I’ve never been a big fan of the cities. I don’t mind much the dirtiness and the vastness, you get the same thing from the plains and farms. What I mind is the noise and the weight. The noise of the city is the beeping and screaming. The beeping is the constant drones, the mindless utterings that come from mundane, everyday things. There is the man beeping because his coffee spilled, and the dripping of his coffee on the sidewalk is beeping. The sliding of car tires on slicked roads is beeping, and so is the opening and closing of doors and bells ringing. The screaming is the outcry of the city, another thing absent in the place I come from. The trains scream as they pass through the city, the sirens of cops and firefighters scream, the forgotten homeless man on the corner screams.

The weight is simple because the weight is just that. There is no size to the plains, only the expanse. The expanse is not heavy, it’s as light as air and more free too. Life grows from the range, the only verticality is that of the wheat and house. I don’t fear noise like I fear weight. The weight of the city comes from its material, its texture, its facade. Nothing grows from the city besides the flower from the dirt filled crevices on the sidewalk. That, I guess, is a sign that cities are not entirely irredeemable.

I think about using the weight of the city as a blanket to help me sleep on the train. Nothing can really put me to bed, nothing but the forest can anymore. I had become so accustomed to roughing it in the woods that I couldn’t sleep at the barracks anymore. Sometimes my insomnia would get to such a point that I would get out in the middle of the night and sleep in the dirt because even that was better than the bed.

After my leg was blown off, I couldn’t sleep at all because I had to spend so much time in the hospital. I had to spend days and nights listening to beeping and screaming, only these beeps and screams were really there. The man in the bed next to me had it much worse than me. He had been going up north when a bomb went off and he was crushed by his own truck. Both of his legs were left on the road and the rest of him landed on scalding metal debris. Whenever the curtain between us was moved, I would sometimes catch glimpses of his back. I had never seen more red and black in my life, and there were more ridges than mountains. The worst thing to ever happen to him was the doctors saving his life. He would scream all day and all night for the doctors to kill him. He would beg for them to put a gun to his head and shoot him. What made it all worse was that he hated The Beatles, and that’s all the doctors would play on the radio. One time he said that he would open up the hospital to the enemy if that’s what it would take for him to die, whether by the enemy soldiers or by execution for treason. But that never happened. After three months in the hospital—everyday of which was spent screaming—they put him on a boat back to New York. I heard talk about a month later that he rolled his wheelchair in front of the train as soon as he got the chance, and that the last song he was forced to listen to was “Yesterday.”

But during that explosion, while I felt my leg leave my body along with my finger, I had the best sleep of my life. It may be because the bomb killed my senses for a while and there were no noises to hear and no weight to feel. In that moment, I felt entirely weightless. I flew ten thousand feet in the air and landed on a cloud, my eyes closed and all my remaining limbs outstretched. I dreamt that I was a bomb exploding and sending another man into the sky, giving another this pleasure of floating. When my timer ticked down I woke up screaming with the shellshocked field medic holding what remained of my leg like he was going to put it back.

The train screams and I press my head against the window. I wrap myself in the city and think of sleeping. I can’t. The man across the aisle stares at me, or more accurately, where I’m not. His young kid tells him it’s rude to stare and goes back to his comic book. I can tell it’s a Marvel comic: Captain America’s got a communist by the throat. About five minutes into the ride, I lift my leg up onto the seat and lay down, then stuff my crutches underneath. The man finds this grotesque. I think he just doesn’t like looking at what can be gone so fast, that might make losing it a possibility. He squeezes his right thigh and finally closes his eyes. I look at him a little closer and see he’s not much older than draft age, he’s only a year or two older than me. He’s young.

In my head I start to daydream about these two. How’d he get out of it? A few years ago, he would’ve been fresh out of high school. Maybe: here he is, this kid just out of school, no plans for college so he’s sure he’s gonna get shipped over. Maybe he’d make a good soldier but he’s not built for killing, and death is too much of a reality. So maybe he’s got a high school love. Maybe it was an accident, maybe they wanted one together, but I think the kid was his plan for getting out. Now, the guy and the kid are here just on their own, no mother. Maybe she’s at home, maybe she left, maybe she died.

I open my eyes and the two are sleeping. We’re stopped at a station somewhere outside Manhattan. Still the city. I feel disgusting. The kid is resting his head on his dad’s lap and he had let his comic fall to the ground. The dad is leaning his head back and has got his hand around his kid. I don’t say anything but I think to myself that I’m sorry. Captain America’s got me by the throat and chokes me back to daydreaming.

I’ll get a good thought going: This man is a college graduate with a loving wife who’s waiting for him outside the city. They’ve got another wanted kid on the way. He’s started his life early and got out of the war because of love, and love’s got a way of taking you out. That’s why he’s sleeping so soundly, there’s no bombs in his head. To him flying isn’t a pleasure. He’d much rather be two feet on the ground. The only bomb he’s got is one that’s loaded with good news because his kid’s happy with his new comic and had a good day at school. His bomb’s an atom bomb and his life’s exploding with love.

I open my eyes again and they’re gone. We’re at another station elsewhere in the state. They are replaced with a mean-looking man and a meaner-looking woman, both well into their old ages. The old man packs himself like a box, closing his arms into his sides and tucking his head into his chest. The woman tucks her bag underneath the seat and rests her head on her husband’s shoulder. Neither of them ever pay much attention to my leg. As she moves her bag, I notice that the kid’s comic book is still on the ground.

I say something to myself, arguing whether or not I should do anything. The comic looks new. That poor kid. I curse loudly, startling the old woman and she gives me a dirty look. I shuffle off the seat, take my crutches, and snatch the comic off the ground. The bell of the train rings as I hop onto the platform.

The cold wind drifts through the empty station. I didn’t notice when I was in the city, but it’s that two week period of the year where all the leaves are colored. There’s a light dusting of snow, the kind that comes down and fills the gaps but nothing higher. The midday sky is a color not quite blue or grey, something in between. The sun is just a dash of yellow behind the thin layer of clouds, looking at it still hurts. For a second I forget what I’m trying to do and sway in the wind.

One of the station workers looks at me kind of funny and I keep moving. It’s only after the train gets moving again that I realize the weight that was previously on my back is no longer there, and that I have left my bag. I turn back and watch it go west. Well, it was never of any help anyway. Most of the weight was a change of clothes, but I’m fine in my boot, long-sleeve, and field jacket. Now the bag can enjoy the sights of the Midwestern fall.

I take my crutches and comic and barrel through the small station until I get to the parking lot. At the very end of the lot, there’s the boy and the man getting into their car. They traveled so far so quick. Within just a minute, the car pulls out of the lot and heads down the lonely road. My leg tells me that I’m not gonna catch up to them. The empty station tells me I can’t go anywhere else. The wind pushes me down the road.

