Junior

TW: suicide

Junior entered the house where he had grown up, not knowing what to expect. His father had committed suicide yesterday. The body had been discovered by the health care worker who visited him three days a week. Senior’s health had been deteriorating for the last year. Junior was not surprised that Senior decided to deny the grim reaper the pleasure of torturing him as he slowly lost control of his bodily functions. The fact that Senior had said as much in his suicide note affirmed what Junior had suspected for months.

Both of Senior’s wives had died of cancer, and he had cared for them until their last. He was no saint, but he loved them with all his heart and took care of them as best as he could. 

Senior was a force to be reckoned with. Half the community respected him, and half the community feared him. A car dealer who was not a politician having that much power spoke volumes about his personality and willingness to engage in public disputes.

Junior and Senior had real names, but they had been Junior and Senior since Junior was born.

Junior opened the front door slowly. Senior had insisted that Junior not come to the house after the diagnosis was confirmed so he would not remember his father as an ailing old man, but rather as the force of nature he had been throughout Junior’s youth.

Junior had taken over the dealership immediately after graduating college with a degree in business and had expanded the company from a single location to three sites. The new sites had been purchased from a competitor. Junior and Senior had strikingly different management styles. Senior was a powerhouse quick to give orders and meager with his praise. Junior asked questions, working closely with his staff to carefully determine solutions. Purchasing the two other locations was not Junior’s idea but had been presented to him by one of his lead salespeople.

Senior opposed the idea, but after weeks of deliberation and a competing offer to buy the other sites, Junior went with the idea. It turned out to be a brilliant move. In retrospect, Junior wondered why making the decision had been so difficult. Junior moved the salesperson who had initially presented the idea to manage one of the new sites. It was now the most profitable of all the company’s locations.

When it was time for Senior to step down, he announced his retirement at a staff meeting, left, and only returned a few days later to clean out his office.

The entry hall was spotless. The shoe rack held only one pair of shoes, and only one coat hung on the pegs on the wall. Junior had not thought about it as he ascended the front stairs, but all the furniture had been removed from the front porch. He stepped back outside to confirm that the porch was empty and noticed that the floor had been freshly painted. Senior had been busy.

The entry hall’s wood floor had been sanded and varnished. Junior kicked the snow off his shoes before returning to the entry hall. He removed his shoes and stepped into the house.

Junior’s mother had collected ceramic figurines, which she had displayed on shelves around the living room. One entire wall had been covered with these figurines. Senior’s second wife had added to the collection. The figurines were gone, as were the shelves they had stood on. The walls had been repainted, and the wood floor had been varnished. The carpet, frayed beyond repair when Junior had last been in the house, was also gone. The room was empty except for the sofa and two matching chairs.

The dining room with its exquisite wood table and chairs was untouched except that the breakfront that had held all the china and silver was empty. Packing boxes labeled “china” and “silver” sat piled in the corner.

The kitchen cabinets had been emptied. Their contents sat in packing boxes in the corner.

What had been the downstairs playroom had been converted into Senior’s “sick room” after the diagnosis. Junior had assisted with the conversion. That was the last time he had been in the house before today. Much of the contents of that room had been rented from a medical supply company. Junior had the information so he could call the people to collect their equipment.

The upstairs bedrooms were empty except for carefully labeled packing boxes piled in the middle of each room. Senior left nothing to chance, not that he ever did.

One box stood out.

The box was wrapped in black and yellow caution tape. All the other boxes had been sealed with clear tape. All the other boxes had been labeled with their contents. This one had Junior’s name and “OPEN ME NOW” written in a heavy felt tip pen.

Junior hauled the box to the kitchen and placed it on the table. He opened it with the letter opener that had been left on top of the box. When he looked at the picture on top of the stack of documents in the box, he froze. Fear gripped him. A red Mustang convertible had just been dumped from the back of the company’s tilt-back tow truck and was falling over the bridge rail into the river. The driver’s head could be seen in silhouette from the streetlights. If the driver was still alive, he would last less than a minute in the icy water if he did not drown first. Even if he survived the drop and managed to get out of the car and into the water, the current would have carried him downriver under the ice sheet with no way to reach the surface.

Junior stared at the picture. He flipped it over. The handwritten date confirmed what he had suspected. He knew only one person who owned a red Mustang convertible. Junior’s sister had been raped and beaten during the summer after high school. It had been treated as a “date rape,” and the district attorney had elected against prosecuting. 

The day after the announcement that there would be no prosecution, Junior’s sister joined the Navy and never returned. She had always blamed Senior for not forcing the issue and had left without telling anyone where she went.

Junior was in college and had no idea where to look for his sister. Their brother was in Afghanistan and was not due to return for six months. When he did return, it was in a box.

The Navy sent a press release to the local newspaper that Junior’s sister had graduated from basic training at the top of her class and had been accepted to advanced weapons school. That was the first any of her family knew where she had gone.

Junior stared at the picture. If he sent it to his sister, she would know that their father had avenged the wrong done to her, but at the same time, he would tell her that their father was a murderer.

Junior opened the fridge. It was empty except for two bottles of his favorite beer. Damn! The old man had known!

A second box was nested inside the first. A folder sat on top of the second box. The folder contained newspaper clippings and documents related to Junior’s sister’s case. The last clipping included a photo of the Mustang being pulled from the river three months after the date on the back of its picture going into the river. Junior choked on the beer. The alleged rapist had choked on a ceramic figurine. The cause of death was strangulation.

Junior put his head down on the table and cried. How could this possibly be true?

The investigation into the alleged rapist’s death had turned up no leads and was closed after two years. Junior had already started working at the dealership when the announcement was made.

Junior opened the second box. It was full of hanging files. Each of the fifty files included a picture of a car leaving the back of the company’s tilt-back tow truck into a river somewhere. Each folder included a description of a case of alleged rape that was dismissed on some technicality or that the local prosecutor had elected to ignore.

Junior finished the second beer and stared off into space. How could this be the father he knew?

Junior was about to close the inner box when he noticed that the inside of one of the flaps was labeled “one of two.” He went back up to his room and found a box labeled “two of two.” He opened it.

The inner box was labeled “pending cases” and contained details on unresolved litigation and potential options for “resolving” them. A hundred pending files representing a hundred alleged rapes stared back at Junior.

Completely overwhelmed, Junior lay back on the floor.

A crew from the dealership would arrive in the morning to cart the boxes to storage so that the house could be sold. Junior knew that he could not risk anyone seeing these boxes, so he loaded them in his trunk.

Junior locked the house and went home.

His wife had waited up for him. “How did it go?”

“Emotional,” Junior answered. “I’m a wreck.”

“You wouldn’t be the man I love if it were otherwise. I have to be at work early. I’ll be gone when you wake. We can talk at dinner. Try to sleep if you can.”

Junior’s wife and children were gone when he awoke. He drank the coffee that had been left for him and went to work.

The manager of the used car department met Junior as he arrived.

“Man, you look terrible. What did you do?”

“I went to my father’s house yesterday.”

“Ah. I see. I’ll bet that was a shock. Look, if you need the tilt-back repo truck, let me know. I’ll make sure it’s full of gas and has the two spare five-gallon cans, just like I used to do for your dad.”

Junior gaped at the kindly-looking man with white hair and beard. “How many people know?”

“A couple guys think they do, but I’m the only one that knows for sure. Let me know what you want to do.”