The Best American Mystery Stories 2019

Brian Panowich A Box of Hope

from One Story

Will sat on the front porch of the house, his feet tucked in close to his body. He’d been sitting in that spot, staring out into the yard, for at least a hundred years or so. He sat and watched both the ghost of his father and a younger version of himself playing tag football in the thick overgrown crabgrass. His old man purposely leaving himself wide open and slowing his movements to let his boy win. Will watched the figments of his imagination climb on the monkey bars that his father had spent a full two weeks yelling at while building piece by piece so many summers ago. The jungle gym started out as a huge flat cardboard box that a truck from K-Mart had dropped off in the driveway, but Will’s father slowly erected it into a steel fortress for them to climb and conquer together. Now it just looked like frail and rusted dinosaur bones — the carcass of some ancient dead thing that had chosen his front yard for its final resting place.

His father had died in his shop just behind the house — an aneurism in his brain. Will was fifteen and felt like he should have had a clear idea of what an aneurism was, but he didn’t, not really. He sat on those steps looking out at his memories and trying to ignore the fat man sitting next to him. The man’s mouth had been moving through every bit of the past hundred years Will had been out there, but his voice had shrunk to a hum that gave the ghosts a soundtrack of static. Will was almost thankful for it.

Almost.

He missed his father’s voice. He was beginning to believe he’d already forgotten the sound of it, and he considered that maybe this fat man’s words bouncing off the surface of his memories might just be saving him from breaking completely in half. He took his eyes off the ghosts and looked down at his brightly polished patent leather loafers. He traced the reflection the trees made in them with his finger. He thought about how he had never worn — or owned — a pair of shoes like this before. Why in the world would his mom spend what little money they had on these shoes, knowing full well he would never wear them again? She had been so adamant about it.

“You need to look respectful,” she’d told him in the middle of J. C. Penney while she’d pulled box after box of shoes off the rack, littering the aisle with tissue paper.

“How does a pair of shoes make you look respectful?” he’d said. How does a person “look respectful” in the first place? Will felt himself slipping into his own anger. He’d lost his dad two days before and was filled with just as much grief as his mother. At least he’d thought so at the time. These shoes felt so unimportant, but as he’d tried on a third pair — the pair he was wearing now — he noticed his mother fighting back her tears. She’d been hiding her own pain behind the shopping. That’s when Will loosened up and allowed her the small comfort those shoes seemed to bring her. “These are good, Mom.”

“Are you sure?” she said and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Walk around some and make sure they fit.”

Will did and then sat back down on the little bench. He reached over to take her hand as she cleaned up the wads of tissue paper. “Mom, it’s going to be okay.”

She looked at him and answered him honestly for the first time without the facade of a protective mother. “No it isn’t, William. No it isn’t.” Then she broke down crying.

This was part of Will’s job now — holding his mother while she sobbed in a department store — whether he wanted it or not. But he hadn’t seen her cry again since. He knew that was due to her new medicine — the little yellow pills that rattled around in her purse and sat on her nightstand. Those pills did their job too. They kept her from crying but they also seemed to keep her from feeling much of anything else. That was okay, though. Will felt enough for both of them. He wanted to cry along with her, but he knew the rules. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was the man of the house now, and men tough it out. Men keep it together. Above all, men don’t cry.

Men get angry. But who was he angry at?

God, maybe.

The helplessness made him want to scream. He wanted to scream until his vocal cords strained and burst. He wanted to scream so loud it would crack the world in half, so that everything that had happened over the past few days would fall through the middle — get swallowed up by the void and be over. Even now, sitting on the porch steps, lost in his memories, he could feel that scream building up behind his tongue and teeth, swelling in his throat like a living thing. Maybe if he let it out he could stop being so angry. Maybe screaming would make him not want to take a swing at everyone in the house.

Before he’d stepped out to get some air, he’d watched as people floated around in their Sunday best, chatting about their jobs or football or the economy — whatever the hell that was. Some of them were even talking about what they had planned for later in the evening. That made Will’s skin burn. Later this evening didn’t exist for him or his mom, not in any kind of way they could have wanted. They were stuck here in this reality for a long time coming, while all these friends of the family shook hands and ate casseroles off little paper plates.

