Found money

2

Lazy swirls of orange, pink and purple hovered on the horizon in the afterglow of another southern Colorado sunset. From the covered wood porch of his boyhood home, thirty-five-year-old Ryan Duffy stared pensively at what seemed like nature’s daily reminder that endings could be beautiful. The spectacle slowly faded into darkness, a lonely black sky with no moon or stars. The brief burst of color had nearly fooled him. He felt guilty now for having thought even for a moment that his father might be better off dead.

Ryan’s old man had lived his sixty-two years by one simple rule: “last” was the most vulgar of four-letter words. For Frank Duffy, there was no such thing as second place, no ranking of priorities. Everything was first. God, family, job — he devoted unflagging energy to each. A tireless working slug who never missed a Sunday service, never let his family down, never left a job site before someone had said, “That man Duffy is the best damn electrician in the business.” Only in the most important battle of his life did he seemingly avoid being first.

He was the last to admit that his cancer would kill him.

Not until the pain was unbearable did he finally concede he couldn’t beat it on his own. Ryan was furious with him for shunning medicine. Being a doctor had only seemed to make his incessant pleas less credible, as if Ryan were just another one of those test-crazy physicians Frank Duffy had never trusted. As it turned out, treatment would only have prolonged the inevitable — two months, maybe three, tops. Ryan would have welcomed any extra time. Had the tables been turned, however, he knew he might well have displayed the same stubborn denial. Ryan enjoyed it when people said he was just like his father, and they looked so much alike that comparisons were inevitable. Both were handsome, with warm brown eyes. His father had long ago gone completely gray, and Ryan was on his way, with distinguished flecks of gray in his thick dark mane. At six-one he was the taller of the two, though he would have been the last to point out that his proud father was shrinking in his old age.

The sun was completely gone now, dipping below the flat horizon. After dark, the plains of southeastern Colorado were like a big ocean. Flat and peaceful, not a city light in sight. A good place to raise a family. No crime to speak of. The nearest shopping mall was in Pueblo, a blue-collar city a hundred miles to the west. The closest fancy restaurant was in Garden City, Kansas, even farther to the east. Some said Piedmont Springs was in the middle of nowhere. For Ryan, it was right where it ought to be.

Ryan had supported his father’s decision to spend his few remaining days at home. Frank Duffy was well liked among the town’s twelve hundred residents, but the two-hour trek to the hospital was making it hard for his oldest friends to say their final goodbyes. Ryan had set his father up in the rear of the house, in his favorite sitting room. A rented hospital bed with chrome railings and adjustable mattress replaced the rustic pine sofa with forest-green cushions. Beyond the big bay window was a vegetable garden with knee-high corn and bushy green tomato plants. Ash-oak floors and beamed cedar ceilings completed the cabin feeling. It used to be the cheeriest room in the house.

“Did you get it?” his father asked eagerly as Ryan entered the room.

Ryan smirked as he took the bottle from the paper sack in his hand: a fifth of Jameson Irish Whiskey.

His face beamed. “Good boy. Set ’em up.”

He put two glasses on the bed tray in his father’s lap, then poured two fingers into each.

“You know the really good thing about Irish whiskey, Ryan?” He raised his glass in a toast, smiling wryly. “It’s Irish. To your health, laddie,” he said in an exaggerated brogue.

The hand was shaking, Ryan noticed, not from drinking but from his illness. He was even more pale today than yesterday, and his weakened body seemed shapeless, almost lifeless, beneath the wrinkled white sheets. In silence, they belted back one last round together. His father finished with a crooked smile of satisfaction.

“I still remember the first drink you ever took,” he said with nostalgia in his eyes. “You were a spunky little eleven-year-old, pestering my old man for a sip. Your grandmother said go ahead and give it to him, thinking you’d spit it out like medicine and learn your lesson. You threw your head back, guzzled it right down and slammed the glass on the table, like some cowboy in the movies. You wanted to cough so bad your eyes were nearly popping out of your head. But you just dragged your sleeve across your lips, looked your grandma in the eye and said, ‘Better than sex.’”

They shared a weak laugh. Then his father gave him a searching look. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in I don’t know how long.”

“Guess I haven’t felt much like smiling. Didn’t feel much like drinking tonight, either.”

“What do you propose we do? Make a few phone calls, cancel the disease? Look,” he said warmly, “the way I see it, we can either laugh in the face of death, or we can die trying not to. So be a sport and pour your old man another drink.”

