The Nature of My Inheritance (5 page)

Now, I always thought it strange that my father,
who had a booming sermonizer’s voice on
Sundays, possessed such dainty old lady’s handwriting.
Just never made sense to me. Be that as
it may, while his lion’s roar may have been gone,
his little kitty claw marks remained on many of
them.

Like some born-again bean counter, I started
going through the slips of paper. At first I was
frustrated to see some of the notes about prices
were coded. What, for example, did $RLTAS and
$VEASS possibly mean? My heart sank. I saw re-
assuring names like Milton, Dryden, Swift, Poe,
scattered here and there in the thicket of scrawl.
Some of them were in my closet and others
listed were not. When I happened to uncover a
scrap that had been wadded up like some spitball
with the word “$Revlations” penciled on it,
I understood after a bewildered moment it was,
eureka, the reverend’s price code. An ironic one,
too, if you stopped to think that it was not
meant to reveal a thing. Seemed he had chosen
a book of the Bible in which, when he dropped
one “e,” each letter could stand for a number,
one through ten, and who’d be the wiser? Well
done, pop, I thought proudly as a wave of missing
him spread through me like the fast fever of
a real cold, not my pretend act. It made me
shiver to think of him somehow managing to
assemble these books, to keep his doings so tight
to the vest, or vestments I should say, and then
the doorbell rang for the second time that day.
Sensing this hoard of notes was almost as valuable
as the books themselves, I stuffed them back
in the hollow with the money and hid the Bible
under my pillow. I had to figure that even if my
room was searched by an alien strain of vampire
stormtroopers they wouldn’t deprive a sick,
mourning boy of his bedtime copy of the Word
of God.

Leery by now of unexpected visitors, I peered
out an upstairs window and saw, to my astonishment,
the same black Mercedes I’d seen that
freakish hot August day, parked right in front of
our house. Was there any way this could be
good? No, I didn’t think there was any way this
could be good. But I couldn’t hide inside the
house like a book in a Bible for the rest of my
life hoping my father’s rare book contacts—and
I was sure, Amanda, that’s who this was, wishing
like crazy I could disappear in your warm,
dreamy embrace—hoping they would leave me
alone now and forever, Amen.

The doorbell rang a second time. Nothing
ventured, nothing gained, and all that. I slunk
downstairs and opened the door. Middle-aged
man wearing the most dapper raincoat I ever
laid eyes on with its collars turned up. He had a
salt-and-pepper moustache, steel-blue eyes, a
learned face. City-looking, natty urban.

When he asked if my father was home, very
polite and well-spoken, I recognized his as the
voice on the phone from before. I also knew, seeing
him there, beads of water trickling off the
brim of his chic brown fedora, that he really and
truly didn’t know that the person he was asking
after was no longer with us. Which meant, of
course, that this wasn’t the murderer.

“I’m afraid my father passed away two weeks
ago.” I didn’t need to use any of my pathetic acting
skills for it to be clear what I said was true,
and that it upset me.

The quick look of shock that swept across his
face was more proof that this guy was out of the
loop on my dad’s status and troubled by the
news. “I hadn’t heard, been overseas on business.
I’m terribly sorry for your loss. He and I had
arrangements, you see, to meet and—I don’t
know what to say.”

“It’s wet out there. You want to come in?”

“Well, just for a moment.”

We stood in the hallway, him dripping, me
shivering.

“I think we met once before, in the church
some months ago,” he said. “May I ask how your
father passed away? It must have been a sudden
illness. He seemed healthy when I saw him last.”

“We weren’t introduced,” I said, to clarify.
“But yeah, we saw each other once. My dad died
of a concussion. He fell down the stairs at
church. They say it was an accident.”

Took me long enough, but only then did I
notice he had his leather briefcase with him.

“You don’t seem too sure it was. An accident,
I mean.”

With that, he suddenly sounded concerned.
My first impression that he was clean as a freshwashed
window might have been wrong, I
thought. “Me, I’m just a kid, so what do I know.”
Bread on the water, again.