This little stretch of country I find myself in is just a bite out of the whole world. As I walk the long narrow road, one side lined with colorful trees and the other side with a wide open range for farming, I see that it was not any different overseas. Over there, we would be in the thick of it and then find ourselves in a rice paddy then right back into the jungle. Everywhere you go there’s men in fields next to fields of trees. It’s true for even the deserts, cities, oceans. Just swap the trees for dunes, steal, and waves. I can’t tell how far I am from the city or my destination, I didn’t sleep on the train but it felt like blinking took me an hour into the future. Even if I was just a few minutes from my house, I probably couldn’t separate here from there.

Along this long road towards whatever town was at the end, many cars and trucks pass me by. It’s not like I’m looking for a ride or anything, but I would like a little bit of care to where I’m walking. I can’t blame them though, this road’s got no sidewalk and I doubt many people walk along the side anyway. At this point, I’m closer to the drainage ditch than the road. One of my crutches keeps getting stuck in little notches in the asphalt. It looks like it’s been a long time since whatever local government took notice to the roads. I know that’s true because of the maybe millions of potholes I’ve counted up to this point.

By the looks of it, the county’s economy is based in the farms in the area. It’s not quite late yet and all the farms are still populated. Men in the fields dig up their crops, I think it’s cabbage. They’ve got these real shiny tools that shine in even the little sunlight there is. They’re down on their knees or bent at ninety-degrees chopping at the ground, ripping the cabbage from the dirt. In the farm I have to my right, there’s about twenty men moving across the field like a wave washing up on the shore. They’re in this abstract shape that flows and sometimes grows over itself. I imagine what a bird might see: this sweeping motion, reflecting its own sunlight, cutting up heads of cabbage. It’s nearing the end of the harvesting season, sometimes a gust of cool wintery air comes through the prairie. It’s still fall though.

I get about two miles from the station and arrive at a sign that tells me there’s only three miles left until town. I can see, kind of way in the distance, this little town I’m looking for. I don’t actually know what I’m looking for. I lean against the closest telephone pole and start looking around. I never saw their car pull into one of the dirt roads to the farms, it must have gone straight to town. I wonder if the kid’s realized he’s lost his comic book by now. I mean, there’s not much else to do in the farmlands if you’re a kid. Maybe turn on the radio? I pull the comic out of my pocket.

Captain America and the communist. Looking at these two men fighting, I see now they’re just boys. Captain America is a kid filled with serum and idealism, and his opponent just doesn’t have the serum. What’s a communist got to do with the state of the world besides being in it? I could ask the same to the superhero.

There was a friend of mine in the jungle who was a communist. He liked to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and The Rolling Stones like the rest of us. It’s not like he was hiding his ideas either. One time, he had a local guy tattoo the hammer and sickle on his chest, and the next day someone stole his shirt and the captain saw him. The captain took him to a cattle farm that same day. He took the branding iron and shoved it red-hot over the tattoo, so then he had some writing in another language instead of a symbol. I was told that it meant “property of” and then whoever the owner was.

Anyway, about two weeks after that whole ordeal, we were getting ready to load into the truck that was gonna take us away from this village we were beating. We had exhausted all their fun and money so we had to keep moving. Me and the communist were sitting at this cafe and getting some coffee. I asked him why he came over if he was a communist. He told me there wasn’t any choice. He didn’t have the money to dodge and wasn’t too keen on going to jail because he would end up over there anyway. He figured that if he was gonna get sent overseas, that he would at least get some kicks out of it and pull the trigger the least he could. That was true, I had only seen him fire his rifle twice before: once to scare away some creature in the night and the second to see if he could hit a beer can from fifty yards while drunk. The third time would be on that same day, when a local across the street from the cafe came out of his building with a pistol. He shot and killed one of the soldiers as soon as he opened the door. The communist immediately pulled out his gun and shot the guy in the throat, but at the same time the man shot him in the head. I think “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was playing on our radio.

They lit the local up with bullets, but it was my friend’s bullet that killed him. His holey remains were left for the other residents to clean up. We took the communist and did whatever you do with dead soldiers. I think Vikings used to send their dead off in a boat on fire. You can’t light a steel ship on fire. Instead, his mother received him in a box draped in an American flag. That’s not what he wanted. He told me one time that he wanted his coffin to be made of some weak wood and not covered in anything, and the coffin would break under the weight of the dirt.

In thinking about all this, I didn’t realize I had kept moving another mile. I check my pocket and the comic is still there. It’s getting later in the day, there’s still a while to go. On these crutches and one leg I feel like my own telephone pole. What if I could conduct all that electricity through myself and spit it out the other side. Would that be my next job in the world? There’s not much you can do with one leg, not where I’m from. There’s one thing most people who lose a limb do if they live in the country, and that’s move to the city. In the city, you can sit at a desk. If you live out in the fields, all you can do is join the previous generations in watching the television. Maybe tell a war tale.

I used to think a war tale was boring. Most kids, they want to hear how you killed a guy and then killed more guys and maybe blew something to pieces. That’s not most war tales. Most of the time it’s you got high, your friend did something stupid, your officer embarrassed himself. You get the same material from college. The reason so many war tales are boring is because most war tales don’t make it out of the war. Then you get people making up their own stuff and it all gets exaggerated and blown out of proportion and then it’s not a war tale anymore, it’s a fantasy. A fantasy can be just as boring.

Now I like a good war tale. They’re funny, even if somebody dies in them. They’re funny because it can happen at any moment. One second you’re going up the country and the next your leg is half-a-mile away. That’s just funny to me now. It can be the most gruesome story I’ve ever heard and not a single cell of me will have the idea to laugh, but my brain will chuckle to itself. There’s a ping-pong table in my head, and funny and disturbed are playing against each other with my head as the ball.

I think the thing I miss the most about being there is the radio. It was everything over there. What else do you have to do if you’re sitting around at a base all day, getting shot at from who-knows-where, and with a mysterious pain in a place where it shouldn’t be painful. At a certain point, chatting and chores get boring so you turn on the radio. Sitting around and the radio’s going, playing The Beatles and The Doors. I once listened to Jim Morrison for a whole night singing some craziness about love and hate and killing and America. I can listen to him sing for days on end.

It’s not quite the same back here. A lot of people over here still prefer the fancy men in suits crooning and those shows you turn on where there’s a guy surrounded by fifty women in some costumes dressed like birds. You get into some parts of the country, they still haven’t even accepted jazz. Many people don’t see the world is coming to more changes than they can count. I understand that, I would ignore it all too if I wasn’t pushed into it.

Then I walk into it. I’m in the town now, this one-street town made up of brick buildings and suddenly there’s a sidewalk. I’ve walked into the range of something playing on the radio. I think it’s The Kinks, “You Really Got Me.” It’s playing from this general store to my right. To my left is the same car that I saw the man and the kid get into all that time back.

This is really a slow-moving town. I think everybody lives outside of it, I couldn’t tell you where though. There’s not many cars lining the streets, right now it’s mostly just those of the business-runners. There’s not many businesses either. I can see the general store, a near-empty bar, a barbershop, and a butcher. The rest just fade into brick and fading storefront signs.

