How much a father costs

How do you gauge the value of a human life? Supposedly everyone has a price, but who decides what that is? Everyone has a price they’d tell you for themselves, but would others agree? Would the people who love them agree? Leeroy certainly wasn’t the man who had the answers to that. There were times in his life where he would’ve sold himself for a few hundred. Anything to get away from the next week of sleepless nights and long hours that earned him barely enough to get by. At age 35, his bones felt like they had lived 2 centuries, and even in his free time, he struggled to justify pondering philosophical quandaries over just getting some sleep. However, if you had asked him, he would’ve valued his father at least a little higher.

When he got the call from the lawyer’s office, it had barely even registered in his head what they were telling him. Even as he sat in the office, 7am sharp, struggling to stay awake, he wasn’t fully aware of why he was there. Something about a will. His old man had passed away recently for sure, but Leeroy found it hard to believe that he’d have bothered to set up a formal will. The father he’d known was a rough, distant man with a grudge against authority and a multitude of chips on his shoulders. Throughout Leeroy’s life, his father had come and gone like the wind. To his credit, it was due to work. He was always away, doing this or that. For some years he was at sea with a fishing boat, and for some others he was off trucking oil and lumber across the US. At best he’d be home for a month at a time, and even then, he’d spare time for Leeroy maybe once a week to play an awkward game of catch, or in Leeroy’s teenage years, share with him some rugged wisdom. Leeroy would be lying if he said they’d known each other well, but he knew his dad wasn’t a suit and tie kind of guy. Taking the time to sit down with a lawyer wasn’t exactly his style.

Yet there he was, his father’s last surviving kin, sitting in one of the nicest rooms he’d ever been in, in a suit that he’d bought 10 years ago.

“Mr. Jones,” the lawyer began. “Thank you for making the time to come and see me. I promise I’ll be quick. There isn’t much to go over.”

“What’s this about again?” Leeroy grumbled.

“Your father’s will. I thought we were clear about that.”

“We are, we are. Just wanted to hear it again to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. I didn’t think my father would die with anything to pass down.”

The lawyer chuckled. “Well as I remember him, he certainly was a man who gave off that impression. But in my profession, you learn that people are full of surprises.”

Surprising, it certainly was. The lawyer took an aged, brown envelope out of his desk drawer, and withdrew the first of its contents; a rumpled sheet of paper.

“Now, one thing you won’t be surprised about is that your father didn’t exactly leave a letter. He simply put down a few bullet points. There’s not really much to see here, so I can give you the gist if you’d like.”

Leeroy nodded, eager to finish and get on with his day.

“Alright then. Well the good news is that he’s left you quite a hefty sum.”

Leeroy perked up, the sound of the words “hefty sum” snatching the sleep straight out of his eyes. “What do you mean a hefty sum?”

“20,000 to be exact.”

Leeroy jumped out of his seat, vibrating with shock. “Twenty what?!”

“Calm down please,” the lawyer asked. Leeroy complied and sat back down, but shuffled his chair much closer to the table.

“Just making sure here,” he whispered, as though someone might overhear and try to steal his newfound fortune. “Twenty thousand what?”

“Dollars, sir.”

Dollars. He sat back in his chair, head spinning from the sheer idea of it. He was lucky if he made that much in a year. The things he could do with that…

“There is one stipulation though,” the Lawyer continued. “And it has to do with this.” He slid a second item out of the envelope; a little black book, which was just as worn and beaten as the piece of paper. “Within this book, there are a few pages worth of locations your father wants you to visit, and a specified amount of time he’d like you to spend there. As long as you’re able to confirm that you’ve done this, you’ll be able to come back here and receive the full sum. Any questions?”

“That’s it?” Leeroy asked. I just need to go hang around some random spots and I get my money?”

“Yes.”

Leeroy smiled. Possibly for the first time in years. “Well hand me the book then.”

To his dismay though, his father hadn’t left simple names of locations. He’d left coordinates. He didn’t think his old man was one for puzzles, but it seemed like he’d saved all his surprises for after his death. Leeroy might’ve abandoned the whole scavenger hunt and run off with the money, but the lawyer only gave him $5000. The other $15,000 he’d be able to collect when he was done. $5000 was nothing to sneeze at, but for an extra $15,000, he could indulge the old man’s game. It was his day off anyway.