He hadn’t expected to feel this way today. Angry with no one to lash out at, lonely with no one to hold on to, scared and hollow with nowhere to hide. Out of the blue, he felt the urge to punch the man sitting next to him square in his fat face. He wouldn’t do it, but sitting still like this was excruciating. It was just as bad as having to listen to people he barely knew tell him over and over how “time heals all wounds.” He wanted to cheat his emotions like his mother was doing with the pills. Maybe he’d sneak one from her purse later. She’d never notice. No. Will shook his head again. He wouldn’t do that either. Dad wouldn’t want him to. He just needed to suck it up and take it. He needed to follow the rules and stop being so selfish. These people in his house were only trying to help, and the truth was they probably were helping his mom just by being here. He scratched at the back of his neck and loosened the tie his mother had also bought him that day at the department store — another act of endurance he’d had to bear for her sake.

Inside the house, Will’s mother had spent nearly twenty minutes spreading the creases out of a red and white checkered tablecloth before she set out all the covered dishes. A few people — Will included — had tried to help her, but she became indignant about it. She was still able-bodied, she reminded everyone. “I lost my husband,” she said, “not my goddamn hands.” She never cussed or took the Lord’s name in vain like that, but she was angry too.

His Uncle Jack’s being there didn’t make it any easier.

Will didn’t know much about him. He’d never even seen him before today — outside of a few family photo albums — but it was obvious that his presence at the funeral and now here at the house was upsetting his mom even more than she already was. She’d barely spoken to him at the funeral home. She’d introduced the two of them, but then she’d immediately pulled Will away to talk to one of the neighbors. Will had been so taken aback by his uncle’s resemblance to his dad that he’d been dumbstruck, anyway.

The fat man sitting next to him truly had no idea that Will hadn’t heard a word he’d said. It was baffling. He continued yapping until Will felt a hand touch his shoulder and a new droning sound started. Then the fat man brushed the nothing from his pants as he stood up, made a hasty sign of the cross in the air, and mumbled a few words that might as well have been a recipe for rhubarb pie. He cast a weary glance at his replacement. “Good luck,” he said.

Will felt the urge to smack him again but sat still as the fat man headed inside to get in on some free potluck. The new man sat down on the steps.

Uncle Jack.

“Hey there, Will,” he said. And then, after a few moments: “I hate that you had to sit out here and listen to that guy for so long. I would have come out to save you a while ago, but your mama said she wanted you to have some time with a holy man.”

“A holy man?”

“That’s what she said, kiddo. A preacher from one town over. I wasn’t about to argue.”

“Yeah, she’s been a little touchy lately.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s going through a pretty rough time. If she wants to act a little touchy, then I reckon she’s entitled to.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Will was amazed at how quiet it got without the “holy man’s” hot buzz in his ear. He turned and took in the sight of his uncle, his dad’s younger brother. This close up, the resemblance was startling. Uncle Jack was so much like Will’s father it made him hard to look at, so Will didn’t look for very long. There were differences, of course, but those seemed — at a glance, anyway — to be matters of style. Will’s father had been uptight about his appearance and manner. He always sat up straight in his chair, always kept his hair short and trim, and his shirt stayed tucked in. Will supposed his dad’s twenty-five-year tenure in the Fire Service had made him that way. He always carried himself as if he were in service of someone else and ready for a business meeting. That sort of thing had been important to him, but clearly none of that mattered to Will’s Uncle Jack. He was thinner, looser. His graying brown hair fell long and messy. Not long enough for a ponytail or anything, but long enough for him to have to reach up and tuck it back behind his ear every two or three minutes throughout the entire funeral, Will had noticed. He wore black Levi’s and a pair of beat-up black cowboy boots that seemed to be challenging Will’s own sissy shoes to a duel on the steps below them. His black button-up shirt looked expensive, but not new. Will got the feeling Jack dressed like that all the time. He hadn’t just made a stop at J. C. Penney to pick up some dress-up clothes to make himself “look respectable” on the way here. He didn’t wear a tie, either, but he wore a lot of silver rings and they made both of his hands sparkle in the sun. Will could see bright-colored tattoos creeping out from under his sleeves whenever he moved his wrists just the right way. Although Will thought that was cool, he knew every pair of eyes in the house behind him had washed this man down with buckets of judgment — good Christian judgment.

