Puppet Master

I was falling asleep to the lull of the wine on my crappiest-looking La-Z-Boy chair when I heard the phone buzz to the rhythm of someone calling me. 

“Don’t care, feeling too angsty to talk to anyone anyway,” I remember myself thinking as I closed my eyes in my twilight living room. In hindsight, I should’ve gotten up and answer the phone. If I did, I would have been able to talk with my estranged uncle before he passed away and I may have gotten a more realistic explanation than the one I’m stuck with now.

Uncle Dan was his name. And I didn’t even get to hear about him until after he died. The phone rang that night, and when I woke up with an unfortunate headache the next morning at 6:00AM (I can’t sleep late now even when I try), I listened to his voicemail, which failed to answer some important questions while he talked in a fast-paced, almost maniacal tone.

“Hello my dear Lisa. It’s Dan, your mom’s brother. We met when you were just yay-tall -ope! I know you can’t see my hand gesture through the phone- I met you before you were old enough to remember me. It was a glorious time then; you see, I had just had a baby of my own and my partner and I were madly in love and had dreams of our sweet young Marvin growing up being not only your cousin, but your best friend. Anyway, those dreams, and in some ways my life, ended when I came home drunk, far too drunk, and wanted to see my sweet baby boy and hold him in my arms. I cradled him wildly and swung him to death. If I had more time right now, I would explain to you the absolute pain that I created and how regret does not even begin to describe the emotions connected to my actions. But I am running low on time, so long story short, my wife left me, I went to prison, and your mother, my dear and stubborn sister Loretta, demonized me when she promised that I would never see you or her ever again. I’m not sure if she ever mentioned me to you. 

“My time in prison was nothing compared to the punishment I believe I deserve, but it was rough…” his voice trailed off for just a moment before picking back up, “...and when I got out 30 years after my mistake and 10 years ago today, I vowed that the next decade would be one to make up for my sin. I tried to find god and do good spiritually, truly I did, but no amount of religious text could undo the lack of evidence I personally saw in it. I tried to be kind to others and go out of my way to do favors for neighbors, but I often messed up and came across wrong, perhaps as a creep. I was ready to give up my life and hopefully somehow be with my son again. Or at least be out of this pain. I decided to wait though, and build up my investments so that I could donate as much as I could to nonprofits who support parents dealing with alcoholism create better relationships with their kids. Who the hell knows if the money will do much, but even if it keeps one child alive, my charity will have been worth it. 

“I was quite good at investing before my time in prison, and I used what little money I had left to grow in this revolting capitalist market that we all bow down to. And what do you know, it worked. I’ve become a multi-millionaire in less than 10 years, and although the money sometimes disgusts me, I believe it can go to good use. I’ve made even more than I thought I would, and that’s where you come in.

“You see, Lisa, I am dying. My body’s been failing for the last two decades as it has battled Cardiovascular Disease, something suspiciously common for inmates. I can’t say that I’m surprised based on the stress and unhealthy living styles I’ve embraced. Medics brought me back from a heart attack about 7 years ago, but I don’t intend to let them do that again. Recently, I stopped taking my medication. And I see my time coming to a close soon. With my death, I want you to prosper. I want to be the uncle I should have been all along, and I want to leave you the money that should have gone to Marvin. A million dollars will be coming your way shortly, and although I won’t be here to monitor your spending, I do hope you’ll use it wisely. 

“There is a catch, of course. Ha - I can’t play the part of the mysterious uncle without one. Nothing in life can bring me much joy anymore, but that doesn’t mean that I am okay living a life without a legacy. My financial charity will add some positivity to people for a short amount of time, but once the money is spent I’ll long be forgotten. 

“So what I am asking of you is to not waste your life. No, learn from my mistakes and find meaning. I have done some research on you, and you have so much potential. I want you to quit your job at the store, we both know you never liked interacting with the customers there anyway. That should be easy enough, since you have money coming your way. But more than that, I want you to put yourself out there. I’ve taken the liberty of signing you up for a number of classes and activities that will get you out of your comfort zone and maybe bring you higher self-actualization. They are all paid for, and tomorrow you will receive the schedule for the coming months. You don’t need to do anything once you’ve completed an event or class: my lawyer will be aware of your participation in the activity, and she will know to not send you the money if you skip out on anything I request. 