Really, this is just another beat-up war town. I can see how opposing armies have moved through here, trampled all the people, stomped on all the beer cans, kicked them down the road. Tanks have rolled, guns have fired, bombs have exploded. The history of another place happened here too. The legs of many men have been fully ripped clean off the rest of them, and the people here are all skin-grafts. I can see where a man has rolled himself in front of a train, where one man drank coffee and another drank his own blood but they both ended up in the same place. Is this what coming back is? Was it already here and I am just now noticing? Will it always be this forever?

A hand tugs on my sleeve and I’m pulled gracefully out of my mind. Suddenly I am twenty pounds lighter. The radio’s playing “Sunday Morning” by The Velvet Underground. I haven’t thought about any of this since I woke up in the hospital. To my right is the kid. I take the comic out of my pocket and gesture for him to take it. He takes a second, he sees my hand has four fingers. Then he slides the comic into his own pocket.

“What happened to your finger?”

“I sat on a bomb.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see if it would blow up.”

The father comes out of the store with a bag of groceries and stops to look at me. He waits only for a few seconds before opening the passenger door of his car for me. I put my crutches in the back seat with his son and they drive me back to the station. He doesn’t talk besides thanking me for my service. I don’t say anything. On the way back, I see that the colorful leaves are starting to fall.

Back at the station, the man buys me a ticket for whatever place comes next. I thank him, he and the boy leave, and I find a bench so I can sit and wait. But sitting becomes tiresome, and I lay my head down on the wood and lift my leg up to the seat. I stuff my crutches beneath the bench and look up at the sky that’s now a range from red to grey. The sun’s going down, my watery eyes too. I can finally do something I haven’t been able to for a long time: sleep.

Elmer Bronsted had bought the property formerly known as Burial Point and had his manor constructed over the course of a few years. Of course, he did own other properties, such as his mansion in Malibu and his estate in Florida, but Chaperon Place was to be his final resting spot. He named it after his mother’s maiden name, the same name from which he inherited much of his money. But she had married a wealthier man, from whom he had inherited another chunk of his money.

For the first two decades of his life, Elmer had blown the money on cars, drugs, and sex. For the next, he had spent it on investments and failed startups. But in his thirties and all the way to his sixties, he finally found his calling. Industry. Everything from oil to weapons, from destruction to philanthropy. He was at the top of the world and could never be happier. He was so happy that he would spend the final two decades living in peace in his various homes. He had more money than he could ever inherit. After all, he had worked for it.

Now, Elmer, old and weary, spends his time sitting in his red velvet chair staring at his dark wooden walls that are lined with trinkets and prizes. These had come from all around the world. The golden plate that is at the top of his fireplace mantle is from Ghana, where he had it made personally for him. The bejeweled rings on the shelf are from Russia. The monkey paw next to the rings is from India, but of course, it’s manufactured. Elmer originally enjoyed the joke of it, but now, the more he gazes upon the fake leather skin the more he finds it obscene.

One of his favorites is the elephant head, and the elephant gun accompanying below. It’s the centerpiece of the lounge, in between two tall windows with white drapes, mounted to the caramel colored European oak walls. It is placed far from the door so that it is one of the first things to see when entering. Below are the golden mantles that hold the elephant gun Elmer had used to bring down the beast. He makes sure to polish it every week, the wood and the silver. His chair is placed in the very middle of the room facing the head so he can always stare at his accomplishment.

Chaperon Place is quiet.

*

Three knocks sound at the door.

Elmer is sleeping in his red velvet chair. Between his fingers is a cigar. He is wearing his red velvet robe and boxers without a shirt. Five knocks hit the door. He awakes with start and drops the cigar on the floor. He quickly picks it up and stomps out the glowing embers. There should not be any knocks at the door.

Elmer approaches the taxidermy elephant head and gazes at its beauty. He then looks below and grasps the gun. Just as beautiful, he thinks. What a creation, a thing that could bring down the biggest of creatures. Now, he assumed, it would bring down an average size trespasser.

Six knocks crash against the door.

Elmer leaves the lounge and descends the grand staircase at the very center of the manor. It is carpeted with more red velvet. Just ahead are the large doors that block this knocker from entering. But before approaching the doors, he decides to grab a drink. So he makes a left at the bottom of the stairs and saunters to the back of the house.

Eight knocks.

At the back of the house is a long dining room with a wide window that peers out at the gardens. They are home to all kinds of birds that like to perch at the feeders and the flowing tiered fountain. To the left of the dining hall is another lounge, although this has more books and wine bottles (but the same amount of trinkets). To the right is the kitchen.

Ten knocks.

The old man places the gun on the island in the middle of the kitchen and reaches into the back of the fridge, where he keeps his orange juice. He tries to find a nice glass to drink out of, but the cabinet is high and most of his dishes are in the sink. So he grabs a wine glass off its rack and pours the juice into that.

A sudden, very hard knock startles him and some of the orange juice spills onto the counter. Elmer sighs and grabs a rag from off the handle of the stove. As he wipes, he thinks, God damn this bastard.

He grabs his glass in his right hand and picks the gun up from the island with his left.

Another hard knock echoes through the manor as he walks past the stairs and toward the doors.

Finally, a third, blasting knock hits the doors just before Elmer opens them wide and points the gun right in the trespasser’s face. Who he sees is an unstartled, unshaken, unperturbed man dressed in a beige suit with a maroon tie and pearl white shirt. He has a glowing, combed, plentiful head of blonde hair. He is wearing rose-tinted aviators and looks like he is about to knock again.

“How did you get here, you annoying bastard?”

The man gently smirks and steps to the side. Behind him is a white 1966 Toyota Corolla. “Car.”

“I mean, how did you get past the gate?”

“Your gatekeeper let me through.”

“Gatekeeper? I don’t have a God damn gatekeeper.”

“Then I guess a random lady opened it for me.”

Elmer spits on the floor and takes a sip of his orange juice. He places the glass down and puts two hands on the gun. He waves it in the man’s face. “Who are you?”

“Sorry, allow me to introduce myself. Levi Wolek,” he says, trying to shake Elmer’s hand while using his other to gently push the gun out of his face. Elmer does not shake his hand and does not move the gun away. “May I come inside?”

*

Levi sits at the western end of the dining table, the side closest to the second lounge. Elmer stands at the eastern end, still drinking his orange juice and pointing the elephant gun at the man’s face. “Your home is beautiful, especially those gardens” Levi says, trying to shift around in his seat to avoid the gaze of the gun but it is of no use. “I saw that the metalwork on your gate was designed by Gaetano Bellucci, I’m a big fan of his work. But the house itself seems more Parisian, to me. It has the same sense that waking into Versailles gives you. This sense of royalty, grandiose... beyond anybody else. Almost so beautiful that only those who can appreciate it should see it. Let me guess, it was the architect Jean Barbier that designed this manor.”

Elmer grunts.