Uncle Jack didn’t live here in McFalls County. He’d moved to Atlanta several years before Will was born and had stayed there, far away from where he’d grown up, far away from his family. From what Will could tell, that had always been fine with his parents. There was no contact that he knew of, and no one had spoken to Uncle Jack at the funeral today except for his mom — and that was only because Uncle Jack had approached her. He didn’t get up to say anything during the service, either, which Will thought was weird. The man had lost his brother, after all. Family resemblance or not, he seemed to be a stranger.

The two of them sat in silence for a long time.

Then Uncle Jack said, “I miss him too, kid.”

Those five words opened the floodgates. Will could hear this man that everyone treated as some kind of pariah start to openly cry, and Will couldn’t help himself. The tears they both had been doing their best to hold back all day ran down their faces. Jack reached out and pulled his brother’s son in for a hug. Damn the rules.

Once the moment turned awkward, they shifted back from each other on the step and straightened out a bit, the way men do. They sat again in silence. Jack let a misplaced chuckle slip out that reminded Will so much of his father he almost started crying again, but he didn’t. He’d already gotten that out. Instead, he unintentionally mimicked Jack’s chuckle, which caused them both to laugh even harder. Will supposed their sudden mood swing brought on curious stares from some of the casserole eaters behind them, but he didn’t care.

“You know,” Jack said, “your father was pretty proud of you. He talked about you all the time.”

Will figured the drone would begin now, but he played along. “He did?”

“Of course he did. He rarely talked to me about anything else.”

“No,” Will said, elaborating on his point, “I mean, you two talked? I got the impression that you guys didn’t talk to each other at all.”

“Well, we didn’t exactly have Wednesday-night chat sessions or anything, but he was my brother, you know. We talked. Holidays, birthdays — that kind of thing.”

“Oh.” Will rested his elbows on his knees. He couldn’t help but wonder if what Jack had said was true or if he was lying just to make his nephew feel good.

“I’d ask him how things were going and immediately he’d get to rambling on about you.”

“What was the deal with you two, anyway?” Will asked. “He never talked to me about you.” He knew his words were callous. Jack didn’t seem to mind. “Did y’all have a falling out or something?”

“Or something,” Jack said, as if that took care of describing it. “We just led two very different lives. Your dad was always kind of a straight arrow, even when we were kids. He always did the right thing, despite what people thought of him or what it cost him. That’s what made him so damn likable.” Jack motioned with one shiny hand back toward the house. “It’s also why his house is packed out with so many people right now.”

Will rolled his eyes.

“Hey, think what you want about those people in there, but every one of them wishes they had an ounce of the stuff that made your father the man he was. I can promise you that. I know I do.”

That much sounded right to Will. He let his uncle talk.

“He was the kind of guy that people just wanted to be around. The kind you wanted in your corner. Very much the opposite of me.”

Jack took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Back in the day,” he said, “me and my buddies did some dumb things — like lifting beer from Pollard’s or dragging three-oh-twos up on McDowell Road. Stuff like that always had me locking horns with your father, because he never approved. He definitely had a way of making you feel his disappointment if you strayed from the righteous path.”

Will felt himself nodding in agreement. He’d gotten into a fight at school once. He couldn’t even remember what started it, but he could remember after he was sent home how the look on his dad’s face had been far worse punishment than a whupping would have been.

“Your old man cast a long shadow, if you catch my meaning.”

“Yeah, I do. He was a high-road kind of guy.”

“The problems we had? That was all me. If your dad was a high-road kind of guy, then I was the low-road kind. I always found the easy way to do things and it always got me into trouble.” He thought on that for a second then added, “Your dad just didn’t understand. For him, being a fuck-up, and all the bad stuff that comes with it, just didn’t compute.”