“You seem like a pretty smart kid to me.
None of my business, but I assume you’ve spoken
with the police about your suspicions.”

“Oh, sure. The detective who’s looking into
it stopped by this morning to go over a few
things with me.”

“Did he. Well, let’s hope he gets to the bottom
of it. I admired your father very much and we
shared some of the same interests. In fact, I’d
brought him something he and I had discussed
before I went abroad,” he said, lifting the brief
case slightly. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter
now.”

That statement obviously left me in a
quandary because I both knew and didn’t know
what was in the briefcase. Had my father’s books
so taken hold of me, so seduced me like they had
him, and probably this gentleman whose name
I still hadn’t asked for, fool that I was, that I was
dying to know what he had brought? I couldn’t
recall ever being in such a helpless bind. If I had
even the slightest hint of a moustache, not the
convincing sculpture of whiskers that crowned
this man’s upper lip, I might have had a fighting
chance to say, Hey, I know about the books.
What’ve you got there? Something in vellum? A
duodecimo or, like, a royal quarto? More
Boethius, more Lucretius? But I sensed I hadn’t
a fighting chance.

I did go ahead and venture, “If it’s a present
or something, I could pass it along to my mom
for you,” hoping to coax some information out
of him.

The wheels in his mind were turning. If he
were a cartoon character, the illustrators would
make it so you could see inside his head, pistons
cranking, smoke billowing in the air like the gray
ghost of a cauliflower.

He floored me when he finally said, after, I
swear to every angel fluttering around on butterfly
wings in heaven and every devil who ever
poked a pitchfork in a sinner’s behind, what had
to have been a full minute, “It’s not a present.
Your dad wanted it for a—friend of his who was
going to buy it. It’s a little complicated.”

The brief hesitation that ballooned before the
word “friend” meant it wasn’t a friend. I was
young, yes, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Curious
before, now I was riveted.

He continued, the wheels in his mind still
turning, “I’d give it to you but the problem is,
you wouldn’t really know what to do with it.”

“How complicated could it be?” I asked. I
mean, I loved my dad but doubted what he had
been up to here wasn’t beyond my own modest
abilities.

“Your name is Liam, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Well, mine’s John Harrison. I’m wondering
if you’d mind if I took this coat off for a
minute?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, feeling that things might be
drifting my way.

We sat, as if some movie director told us to
and we were obedient actors, just where
Reynolds and I had earlier. Harrison settled his
briefcase between his polished black wingtip
shoes.

“Did your father ever share with you his passion
for books?”

Unbelievable, I thought. Was this guy really
going to tell me what was what?

“For the Bible, sure. After that, not so much.”

“He liked other books, too. You like books,
Liam?”

“They have become of real interest to me recently,”
I said, mangling my English in an effort
to sound sophisticated.

“I happen to think that would make your father
extremely proud.”

“What sort of work do you do, Mr. Harrison?”
I asked, hoping to turn the spotlight away
from me. I tried to make my question sound
chatty, not pushy, but even before he answered,
a raft of other questions flooded my mind. How
did you know my father? Why all the secrecy
around these books? Who was that other guy
with the white Porsche? If my dad was pushed
down those stairs, why was he pushed? What the
hell was going on here?

“You can call me John if you like, Liam. What
I am is a librarian,” he said. “Like you, I’ve loved
books ever since I was a kid, and when I grew up
I figured the best way to be near what I loved
was to work in a building filled with books.”

“Makes sense,” I said, ignoring his patronizing
tone, waiting for more.

“It can be a little boring at times, but the job
has its benefits.”

“That’s probably true of all jobs, no?” I could
tell he was weighing something most important
to him, so didn’t stress over it myself but did
have to wonder when he would get to the blasted
point.

“Listen, Liam,” said Harrison, or, that is, John,
after another of his pauses, this one briefer than
the others. “How good are you at keeping secrets?”

I thought of the more than sixty Bibles
buried in my bedroom closet, thought of my
beloved Amanda, thought of the often daydreamy
life I led behind my locked bedroom
door, and answered, “The best.”

