The Unfinished Gift

by Dan Walsh

  Shawn stood up, a full four inches taller than his father, and paced in front of the coffee table. When he spoke again, he seemed a little more in control. “Okay, Dad, you’re right. I did get my way on those things. But you’re missing the point. I’m not a child. I shouldn’t have to fight for my way on things like that anymore. Each of those decisions was mine to make, not yours. Did you make it easy for me to make any of those choices? Did you even try to understand a single one? No, you did everything in your power to shut me down before you even heard me out.”

  Collins didn’t reply.

  “You seem to think every time I disagree with you, I do so out of spite,” Shawn said.

  “I say black, you say white,” said the elder Collins. “I say up, you say down.”

  “That’s not the way it is.”

  “It’s exactly the way it is,” Collins shouted. “At least for the last two years. Ever since you met—”

  “It is not. Look . . . I have to live my own life, whether you allow me to or not. I’m grateful for all the times you were there to guide me when I needed you, but I’m not that little boy anymore. I don’t know why you can’t see that. God help me if I ever treat my own son this way.”

  “God help you see how bullheaded and stubborn you’ve become. And how foolish.”

  “I’m bullheaded? I’m stubborn?” Shawn let out a long, frustrated sigh.

  “That’s right. In my day, a man did what he was told, respected his father. Sacrificed if he had to. Gave up what he wanted for what was right.”

  “And did you like that arrangement?”

  “It’s not a question of did I like it. It’s a question of duty and respect. Things you know little of.”

  “As I recall, all I ever heard is you complaining about how miserable you had it growing up with Grandpop. Is that how it works in this family? You have a miserable childhood, a tyrannical father whom you despise, stay under his control until you’re liberated by his death, then it’s your duty to pass the same thing on to your children? If that’s the Collins legacy, it dies here with me. I will never treat my son that way.”

  “Why, you ungrateful little—” Collins shouted, rising to his feet. “How dare you talk to me in my house that way. How dare you talk about your grandfather that way. Get out.” His whole arm pointed toward the front door.

  “Is that really what you want?”

  “It’s what I demand,” Collins said, still shouting. “Unless you’re prepared to take back everything you’ve just said.”

  “How can I, Dad? I can say I’m not trying to hurt you. I can say I’m not doing these things out of spite. But if you can’t let me start making my own choices without trying to manipulate me with guilt, we’re not going to have much of a future.”

  “Then so be it,” said Collins. He walked to the door and yanked it open. Shawn followed a few steps behind. “That woman has bewitched you, Shawn. She’s taken you away from us—”

  “Bewitched me?” Shawn stood right over him. “Elizabeth is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And she’s not taken me away—you’re the one putting me out. If you’d stop trying to run my life, we could get along fine. I came over here trying to share some things I’ve learned about the Christian faith, things I never understood before. I’m not telling you how to live your life. When you told me you didn’t want to hear any more, what did I do? I backed off. Does that mean I don’t feel strongly about my views? I’ve never felt more strongly about anything in my life, but I backed off. You know why? I was showing you respect. And that’s all I’m asking from you in return. Just a little respect.”

  “What do you mean, telling me what you learned about the Christian faith?” Collins was still yelling even though Shawn’s face was but inches from his own. “So you’re a Christian now, is that it? And what does that make your mother and me?”

  “Dad, did you hear a thing I said?”

  “So now you’re saying we’re not Christians? I can’t believe—”

  “Dad, stop. It’s not what I meant. There’s a difference, that’s all, between what I grew up learning and what I know now.”

  “I’ll say there’s a difference. You grew up learning respect, and now all you know about is being selfish and willful.” Collins held the door open wider and stood out of Shawn’s way.

  “So that’s it, then.”

  Collins motioned with his head for Shawn to leave.

  Standing in the vestibule, Shawn turned and said, “Don’t expect me to come back here begging to get in your good graces. It’s not going to happen.”

  Collins slammed the door shut, rattling the glass panes.

  He and Shawn hadn’t spoken two words since that moment, and that had suited Collins just fine. Ida had given him some trouble at first, but she was a good woman, knew her place in such matters.

  The only other contact was a brief phone call to Ida when Shawn’s wife got pregnant. But Collins stood his ground. The baby changed nothing. Three years later, Ida took ill. When the doctor confirmed their worst fears, Collins reluctantly agreed to allow Shawn to visit his mother as long as he gave fair warning before coming so Collins could exit the hospital first.

  On her deathbed, Ida had made him promise he would reconcile with Shawn and Elizabeth. The power of the moment had been too strong to resist. Collins agreed, taking some comfort that he had never said anything about how or when. There had been no contact in the four years that followed.

  Not until the boy had arrived the other day.

  “Ian, does that upset you?” The words barely penetrated, more like raindrops on a tin roof. “Ian? Ian, are you listening?”

  Collins finally focused on the mouth, then the face of Father O’Malley. Fear suddenly gripped him. If he didn’t act fast, the father would be tempted to repeat the lecture Collins had just been spared. “No, no. I hear you.”

  “But did I upset you?”

  “No, of course not. Why?”

