before.

  “Hey. Grandpa was trying to get me to read this when I stayed with him that summer.”

  “It was on the floor next to him. Look inside.”

  A folded piece of paper marked page ix of the introduction. Part of a passage had been underlined in black pen:

  My continuous word of warning is that you should never be discouraged by failure, and never expect success. Then if you don’t find the treasure, you will not be too disappointed, and if you are successful, you’ll be able to stand it more gracefully.

  “Now check out the bookmark.”

  A scrap of yellow notebook paper folded in quarters. I unfolded it. There was a message, a typed message. I mean like actually typed, like with an actual typewriter—and from the looks of it a highly malfunctional one, with a messed-up ink ribbon and a doubled D key.

  DDear to whom it may concern:

  I, Henry O’Faolain, being of soundd mindd andd failing boddy, ddo hereby ddeclare this ddocument to be my final will andd testament as witnessedd by myself here todday in DDecember. If that’s not goodd enough for the lawyers, tell them to come talk to me in hell because congratulations that’s where we’re headdedd, though personally I ddon’t believe in hell or heaven either, just a crackedd glass with water pouring out the sidde, andd that’s what we call “time.” First you have a lot then you have a little.

  It looks like I’ve reachedd my expiration ddate. The ddoctors have informedd me that my lungs are full of cancer, but I ddon’t needd someone with a ddegree to tell me what I alreaddy know. So that’s that. Time for me to go.

  I hereby ddistribute my possessions as follows:

  From the 10 acres of property, to my truck, my tools, ddown to the last book of codde on the bookshelf, I leave everything to my granddson Aaron. But please note Aaron that at this stage you are not in possession of the most important thing. This isn’t about treasure andd property. When you’ve finishedd, you’ll undderstandd.

  I’ve been here 76 years andd yet I’ve never stoppedd being surprisedd at how buriedd andd overrun by rats this worldd really is. Look up, ddown: levels andd levels of nestedd rats. They charge us for answers to their rat questions, andd as we scramble to pay them, keep jabbing at us for more. Bankers…priests…insurance agents…businessmen…politicians & other speakers against truth…usurpers…lawyers…thieves…scounddrels…Rats, rats, rats…

  DDon’t worry: I’ve madde arrangements to secure the treasure against their rat handds. Give them a ddime andd they press you for the whole ddollar. Pause for a moment andd they’ve taken your shirt too. Yet I ddo believe Aaron granddson you are smarter than the average rat. Got it? Andd when you are stuck, you will know what to ddo: DDig DDeeper!

  Signedd on this dday,

  Henry J. O’Faolain

  PS As for my remains, I hereby request that one half (½) of my boddy be buriedd in the Antello municipal cemetery, rites to be readd by certifiedd Catholic clergy. The remaining one half (½) of my boddy to be crematedd to ashes, these then to be loaddedd into shotgun shells andd honorably ddischargedd from my Remington .410 in the four carddinal ddirections from some appropriate hill or vantage point, preferably at ddusk. My tombstone to readd:

  “It Couldd Have Been Wondderful Andd Sometimes It Was”

  PPS Ignore the ddouble dd’s. But the first clue is this: look behindd the portrait of Mary.

  I had to read it twice to figure out what was going on, and even then I wasn’t so sure.

  “Holy shit. He left it all to me?”

  Dad frowned. “I’m the SOB who had to deal with him all my life, but yeah, it appears so. The old man was crazy, and a pain in the ass in both life and death.” He plopped down on the couch. “That will proves it.”

  It was kind of crazy. But as I read over the words again, this realization began to sink in. Maybe it wasn’t crazy. Ten acres, house, truck, tree, every rock and brush—and all of it mine? Holy shit! Problems solved! Wow. You think you’re in a hole, and then suddenly you find yourself standing on top of a mountain. And that mountain is made of money. Enough to pay everyone and take care of all my problems. Awesome!

  “The old goat was insane.”

  “You’re not disputing it, though, right? I mean, you’re not just angry because—”

  “Am I pissed I got squat?” My dad was standing again. “I’m happy to be rid of him, not gonna lie. That’s my reward. Sorry to say that about my own father, but it’s true. But there’s someone else we’re forgetting in all this.”

  “Who?”

  “Your sister, smart guy. How come she got cut out?”

&nb
sp; “How should I know?”

  “Well, here’s what you need to do. You need to sell his place and give her half. It’ll take a while, the market is down, but maybe in a year or so you can get a decent price….”

  Right. Of course. Here I was still getting used to the idea that I’d suddenly inherited an entire house + some property + whatever else, and he was already jumping on me to sell it and split it with Evie. But what really got me was how he wouldn’t even give me the chance to come up with the idea on my own. Because who knows? Maybe I would have offered her something. Definitely I would’ve. Although maybe not half. I mean—come on. He did leave it all to me.

  My dad continued with his plan: “The reason I say you can wait on putting it on the market immediately is because I think there may be money available now. You know, from the land sale.”

  “What land sale?”

  “The eighty acres he sold to the Coyote Heights golf course. This was maybe five years ago, remember? They never finished it. The whole thing went under when the Restructuring happened. Here’s what I want to know: Who thinks it’s a good idea to build a luxury golf course in the middle-of-nowhere Antello?”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, I know for a fact he got paid. He kept ten acres for himself. Sold the rest. Didn’t trust the banks. And the question is, where did he put the money? I guarantee you he didn’t spend it. Which is why I wanted you to come over here in the first place.”