Day 13 - Buried Treasure

 Buried Treasure 

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

Daniel didn’t mind helping Joshua clean out his father’s house. Randy Williams had an open house policy to all his children’s friends. There were large weekend dinners and family gatherings the third Sunday’s of every month. Daniel always called him Mr. Williams as a teenager and kept the habit up as a young adult. As a teen Joshua resented how friendly his father was and how many of his friends embraced his father. No teen finds it cool to hang out with his family and it made it far worse how well his father got on with his friends. Years later it would be a blessing. As an embarrassed, thin-skinned, nervous teen, it was the last thing Joshua needed.

Joshua seized the responsibility from his family, wanting it, hating it, resenting in and loving it all at the same time. If his father was looking down from somewhere on high, Joshua wanted to prove he could take care of things and do it right. And having something to passive-aggressively hold over his family didn’t hurt either. He could play martyr if he wanted and remind them years later just how much work he had done. Or if they cherished him for it, then he could bathe in the glory of their adoration. Someday he might need to discuss all of these conflicting emotions with a therapist. But that was a someday problem.

Joshua tried to give Daniel anything he wanted. “I can’t pay much, but you can have whatever you want...”

There was no good answer to that. Daniel liked Mr. Williams, but he had no real need for his possessions. It was a fun house to visit when he was younger – full of music and movies and games. But they weren’t his hobbies or habits.

“If you don’t take something, I’ll have to throw it out…”

Clothes didn’t fit. The knickknacks were the wrong ones. Daniel eventually settled on a few CD box sets of bands from the 1970s and some framed Hitchcock movie posters. He could probably dig a CD player out of a box in his closet and he did enjoy Vertigo enough.

When the old man lay on his deathbed he tried to tell Joshua a secret. Joshua didn’t know how to listen. Or maybe his father was losing it and talking nonsense. The previous few years had hard ones – physically and mentally. There wasn’t much left of the man who had once been. Randy tried to talk about the things he could have done, should have done. He spouted random half-finished thoughts about life and love, full of clichés that sometimes passed for wisdom. Joshua tried to comfort him, but didn’t really possess the skill-set to set his father’s mind at ease. You can only say ‘it’s alright, dad’ so many times before the words ring hallow, and Joshua had always been a little too self-involved to have much more than a basic cursory empathy for others.

When his father said ‘buried treasure’ Joshua’s ears picked up. This was something interesting, something worth hearing and remembering. But Mr. Williams wasn’t making much sense and he wasn’t explaining things clearly.

Joshua had thought about telling his siblings about this final conversation. He thought about telling his good friend Dan. But that nagging itch in the back of his mind prevented him. He wasn’t being selfish, he told himself, he just wasn’t indulging the ramblings of an old man. But there was that itch. That special passion his father had, that look in his eyes that made Joshua suspect there was some truth to it.

Something was hiding in that house. He was sure of it. He had heard stories about hoarders – hidden valuables behind a pile, under another pile and past that other pile. Survivors of the Great Depression hiding money in books, mattresses, or under floor boards. His father could have hidden something anywhere. Stocks or bonds or certificates, folded up, stuffed in an envelope. He just had to open enough things.

Or maybe his father literally meant buried treasure. In the back yard. Under a tree. Next to the fence. A bush growing on top, to hide the spot.

He could spend his life opening boxes and books, or digging holes. Somewhere there was something. Something that meant something to his father. Something that had value. Something that would make it all count, make it all matter and mean something. Something special, somewhere, that could fill the hole in Joshua’s heart.