  “Your face has been growing steadily more sour the more I go on.”

  “It’s just my breakfast turning over, Father. I’m fine. That’s all very interesting, what you were saying. But you know, I probably ought to go check on the boy, and I’m sure you’ve got a busy day ahead of you.” He stood up, hoping to strengthen the hint.

  It worked. Father O’Malley stood with him and began walking toward the door. Collins quickly stepped ahead and lifted his black overcoat from the hook. “Thank you for the coffee, Ian. A treat to have real sugar for a change.” He turned, allowing Collins to help him on with his coat.

  “Now, Ian. You think hard about what I said in our little talk. The boy’s been through a terrible ordeal. He needs normalcy and routine right now. I know you can’t change all your ways in a matter of days, or replace a mother’s love, but I’m just asking you . . . see what you can do to lighten his load. Would you do that for me, now? When Shawn gets home, maybe we can all sit down and figure something out together.”

  What an agonizing thought; Collins couldn’t even allow an image of it to form in his head. “I’ll let you know, Father.” He opened the front door.

  “I’ll be off then, Ian. The Lord bless you and keep you. My, what a frosty morn.”

  Collins quickly closed the door. As he walked the cups and saucers back to the kitchen, he tried to ward off any sense of guilt about whether he had just lied to a priest. It wasn’t lying in the true sense of the word, he decided. It was pretending to pay attention. And the fact that he didn’t tell the father about the feud between him and Shawn wasn’t a lie, either. Not telling someone a thing is not the same as telling them something that is untrue.

  What’s a few more weeks in purgatory? he thought. A small price to pay, considering. After rinsing the cups, he decided he better go check on the boy. He’d had plenty of time to do what he’d been told.

  Collins dried his hands and braced himself for a fresh onslaught of Christmas cheer.

  Nine

  Patrick had set the wooden
soldier aside as he worked his way through the box of decorations. He positioned it under the window so he could see it plainly at all times. By contrast the luster of the Christmas box had already faded. In about twenty minutes, he gathered a sufficient pile of decorations, made sure he could replace them in their assigned locations, then walked over to the wooden soldier and picked it up.

  He couldn’t just leave him here now that he’d discovered him. His grandfather would never allow him back up here to play. As he sat on an old cane chair, he stroked the soldier’s helmet and thought through a plan. He remembered his friend Billy saying people only put things in attics they don’t care about anymore. But they do care a little, otherwise they’d have thrown them out. This soldier must have been lying here for years, totally forgotten. It was caked in dust, like everything else up here. Maybe it was like Billy said, almost ready for the trash but not quite. Maybe his grandfather would let Patrick borrow it. He would promise not to hurt it. He wouldn’t even play with it, just set it on his dresser next to the picture of his parents.

  Then maybe if he was really good, his grandfather would let him take it home when his father came to pick him up. Patrick smiled at that thought; his father would love this soldier.

  He got up and carefully weaved his way back toward the stairs, cradling the soldier in his right arm. He’d come back for the decorations later. Barely halfway down the stairs, he heard footsteps coming up from the ground floor. He froze. Quick, he thought, back up the stairs and put the soldier back, right where you found it. No, don’t do that. Stick to the plan; it’s a good plan. It might work. This soldier wouldn’t give up and run away.

  Patrick took two more steps forward. The door opened. “Oh, hi. I was just coming down to—”

  “Well, Father O’Malley is finally gone. Hey, what is that you’ve got there?”

  “This? I found it up there, over by the—”

  “Who said you could touch that?”

  “Well, no one. I—”

  “Give me that.”

  His grandfather lunged toward him. Patrick fell back on the stairs. His grandfather snatched the wooden soldier from Patrick and stormed past him back up the stairs.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t taking it. I was just coming down to ask your permission.”

  “Don’t ever touch this again. You hear me?”

  He was already in the attic, his voice trailing off. Patrick wanted to run down the stairs and straight out the front door and never look back.

  “Can’t leave you alone for one hour,” he heard his grandfather say, followed by what sounded like two swear words. “No respect at all. Guess I know where you got that from.”

  What should he do? Patrick hated this place. Why had Miss Townsend brought him here? Couldn’t anyone else take care of him until they found his father? He’d rather live in an orphanage than here. He ran down the stairs, then across the hallway to his room. Once inside, he closed the door and jumped on the bed, bursting into tears, but cried into the pillow as quietly as he could.

  He didn’t know how long he had cried, but Patrick reached a point where he knew he was done. He felt a strange comforting feeling come over him just then. He sat up and looked into his mother’s smiling face in the picture. In his mind he could hear her talking to him again, strong and clear. “It’s okay, Patrick. You’re not alone.”

  Patrick wanted to argue the point, but he didn’t want the feeling of her nearness to leave. “But I feel like I am alone,” he whispered. “You’re in heaven; Daddy’s at the war. And this man hates me, and I don’t even know why. Nothing I do is right.” He started breathing heavily, like he was about to cry again.