“Please, please do not waste the life you have - I've done enough of that for the both of us. And maybe lay off the booze and leave those deadbeat friends of yours behind - except for James perhaps; he’s a good one. Anyways my amazing Lisa, with the lack of medicine I suspect that my time is running out tonight, and although I’m scared of dying, I feel semi-good about you being the last person I talk to, even if nobody is talking back. Keep a lookout for that schedule. I hope you choose to follow the events I have chosen for you and get the money that may be coming your way. I love you.”

When the voicemail switched off, I could only sit there for a minute of two, making a face at my phone that I usually reserved for when I overheard people say something surprisingly stupid. I wished someone else was there to share my bewilderment and respond to me when I said “what the fuck...what the actual fuck” over and over again. 

I would have called my mom, but the anxiety my poor mother faced in her later years got so intense that I was pretty worried this may send her over the edge. But how did Dan get my information? And why the hell was he being so creepy about it?! He had mentioned James, who I had met back in community college and enjoyed talking to about various philosophical possibilities. He was a friend, but he also had an intensity surrounding certain topics of injustice that made me nervous occasionally. Plus I hadn’t actually hung out with him in person in months- we just had sent the occasional text to each other, so was Dan tracking my phone? The first part of Dan’s voicemail made me almost pity him, but he really showed his audacity in the last part. And what a condescending S.O.B. he must be to demand that I completely change my life in order to get his money! Like, $1 million wasn’t even that much anymore. 

After a little bit of thought and going to the kitchen to grab a knife (just in case, since I felt kind of violated at that moment), I dialed the number that I had gotten a missed call from just 8 hours ago. Nobody answered and no voicemail box was set up. Just as I began to wonder if this was all a crappy prank, I received a text from a new number, who I now assume was Dan’s lawyer. It simply sent me the obituary of this man, this family member who I had never met.

“Jesus, how quickly did they get this thing written?” I asked myself as I scanned the article to read that Dan Miller had died the night before (presumably right after his call to me), and was survived by his sister Paula (my mom) and brother Stewart (his brother and my other uncle). And there beside the small, sad blurb summing up Dan’s life was a picture of him. Swollen eyes and a pained smile were what would catch most people’s attention, but it was the uncanny likeness to my mom that made it almost impossible for me to look away. 

I needed some answers, a better explanation, so I called Uncle Stew. We weren’t on particularly close terms and I knew that even though my mom had always pretended to love him, she was weary of him being gay (“choosing that lifestyle,” as she would say) and kept me shielded from "his ways." I didn’t particularly care; hell, I always liked hanging out with him on the rare occasion she invited him over and began to dote over her younger brother, despite her belief that Stew was challenging God. He was a good guy, and the more I heard from some friends about how gay people were oppressed, the further I ventured from my mom’s beliefs. You know, sometimes I don’t even believe in God anymore. But don’t tell her that.

So anyway, Stew answered the phone but immediately shut down a little when I asked him about Dan. He did confirm that his brother was real and that he himself had been forbidden by my mom to talk about Dan around me. I was about to go into the details of what Stew’s brother requested of me, but as soon as I mentioned Dan’s death, Stew broke down sobbing. I guess he didn’t hear about it yet. I decided against talking about the other details and hung up as soon as I got the opportunity. 

And then I waited. And mulled over the possibility of quitting my job.

The schedule that Dan had created for me came without a letter when it was delivered by the UPS guy. It didn’t look too bad at first, just some random college classes and meditation retreats that he signed me up for. It got a little scarier when I saw the skydiving and bungee jump dates on the sheet (considering my fear of heights, which creepy Uncle Dan probably knew about). And then it got oddly specific.

-----

FOUR YEARS LATER

It turns out $1 million is still a lot of money. And that $3.5 million is enough for Dan to get me to do whatever he wanted. And definitely enough for his requests to unleash a side of myself that even I was surprised to learn about.

“Where to?” James, who was now my subordinate, asked as he looked down at the box of fliers in his hands. 

