Short Stories: The Tin Box
This story first appeared in St. Anthony Messenger magazine in September of 2003. In 2004 it won second place Best Short Story by the Catholic Press Association.
"Where is that bloody thing? Ah…!" Galen lay flat on the plank floor. With feathery dust curling at his nostrils, he reached under the iron bed. Amid the grey shadows lay an old pair of his father’s shoes, work boots, the kind coal miners and tradesmen wore in the last century. He shook his head. His father belonged to another era. Maybe it was his Welsh heritage. He had never really Americanized himself. Never wanted to.
Once the funeral was over and the relatives had satisfied themselves with food and the proper amount of sighing and eye daubing, finally leaving with their cars in clouds of dissipating dust, he concentrated his search for the box.
Galen saw it at last, hidden behind the boots. The box. That black tin box. He pushed the shoes aside and touched the metal, cold at his fingertips.
Both hands, all fingers, wrapped around the box’s sharp edges. He got to his knees and laid it first on his thighs and then atop the faded quilt. It glistened in the light of the shaded bulb hanging overhead. Without dust, it was as if his father had just wiped his handkerchief across its ebony surface.
For almost all his forty-one years Galen had seen this box dimly lit by that single bulb while peering through the crack of the bedroom door left slightly ajar. Sometimes the door slammed and the secrets of the box’s contents—and its whereabouts—vanished.
The black object was shoebox-sized, only square, with a wire handle on the lid. He could never ask his father about it, even when he’d reached adulthood. Griffith Davis wouldn’t have said anything anyway. On Galen’s infrequent visits to his father, they ended up mostly standing on the porch, assessing the shabby neighborhood, neither one speaking.
A small, silver lock guarded the box’s contents. Galen frowned. Where was the key?
***
"Galen Pryce Davis!"
Griffith Davis shored up the doorway with his broad shoulders, cutting off the light from the hall. Galen glanced up with a wince. What had he done now? He got to his feet, forgetting the playing cards scattered across the floor.
"Yes, Father?" Father. How many boys his age called their father "Father"? No other dad insisted on it. And none of them talked with that thick accent that his ten-year-old friends imitated with such rugged jesting. Why couldn’t Griffith be more American? Galen was born in Wales but he arrived before his second birthday, never cultivating anything but an American accent.
"You left the rubbish bin. You didn’t take it out. There’ll be maggots by morning."
"I forgot."
"But you remembered to ride your bicycle to Hurly’s Drug Store with your chums."
"I’m sorry."
Griffith brought out a little notebook from his coat pocket. He pulled the pencil free from the rubber band wound round it and dabbed the lead point on his outstretched tongue. He opened the cover, turned several pages, and scribbled with the tiny pencil. "That’s another mark off your allowance, boy. That’s so many that soon you’ll be owing me." He almost smiled.
Galen grimaced. "Why don’t you just keep my allowance, if you want it so much!"
"Galen!"
"I don’t want it."
Griffith frowned and lowered the notebook. He snapped the rubber band around it and inserted the pencil in its place. "Then you won’t have it." He turned and thudded down the hallway.
‘He’s going to his room,’ Galen thought, ‘to drop his precious notebook into that little black box. Who needs an allowance? I can get a job. At Hurly’s, probably.’
***
And he did. He worked all summer and after school once fall began. For seven years he worked there, moving up from floor-mopper and go-fer, to clerk and then cashier.
That was thirty years ago. Galen looked around and spotted a ceramic jug on the dresser. So few items decorated the house, it stood out like a sentinel.
Impulsively he walked to the jug and plunged in his hand. The key! He returned to the bed and squealed the springs as he sat. The skeleton key fit.
Anticipation thudded his heart as if he expected his father to walk in. Tall, thin, always in suspenders and workboots, his father had a bow-legged stance. He would always thrust his balled fists into his hips and shake his long face in dismay at some mistake of Galen’s. Griffith’s brown hair, shiny from the oil he slathered into it day after day, gleamed darkly.
After his mother died, the elderly woman next door took care of the four-year-old Galen while Griffith worked in the factory. When she passed away it fell to another neighbor lady. And after her, another. All cared for Galen as a stray cat is fed by many but not loved by any. He often wondered what his mother—a faded half-remembered and half-dreamed memory—was really like, and why such a woman—why any woman—would marry his father in the first place.
The absence of her picture anywhere in the house accentuated the void.
"Well, here’s one secret that won’t die with you, old man," he said. "Let’s see what you’ve been hiding all these years." He grasped the lid and opened.
***
"Mrs. Cooper is Galen’s mom!" cried Freddy. Freddy wasn’t one of Galen’s pals, just another kid waiting for the school bus. Yesterday he’d seen old Mrs. Cooper bring Galen his forgotten lunch.
"How can she be his mom, you lame-o?" His best friend Sam moved forward, hiding Galen’s crimson face behind him. "His dad isn’t married to her. She just cleans their house and stuff."
