The Farm. The Gold. The Lily-White Hands.

By Dan Chaon

Chapter 1

Alone for years now, Daddy has settled into his rituals and routines.  He wakes up a little before dawn, dresses in the dark:  white running shoes and warm-up pants, a plain blue tee shirt.  His dog fetches her own leash and stands there, waiting, holding it in her mouth.

It’s a beautiful morning, middle of June.  Birds.  Lawns.  Flowers.  It’s the kind of pleasant upper middle class old suburb on the edge of the city where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find a man like Daddy.  But he has changed a lot over the years,   has transformed himself into the sort of handsome older guy who jogs with his dog early on a Tuesday morning.   

6 am and they go winding down the long hill that leads from the Ambleside Apartment building, everything green and blooming, the dog Angeline trotting and gazing up at Daddy with her black Labrador sort of love, soft brown eyes and a coat the same shiny color as Daddy’s hair.  His hair still doesn’t have much grey in it.  

In general, Daddy is in great shape for a man his age, broad of chest and flat of stomach, and even the smoking hasn’t done much noticeable damage.  He doesn’t have the kind of wrinkles you’d expect from a 54-year-old with a pack-a-day habit.  His teeth are healthy, a little yellow but no cavities, none have fallen out.  His eyes are still that devastating dark.     

Does he have a lady friend, someone to have sex with?  Probably not, but he could, if he chose to pursue it. 

He prefers his solitude.  Daddy uses his keycard to buzz himself into the quiet of the apartment building and none of his neighbors notice as he pads along the white florescent hallway, leashed Angeline panting demurely beside him.   
If he were to disappear, if police went from door to door in the Ambleside Apartment building with his photograph his neighbors would shake their heads.   I’ve never seen the guy; oh, once or twice, maybe, but rarely; can’t say I’ve ever spoken to the man

And turns the key in the lock, opens and closes the door.  Angeline goes to the kitchen and laps some water from her dish.  

Alone for years now, Daddy doesn’t usually think about what his apartment might look like to a stranger.  The bare walls, the unemptied ashtrays.  Easy chair facing a television in the middle of the undecorated living room, jar of spare change on the counter in the kitchen, mattress on the floor of the bedroom, the sheet and blanket braided together by Daddy’s restless feet as he slept.  

He tries not to think of how it would all look if he died, for example, and the building super had to unlock the apartment with his master key and they found him there on the mattress, floating on the surface of the mattress like a fish belly-up in an aquarium,   eyes and lips slightly parted and the ceiling fan turning and dirty ice cream bowl with a cigarette put out in it and so on. 

He tries not to think of these kinds of things and yet it is true that such thoughts sometimes circle around in his head and he finds it difficult to fall asleep, he wakes up in the middle of the night gasping, sleep apnea, sometimes choking or crying out.  Angeline also startled will rise up from her curled position beside him on the mattress and begin to bark warnings at the dark opening of bedroom door.   

Usually he doesn’t remember his dreams but there was one last night in which he woke and his eyes were still closed and he could sense someone bending over him.  A face was pulling close to his own face, the exhalation of breath touching his lips, feathery brush of lashes against his forehead.  A face like someone from childhood, an adult who had once loved him, leaning over his bed at night to smell his hair.   
He was paralyzed.  He had stopped breathing.  

He had stopped breathing for a moment and then he sat up abruptly with a glottal choking sound as if mucus were caught in his throat. 

The dream disappeared, and yet a little scrap of it hung above him,             like a little ragged strip of cloth caught on a barbed wire fence  

like the lyrics to an old song or story from

And now it is morning and Daddy is still troubled, still something nagging at him.    He opens a can of dog food and spoons it into Angeline’s red dish, she waits with a dignified paw lifted, like a lady in olden days offering her gloved hand to be kissed. 

He makes coffee, opens up the newspaper and turns to the funny pages where he puzzles over Sudoku and brings a cigarette to his mouth.           He looks at the space on his left hand where his finger used to be.  Considers.  

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© 2007. Dan Chaon. All Rights Reserved.