I pointed to the closet on the far end of the hall and got back to my thoughts. As it turned out, Dan’s plea for me to live a better life was not fully focused on my own wellbeing. Some of the first classes he signed me up for, like the Intro to Calligraphy and Marketing 101 programs ended up catching my interest, even though interacting with the other students made me uncomfortable, as if I was a fraud attending these seemingly random classes. It turns out they were a cover, a smoke cloud to hide the fact that Dan had really planned on me attending the later events.

This first became obvious when after two months of attending a criminal justice class, Dan’s schedule had me go visit a prison: the very prison he had spent so much of his life in, in fact. I met with a man named Charlie who very clearly was trying to sum me up as a person. He asked me vague questions about morality and what I thought of the prison system in general. He didn’t seem to trust my answer that I was still trying to figure it out, but he took the fact that I was in certain classes as a good sign. He left me with the knowledge that he had trusted my uncle, and my uncle, for whatever reason, had seemed to trust me. 

You see, my late Uncle Dan was grooming me to become a leader against the Prison Industrial Complex. A noble goal, yet one that put me in situations that brought out the most social anxiety I have ever experienced. He seemed to know what the effect on me would be though, so whenever his schedule requested something that made me truly question the worth of the money he had left me, a few days before the event his lawyer sent me a notice saying that I would be gaining half a million dollars more than originally promised if I went through with the activity. An extra $500,000 was enough to get me to start a local chapter of The National Prison Abolitionists, and another half million was enough for me to grow the balls needed to go to rallies protesting South Carolina private prisons. 

It was tough, but once I started attending these events and heard the pleas of passionate ex-cons who had been treated unfairly, I slowly began to believe in the movement. And the funny thing was that even as this was happening, I knew I was submitting to exactly what Dan wanted. He had known that I would be reluctant and apathetic towards the movement; hell, that’s how I’d led my life up until this point. Maybe it was being part of a community or maybe it was seeing how shitty this country treats inmates (or maybe it was even these events brainwashing me), but something snapped inside of me and suddenly I couldn’t see how I could stop being radical. Plus, the thought of inheriting millions was awful nice. 

For Dan, I think it was about revenge. That’s what I gathered from talking to his old friends in prison. I think the reason why he didn’t tell me that getting me to rage against the prison industrial complex was his goal was because it was his anger, not mine. I would have been scared away, even when money was involved, if I had known his plan from the beginning. Apathy was my protection from a world that seemed too complicated to bother getting to know. But for the past four decades, Dan didn’t have the luxury to stay in his home, go to a crappy job, and drink wine at night the way I did. Despite all his wrongdoings, I learned from Charlie that Dan had to witness his friends in prison be raped, had seen (potentially) innocent men have decades of their life be stripped away, and had personally been badly assaulted by a guard. I’m not sure if Dan really believed he should have been punished for 30 years after killing his son, but he certainly did not think that the friends he had made while in prison deserved to be there alongside him. And for these injustices, he blamed our country’s prison system.

Uncle Dan is long dead, so I can’t actually fact check any of that to make sure that this actually was his motivation for me being so involved in this movement. But I like to think that it is: it both makes me respect him more and makes me feel better for blindly following the money into this life.

So here I am, the leader of Mecklenburg’s chapter of NPA, directing James and others while planning our next moves that I choose (now that Dan’s schedule has long since ended), and $3.5 million richer (although I’ve invested much of that for our organization to try to supplement our budget). My mom is still hanging onto life despite me eventually telling her that Dan left me money and her being bewildered by my new lifestyle. That’s okay though, because even though some mornings I wake up feeling as though I haven’t done enough for this world, the indifference to life that I felt before rarely surfaces.

As I walked over to my desk I gave James a smile. We had begun hooking up a couple months ago, and despite him being a sad boy, I kind of wanted it to turn into something more. But I could worry about that later. My mind shifted as I began brainstorming how to get more people to come to our next protest while I picked up the phone to make some calls to other NPA branches. When I take time to think about it, I’m just a puppet being controlled from beyond the grave. Weirdly, I’m more than okay with that.