“Yes, I thought so. His designs are of fashion. These gardens, however, there’s something off about them. They don’t seem to be dreamt up by any particular designer I know. You know what, I think it was-”

“My wife,” Elmer spits.

“Your wife. Agatha Bronsted.”

“Agatha Bitney, now.”

“Yes, Agatha Bitney. I remember the headlines when you married her.”

“Then I’m sure you remember the headlines when she left me.”

“Yes, I do. I’m very sorry.”

“Don’t be. If she didn’t love me, then, well...” he shrugs and takes a drink. “Then what’s the point of being sorry?”

“I agree, sir. She had an eye, though. An eye for decoration, an eye for nature, an eye for these birds. I’m assuming she decorated much of this house, correct?”

Elmer grunts.

“Even the lounges-”

“Before you talk my ear off... what the hell do you want?” he asks, raising the gun to him from across the table.

“Frankly, Mr. Bronsted, I want your eyes.”

Elmer chuckles. “Why are you actually here? To sell me some bullshit? To invest in your bullshit company?”

“Mr. Bronsted... I want your eyes.”

Elmer stops chuckling and puts the glass down on the table. He then puts both hands on the gun and aims at Levi.

“You see, Mr. Bronsted, I am a treasure hunter.”

“A God damn treasure hunter? Like, some kind of Indiana Jones?”

“No, no, no, sir. I’m afraid the movies make it look like a much more adventurous business. I’m afraid I’m not running around with a whip or a gun, I don’t find old ruins and steal old artifacts. No, it’s much more grounded than that. You see, Mr. Bronsted, I research all kinds of valuable items, trinkets, all kinds of wares from around the globe. And I’ve been around the globe. I go around the world and buy these valuable things off of these people so I can put them in my collection, maybe sell them off to an even higher bidder. The most adventurous part of my job may be wiping the dust off of artifacts we’ve just pulled out of the ground. But most of my job is meeting with the makers, speaking with the owners—most of whom live in mansions much like this one. I find the treasure, and I get the treasure. I’ve never failed at that.”

“So you want what with me?”

“I want your eyes. I’m sure there are treasures in this estate that are much more valuable than an organ, but this one is more of a personal project. You see, me and my partner—she does more of the inspection side of things—we want to see the world through your lens.”

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“We want to take your eyes and look through them to see how you see the world.”

Elmer chuckles and scoffs: “You’re insane.”

“I’m a treasure hunter, Elmer. And there’s something special about how you see the world.”

A grim realization flashes over his face. What had been an amusing activity has become a disturbing, violent plight. “I’ll shoot you,” he says through his teeth.

“There’s no reason to. I’m not going to harm you.”

“What?”

“The fact is, I’m not leaving without my treasure. But I’m also not going to forcibly take them from you. I’ve never had to harm anyone to get what I’ve wanted, and if I have harmed someone, it was to protect the treasure. I understand that giving up your eyes—”

“Shut up!”

“I understand that giving up your eyes would be detrimental to your health. And so to ensure the most pleasant process of acquisition, I’m giving you two options.”

“Two fucking options!” Elmer roars with a hearty, sarcastic laugh.

“Yes, two options.”

“You’re insane!”

“The first: you willingly remove your own eyes—”

“Go to hell, you stupid bastard!”

“And give them to me. Or, I wait here until you pass away—”

“Get the hell out of my house!”

“And when you pass away—”

“You sick bastard!”

“I take them from you.”

“That’s it, you psychopath!” Elmer storms across the room and plants the barrel of the gun against the unwavering Levi’s head.

Levi turns to face the man, staring down the barrel of his gun, his rose glasses obscuring his glare. “I’m not leaving without my treasure.”

Elmer cocks the rifle.

“Allow me to show you why this is important.”

“You’re a sick freak!”

Levi sighs. “And you’re a genius. You must be.”

“What?”

“You’re a genius, Elmer Bronsted. You have to be. Or none of this makes sense.”

Elmer stops. His fingers lift off the trigger of the gun. “Explain yourself.”

“I’d be pleased to. Can I grab my projector and tarp out of the car?”

Elmer gives a hearty, sarcastic laugh. “Fuck off.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“What’s stopping me from shooting you right now.”

“You’ve never killed a man before. Not yourself, anyway,” Levi smirks.

Elmer keeps the gun trained at the bridge of his nose, but his arms weaken. There is something whispering in his ear. A shiver creeps down his neck and all the way down his spine. It crawls inside and his heart skips a beat. He tries to find any reason to pull the trigger, but everything is telling him to put the gun aside. Every fiber of his body pulls his finger away from the trigger. In his conscious mind, he would like nothing better than to see Levi’s body crumpled on the floor. But he just can’t reach the trigger.

“Grab your damn projector.”

*

Elmer watches through the windows of the main lounge as Levi removes a large projector and a folded tarp out from the trunk of his car. This man is something evil, he thinks, but he can not entirely tell why. The man then comes back into the building and stumbles as he struggles to carry both the heavy projector and the tarp at the same time. He nearly shatters the flimsy machine as he reaches the top step.

He then finds his way to the main lounge, where he stops in the threshold to admire all the treasures inside. “What a lovely room.”

“Don’t get any ideas, treasure hunter.”

“Oh, no. I would never steal anything. Unless you’re willing to sell m-”

“You’re trying to take my eyes and you think I’d sell you something?”

“You’re right, probably a long shot.”

Levi scrambles around the room looking for outlets and a good place to set up his presentation. His machine is a carousel slide projector from the sixties. “I haven’t seen one of these in a long time.”

“It’s a treasure, too. Only a functional one,” Levi says, still looking for a place to set up. He decides the best place is just below the elephant’s head. And since the gun was in Elmer’s hands, he could hoist the tarp off of the golden mantels that held the firearm. “Alright.”

“Yes, tell me why you want to rip the eyes out of my skull,” Elmer says, still feeling a tingling on his nape.

“Please, remember, Mr. Bronsted. I won’t be doing any ripping.” Levi then presses the button on his clicker to flip the slides. The first thing that shows is the image of a ruined forest. It is a sprawling landscape of dirt and stumps. “In 1965, you launched your first big project. You remember what that was?”

“Enlighten me.”

“In the fine state of Colorado, you found Humphries Hills: prime real estate, a nice place in the woods with a beautiful view of the mountains. Now, here you come, a young man looking to make a name for himself and do something great. You see this place and you have the idea for...”

“Ah. Five Pines.”

“Yes, the resort named for the five massive pines nearby. But of course, resorts need room, and forests don’t have the most space available. So, naturally the trees have got to come down for the resort dream to come to life. And it does. Actually, this picture was taken a little bit after the acres were cleared and a little bit before construction started. And for eleven great years, Five Pines flourished.” As he speaks, he clicks through multiple pictures of Five Pines Resort. There are people playing tennis, people at the pools and bars, and people watching the sunset behind the mountains. “But you were young. No one can blame you for losing your father’s funding... it was just a small venture anyway. But after this, you got back on your feet and you marched forward.”