“Good. I kind of thought so,” he said. “Your
father, being a man of cloth, probably taught
you what the phrase ‘to take a leap of faith’
means?”

“Sure, I know what that means.”

“All right, I’m going to take a leap of faith in
you, okay?”

“I’m chill with that,” I said, wishing immediately
I had expressed myself less like some
wannabe hip-hopster and more like a responsible
grownup.

“Good,” he continued. “Have you ever heard
the word ‘deacquisition’?”

“No, sir, I haven’t.”

“What about ‘deaccession?’”

I didn’t know that one, either, so he explained
what they meant and went from there to tell me
a lot of other interesting things. The more I
spoke with John Harrison, the cooler, or rather
more estimable, he seemed. I could see why my
father enjoyed his friendship, or working with
him, or whatever they did together. We conversed
for an hour, him treating me more like
an adult than anybody had in a long time, actually
ever, telling me a little about a world I might
never have imagined existed before I inherited
my trove. Once I got the gist of what he was saying,
and hearing the clock strike four, I told him
my mother and brother would be coming home
pretty soon, and he left after shaking my palm-damp
hand, taking that book with him for safekeeping
just for a few days, never knowing that
it probably would have been just as safe if not
safer in my tenderloin clutches. Unless what he
let me in on was a pack of lies, which it wasn’t, I
just felt it in my bones, the reverend had quite
an interesting double life going on here for the
past several years. On the one hand, it fried my
circuits to think of him, my bike-riding, sermon-
preaching dad, as an under-the-radar outlaw.
On the other, I found myself weirdly proud
that he’d led a whole clandestine life nobody
might have guessed. That he was so squeaky
clean made it possible for him to take a walk on
the wild side. Yes, my mind was blown but, at
the same time, I was deeply inspired. Looking
back, I see that day as the one when I became,
for better or worse, a man.

True to my word, veritable poster boy of godless
integrity that I was, I didn’t let on to my family
about my second visitor that Friday, although I
did tell my mother that the detective had
dropped over.

“He have anything concrete to tell us?” she
asked, filling the kitchen cabinets with cans of
soup and vegetables after finding a place for a
carton of milk in our fridge, which was already
overstuffed with casseroles and pot pies that
neighbors and congregants had dropped off
after the funeral. To her credit, mater had kept
up the same dinner regimen that kept pater so
hearty during their years of marital solidarity. If
meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and canned peas
were good enough for a man who ministered to
hundreds of unwashed souls over the years, and
secretly collected and fenced rare books—I hadn’t
known, until Harrison told me, that the word
“fence” had another meaning beyond chainlink
and pickets—then loaf, spuds, and mushy peas
were good enough for me.

“Not really,” I said, neutral as a glass of water.
“He told me that the rest of them he works with
say it was an accident. Guess they don’t have any
clues.” I was about to add that maybe we should
consider suing the church since there was a little
lip on the third step down on which he might
have caught the tip of his shoe. But then I realized
we would pretty much only be suing ourselves. Besides, who knows whether the insurance
was all paid up. Just seemed like a dead end
in every sense.

“Well, then, I wish he’d stop coming around
and stirring up bad memories.”

“I hear you, Mom. But his intentions are
good,” remembering that line about how the
road to perdition is paved with good intentions.
She was right. Especially now that I knew what
I knew. It was going to be best if Reynolds did
back off. If I stuck to that old bit about
An eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
, it could wind up
being my eye and my tooth that might go missing.
I didn’t know whether or not my poor father
tripped and plunged down the stairs all on
his lonesome. Point was, either way he was gone
and there was no getting him back. And, like it
or not, the less the police looked into his death,
the less the chance they would uncover his curious
secrets. He was beloved by his tightfisted
flock, I thought. Let him stay beloved.

“I think Liam did it,” my little brother, who
will never get a blue ribbon for sanity, offered
up to no one in particular. Three years my junior,
he might as well have been a decade younger
the way he acted sometimes.