Mather Schneider was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1970. His poetry and prose have been published in many places and he has 6 books available. He lives in Tucson, Arizona and works as an exterminator.

THE SAFE

Dad and I stood in grandpa’s garage staring at the 3-foot-tall safe which sat on the concrete floor against the back wall. The safe was the only thing left in the garage. All the wooden shelves were empty and the floor was cleared.

            “Jesus Christ,” he said.

            It was mid-summer, hot and humid. We were both sweating from trying to move the safe. It hadn’t budged.

            “Is it cemented to the floor?” I said.

            “It’s possible, I wouldn’t put it past him.”

            Grandpa had died the month before and we were getting his house ready to sell. I’d flown in from Arizona to help. Dad was 69 and I didn’t want him to deal with this alone. Plus, I had something to tell him and I wanted to do it in person. We brought a Salvation Army crew in to clean out what they wanted and they took pretty much everything. It wasn’t worth much, just a bunch of ratty old furniture and dishes and crap. The Salvation Army guys wouldn’t take the safe, it was too heavy. We got to cleaning and we did some painting. We worked around the safe, knowing that it was a problem but putting it off until the end.

            “What the fuck is in there, anyway?” I said.

            “I don’t know, Matt. Whatever it is, it isn’t money.”

            “You can’t think of anywhere Grandpa might have written the combination?”

            “Not unless he’s got it buried in the yard somewhere.”

            It was just a normal house with a normal yard in Pekin, Illinois, with vinyl siding the color of a band-aid. Grandpa had been living there by himself for 20 years after Grandma died. Nobody visited him. Dad lived across the river, but he hadn’t seen Grandpa in a decade. I hadn’t seen him for longer than that. This was the first time I’d even been back to Illinois in 25 years.

            I fiddled with the dial, turning it one way, then the other. Click, click, click. It was an interesting safe. It was black and very old.

            “Maybe the safe itself is worth something?” I said.

            “I checked on the internet. It’s worth maybe 50 bucks.”

            “Well, leave it here then, let the new owners deal with it.”

            “I’d like to. You know your Uncle Karl called me the other day.”

            “Shit, I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

            “No one has. He didn’t even come for the funeral. He’s living in California now. He’s an alcoholic, he sounded drunk when he called me. He started crying, talking about dad and the old neighborhood we grew up in and all that. His wife, your aunt Sally, told me a few months ago that Karl had stopped wearing clothes. Apparently, he just walks around the house naked. He gets his beer delivered right to the house. She’s about fed up. The guy has no shame. Some things you should just keep to yourself. The world doesn’t need to see all that shit.”

            “You want a beer?” I said.

            “Sure.”

            I went into the house and got us a couple of Miller bottles.

            “Uncle Karl,” I said. “Damn.”

            “Yeah, he always was a little strange, kind of fucked in the head, nobody knew what his problem was. He left when he was 16 and we never heard from him. Until now. He always hated your grandpa. Who knows why? Dad wasn’t that bad. He was just stuck in his ways, I guess.”

            “Yeah.”

            We sipped our beers and stared at the safe.

            “I know they said Grandpa died of a heart attack, but I was wondering if there was anything else?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Just wondering.”

            “Anyway, I told Karl about all the work we’ve done cleaning out the house and everything, and I told him about the safe, and he said he wants the damn thing.”

            “Let him have it then.”

            “He wants me to ship it to him. I looked into it. They want fifteen hundred dollars. What an idiot.”

            “What did Karl say about that?”

            “He told me he’d think about it. But we don’t have all the time in the world here. We’ve got to sell this place.”

            I finished my beer and wanted another but resisted the urge.

            “Too bad you didn’t like that,” he said.

            “Tastes good on a hot afternoon.”

            “Your Grandma used to drink whiskey in her coffee,. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”

            Grandma had died 30 years ago, when I was 18. What she died off was a mystery.

            “I didn’t.”

            “She was good at hiding it. I didn’t even know until I caught her at it when I dropped by once.”

            “You know, I’ve never been to her grave,” I said.

            “Why would you want to do that?”

            “I don’t know, seems like something people do.”

            “People do a lot of things.”

            “It was just a thought.”

            Dad sat down on the safe and put his beer bottle on the concrete floor. He wiped his sweaty face with a red bandana and put it back into his blue shorts. His hair was buzz cut and completely white, and his face was puffy. When he got winded, he had a look on his face that reminded me of someone who was drowning.

“You feeling ok, Dad?”

            “Sure, sure.”

            I looked out the dirty garage window at the neighbor’s house.

            “Did Grandpa know his neighbors?”

            “How the hell should I know? I doubt it. Grandpa minded his own business.”

            I put my hands in my pockets so they wouldn’t be fidgety. I still wanted another beer. I felt the piece of paper in my pocket. It was a summons to appear in court. It concerned something my 22-year-old son was accused of doing. I didn’t know anything really. I figured he was probably guilty. The crime he was accused of was disgusting and I could hardly stand to think about it. I’d brought the paper with me to show Dad and maybe talk to him about it. Dad didn’t even know I had a son.

            I looked a lot like Dad, which was unnerving. I walked like him and I had his hands and my hair was going white too. We even dressed similar, even though we hadn’t seen each other in so long.

            “What in the world did Grandpa think he needed a safe for?” I said.

            My dad shook his head but he didn’t say anything.

            “How’s a burger sound?” he said.

            “Sounds good.”

            We stepped out to the gravel driveway and looked at the yard which was all overgrown weeds.

            “I’m gonna have to mow this shit,” he said. “Hope I don’t find any snakes.”

            “Or bodies,” I said.

            He shut the garage door by reaching up and pulling it down until it crashed into the cement.

            We went to McDonald’s and got hamburgers and sat down with our backs to the wall. We talked about the Cubs, immigration, work, corn, the price of an oil change, how rude people are. We wondered if the clouds would develop into something significant, or just hang around like that, trying to make up their minds. My back ached from trying to move that safe, and if mine hurt I was sure Dad’s did too. A 5-year-old Mexican kid tore into his Happy meal box at the table next to us, searching for the prize.

            “You know what’s good about getting old?” Dad said.

            “What?”
            “Nothing. Not a god damned thing.”

            I laughed but he didn’t.

            “Just list the house cheap and it will sell quick,” I said.

            “Hope so,” he said. “That safe is still bugging me, though. I feel like we shouldn’t just leave it there like that.”

            “Forget about it, it doesn’t matter.”

            “Yeah. I guess,” he said. “How do they make these fries taste so good?”

            “Who the fuck knows.”

            I never did tell Dad about my son, who is now locked up. He might not ever get out. They say it’s better this way because he can’t hurt anybody anymore. It got ugly at the trial. He blamed me for everything. I told him I was sorry, which was true, but it didn’t help. I think about him. I wrote him a few letters and then I ran out of things to say. He never wrote back anyway. I tried to visit him once but he didn’t want to see me.

Dad died 2 years ago. I went to the burial. It was at a cemetery called Swan Lake. I don’t know why they called it that. There was no lake and certainly no swans. Me and Uncle Karl were the only ones present, besides the funeral crew. No preacher. Uncle Karl was drunk. He’d managed to put clothes on and fly to Illinois. We didn’t talk much. He kept acting like he wanted to tell me something but couldn’t spit it out.

            “Did you ever get your hands on that old safe of grandpa’s?” I asked him.

            “Naw,” he said. “It wasn’t worth the trouble.”

            They lowered the casket into the hole in the ground. Then they covered it up and got the stone ready. His name was carved into it, his date of birth and date of death. That dash in between. Dad always wanted a big one. It took 5 strong men to shove it into place.

END