He clicks to the next set of pictures, a collection of small businesses Elmer had started when he was in his twenties. All had failed. There are pictures of Great Adventures, a party planning company; Brigandine, a fashion company; Taste of Italy, a restaurant. All of these had failed, but when he shows Taste of Italy, he displays a striking image of Elmer by a large fire in the kitchen. Elmer thinks but has no recollection of what they were cooking.

“Then comes your forties, and it’s time to get serious.” The next picture he shows is of a massive cargo ship labeled: The Gradulf, a German name, given to it by his father. For it is his father’s company: Trans-Atlantic Shipping Company. “You join your father’s company in the early ‘80s. Business is booming. You’re shipping oil, you’re making money, and it is coming in fast. With you in the company, it becomes so vast that you start working with the United States Military and the government. You start shipping to every part of the globe, and it’s not just oil anymore. You saved your father’s company. And when you have that much money, you can start to do even greater things. You found love... sorry. You made a family... you raised children, you bought homes. And once you got that settled, you entered the industry of philanthropy. You donated to the military, you gave money to towns ruined by natural disasters, you sent people to help clean up Trans-Atlantic Shipping oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. But probably, one of the best things you did, is fund the building of the Bronsted Boys’ Home and Girls’ Home in Chicago. You even adopted a girl: Brooke Young.”

Elmer stops him for a moment and gazes at the picture he is showing. It is him standing in front of the Bronsted Girls’ Home holding his adopted daughter, Brooke. He leans over in his chair, just staring at her face. Levi notices this. “It’s a shame-”

“You shut up. Just...”

Without a notion to keep this up, Levi continues anyway. He slows down, entering the later, darker stages of his life. He passes over the divorce, the diaspora of his children around the world. He excludes their hatred for their father. Although, how could anyone know what happens behind closed doors. “Then, when it’s all said and done, you settle down here: a place named for your late mother.” The slideshow ends and Levi places the clicker on a stand. The silence lingers for a few moments, lasting centuries. “Now, why would I want your eyes?”

“I should shoot you right here for even saying any of this.”

“But you won’t. Because you are just as fascinated. Only someone who has seen through your eyes can support you, because you know that there is a whole world out there that wants your head on a pike. But if me and my partner can finally see what you see, then we can, without a doubt, take your side. We just need your perspective. Because if you aren’t some kind of genius that can see things we can’t... then all of this is for nothing.”

“All of what?”

“This... the world, the continent, the country, the state, the county, this manor, this conversation. None of what is happening and what will happen makes any sense if you do not have some kind of genius plan. Whether you know it or not. It can not be true.”

Elmer stays silent for a moment, and in doing so, he hears the same thing he has been hearing for years. He can not remember when it started, but he can always remember when he notices it. He noticed it when he was just a kid partying with friends, he noticed it when he bought Humphries Hills, when he started his company, when his wife left him, at Brooke’s funeral. It is so loud when he notices it that he can not help but look around blindly for the source. All he can hear is silence. A resounding silence. Larger than any whisper, than any windless day, than any ant’s footstep. It is so silent that he thinks he is deaf.

*

It has been weeks and Levi sleeps in his car outside in the circle of the driveway. Elmer peers out the window and sees the car. He has regretted his decision ever since he opened his mouth. It was not much of a decision, but an unwilling acceptance. Or he thinks it was unwilling and willed it anyway.

He has barred Levi from coming into the house, and ensures he does not hang around in the garden either. But Levi often comes to the door or, if the door is not answered, checks through the windows to be certain that the old man has not fallen dead. If Elmer dies and Levi does not know about it soon enough, the eyes may be too damaged before he can get the chance to extract them.

In the early morning, Levi sleeps inside his Corolla. His chair is leaning precariously far back over the back seats, which is littered with textbooks. Within his car, there are nearly twenty textbooks and regular educational novels loosely strewn about, pages ripped and folded to extremes after years of study. All of them are medical, some human biology, some medicine, some surgery. There are notes and tabs pointing out specific pages, pages that had anything to do with the eyes.

Levi wakes in his car and quickly exits, fully dressed in a suit and tie. He approaches the door, Elmer shifts away from the windows. Just as he is about to slam his fist against the wooden door, it swings open and Elmer stands before him.

“If I never answered and you never saw me through my windows, what would you do?”

“I would assume the worst.”

“And what if I was still alive?”

“Then I would politely exit... if you wanted me to.”

“But you would be breaking and entering.”

“It would not be the first time.”

“And if I called the cops?”

“Like I said: it would not be the first time. Nothing has ever stopped me from getting my treasure before, Mr. Bronsted. Nothing ever has and nothing ever will. Trust me, there is nothing you can do that will stop me.”

Elmer slams the door in his face. Levi, having given this talk before, is not surprised. They always react this way. Levi returns to his car and sits in the front seat, listening to the radio.

Elmer, flustered, confused, and frankly, trapped, returns to the lounge on the second floor. It seems that Levi is on all sides, closing in. His fingers twitch. When he looks down at them he sees he is sweating down his arm. Whenever he looks out at the car, his blood pumps a little faster. It is more than a frightful scare, but a creeping, rising pain in his heart. He knows a final, lethal sting is inevitable.

Levi had left his projector in the lounge and it has been collecting dust ever since. It is still showing the image that he had finished on: the picture of Chaperon Place in a strange framing. It looked as though the picture had been taken sometime during sunset, but also from the tree line, almost like some kind of stalker had taken it. Elmer is not entirely sure that Levi is not some kind of stalker. After all, he knows more about Elmer than Elmer knows about himself.

The projector is hideous, and Elmer does not want it in the house anymore, so he walks over to it and begins to tear it all down. He rips the tarp off the wall and casts it aside. Now, the projector is showing the warped image onto the elephant head. The tarp had been covering the gun mantle so the firearm is sitting in the corner of the room.

With the tarp on the floor, Elmer turns to the projector and tries to figure out the best way to lift it. After trying to bear-hug it, he slides it to the side of the table so he can tilt it up and grab it from the bottom and side. He pushes the projector close enough to the edge so that one side begins to lean down off the side. When he tries to catch it, however, it falls to the carpet floor.

Luckily, the machine did not completely fall apart, but the slide disk did dislodge and roll to the other end of the room. As it rolled, tons of pictures fell out onto the floor. Elmer sighs and bends down to one knee, picking up the debris. He finds all of the pictures, even ones that Levi did not get to in his presentation.

These pictures show a more in-depth look at what Elmer’s time in business. Some of them were milder, like him at meetings with foreign leaders or even domestic ones. Some of them he questions how they could have possibly been taken, like pictures of him at parties with dangerous and taboo people of all kinds. But the last are more damning: oil spills, shipments from Trans-Atlantic Shipping being delivered to warzones (to American soldiers, and they were most likely filled with weapons), some headshots of directors at the Boys’ and Girls’ homes, and him hunting in Africa. Elmer questions what any of these could be used for.

