PLEASE BURN

by Scott Jacobson  —

There it was, in the shed, as promised. A small wooden box – once used for gifting a bottle of wine – with the words “PLEASE BURN” scrawled in black paint marker on the lid. Jesse glanced around the shed, taking in the years of decaying clutter. It had all belonged to his dad, and now if it could be said to belong to anyone it was to the brown recluse spiders Jesse was sure lurked among the lengths of leftover two-by-fours in the corner, or in the deep grottoes of shadow under the workbench. Jesse pulled on a pair of leather gloves. He knelt by the box.

Why his dad had made burning the box such a priority, Jesse had no idea. It was on the first page of the notebook Jesse’s dad had kept in the months leading up to his death. He called it his “Adios Amigos Book.” Jesse had asked his dad what he was always scribbling in this coffee-damaged dollar store composition pad that seemed to come out at least once per visit.

“Passwords, account numbers, all the important shit,” answered his dad. “When I croak, read it!”

The book had already proven helpful, just three days after Jesse’s dad died by self-inflicted gunshot wound, ending his life on a muggy fall night in the passenger seat of a broken-down golf cart, next to a fence shared with a neighbor he didn’t like.

JESSE:

BEFORE ATTENDING TO ALL OTHER AFFAIRS, GO TO SHED, TAKE THE WOODEN BOX (YOU WILL KNOW) AND BURN IT!

DO NOT OPEN. ONLY BURN.

Jesse held the box in his hands. He was staring at it, wondering how and where his dad expected him to burn it, when he heard a scratching sound. Faint, brief, but frantic. Jesse might not have noticed if not for the fact he could also feel it through his gloves: sound waves touching Jesse’s hands, traveling through wood and leather from– something, inside the box.

Jesse froze. His mind flashed to a dream he often had but rarely thought of in his waking hours. Dream Jesse returned from a long vacation only to realize he had left his pet (usually Strawberry, his childhood dachshund) at home with no food or water. Standing on his doorstep, sensing Strawberry’s presence inside the house but not hearing a peep, Dream Jesse clasped the doorknob, torn between wanting to rescue Strawberry and desperately not wanting to see the mess of his own making that surely awaited him inside.

Real Jesse decided he needed to see inside the box. His dad wanted the box to stay shut. But that felt particularly rich coming from Jesse’s now dead dad. In life he’d had oppressively detailed rules for taking garbage to the dump, rules for handling the books in his mildew-stinking library and rules for using the banged-up Mr. Coffee machine on the kitchen counter. If you want your rules followed, thought Jesse, maybe don’t blow your brains out in a golf cart in the backyard.

Jesse’s hands trembled as he set the box on the workbench. He pried out a nail that secured the box’s sliding lid then slowly rasped open the box, uncovering, inch by inch, what looked like a folded American flag. Jesse stared at the narrow strip of red and white. The scratching had stopped. It had happened just once, and faintly – now Jesse worried he had imagined it. Shame stirred inside him for opening the box, for disobeying his dad’s final wishes. Then a smell hit his nostrils. He slid the cover open a bit further, uncovering the edge of a dark stain on the fabric. Jesse leaned in closer. A little more sliding revealed the stain was ringed in a chalky white deposit. It reeked of animal urine.

Suddenly: a flurry of brittle claws on wood. A white rat thrust its snout from under the folded flag, gasping for air. Clinging to the end of the rat’s snout was a single bead of pomegranate red blood.

“You’re supposed to burn a flag, right? If it’s, like, damaged, or in this case soaked in rat piss?”

Jesse’s wife Adria folded laundry on the bed. She was eight months pregnant. Nearby a YouTube video about hypnobirthing – a recommendation from her older sister – was paused on a laptop. Also nearby: the newly-folded, newly fabric-softened flag.

“I guess. But popping it in the washer works too, apparently?”

Jesse sat at his desk, looking at the rat. How long had it been in the box? Jesse had bought a small cage and a bag of rat food. In the shed the rat had been emaciated and listless. Now, just a day later, it was shy but curious, with a monstrous appetite.

“My dad put the rat in there.”
Adria shrugged. “Rats get into places.”
“And then nail themselves inside?”
“Maybe it’s some rat social media trend gone wrong.”

Jesse didn’t smile. He leaned back. Adria balled the last pair of socks.