Will felt a pinprick of joy when his uncle dropped the f-bomb. The adults he knew usually never cussed around kids. Hearing the f-bomb made him feel more grown up and less like the child everyone felt sorry for.

“When we were boys,” Jack said, “I used to resent your old man for being such a tight-ass, but as we grew up I started to realize that for all of his soapboxing and straight-shooter bullshit, he never once gave up on me or backed down from someone or something I got tangled up in. And believe me when I tell you, kiddo, I brought a truckload of bad news into his life. He could’ve walked away from me at any time and nobody would have blamed him, but Hank didn’t have it in him to walk away from anything.”

Hank. That was a name reserved only for the people that truly knew Will’s dad. Most everybody called him Henry, or Mr. Henry even, but never Hank. Mom called him Hank. Nana called him Hank. The name sounded strange coming from someone Will had just met, but it was also comforting, and it made the conversation sound like something warmer than it had just a couple of moments ago. It made it feel like family.

“I also realized that I was never going to change,” Jack continued. “I was pretty comfortable with the way I lived my life, so I decided it was best for me to stay away. Your old man never argued with that. I was single and had no one to look out for but myself. He had a pretty wife and a kid on the way. He didn’t need me around causing him any grief.” Jack got quiet and a sadness swirled on the porch like a miniature twister between them. Will shooed it away in his mind. He realized he felt less lonely. The ache in his chest had dulled — not much, but some.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here now,” he said. “I don’t really know anybody in there other than Nana and a few guys my dad worked with. I think you’re maybe the only person here that isn’t looking at me like I’m on suicide watch. If one more person asks me if I’m okay, I think I’m gonna scream — or puke.”

Jack smiled, and it made him look more like Will’s dad than ever. He put his arm around the boy again. “That’s exactly what I needed to hear, because although I love your mama and all, I know she hates me and can’t wait for me to get the hell out of Dodge.”

“I wouldn’t say she hates you.”

Jack raised one eyebrow — another mannerism that echoed Will’s dad. He looked back toward the front door where Will’s mother had been standing for who knew how long.

“Are you okay?” she said. The question was for Will, but her blistering stare was all for Jack.

“Yeah, Mom. I’m fine.”

She stood with her hands on her hips for a moment while she made that decision for herself and then finally backed away into the house. Will knew even if he couldn’t see her, she’d stay within earshot of him and Jack. Jack seemed to know it too. They began to speak more softly.

“Okay, she hates you.”

“Told you.”

“But she’s feeling no pain right now, so I think you’re safe.”

“Well, to be completely honest, kiddo, no disrespect, but I don’t care what your mama thinks of me. I didn’t come here for her. I came here for your dad — and for you.”

“Why me? I don’t even know you.”

“And that’s sort of the point,” Jack said. “I know I haven’t been the greatest uncle to you and you’ve got no reason in the world to put any stock in anything I say, but it’s important to me that you understand something.”

“What’s that?”

“I loved your father. I did. And I didn’t tell him that enough while he was alive. I never thanked him for anything he did for me or told him how much he meant to me. Now he’s gone, and I can’t. That’s on me. I’ve got to live with it, and so I don’t want to screw up and do the same thing twice.”

Will didn’t know what to say. Stupidly, he just nodded.

“William, listen. From this moment on, as cheesy as this may sound, I will never be more than a phone call away. My brother was the best man I’ve ever known, and my bet is that you’re going to turn out to be just like him. I want to be around to see that. I need to see that. I guess I’m saying that anything you need, Will, anytime you need it, from anywhere you are, I got your six.”

What felt like a full minute of silence passed. Will settled his eyes back on his shoes. “Thanks, Uncle Jack,” he finally said, but it sounded thin and obligatory.

Jack took another deep breath and both of them could feel the awkwardness of why they were there creeping back in between them. “I also came here to give you something.”

Will looked up. “What’s that?” He assumed it was money. Money his mother wouldn’t let him keep. Money his father never would’ve allowed him to take.