He doesn’t bother with picking up the slide disk and the projector. He instead leaves the lounge, giving one last glance at the elephant head on the wall. Then to the gun in the corner of the room. He goes to the bathroom in his bedroom, which he has not used in a long time. The bedroom is absurdly clean, neat and tidy. It is as clean as the day it was last used, except for the dust. The dust has built up immensely over the years. After the bedroom, he goes to the bathroom: just as clean, just as dusty.

He places the slides on the counter beside the sink and washes his face in the cold water. After wiping his face, he looks up into the mirror and sees himself. He sees his wrinkles. He sees his scars. He sees his completely white hair. He sees how his skin is just barely latching onto his bones. Everything looks like it is about to fall off and he will wither away. He looks down at the pictures and spits into the sink.

After leaving the bathroom, he goes to the nightstand at the side of the bed. The bed is covered in a red velvet blanket and wool sheets underneath. He lifts the frame, which is right next to a picture of him and Agatha, his ex-wife.

Inside the frame is a newspaper clipping from the 1970s. It was the first newspaper he was ever featured in. It is an amazing picture of him when he was young. He is standing on a boat next to his father and mother. Behind them is the city of New York and a glowing blue sky, grey in the picture. His hair is flowing in the wind, his skin is smooth, he has a full smile.

He places the frame down and knocks it over. He does the same to the honeymoon picture with Agatha.

*

Guy Smith leaned against a tree on the side of the road outside the walls of Chaperon Place as a car approached the gate. He smoked a cigarette and scratched an itch on his left arm near a tattoo. The tattoo was that of an organization called the Just World Front (JWF, for short). They are an organization dedicated to fighting injustices around the world, sometimes within and sometimes outside the bounds of the law.

Guy Smith is a dedicated member, and a good one at that. He had been entrusted to carry out some of the Front’s most vital missions. This included the largest mission they had ever enacted as of yet: the bombing of a pipeline going through Native American land. This act led to more of a focus on the organization from law enforcement, which is why he was standing outside Chaperon Place undertaking a more minor mission.

Guy Smith and a few more of his associates (who were camping in the woods, leaving no trace) had been sent to force Elmer Bronsted to dissolve his company and pay billions of dollars towards environmental and humanitarian groups. It is (and they are aware of this) a not very fledged out plan. For years, nobody had confirmed if Elmer Bronsted was even still alive. That is why, when Guy Smith saw Levi Wolek get buzzed through the grand gates into the grounds of Chaperon Place, they knew it was their time to strike.

For the next few weeks they would acquire everything they needed to break into Chaperon Place, to restrain Bronsted, and to maybe force compliance. They were, however, never going to harm him.

*

Levi sleeps inside his car. It is turned off, just a shadow in the darkness. He does not see three lights shift through the dark forest ahead of him. In fact, there are six lights he can not see, three more in the woods to the rear of the car. The activists can just barely see the silhouette of the treasure hunter from afar. They all move quietly around the fringes of the manor, gazing upon its disgusting glory for the first time. They realize they may be some of the first outsiders to ever lay eyes on it.

Two of them have rope.

One of them has documents to guilt Bronsted.

One of them has a false gun.

Guy Smith has brought nothing, because he knows that the only way to influence people is by talking to them.

One of them has brought a real gun (unbeknownst to the others), because he knows that the world is too far gone for flattery and niceties, and it must be saved with force.

They silently move around the outskirts of the house, their lights bobbing up and down in the darkness. Guy Smith is leading one group while the man with the gun leads the other group. They walk in symmetry across the lawns and eventually to the back of the house. At the back of the house, those with rope swing them over the wall and allow the others to climb over.

The activists land in the gardens of the house. Guy Smith bends down by the fountain and sees himself in the water. The others look around at the greenery. Guy Smith stands and rubs his fingers along some of the plants. It is dark, quiet, and peaceful, until three loud crashes echo throughout the woods. Behind him, the man with the gun throws a plant pot against the glass sliding door until it shatters. Glass scatters over the brick of the garden ground and the wood floors inside.

“What the hell are you doing?” Guy Smith asks. “We’re meant to go in quiet! He could be armed.”

“So are we. He needs to know that we’re coming for him.” Guy Smith does not understand what he means. He knows this man to be somewhat of a wildcard, after all, he had made the bomb that ruined the pipeline.

“You’re gonna wake the guy in the car.”

“Good, an audience.”

The man with the gun pushes through the glass and is the first to enter. Some of them follow closely after, while the rest enter cautiously. They give each other side glances of concern for their counterparts. Those that had entered first began tearing the place down. They remove trophies off the wall, they break glasses and vases, and express their anger in the most destructive ways.

Guy Smith and two others follow in their trail as they create a warpath. He can not blame them, for he understands fully their anger. But he also can not partake. They eventually make their way up to the second floor.

Their first stop is the bedroom, where they find nobody. All they notice are two toppled pictures. Guy Smith is the first to take a look at them. After seeing one is a picture with Bronsted’s wife and one is a picture with Bronsted’s family, he puts them both upright again. The man with the gun pushes both of them back down, cracking the glass of the newspaper clipping. Guy Smith looks back at the man, noticing bubbling, boiling water. It is almost at the crest.

They then go to the lounge, where they find a drunk Elmer Bronsted sitting in his chair, drool pooling on his chin. It is the worst thing any of them have ever seen. An obscene, grotesque image of an old, pathetic man sitting in boxers and a robe, letting himself wither away. He is surrounded by all of his conquests and spoils, layers of dust building over each other.

“Wake up, Elmer,” says Guy Smith flatly.

“Get... get out of here... Wolek.”

“Wake up, Elmer.”

“You... won’t... take... my... eyes.”

“Get water.”

The woman with the false gun goes to the bathroom, finds the enclosed plunger holder, removes the plunger, and fills the holder with sink water. She then returns to the lounge and pours the water on top of the billionaire.

Elmer awakes with a start. He falls to the ground out of his chair, and out of his lap falls a collection of pictures. Guy Smith bends down and picks them up. “Depressing, Elmer... these pictures.”

“Who the hell are you?!”

“We are the Just World Front.”

Elmer spits and sees the pictures on the ground.

“It’s not often you find a man regretting his terrorisms. Usually they boast them in public. But if they’re ashamed... they’ll put themselves in the darkest, sealed, depressing rooms.” Guy Smith takes a look around the room. “Shame isn’t enough, Elmer. You want to stop regretting? You have to take action. Wallowing doesn’t get us anywhere. Action does.” He turns to his people. “Let’s get started.”

The man and the woman with rope pick Elmer off the floor and put him back in the chair facing the elephant head and gun. They begin to tie down his arms to the chair. As they do so, Guy Smith says “we are not going to harm you, Elmer. We just want something out of you. Something vastly important.”

“If you say you want my eyes...”

The others look at each other with faces that say “the old man has gone insane.”

“No, Elmer. We want the complete dissolution of your company. We want your money put to something good. We want you to make up for the harm you’ve caused over your time as ruler of the world.”