“And, I mean… speaking of social media…”

Jesse sighed.

“Yeah, I’m wondering if it’s got something to do with my Uncle Allen.”

Allen was his dad’s brother who died in 1969. Growing up, Jesse had rarely heard about Allen. He knew his dad had a brother who was killed in combat in Vietnam, but his father was tight-lipped about it and Jesse had not been curious enough to pry.

Then, twelve years ago, doctors diagnosed Jesse’s mom with breast cancer, and she died after a quick decline that always reminded Jesse of the time lapse video of a rotting fox. She and Jesse’s dad had bickered tirelessly and threatened divorce for as long as Jesse could remember, but her absence left his dad strange and rudderless. He stayed up all night whittling sticks into sharp points. He raided neighbors’ gardens for vegetables, and after getting caught, kept returning, mischievous and defiant as Bugs Bunny towards neighbors who felt only gentle concern toward the widower from down the road ransacking their tomatoes.

He also joined Facebook and posted a lot. To Jesse’s surprise, it was mostly memes from P.O.W.-M.I.A. and combat veteran pages. He wrote long, passionate tributes to his heretofore rarely mentioned brother, posted photos of Allen’s Silver Star commendation letter and rubbings of his name from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Though never one to rally ‘round the flag in Jesse’s youth, now he picked fights over perceived patriotic lapses in his son and daughter-in-law. One night he threw a beer on Jesse for not putting his hand on his heart during the national anthem at a baseball game.

Then his dad got a Facebook message from a man named Greer, who claimed to have served with Allen and witnessed his death. Allen had led a successful mission to kill a sniper who was pinning down his platoon. On his way back to base, Allen tripped an explosive booby trap. Greer said he’d watched as Allen tended to the wounds of the men under his command before succumbing to his own.

Greer’s war stories, written in all caps over Facebook messenger and cut-and-pasted into long posts by Jesse’s dad, lent a mud-caked, mosquito-bitten three dimensionality to scenes only hinted at in official documents. Jesse’s dad started talking daily with Greer. They even sent each other post cards.

“We can still burn it. Without the rat this time. You’re welcome, little rat.”

Jesse turned to Adria and half-smiled.

“Yeah, maybe.”
“It’s what he wanted.”

Jesse nodded. In the cage, the rat ran in circles.

That night Jesse dreamed he was attacked by a flag. In the dream he stood on his dad’s porch at night, looking out past the pond that lay like a warped starscape between the house and the commotion of highway traffic beyond. Out of the corner of his eye, Dream Jesse saw the porch flag undulating as though underwater. The American flag pulsed and rippled and seemed to reach out to Jesse like an animal reaching out of a cage. Jesse tried to turn his head to face it but his head wouldn’t turn. He tried to move away but his feet were glued in place. He could only watch as the flag’s movements grew less languid, more frenzied. Finally it snapped like a wet towel at Jesse’s eye. This is when Dream Jesse realized he also couldn’t blink. His eye filled with tears and blood as the flag snapped again and again, ripping at his cornea, each snap sounding wetter, Dream Jesse trying and failing to scream and barely noticing as the flag burst into flames.

When he woke up, Jesse’s heart raced and his stomach felt poisoned with the same deep chemical anxiety he usually associated with a hangover. As Adria slept, he picked up his phone and found a Facebook message notification. It was from his dad’s friend Greer.

The next morning Jesse tackled the clean-out of his dad’s beloved basement library. A small pile of volumes rested on the scuffed coffee table that, along with an old walnut dining room chair, was the only furniture in the room. Jesse knew the coffee table was where his dad kept his “now reading” pile.

On top of the short stack (otherwise made up of Vietnam war books and, to Jesse’s queasy amusement, a Fifty Shades of Grey sequel) was a glossy paperback with a cover photo of what looked like a Buddhist temple: rows of adepts sitting cross-legged under a vaulted ceiling, dwarfed by columns ornamented with corkscrewing dragons. The title, presented in an ugly serif font that suggested self-publishing, was Thánh Ngôn Hiêp Tuyẽn: Collection of Divine Messages.  

Jesse leafed through the book, figuring it to be a religious text from some Vietnamese sect. On the title page was an inscription: To Curtis, The blood of a patriot nourishes the soil. What grows, and from whence? Yours in power, Sgt. Ben Greer.