  Through his mother’s eyes a thought seemed to surface. She wasn’t speaking it, but it was almost as strong. He remembered a bedtime story she’d read him one night during a terrible thunderstorm, about a time when the disciples were out on a boat. The wind had started to howl, and the waves began tossing the boat every which way. A storm much worse than this one, she had said. They had all began to fear the boat would capsize, and they would all drown.

  The most amazing thing was that Jesus was sound asleep in the back of the boat. “Can you imagine that,” his mother had said. “Being sound asleep when everyone else was afraid for their lives?”

  Patrick remembered the disciples had woken Jesus up, saying something like, “Lord, don’t you care if we die?” His mother had said sometimes we feel like we’re all alone when we’re afraid or in danger, but really we’re not, not if the Lord is with us. Jesus woke up, walked to the edge of the boat, and ordered the wind and the seas to be calm and still. Instantly, they obeyed.

  His mother had finished the story by saying that Jesus could sleep easily, even during a scary time like that, because he knew his heavenly Father had everything under control, and that he had authority even over things as powerful as the wind and the sea.

  Patrick felt that same calm come over him just now. His grandfather was scary all right, but he wasn’t more powerful than the wind and the sea. When Patrick’s mind drifted back to the present, he was still staring at his mother’s beautiful face. Then he heard the doorbell ring downstairs.

  Collins didn’t hear the doorbell ring the first time. It was normally loud enough to reach the rafters but not louder than his thoughts. This attic had always proved to be a place of conflicting emotions for him. Everywhere he turned he collided with memories, mostly painful ones.

  Everything having to do with Ida just reminded him of how lonely he’d become since her passing. Everything to do with Shawn reminded him of either the pain of the last seven years or of the good times they had before the rift, times they could never have again.

  Collins held the wooden soldier in the light and remembered the day it began as a block of wood from a pile behind the garage. It had been an overcast day late in the fall, before Shawn had ever met that woman he married. He had just headed back to college after yet another difficult visit back home. Collins decided to carve the soldier for Shawn as a peace offering. Shawn’s room was filled with things Collins had carved for him throughout his childhood. He knew Shawn had recently developed an interest in World War I, so Collins modeled the soldier after Alvin York, a famous World War I hero.

  As it turned out, his peace offering brought no peace between them.

  At first, when Shawn came home, it seemed to work its magic once more. But by the end of the weekend, they were in conflict again and Shawn left in a huff. He stopped coming home on weekends after that.

  The doorbell rang again.

  Collins sighed as he set the soldier back in its assigned spot. “I’m coming,” he yelled. What now? he thought. Before the boy came, he might enjoy a week to ten days without hearing that stupid bell. Now it rang twice in the same morning.

  He made his way down the two flights of stairs and peeked out the curtains. A delivery truck of some kind, he thought. Now what’s this all about? He put on his coat and opened the door. The cold hit him like a slap in the face. “What do you want?” he yelled through the vestibule door. A middle aged man, bundled like a dog sled driver, stood there next to a large box.

  “You Ian Collins?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is for you, then.”

  “I haven’t ordered anything.”

  The man looked down at his papers. “Says here it comes from Clark Street. From the landlord of an apartment building.”

  “I don’t know anyone on Clark Street.”

  “Look, sir, you’re Ian Collins, right? So I ain’t at the wrong house. C’mon, it’s freezing out here.”

  “I gotta pay for this?”

  “No. The note says here it contains the belongings of one Elizabeth Collins, deceased. You even got the same last name. Guess the landlord had to rent the apartment out, needed to clear out her things.”

  “Well, I don’t want it, why bring it here?”

  The man looked down at his papers again. “It was authorized by someone named To
wnsend from Child Services. Look, do you mind? My nose is about to fall off out here. You don’t want this, I can find someplace to dump it, but you still gotta sign for it.”

  “No, I better take it. Come in.” He opened the outer door, then backed into the living room and out of the way. The man hauled it in on a wheel cart, dripping wet clumps of ice and snow all over the throw rug. “Right there will be fine,” Collins said.

  “Sign here, please.”

  Collins signed the form. The man stood there for a minute, apparently expecting a tip. “You think I’m going to tip you for something I never asked for?” Collins walked over toward the front door. The man shook his head in disgust and went out the way he came.

  Collins closed the door. “What am I going to do with this?” he moaned. He heard a noise on the stair, looked up and saw the boy’s face peeking out from behind the stair rails.

  “What have you got me into now?” he said, surprising the boy.

  Patrick ran back up the stairs. Collins heard his bedroom door close. He walked over and tried lifting the box, but it was too heavy. Maybe he should have just let the man throw it out like he said.

  He was sure it was nothing but a boxful of trouble.

  Ten

  Captain Shawn Collins had flown seventeen bombing missions so far, but he’d never been this terrified before.

  The 91st Bomb Group had already lost six planes to Nazi fighters on the way in to the target: a munitions factory in Bremen, Germany. Then as quickly as they came, the fighters disappeared. But then came a more terrifying adversary, for which the bombers had no defenses. Dozens of German antiaircraft gunners shot thousands of exploding canisters into the air disguised as harmless puffs of black smoke, each one unleashing jagged shards of molten metal in every direction. The boys nicknamed it “flak.”