"I think she’s his mom."
"Oh lay off!"
That night when his father arrived home, Galen watched from the shadows of the kitchen doorway. He knew better than to disturb Griffith before he’d finished reading the paper, but Galen’s anger had been smoldering all day. "Why does Mrs. Cooper have to be over here all the time?”
Griffith Davis glanced up from the crisp paper, glaring at his son from over the reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. "I’m reading the paper."
"But how come, Father? For crying out loud. I’m thirteen years old! I don’t need her."
Griffith lowered the paper to his lap, revealing a scowl as long as the Bristol Channel. "You’ll do your own laundry now, will you? Make supper?"
"Uh…yeah. Why not?"
"Done!" said Griffith, snapping the paper upward.
The victory was so sudden that Galen hadn’t fully grasped it. Its abruptness angered him and he blurted out, "Why did Mother marry you?"
The paper lowered slowly and Galen felt his gut tighten and twist. Griffith raised his face. Steel replaced his eyes. "We don’t talk about your mother."
"Why not? Didn’t you love her? Is that why there’re no pictures of her?"
"You’re going too far, boy."
His tone should have been enough to warn Galen. "She was probably happy to die. Happy to get away from you and this house—"
Like a javelin, Griffith shot to his feet. He grabbed Galen’s arm with firm, bottled strength, not squeezing any more than necessary. Galen knew that if Griffith wanted to, he could have wrung it right off his shoulder. "You don’t know what you don’t know. Go to your room and do your homework."
He released the arm and Galen breathed again. Silently, rubbing his flesh, he retreated to his room, wondering why he had said all those things. There was no reason to have. His father must have had feelings for that redheaded Welsh girl all those years ago and surely Galen remembered her smiling at Griffith’s long face on many occasions.
He just couldn’t entirely grasp those memories.
***
The box’s lid opened smoothly. Carefully creased tissue paper sat on top. Like an archaeologist, Galen thought. He lifted the tissue. Each layer like sediment revealed an older, unknown age. Beneath lay a few documents: Griffith’s naturalization papers, Galen’s birth certificate, his mother’s death certificate, a few ballot stubs. He pulled them out and fanned them on top of the quilt. Next came a tattered manila envelope bound with a rubber band. He removed it from the box and turned it over. Scrawled in his father’s familiar hand was the legend “Galen’s allowance.” Frowning, Galen opened the flap and gasped. A stack of old bills wound with a yellowed piece of paper fell out onto the bed. The paper read: “Galen’s allowance since 17 June 1970 to 17 June 1978.” June seventeenth? Could that have been the day he told his father to keep his allowance?
His stomach churned, a warm pit in the center disturbing the anger.
***
Galen came home from church, and loosened his tie. The screen door banged behind him. "I’m back!" he yelled to the empty house; at least it seemed empty. His father never went to mass but insisted Galen go every Sunday. Galen peered into the dark living room as he passed it, but did not see that familiar tall head resting against the antimacassar of the wing chair.
The hall floor gleamed, its scent of furniture oil faintly drifting upward. A rectangle of light from his father’s open bedroom door shown brightly on the oiled wood, but no movement alerted him there. He turned into the kitchen and saw his father talking to a derelict standing on their back porch. Galen hung at the archway. He listened but could not hear the words exchanged. He saw his father hand the man a bag. The man took it and bobbed his head before backing his way down the steps like a servant leaving the presence of a great lord. Galen frowned. What strange Welsh custom was this?
His father took his notebook from his pocket as the man’s head moved past the kitchen window’s fluttering fruit-printed curtains. Griffith dabbed the pencil lead to his tongue and wrote in the journal, dropping it curtly into his pocket as Galen strolled into the room, grabbed an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table, and bit into it.
"Who was that?" Galen pulled the chair out and sat on the yellow plastic cushion.
"That’s…a man," Griffith offered. His mouth shut tightly as he moved into the next room, asking over his shoulder, "How was church?"
***
At the bottom of the tin box, Galen found his father’s notebook. He lifted it out and stared, feeling a sense of strange triumph to have it in his hands. When he pulled on the old tan rubber band it broke in his fingers. He tossed the loose rubber string aside and opened the cover. There in his father’s careful hand was a list of names of families he knew well; some from his neighborhood and others from across town. Beside each name was an entry, either a monetary amount or notation such as, “children’s shoes; size 7,” or “raincoat, ladies,” or “groceries, Easter week.” Some were crossed out while others only checked. Frowning, he turned the yellowed pages.
He reread the entries. Slowly, he deciphered the checks and the strikethroughs. These were poor people. People Galen knew only well enough to wave to from across the street, or to whom he made an occasional delivery from Hurly’s.