Elmer doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t try. He doesn’t try to move either. It doesn’t look like any emotion flashes across his face. He is simply receiving.

Guy Smith flips through the pictures that the old man had been holding. He notices the emotional value of each one. He eventually picks a picture of a male director from a Boys’ Home.

“This man...” he takes a long look at the picture. “He hurt that little girl, didn’t he? What’s his name?”

Elmer glares at the picture. “I don’t remember.”

Guy Smith grunts. “You hired him directly, didn’t you? If I remember right, he was a good friend of yours.” He pulls another picture out of the stack. “This one too.”

“There are so many of them...” Elmer whispers. “Too many. All of them the same.”

“Do you want to be different, Elmer? Do you want help the little girls and boys that were hurt by these men? Do you want to end the slaughter of children in foreign lands? Their lives ended by your guns? Do you want to help children who drink your poison water?” he looks back at the picture. “Or do you want to remain the way you are? Sitting here. Alone. Drunk. Hideous.”

Seeing no reaction fall over Elmer’s face, the man with the gun readies himself.

“You know... we brought these blackmail documents, we brought a gun. I don’t think we need any of that. I see a little humanity in you.” He says, knowing full well there is hardly a spark. But he finds himself gazing into the billionaire’s eyes and a creeping feeling takes over his mind. There is something horribly wrong with them.

“Humanity!” the man with the gun scoffs. Guy Smith breaks his contact with Elmer and sees the man reach for something in his jacket. Immediately Guy Smith lunges at him and the two grapple. The other activists don’t know what to do. Guy Smith says something unintelligible, as does his opponent. Eventually, in the struggle, a loud bang echoes through the lounge. Guy Smith crumples to the ground, falling over himself. He lays against the chair where Elmer sits, holding his wound. As he bleeds out of his side, he breathes heavily. His heart is racing. His eyes blink swiftly. His hands tremble. With a final gasp, the light in his eyes fades.

All of the activists in the room remain silent. None of them know what to do. Elmer doesn’t move either, unwavering, unspeaking. Eventually, one of them falls to their knees and vomits on the ground. Then one turns to the man with the gun. They lock eyes for a moment, and he charges. He is stopped when the gun fires again and he topples over to the ground. There are only four of them left.

The woman who vomited gets off the ground and says “You’re a monster!”

“You’re standing next to one. The only way we can possibly win is if we force it out. You’re naive!”

They begin to take sides.

The man with the gun points it at Elmer, but his arm is pushed out of the way by the woman. Then they all crowd around each other, each one of them fighting against each other for reasons they don’t quite understand.

Elmer sits still, smelling the air of blood. Ahead of him is the elephant gun. The same weapon he used to bring down a beast. A quiet beast. One that drank from the river. One that mothered a child. Her head sits on the wall.

Eventually, there is only one conscious activist. They breathe heavy, having beat their old allies. Whatever their ideals were before entering the house, they now consider them worthless. They want to go home. Elmer looks over his shoulder and watches the activist leave through the door. He does not notice Levi enter through the other door, pick the elephant gun off the wall, and fire it at the activist. In an instant, Elmer sees his lounge painted in blood.

“How are your eyes, Mr. Bronsted? I’m so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I heard the gunshots. It all happened so fast. Let me check you out. Did they hurt you? How are your eyes?”

He finds no damage to the eyes. He finds no damage at all. Elmer looks back, all he sees in Levi is fear. Fear and calm. Nothing else.

“Untie me.”

Levi quickly undoes the ropes and helps Elmer to his feet.

“Let’s get a drink.”

*

The two drink whiskey on the rocks in the lounge surrounded by bodies. There are no neighbors to call the police. There are no police to investigate. The two gaze at the elephant gun and the head above, the gun back on its mantle. The fact that he had been tied down to it does not dissuade Elmer from sitting back in his chair. Levi slowly drinks from the whiskey and has a blank stare on his face, but not a remorseful one. Elmer assumes that it was not his first time killing.

“I think you and I are the same person, Mr. Bronsted.”

“Why’s that?”

“We are both collectors of the same thing: treasures. I think that if I was not here under the pretenses that I will be taking your eyes, we would be great friends. We would be collectors together. All these trinkets we would share.”

“Maybe,” Elmer says, knowing that the two could be no more opposites. A fact that was revealed to him by those that almost killed him. He realized that he never was, and never would be, like them. Levi doesn’t know that he was one of them, too. They could not be further apart. They are forever, he is temporary.

*

Elmer and Levi will walk across bodies, go down the stairs, and shake hands at the door. Levi will retreat to the 1966 Toyota Corolla to sleep in the back seats. Elmer will go to the kitchen and make himself tea out of the years-old teabags his wife had used. It will be bitter, and he will hate it, but he will know that it is good.

By the time Levi sleeps, Elmer will return to the lounge with his tea, spinning his spoon around the rim of the mug. He will see dead bodies littering the ground and know that it is because of him. He will see the pictures strewn about the floor and know that they are real because of him. He will know that they could not have existed without him.

Elmer will pick the pictures off the ground and flip through them once again. The texture of each will feel like a million needles stabbing his fingers. The sight of each one will fill his eyes with a burning sensation. The sound of each one will be so silent that he will think he is deaf.

Elmer will sink into a filled bath, his tea, spoon, and tea plate sitting on the side of the tub. He will welcome the pain he feels with each picture, and he will hate it, but he will know it is good. The time of passing from one picture to the next will feel like millions of years and a lifetime of pain that he caused will come rushing back to him. He will feel it tenfold. He will hate it, but he will know it is good.

In a final moment of realization, he will look to the spoon on the side of the tub. He will gaze upon its stainless steel. He will admire its miniature designs. He will take it in his hands. He will hate it, but he will know it is good.

Levi will knock on the door in the early morning. That day will be just another day Elmer will not answer. So Levi will look through the windows and see nothing. Levi, calm, will climb over the garden wall and step through the shattered glass door. He will go to the lounge, still covered in bodies, no pictures to be found. Levi will search the house for Bronsted. He will eventually reach the bathroom, and he will try the door. Levi will see the lifeless body of Elmer Bronsted in the pink bathwater. He will see a spoon placed on the side of the tub. He will see how Elmer’s face has no eyes. Levi will see two perfect condition, perfectly round, perfectly healthy eyes resting on a tea plate.

Had his father been alive, it still would be debatable whether there would be one more person. By the end of both their lives, they hated each other. At least on a surface level. The last time they tried to make amends, it ended in a shouting match and a near murder. Had the glass that shattered over Marty’s head broken just any bit sharper, he would have been dead a lot sooner. Maybe if his father hadn’t died a week later, Marty would have returned the favor. He had bought a pistol and everything. It was the same one he would use to kill his real victim and then himself.

Their love was something of a mystery, even to Laurie and Martina. It’s undeniable that there was something there, but that’s true for hopefully all parents and their children. It didn’t make sense that they could be from that small percentage where there was no love. But they definitely didn’t try to help their case. Whenever they were together, they would go into enraged arguments about the smallest things. It didn’t take much for either of them to fly off the handle.

