Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1/swsii.zip/swsii/201/RUBYV25.ZIP/RUBY25-2

Text File | 1993-09-11 | 6KB | 97 lines

Copyright (c) 1993

                          INHERITANCE
                        By Michael Hahn

     Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see my father in my
eyes. That scares me. If my father isn't certifiable, he's
damned close.
     My father has obsessions, strange, repetitious rituals that
have no apparent purpose. There's the nail ritual, and the boxes
of boxes, and the murky fishtanks. None of my friends believe the
stories--except the ones who've come to visit.
     My father is building a garage. He's been building the garage
for more than fifteen years. Why is it taking so long?  Here's
the routine:  he gets a hammer, and a strip of siding, and a nail
from the boxes in my brother's room. He takes them outside, to
the patio. The patio is being covered, slowly, from east to west,
by the garage. He goes to the end of the garage, a garage
currently only about eight feet long, and nails the siding in
place with a single nail. He goes back in the house, gets a
notebook, scribbles something none of us have figured out, and
goes on about his other business. An hour or so later, he'll get
the hammer and another nail from the boxes in my brother's room,
return to the strip of siding, and drive in the second nail. He
records it in the notebook.
     I suppose I haven't made the part about the garage clear.
Viewed from the front, it looks like a completed garage. It has
door, and shingles on the roof, and green-painted trim around the
its edges. The white paint on the door and the siding has faded,
and the green paint on the trim has faded. The front of the
garage is about twelve to fourteen years old. Past the front, it
only extends about eight feet. It has siding, and trim, and
shingles, and it stops abruptly eight feet from the front door.
There is no frame. The sections of the frame are added in two-
foot increments:  first the right side wall, then the left, then
the right half of the roof, then the left. He puts on the siding,
then the shingles, then the trim. All in two-foot sections.
The front took almost five years. Each two-foot extension has
taken over eighteen months. The patio, which he hopes to cover,
is eighteen feet long. He has about fifteen years to go.
                               ***
     In the back of the closet of my parents' room is a box from
a pair of cowboy boots. The outside of the box is covered with
numbers. Every square inch of the outside of the box has ink
spots where numbers were written and scratched out. The numbers
are approximately an eighth of an inch high. They have no
qualifiers: no percent signs, no degree symbols, no hash marks for
feet and inches or minutes and seconds. Some are two digits, some
are three.
     Inside the cowboy boot box is a large shoe box. It, too, is
covered with scratched-out numbers. Inside the large shoe box are
two smaller shoe boxes. One of these is covered with numbers, the
other is covered on only two sides. Inside both boxes are smaller
boxes, without any numbers at all.
   Each day, sometimes two or three times a day, my father takes
the cowboy boot box out of the closet. He removed the larger shoe
box from the cowboy boot box, and the smaller boxes from the
larger shoe box. On the half-covered box, he scratches out the
only set of unmarked numbers, and using a draftsman's ruler,
writes new numbers adjacent to the old ones, and the numbers are
only an eighth of an inch high.
     I've seen other boxes in the old storage shed out back. The
oldest, way in the back, seem to be more than thirty years old,
almost as old as I am.
                               ***
     In the corner of the dining room, my father has built a set
of shelves into the wall. Five shelves, and each contains a ten-
gallon aquarium. Each aquarium has an air pump, and a heater, and
a lamp with a hood. The hum from these fifteen pieces of
electrical paraphernalia can be heard all over the house. It's a
low hum, but pervasive.
     Each tank has four or five fish. The fish live in
approximately four inches of water. The water is dark, and murky,
and smells very bad. Each day, my father fishes the dead fish out
of the tanks with one of those little mesh nets. He then measures
out precisely three tablespoons of water, and pours this into each
of the tanks. Each of the five tanks receives three tablespoons
of water each day, but with the heater and the pump and the light
from the windows, at least that much evaporates from each tank
each day. The water stays about four inches deep, and dark, and
murky.
     Once a week, my father goes into one of the larger cities in
the neighborhood, to a tropical fish dealer. He buys ten fish,
sometimes twenty. He brings them home, divides them evenly among
the five tanks. They usually last about three weeks in the dark,
murky water.
                               ***
     Sometimes I find myself keeping track of the budget a little
too closely. I note each penny I spend. I save receipts for
things that can have no real purpose for me, or for the IRS.
     Sometimes I save newspapers. I stack them neatly in a box in
the basement. When the box fills up, I tape it shut, and get
another box.
     Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I see my father in my
eyes. That scares me. I burn the receipts. I throw out the
boxes of newspapers.
                               END