Jesse rolled his eyes. “What grows, and from whence?” His dad’s Facebook posts were littered with this kind of grizzled warrior-speak. Portentous bullshit from war-obsessed old guys forever regurgitating the language of a Civil War letter home.

And there was the name Greer, popping up uninvited, looming over the memory of his dad like haze from a distant wildfire. The message he’d sent Jesse was written in all-caps and said Greer would be flying in the next day. He wanted to attend the funeral, and to share a meal with Jesse and Adria, whom he claimed to have heard so much about.

Jesse had sent a non-committal reply. He was jealous of this man who seemed to have known his dad so confidentially. “You grew up with him,” Jesse imagined him thinking, “but I’m the one who knew his soul.” That night Jesse accepted Greer’s invitation to meet and suggested a time and place. But he dreaded the encounter like he would have a sit-down with a romantic rival, or with a grade school bully who wanted to make amends.

Jesse felt sick with anxiety as he drove with Adria to the Marie Callender’s in town. In the backseat was the little pine box with the vaguely floral scented flag inside. Greer hadn’t mentioned the box in his message, but Jesse wanted to put it in front of him to see the old veteran’s reaction.

“Do we know what this guy looks like?” asked Adria.
“His profile picture is just a P.O.W. flag, so no.”

Walking into the restaurant with the box under his arm and Adria at his side, Jesse was startled by a thin wheeze of a voice behind him.

“Jesse? Adria?”

They turned around to see a man standing up from the bench by the hostess stand. He held out his hand to Jesse.

“Ben Greer. So sorry for your loss.”

Whatever Jesse had been expecting Greer to look like (and deep down he supposed he had been imagining John Goodman from The Big Lebowski), this wasn’t it. Greer was old enough to be a Vietnam veteran, true. But he dressed like a teenage metalhead. His T-shirt was black and adorned with a band logo so crabbed and scratchy it looked like an evil seismograph. He wore black leather bracelets, and a dyed black soul patch nested awkwardly on his chin. His body was long and rangey, post-military, with incongruous flab around the chest and waist. His face, thought Jesse, wore a funeral director’s expression of performative grief.

“Shall we sit?” Greer asked.

Greer hoisted an olive drab duffel bag from the bench. As the hostess walked them to their table he apologized for his outfit, saying he had come straight from his flight. Jesse and Adria demurred politely.

“You’re a metal guy, huh?” Jesse asked as they settled into their booth.

“Oh yeah. Music’s a place to put the anger. Hell of a lot healthier than drowning it. Take it from a man who tried to drown it.”

Jesse nodded, remembering his own brief teenage metal phase. His dad had mocked him for it. He wondered if Greer had ever talked heavy metal with his dad. Had his dad feigned interest?

“But I lay it on thick, huh? It’s a uniform. Uniform’s something I miss about being in the service.”

Jesse and Adria smiled as they bobbled their giant laminated menus. Jesse noticed Greer glancing at the box.

“Your father was a beautiful soul. A patriot, no bullshit. You holding up okay?”

Jesse was silent for a beat too long. Adria jumped in.

“It’s been up and down. It was– god. Shock to everyone.”
“That’s for sure. Mm.”

Greer took a look around the restaurant. He sighed heavily, then turned back to Adria.

“Congratulations. By the way.”

Adria smiled faintly and touched her belly.

“I’ve got two boys. Well, I say boys – they’re about your age. Take it from me: the days feel endless but the years are short.”

Jesse blurted: “Do you know anything about this box?”

Greer blinked at Jesse.

“My dad wanted it burned after his passing.”

Greer frowned and glanced at the box.

“But you didn’t?”
“There was a rat in the box. A live rat.”

Greer took a few deep breaths. He seemed caught off guard, maybe angry. A waitress came over.

“You all ready or do you need some time?”

Greer spoke in a gentle purr: “Miss, we’re gonna need a few minutes.”

He turned to Jesse and Adria. “I owe you both an apology. The box is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Okay. And…?”
“Have you heard of Caodaism?”

Jesse and Adria stared blankly.

