Dad's Little Black Book

For three solid weeks I punished myself by eating only cheezies and ice-cream because I had skipped my father’s funeral, although it is true that Maggie and I were expecting our fourth and fifth children and with babies on the way, new Covid restrictions, preparations for a major terraforming project on Mars using a synthetic self replicating bio-organic manure compound I developed, and Doodles, my fifteen year old show Pomeranian’s birthday party, I was swamped. There was a bounty of completely legitimate excuses for not showing up, but there was no escaping the guilt and it nagged at my conscience, briefly convincing me that I would live in eternal misery and shame which only a son who has failed to show up at his father’s funeral can understand. Still, things always seem to work out in the end and thankfully today, I have no regrets or even the tiniest bit of guilt for missing the funeral, since I happened upon a thing far more valuable than bitcoin or gold that day and because in the end I did find a way to pay my final respects to my father, I discovered a little black book and everything in our family changed for the better.

I had already taken a leave of absence from the lab to mourn and was planning to spend some quiet time at my father’s grave in the cemetery. I had even carved a special talisman to leave on his headstone when I got there. So when Maggie’s sisters arrived from Nova Scotia to spoil the triplets and coddle our new twins, Samantha Four and Samantha Five, I caught the train to the tranquil cemetery in dad’s favorite desert town, Las Vegas.

On a southbound train reflecting on the countless conversations we had, I tried imagining how an actual conversation at his grave might unfold. He and I always had a tenuous relationship, I wish we had been closer. For most of the journey to the cemetery I fielded a barrage of painful calls from Maggie since Hell had broken loose at the farm. Three of the seven fat milking cows I was given as a dowry when we married developed a highly contagious Bovine Pink Eye. Maggs discovered on Google that Bovine Pink Eye might lead to permanent blindness in humans and she started talking about incinerating the cows when I put her on hold to take a call from the ventriloquist whom I had hired for Doodles’ birthday party. He was canceling the gig and informed me that he would be keeping the non-refundable twenty thousand dollar deposit. It had all been a scam.

My head was swimming at the cemetery where I searched calmly for my father’s tombstone, which was engraved unpretentiously only with the words, ‘Here lies a man’. Maggie had called just moments before I found the grave and informed me that she knew about the ventriloquist and the money I lost which should have gone to pay our back taxes or we would lose the farm. I had just set the carving on dad’s headstone and she was calling again; everything had gone south on the corner of Beargrave Blvd and Mosswick Road in Rhyolite, our once bustling desert town in Nevada and it seemed that chaos was devouring the family in my absence. Maggie’s sister, Gladys, had run over poor Doodles with the ATV I used around the property and the mime I hired to follow the ventriloquist’s act arrived early for the party. Maggie was seething with rage screaming, “there’s a bloody mime at my door ----for Doodles’ birthday party, Susu! Want to tell me what is going on yet? He’s here for a party! Doodles is dead and there is a mime, Susu! what am I supposed to do with a mime”!? I began to secretly wish he might help her cook something festive or hardy, like steak, since I would surely be famished when I returned. For a moment I fantasized about a mime from France who suddenly realized he wanted to spoil his hosts with fine French cuisine, and anyway, Maggie needed the help. I ended the call realizing that things had spiraled out of control and standing above my father’s grave, still reeling from the loss of Doodles I heard the familiar flutter of crisp paper in the wind and spotted to my right, a mere side glance away from father’s grave, the little black book. Without a thought I scooped it up and stuffed it in the billowing pocket of the thick cashmere sweater I had recently brought back from Inner Mongolia. I picked up my staff and headed north to the train station.

At the platform waiting for the train home, I began feverishly flipping through the musty pages of the little black book and suddenly found myself asking whether I had not stumbled onto all the secrets of the universe contained within the mysterious diary which belonged to an even more baffling character. I began to wonder if my father had somehow sent a message from the grave, or perhaps the little black book even belonged to him? This magical diary was like nothing I had ever seen. If it had not belonged to my father then to whom had it belonged, anyway?