Was this possible? Could this have been his thrifty father, loaning money and buying necessities for needy families? Galen scanned the entries. Yes, the checks meant repayment because there was a small date noted next to it, while the others, the names who were struck through with a line, were simple charity. When did this staunch Welshman acquire such generosity?
Galen went to college on a scholarship, yet his father had paid for his room and board. Funny how he had forgotten that. He loosened his shoulders and slumped on the bed.
The envelope full of money sat on the quilt and he thought about when he rejected his father’s allowance; how after Galen’s defiant rejection of his “nanny” at thirteen, Griffith bestowed on him the responsibility of caring for their home. He ironed his father’s large work shirts and mopped the floors. He recalled his father’s silence when he sat down to Galen’s suppers of burnt roasts and dry potatoes.
Under a stack of old phone bills and deed to the house, Galen found a bundle of letters tied with a faded red ribbon. Under the ribbon was a lock of hair. Red hair. His mother’s?
Under the curl was a black and white photo. A young, smiling woman stood next to a bicycle on an indistinct road in the foreground of unidentifiable hills. With a sudden sense of grief, Galen recognized his mother. He never saw a photograph of her, and his grief gave way to a swelling anger. Why was this hidden away in this coffin of dead papers and forgotten documents? Yet as he held the fragile relic and gazed into the young face, wide with its grin and squinting eyes, his anger dimmed, replaced by only a grazing of empty sadness. He looked again at the bundle of letters and slid the first out, removing it carefully from the envelope and unfolding the yellowing paper as if it were a costly manuscript. A love letter, from Griffith Davis to Miss Anghard Pryce, his mother.
He read lyric descriptions of emotions he never dreamed his father felt. Letters from his mother to his father, the agreement to wed, the long separation as Griffith traveled to America for employment, Galen’s birth, and the joy when two boat tickets arrived with his letter. It was a stack of correspondence no bigger than his hands could span, yet it revealed an entire lifetime. A queasy feeling started in Galen’s stomach and radiated out to his limbs.
He removed a letter written by his mother. The postmark dated it before their arrival to the United States.
***
Grif,
It’s been so long. All I have to remember you by are your lovely letters and this terrible photograph. Do you remember that day? You won a prize at the fairgrounds at Llanhamlach. That little notebook. You were so proud. After all, you were the only one of your brothers to go to school and learn to read. How I miss that notebook and all of your little scribblings. Someday, you’ll make good use of that. They may make you a manager in the factory and then you’ll need it to keep track of your workers. Your workers! Just think of it.
Galen has begun to cut his teeth and he’s quite colicky. Little wonder you are happy in America when I have the squalling babe. But truly no. He has your look. I only wished I felt better. But don’t worry. My mum is taking good care of the both of us. I hope before his second birthday he can call himself an American.
I miss you, my darling. Remember: be generous, be kind, and never be afraid.
***
Galen read more endearments before moisture in his eyes made the words blur. He put the letter down and struggled to remember. His mother was always ill, perhaps from the day he was born. Did Griffith blame him? Griffith never seemed unusually cruel. It was only as if Griffith didn’t really know Galen, was afraid to know him.
Galen picked up the black notebook again. He hadn’t known Griffith was the first in his family to read. It seemed so Old World. His father was only eighty when he died. Did children in Wales not have the same opportunities as children in America so long ago?
He flipped through the notebook again, pages filled with acts of generosity and kindness. “Be generous, be kind” his mother had written. “And never be afraid.” Tough advice. He had been afraid when he lost his business two years ago. He spent a weekend with his father after it happened. Griffith offered little sympathy. Looking back, it wasn’t really lack of encouragement, just of empty platitudes. No “everything will seem better in the morning” from Griffith. Instead, Griffith flatly stated, “It’s going to hurt, boy. A lot. For a long time. Best gird yourself.”
The words made Galen angry enough to get on with his life and to throw himself into a new venture. Griffith was always doing that, he decided. He was always propelling Galen into action and making it impossible for Galen to wallow in his own pity, or become paralyzed by lack of confidence…or stand still long enough to be afraid.
He lifted the notebook and turned the pages. After all the entries, Galen was surprised to find pages of his father’s writing, like a diary. He squinted at the scribbles and read.
***
May 1964
I buried her. My Anghard. This is the first time I said it. I can’t make myself say it aloud. I suppose it was wrong to throw out all her pictures, but the day after she died they only made the house that much emptier.
I look at the boy and all I see is her. Who will he grow up to be? He’s got to know what life is about. That it isn’t easy. There are ways to be alive but not part of life.
I don’t think I can do this alone.
***
There followed more pages of his father’s tight scrawl, but he closed the cover on them. There would be time to read them. Later. One by one, he returned the items back into the box and closed the lid. His hand rested on the cold metal a long time.
Tenderly, he gathered the tin box to his chest and held it tightly, just as the musty, distant scent of pipe tobacco wisped in the air.
© Westerson 2005 All Rights Reserved.