There was a story I heard—I don’t know where from—about a family dinner Laurie had planned since the four had not talked in a long time. Seeking some kind of reconciliation, both the men agreed to go. They went to this real nice restaurant in the city, overlooking the river with a spectacular view of the bridge. The night sounded perfect: the lights of the city illuminating the night, the smell of the food in the kitchen, the fancy clothes, the slow jazz playing. Marty and his father shook hands cordially, but not like they enjoyed the others’ presence. They sat down next to the women near the window. All it took was for his father to ask what Marty was doing with his career—which his parents had paid for—and one mention by Marty about the condition of his father’s senatorial reelection campaign. After that, the two were at each other’s throats. I remember the imagery of their animalistic barking and furiously shaking limbs.

It wasn’t always like that, or at least that’s what Laurie described to me at the funeral. She told me about these trips that the family would take back when the kids were a lot younger, probably not even in middle school yet. It was a weekend trip that they took to Lake Huron, specifically just outside of Bay City. The family inherited this nice cabin on the waterside with some wide expanse of woods surrounding the whole property. Before they let money and politics get between each other, Marty and his father liked to go on these long hikes up the water’s edge and through the brush. They called them adventures or journeys or whatever made it seem like it wasn’t an excuse to spend time together, like it had some greater purpose.

All memory of adventure left when the glass broke over Marty’s head. He was left on the floor of the restaurant. He wasn’t unconscious, just unwilling. Marty bought himself a pistol, drifted around with a bandaged head for a while, and then shut himself in his apartment for three days. The man died before Marty emerged. He was going up West Jefferson in the early morning when he fell asleep at the wheel and drove into the Detroit River. It happened before the sun came up. What everyone was asking was why he was on that side of town, opposite from his home and far from anywhere important to him. Nobody ever found out. The same day, Marty finally opened his door and went out to the diner.

Out of morbid curiosity, Matt asked me at the funeral whether or not I thought Marty’s dad would have shown up. I told him that I thought it was a stupid question. In my head, I really didn’t know. What I do know is that the last call made on his phone was to his son.

“Boys?” he cried when he came in. We came running to the door. “There you are. One of you take my coat and the other fetch me a drink. It’s been a long ride here.”

Dad set the box down and Seth took his jacket, hanging it up near the door. Our father was spry and lean, even as he aged. At that time, he was still young, in his early thirties. He somehow held on to that soldier physique for a while after the war. Still, he was tired for much of his days on account of our mother being gone and him still having to work. So he crashed into the chair in the living room with the box resting on his lap. I set down a glass of rum in front of him on the table.

“Thank you, kid.” He took a long sip. “The storm is coming along, we’re gonna be trapped here for the night and probably until a little past sunrise tomorrow.”

“What’s the box for, Dad?” I asked.

He looked down and seemed like he had forgotten all about it. He set it down on the table like a precious object. “After I make dinner, I’ll tell you boys a little tale.”

Mom was always a better cook than Dad, but that didn’t stop him from trying, though he cooked like he was still in the army. Our most common dish was potatoes he had bought from the farmers. He would cook them or mash them, but no matter what they tasted like he had just pulled them out of the ground. Sometimes he brought home jerked meats just because we didn’t have much in the way of keeping regular meat cool. We did have an ice box, just not a very cold one. He made sure we always had bread, too, usually rye. That night, we had the typical dinner, but he took the time to mash the potatoes. He was in a good mood. We ate at the table and the whole time my mind was set on the box in the living room.

“So, what was going on in Wilmington?” Seth asked with a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

“I was meeting with some friends from Europe, Dan Gloss and Sam Eddie and the like. Sam just got back from working some harbor job in the south of France or Italy. I think it was Italy. Anyway, he’d come all this way and we decided to make a thing of it.”

“He chose to stay back in Europe?”

“I know some guys who did. Obviously, they came back when the war ended but as soon as they were set they headed right back.”

“Why would they go and do that?”

“They preferred Europe to America. You get past all the mud and the trenches and barbed wire and rubble, sometimes you get to a nice little Mediterranean town where the women are nice and the fishing is too. That’s the kind of thing Sam was telling us about. He got himself a European wife. Didn’t meet her, but he said she’s really something. Things ain’t too great there right now, what with all the destruction and all. That’s why he and her are headed up to New York next week. They’re looking for a good time.”

“They’ve got the money for New York?”

“No, but he’s got a dream and a wife to please. Anyway, you boys find anything good on the beach this morning?”

“We got a pearl, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but it was nothing special. He gave us only a couple dollars for it.”

“A couple dollars is nothing to be sad over. That’s still some good money.”

“Could’ve been more,” I whispered.

We ate the rest of our dinner and moved into the living room. As we did so, the storm really started to pick up. The branch from the tree outside tapped the window and the strong wind felt like it was going to knock the house down. Dad sat back down in his chair and Seth and I on the couch. He moved the box closer to himself and quickly peeked inside, a grin sliding across his face. He shut it and faced us.

“Many legends get told about the evil things,” he started. “Cursed objects from Egyptian tombs and haunted jewels from the temples of Mexico... but none such tales carry with them the violence of this blade.” From the box, he removed a knife. A long, wide knife with a very sharp edge. The handle was made of chestnut, with a silver hilt. The blade itself was entirely black. I could see that there were many etchings in the side, but I could not make out what they were.

“Woah... Can I hold it?” I asked.

“No, Saul. This is a very delicate thing not to be messed around with.”

“It’s just a knife!”

“It’s not just a knife. Please, let me finish.” He set the knife in the box and left it open, then turned it around so we could see it. “Sam gave this to me, said a sailor he met in the Navy had given it to him while we were still fighting and he thought I should have it.”

My father was a big collector. He collected all kinds of things. He had books, taxidermy animals, guns. A knife like this was a nice addition to his study, next to a German knife he brought back from the war and an ornate knife from Japan a friend had given him.

“He said the sailor told him this tale: Nobody knows where the knife comes from, but it’s been passed down from sailor to sailor for longer than was known. It’s survived the sea more than any man has. It’s been through the roughest of waves and the strongest of hurricanes. It’s been lost and recovered, thrown out to the water and washed up on shore, always reaching another man bound for the sea. But the strangest thing of all, most men who have interacted with it at all meet a horrible fate.”

“If that’s true, then why do they keep passing it around?” Seth asked.

“It’s just rumors, son. It’s nothing scary. I didn’t see Sam die some horrible way. But there are stories, that sailor said. Many a man has died to this blade. Men have been betrayed with it, been cut up or mauled. Some men accidentally rolled onto it in their sleep. They say it always finds a way of making its owner pay for their ownership and all the horrible things they’ve done with it.” He then tapped Seth on the nose with the blade. “Don’t you worry, boys. It’s staying right in my study.”

I watched as he placed the blade on a stand in his study next to the other two.