Jack smiled, but this time his smile was his own — not Will’s dad’s. It filled his whole face with the kind of mischief Will’s father just didn’t possess. “Follow me,” he said, and stood up. He walked down the steps and toward a Suburban parked at the end of the driveway and fished the keys from his pocket. Will hesitated and looked over his shoulder into the laser-hot stare of his mother. He didn’t know how long she’d been back in the doorway. He felt the tug of her eyes telling him to keep his butt glued to that step, but he got up anyway. He brushed at his pants the way the fat man had and defiantly followed his uncle to the truck.

Jack walked behind the Suburban, double-tapped the key fob, and stood back as the hatch opened automatically. He disappeared from sight, shuffled some things around in the back, and then emerged holding a large white rectangular cardboard box. Will waited by the front of the truck, keeping himself in clear view of the front door. He didn’t want to give his mother a reason to come outside and ruin whatever this was. Jack seemed to understand. He tucked the box under his arm, tapped the key fob again, and the hatch slowly lowered back into place. He walked right past Will and returned to the porch. He set the box down on the steps and took a seat next to it. Will imagined every pair of eyes in the house joining his mother’s in curiosity, but he also imagined that interest died almost immediately when Jack reached down, lifted the cardboard lid from the box, and pulled out some of its contents.

Comic books.

How old did his uncle think he was? Will had given up comic books years ago. He liked girls and cars these days. Comic books all but guaranteed he’d never get a shot at having either. His uncle was a fool if he thought he could just show up here after all this time, say a few nice things about Will’s dad, and then try to buy his affection with a box of old comic books. He looked at his uncle with a mix of disappointment and confusion. It was Jack’s turn to see his brother in his nephew’s face.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Yeah, you’re thinking that your loser uncle must be out of his mind lugging out a box of comic books to impress a teenager who is clearly light-years ahead of this kind of thing, right?”

“Maybe not the loser part.” Will walked back over to stand next to the porch. “But I am fifteen.”

“Well, Methuselah, these aren’t just any comic books.” Jack handled a few of the flimsy yellowed paper comics the same way Will’s mother handled her nana’s antique dishes. “These,” Jack said, never taking his eyes off what he was holding, “are your father’s comic books.”

Now Will was really confused. His dad had never owned any comics. He hadn’t even read regular books. It just wasn’t his thing. As far back as Will could remember, his dad had never even read a newspaper. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack,” Jack said. “Me and your dad used to collect these together. The X-Men, Daredevil, Green Arrow, The Flash, Tales of Suspense.” He paused on one of the books in his hand, and Will thought his uncle might start to cry again. “And Batman,” he said. “Damn, your dad loved him some Batman.”

“You’re kidding me right now, right? This is some kind of joke.”

Jack looked mildly offended. “I would never kid you about something this important, Will. On my honor.” He held his free hand up, palm out. “When me and your old man were boys — when we were friends — these were his prized possessions.” He carefully placed the books back in the box. “Every last Wednesday of the month, if all our chores had been kept up, your nana would give us each a Susan B. Anthony dollar and we’d walk all the way down to Franklin County to the Stars and Stripes Drugstore. The only place we knew that carried all the latest issues. We’d get two books apiece with those dollars and we’d swap them back and forth all the way home. Sometimes we’d even act out the stories in the backyard.”

Will still looked skeptical. “It’s a little hard to picture my dad doing anything like that.”

“Well, he did. In fact, he loved them even more than I did. He always said he wanted to write comics when he grew up. That was his dream.”

“So what happened?” Will asked, even more bewildered. He noticed his mother had disappeared from the doorway.

“The same thing that happened to almost everything back then. I ruined it.”

“How so?” Will sat back down and tried his best not to look interested in the fragile box between them.