“I don’t think you’d better, Dad. Painkillers and alcohol aren’t a good mix.”

“God, you’re always so damned responsible, Ryan.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. I admire you for that, actually. Wish I were more like you. People always said we’re exactly alike, but that’s just on the surface. Not that it wasn’t cute when you used to sit at the breakfast table and make like you were reading the sports section with me, trying to be just like Dad, even though you were two years old and didn’t know how to read yet. But all that was just pretend. On the inside, where it counts — well, let’s just say that you and I are far more different than you’d think.”

He paused and placed his glass on the tray. All humor had left his face. He was suddenly philosophical. “Do you believe that good people can turn bad?”

“Sure,” Ryan said with a shrug.

“I mean really bad, like criminals. Or do you think some things are so unspeakable, so heinous, that only someone who was bad from the very beginning could have done them?”

“I guess I don’t think anyone’s born bad. People have their own free will. They make choices.”

“So why would someone choose to be bad if they’re not bad?”

“Because they’re weak, I guess. Too weak to choose what’s good, too weak to resist what’s evil.”

“Do you think the weak can become strong?” He propped himself up on his elbow at the edge of the mattress, looking Ryan in the eye. “Or once you turn toward evil are you like rotten fruit, gone forever?”

Ryan smiled awkwardly, not sure where this was headed. “Why are you asking me this?”

He lay back and sighed. “Because dying men take stock. And I am surely dying.”

“Come on, Dad. You’re devoted to Mom. Both your children love you. You’re a good man.”

“The best you can say is that I’ve become a good man.”

The ominous words hung in the air. “Everybody does bad things,” Ryan said tentatively. “That doesn’t make them bad.”

“That’s the fundamental difference between you and me, son. You would never have done what I did.”

Ryan sipped nervously from his empty glass, unsure of what to say, fearing some kind of confession. The drapes moved in the warm breeze.

His father continued, “There’s an old chest of drawers in the attic. Move it. Beneath the floorboards, I’ve left something for you. Some money. A lot of it.”

“How much?”

“Two million dollars.”

Ryan froze, then burst out laughing. “That’s a good one, Dad. Two million in the attic. And hell, all this time I thought you had it hidden in the mattress.” He was smiling, shaking his head. Then he stopped.

His father wasn’t smiling.

Ryan swallowed hard, a little nervous. “Come on. You’re joking, right?”

“There’s two million dollars in the attic, Ryan. I put it there myself.”

“Where the hell would you get two million dollars?”

“That’s what I’m trying to explain. You’re not making this easy.”

Ryan took the bottle from the tray. “Yup, I’d say that’s about enough horsing around. Whiskey on top of painkillers has you hallucinating.”

“I blackmailed a man. Someone who deserved it.”

“Dad, cut it out. You were in no position to blackmail anybody.”

“ Yes, I was, damn it!” He spoke with such force, he started a coughing fit.

Ryan came to him and adjusted the pillows behind his back. His father was wheezing, gasping between coughs. The phlegm in his mouth was coming up bloody. Ryan pushed the emergency call button for the home care nurse in the next room. She arrived in seconds.

“Help me,” said Ryan. “Sit him up straight so he doesn’t choke.”

She did as instructed. Ryan wheeled the oxygen tank alongside the bed. He opened the valve and placed the respirator in his father’s mouth. Home oxygen supply was a drill the whole family knew well, as he’d suffered from emphysema long before the terminal cancer developed. After a few deep breaths, the wheezing subsided. Breathing slowly returned to normal.

“Dr. Duffy, I don’t mean to question your professional judgment, but I think your father should rest now. He’s had way too much activity for one night.”

He knew she was right, but his father’s eyes gave him pause. Ryan had expected the glazed, delirious look of a sedated man who was making up crazy stories about blackmail. But the dark old eyes were sharp and expressive. They not only spoke without words, they spoke intelligently. They had Ryan thinking, Could he be serious?

“I’ll be back in the morning, Dad. We can talk then.”

His father seemed to appreciate the reprieve, as if he had said enough for one night. Ryan pulled away, forcing a meager smile. He started to say “I love you,” like he always did, fearful as he was that each conversation might be their last. This time he just turned and left the room, his mind racing. It was inconceivable, really — his father a blackmailer to the tune of two million dollars. Never, however, had Ryan seen his father more serious.

If this was a joke, it was frightfully convincing. And not the least bit funny.

Damn it, Dad, he thought as he left the house. Please don’t make me hate you.