After some googling, he’d found the first location. Strangely, it was just a local park. The book said he needed to spend 2 hours there, so he treated himself to an extravagant $10 lunch and took a 2 hour walk through the park. At one point, he stopped near the pond, surprised with just how pleasant it looked. The park wasn’t too far from his apartment, yet he strangely had never been there. He felt so good, he even shared some of his lunch with the ducks. With the promise of some extra money lightening his mood, he almost forgot when his 2 hours were up.

The next location was a lot harder to find. It was quite a distance outside his usual stomping grounds, so he shrugged his shoulders and got a cab for another $30. When he got there, he was bewildered to find that it was an amusement park. Not exactly the biggest one, but it seemed to have some life in it. He double checked the notebook, only to find he was supposed to be here another 2 hours.

“He can’t be serious,” Leeroy sighed. “What the hell am I supposed to do standing outside here for two hours.”

He looked around for places to sit, but found nothing but some unfriendly looking security guards looking his way. The last thing he wanted was to get kicked out and ruin his mission, so he bought an adult ticket and decided to wait out his time inside. Luckily, they had more than enough benches inside. After an hour though, his back pain was starting to act up. He looked at a family walking out of one of the nearby rides and felt a pang in his chest. He still hadn’t fully accepted the old man’s death, and he was starting to realise he didn’t want to. He decided he might as well get on some rides to distract himself for the next hour. In the end, he got carried away and spent an extra 2 hours there, before eventually coming to his senses and leaving.

The rest of the day followed the same trend. Whether a fancy restaurant or a local bar or even a mall, he went there, saw the absurd amount of time his father expected him to spend there, and ended up biting the bullet and spending some money to make his time pass more pleasantly. He only just made it back to the lawyer’s office as he was going home for the night. He spotted him locking up and had to sprint to catch him, much to the lawyer’s surprise.

“Mr.Jones? I assumed you wouldn’t be back until next week.”

“Sorry,” Leeroy replied, panting. “I don’t have a day off again for 2 weeks, so I kinda needed to get this done today. Do you mind?”

The lawyer already had his briefcase and coat on, but he sighed at the sight of Leeroy’s honest eyes and ushered him back into the office.

Leeroy didn’t want to impose, so he tried to get it over with quickly. He showed the lawyer all the pictures he’d taken that day, all time stamped to confirm he’d spent the required time there. The lawyer nodded and went into a nearby safe to retrieve a second, smaller, yet thicker envelope.

“There you are,” he said, handing it over. “The remaining $15,000, as promised.”

Leeroy had to open the envelope and count the money on the spot. It really was all there. $15,000, plus the $4,500 he had left over from that morning. He’d had to blow $500 on his father’s shenanigans, but this was still more than enough. He would’ve cried if he wasn’t so embarrassed to do so in front of a stranger. He thanked the lawyer and made to leave, but was stopped.

“Oh, one more thing,” the lawyer remembered. “I almost forgot. There actually was a letter, believe it or not. I was only supposed to give it to you with the rest of the money. I guess your father was a letter person after all.”

Leeroy took the letter, too high on his good fortune to question anything. “Eh, after today maybe I really didn’t know what the old man was about anyway.”

He bid the lawyer farewell and gave him some extra thanks for his time. That night, Leeroy ordered out without guilt for the first time in years. Some ramen from a Japanese place that had opened up recently. He’d been eyeing it up for weeks, but their prices were unjustifiable for him if he wanted to actually keep up with bills. But tonight was special, so he treated himself. Once his food was there, he whipped out his father’s letter, hoping to find out what this whole thing had been about.

Hey, Leeroy. It’s me. If you’re reading this, I hope you’re having fun, cause I'm certainly not. I knew I’d have to ask your mum to forgive me once I got up there to see her, but I was never sure how to make it up to you for never being there. That’s why I set up this goose chase for you. Life’s hard, son. People like us have to spend all our time working just to survive. Believe it or not, I wanted to do so much more with you. But, I kept putting it off till it was too late. So, I wanted to at least give you a chance to do all the things we never did. Have some fun without having to stress over your wallet. I hope it was a good time. Hopefully I don't see you for a while, and you can give me another chance when you do. Goodbye son. I love you.

Leeroy finished the letter in tears. Was $20,000 what his dad’s life had been worth? Was that the cost of the time together that they never got? All the bonding they never did? Leeroy was not the man who had the answers to that, but he started to wish he was.