“We got a little older. I guess I was about your age and your dad was a year ahead of me. I started becoming the asshole you see before you now and I began to treat the whole comic book ritual as ‘uncool.’ I started hanging out with losers and smoking cigarettes while your dad kept himself buried in these things.” Jack tapped the box. “He tried to get me interested again from time to time, but I wasn’t having it. I was too cool. Eventually he just gave up, and without having me or someone else to share all this with, it held less and less magic for him, I guess. Until finally he put all his books in this box, and into the attic they went. He never talked about them again — not to me, anyway. When your nana finally got sick of me always getting in trouble and kicked me out of the house for good, I stole them. I thought I could sell them to a collector or something down the road for some quick cash, but every time I tried, I could never bring myself to go through with it. After a while — when money stopped being an issue for me — they became something else.”

“Like what? What something else?” There was excitement in Will’s voice. Not a lot, but enough for Jack to notice.

“I know this is going to sound corny to a big fifteen-year-old kid like you, but this box of comics became a symbol of the last good thing I could remember about your father and me. It was like there wasn’t just a bunch of old comics in there, but more like our childhood — our brotherhood — was still alive inside this box. I began to think the reason I could never get rid of them like I planned was because, someday, they would be the thing that brought us back together. I started to imagine that one day we would be old men on a porch somewhere — maybe this one — looking through all this stuff, and as we remembered the comic books, we’d remember each other. I don’t know, I just thought if we sorted through these, we could finally sort through all our shit, too. I always thought there’d be enough time. I was wrong.”

“But why get rid of them now? I mean, they still mean something to you, right? They still remind you of my dad, right?”

Jack’s face stoned over. “Yeah, they do. And that’s why I’m not getting rid of them. I’m giving them to you. It’s like I said, I always thought they would bring me and your father back together someday, but I screwed that up like I did almost everything concerning our family over the years. Now that he’s gone, I finally get it.”

“Get what?”

“The real reason I held on to them for this long. It was so I could get them to the person who’s now their rightful owner.” He put a hand covered in silver rings on Will’s bony knee. “I don’t want to waste any more time. I don’t want to screw this up too.”

Will peered at the box, ran his fingers over the comics, and pulled out an old copy of Swamp Thing. He turned the fragile yellow pages carefully, like his uncle had done, and tried to see what his father saw in those faded four-color images. He tried to see his dad. He couldn’t — not right then. But Jack could. He could see Hank all over the young version of his older brother sitting next to him on the porch.

“I know you’re too old for comic books, Will. Maybe you could stick them away in a closet somewhere, and maybe they’re still worth something. Who knows, maybe they can pay for a few years of college down the road. I know some of these things can be pretty valuable. But whatever you decide to do with them is up to you. They’re yours.”

Will kept scanning the pages. “Thanks, Uncle Jack,” he said for the second time. His words still sounded thin and forced, but this time Jack could hear something else. He grabbed Will and pulled him in over the box for a hug. Will laid the Swamp Thing comic on the porch and hugged him back. While holding him tight, Jack whispered into his ear, “Detective Comics, number eighty-three, page twelve, across the top of the Sea-Monkeys ad. I wrote a number. Someone will always answer that number — always. Do you hear me, son? There’s an entire world out there that belongs to you — and you alone. You’re my blood. There’s nothing more important than that. Nothing.”

Will found himself hugging his uncle back as hard as he could. He felt a hard lump of metal tucked under his uncle’s arm, against his ribs. It had to be a gun, he thought. His dad hated guns. Will had never even seen one in real life. He almost pulled back and asked Jack about it, but he didn’t. It was Jack who let go.

He pushed himself up off the porch, wiped at his face with both hands, and walked away from the house without saying goodbye. He looked back as he got in the car and watched his nephew pull out another tattered issue — The Green Arrow & The Green Lantern: Hard Traveling Heroes. It had been one of Hank’s favorites. He pulled the Ruger P95 out of his holster and slipped it into the glove box before he cranked up the SUV and carefully backed it out of the drive. He knew Hank would never forgive him for exposing his son to his world, but Hank was dead, and Jack would be, too, eventually. And now the Parsons family name — and all the respect it commanded throughout the Southeast — was not going to end with him. It didn’t have to. No more need for grooming one of the idiots who worked under him. Fate had provided Jack with an heir. All he needed to do now was wait for the call, and he was sure the call would come.