The train was pulling up to the platform and I had already gone through an extensive list of equations that, because of my work at the lab I knew a little something about. Still, while the enigmatic man’s equations were related to my work in quantum computing, his math explored the broader implications of quantum mechanics and even included a mind bending unified theory of quantum entanglement.

After just five mins on the train I was basking in a master designer’s ideas for luxury backgammon boards and his plans for highly specialized industrial mining equipment intended for expeditions on the moon, along with a dissertation on the modern reshaping of traditional approaches to architecture in the Middle East and other numerous inventions which I confess were too complicated for me to interpret, although it appeared that he was working on practical designs for an ergonomic ----wearable time machine. In the dining car, sitting next to the daughter of a wealthy baroness and a priest from Rome with a gambling addiction, we enjoyed a light lunch of smoked salmon and pickled Herring, with fresh bagels and goat’s cheese and capers, and a very costly seventeen eighty-seven Chateau Margaux, courtesy of the baroness’ daughter who had a fondness for expensive wines and capers. I kept the phone powered down to avoid thoughts of the farm and Maggie and the abject humiliation I faced for throwing away the tax money on a grifter ventriloquist who had claimed to be the only man in Vegas with a genuine Richard Pryor Dummy. Doodles loved watching Richard Pryor as a puppy, especially the skit where he played the president of the United States. Following the meal and a brief performance by the small choir employed by the railroad, I dug into the heart of the little black book with a multitude of philosophical perspectives in various languages and quotes from Nietzsche on how to become The Superman.

The train was pulling into Rhyolite soon and I breached the final pages of the fascinating little black book only to discover another layer of intrigue every bit as complex as the geometry and algebra I had seen scribbled throughout the preceding pages. To my surprise not only had the man been involved in various business ventures in the area surrounding Maggie’s farm, here in Rhyolite, Nevada, but he wrote of a house on twenty-six Mosswick Road, not more than twenty paces from our quaint little farmhouse on the corner of Beargrave Blvd and Mosswisk Road which leads to Maggie’s farm. Then I read: “There at twenty-six Mosswick Road, under the largest boulder I buried twenty thousand dollars. Use it wisely, try something bigger with your life, love Dad”. Jolted by shock and disbelief, I involuntarily spat a mouthful of milkshake on the final sweaty pages of the book, but when Eva the train conductor handed me a warm towel to wipe up the mess, I read the words again and suddenly I knew just what to do. When the train rolled up to the platform in my dusty, abandoned desert town, I wasted no time and borrowed a small shovel and a lever for the boulder from Darius, the train station janitor whom I had occasionally hired to help milk our cows. I proceeded directly to twenty-six Mosswick Road where I felt certain the money would be buried and indeed, it was. The boulder was there, just as dad described. The truth is I had stared at the gigantic red X on the boulder’s weather beaten surface from my kitchen window a thousand times before. After several hours of digging and positioning and repositioning the lever, I gleefully retrieved the money and with a skip in my step was quickly back at home where Maggie, her sisters from Nova Scotia and my children Samantha One, Two, Three, Four, and Five, were eating couscous and bananas and singing sad songs in memory of Doodles while the mime kept turning a cow on a spit, above the roaring fire.

Everything that followed for our family was fantastic from that day forward. With the twenty thousand dollars I found because of the book, we paid the back taxes left owing on the property and saved the farm. The sisters decided they liked Nevada after all and stayed on with Maggie and me and the Samanthas and the family has finally begun to realize Maggie’s dream of turning our small milking business into an empire with a line of gourmet garlic butters and creamy sauces we call ‘Maggie’s Spread’. Most importantly I made peace with my father and while we will never know for sure that the little black book was actually his, there can be no doubt that dear old dad had a strong hand in the good fortune Maggie and our family I stumbled on one magic day when I paid a visit to father’s grave in Las Vegas.