As a young boy, Chet, as he was called then, developed a slouch. It was neither a medical slouch, nor a hunch, but it caused him acute pain every time he was forced to look up. Even the anticipation that the eye contact required by casual conversation, caused, perhaps, by the approach of an increasingly unfamiliar friend, or the need to ask a bank teller if he could withdraw a $10 roll of quarters to take to the arcade, sent rippling, stringing strings of pain up through his neck.
Not many young men can say they received their inheritance at Chet's young age. Out of the ones that can say such a thing, most cannot say they received it in the form that Chet unfortunately had to. At the ripe age of 10, the lad buried his mother. Some say it was a car accident. Others say it was fate. All Chet knew was that it had something to do with the 1979 Schwinn Varsity Sport bicycle that was peeled from the front of his mother's car.
In writing her will some years prior to the "Schwinn-cident", mama Chet felt it prudent to bequeath unto him a family heirloom that she hoped to one day present to his bride-to-be. As he opened the box upon her death, barely breathing from the grief he felt, the 15 pound faux-diamond necklace shined almost as brightly as the woman herself. In honor of his mother's memory, or perhaps 10-year-old naivety when it comes to social norms, Chet wore that 15-pounder every day.
The weight hanging around his neck was visibly excruciating. But it didn't compare to the burden of the secret he was carrying inside.
Six steps separated Chet from the doorbell. A chasm of conflicting emotions, stomach-turning memories, and Chet's innate tendency to hesitate kept him from ringing it.
Milky.
A quick pocket search revealed only a slathering of lint and old butterscotch candy wrappers. "Who am I, Grandma Wiskerchen?" he wondered as he thought about her old leather purse he would always ransack for candies on the way to Saturday evening church.
"Ok Chet ol' boy. Forget about your milk breath. Just do what you came here to do," he muttered to himself, wondering what level of crazy he would rank this day.
It was pretty simple. Just walk up to the door, ring that damned doorbell, and ask for it back. The divorce was two years ago, yes, but surely she wouldn't even miss it if he took it back. It's not even hers, anyway.
He walked up. He rang. He waited, face overly casual, heart pounding.
He heard someone jovially pounding down the stairs with a muffled "LALALALALA!" getting louder and louder.
The door opened with a flush, revealing a tiny little firecracker of a girl. "Hi!!" she yelled towards his middle.
The girl's hair was flush with fine dust and wisps of cobwebs, as though she had been crawling around in the attic upstairs or the crawlspace accessible by a trap door in a small storage room underneath the stairs.
"Is your mommy home?" he asked.
"She's gone," the girl said.
"Sharks. Where'd she go?"
"Mmmmm," the girl said, looking at the ceiling. "I don' know."
"Well, would you do me a favor and let her know that I was here?"
"Mmmm. But.. Well, OK. G'bye!"
She turned around with a quick spin, and galloped into the kitchen and around the corner. Chet quickly surveyed the house. A large fern in a glazed, green pot was overturned near the bookcase to his right. The diffuse, reflected light of the kitchen window pulsed in a large puddle in the center of the floor as a bead of water dripped down from the ceiling with a steady rhythm. The fireplace mantle to his left was as he remembered it.
Conundrums were no stranger to Chet's life. But this was a legitimate pickle.He needed that chest. What could they have been keeping in it anyway - old blankets? Since the moment he moved out he regretted leaving it there. Decades of memories etched into every crevice on all four sides - and the lid!
Someone's got to be home with the little girl, he thought. You can't just leave a firecracker all by herself. If only the chest were in sight. Is it upstairs, downstairs? Chet wasn't convinced it would even fit in his trunk.
As he swayed awkwardly in the doorway, halfway between fleeing for his vehicle and plunging into the decrepit house, he felt a gigantic sneeze coming on.
"Uhhh, little girl?" Chet murmured, stepping around the cereal piles.
He heard a faint knocking in the distance, possibly upstairs a level. The stairway railing provided little more than a thick, syrupy glaze over the palm of his hand. As he descended, each step became more unsure of itself under his relatively light, yet legitimate man-weight.
The knocking continued, but sounded muffled, like it was coming from a closet or enclosed space. Chet entered what seemed like a child's room, yet smelled curiously like cat litter.
"Little girl? You in here?" Chet asked.
Giggles erupted from the left side of the room, yet the lil' firecracker was nowhere in site. Chet overturned pillows, chucked stuffed animals, and pulled off a blanket. The chest!
"It's my cave," the little girl said as Chet peered under the lid.
"It used to be my cave too," he said, "but that was a long time ago."
It was no coincidence that Chet's non-medical slouch coincided with several years as a child with a cave. His verbally abusive father spent the better part of each weeknight yelling at his mother, while the only respite Chet and his serpentine frame could find was bent inside the heavy, dark-wooded trunk.
Weekends were quiet around Chet's house. His father was usually too drunk to make it home from the downtown watering hole, even on foot. His father's liver and consciousness waved a collective white flag on the ratty couch that Big Luke, the Drinkin' Room's diminutive bartender, wisely kept back in the store room — it kept his best customers off of the streets and out of reach of the local lawmen.