“It’s a faith. Originated in Vietnam.”
“Oh– the– the book in my dad’s library–”
“I did send your dad a book. My wife – her name’s Lien, she sends condolences – she belongs to Cao Dai. We got married in Vietnam. I lived in Hanoi for years. Ran a bookshop, actually. Lien was a customer. Amazing woman. She’s a leader in the faith. A spirit medium.”

Jesse fidgeted, confusion jostling with anger. Nearby, the waitress hovered.

“This’ll take some explaining,” Greer mumbled. Then, to the waitress: “Can I just get a slice of strawberry rhubarb?”

A few minutes later, Greer was tucking into the pie, talking between bites. “Whole religion’s founded on messages from beyond. And there are women, like Lien, who receive the messages.”

“So someone from beyond told my dad to burn a rat in a flag then kill himself?”

“Not kill himself! No. And it wasn’t just ‘someone from beyond.’ It was your Uncle Allen.”

Jesse snorted. “Of course.”

“So wait, you’re in town from Vietnam?” Adria asked.

Greer shook his head. “San Jose. Big Cao Dai community there. The communists forced us out of Hanoi years ago. Listen, I lost a lot of buddies in the war. Tremendous people. This– what Lien does– it’s helped me. I thought it could help your dad. He loved your uncle. So much. Felt guilty that he himself never served. Just about ate him alive. I’m sure you know.”

Jesse nodded, though he hadn’t known. “Why the box, though? What happens with the box?”

Greer shrugged. “The messages you get from the other side, they’re garbled. In the war I was a signalman. Know what that is? I had a big, fucked-up backpack receiver. I was out there, sending messages from the battlefield. Any message from the battlefield is garbled. By distance, terrain, fear. Your uncle isn’t on the battlefield anymore, but the place he’s in is just as remote. Might be just as scary.”

“So my dad received a message–”
“Mm hmm.”
“And the message may or may not have been, ‘Go wrap a rat in a flag and burn it’?”
“The messages are worded– enigmatically. To my ear, poetically. That was your dad’s interpretation of your uncle’s words. Maybe he thought the sacrifice would comfort your uncle in the afterlife, honor him somehow. I have my own interpretation of the message.”
“Which is…?”

Greer didn’t answer. Instead he covered his eyes and choked back a sob.

“I just pray your father’s reading – wasn’t why he did what he did.”

Greer wept. Jesse felt he should comfort the strange man in the death metal T-shirt who seemed to course with the raw grief that Jesse knew he should express but couldn’t. But the thought of consoling Greer repulsed Jesse. Jesse hadn’t yet cried about his dad. The tears running down Greer’s face seemed like a provocation from someone who held the password to this particular sadness but refused to share it.

Jesse finally did cry over his father’s death, the next day at the funeral. He couldn’t bring himself to enter the funeral home until moments before the service was scheduled to begin. Instead he stood outside staring at an empty playground across the street while – nearby on the funeral home lawn – an American flag whipped savagely on a flagpole.

The service was a wash of familiar faces and voices. Jesse’s tears, when they came, reminded him of someone who sneezes too loudly. Why do some people feel the need to add volume to their sneezes? Was it for show? Those people are annoying, thought Jesse, as he felt himself cry a little harder than he strictly needed to, and allowed his face to contort in ways that must have looked ridiculous to the handful of distant relatives and family friends. The words “I love you, Dad” popped into Jesse’s head and he didn’t chase them away.

Greer hunched a few rows away, wearing a black suit and clacking a set of wooden prayer beads. Jesse imagined his dad shut up in the closed casket at the front of the room the way he used to shut himself in his little mildewed library. It was a comforting thought. He was something to his dad that Greer could never be: his father’s son, and a keeper of the mundane secrets observable only to family. The pride of that thought made Jesse’s grief bigger, and his tears wilder and clown-like. He looked at Adria searchingly and squeezed her hand.

Two days later, Jesse was listening to a podcast on earphones while cleaning out his dad’s bedroom closet. The room darkened around him as he picked through his dad’s large collection of sweat-stained ballcaps. Most were going to the Goodwill, or into the garbage, but Jesse wanted one as a keepsake. He chose an Atlanta Falcons hat that his dad had often worn while mowing the lawn. He was imagining showing the hat to his soon-to-be son, talking to him about the grandfather he had never met, laughing with him about the bedraggled state of the hat, when a crushing blow to the back of his skull hurled him face-first into a rack of dress shirts.

“Stop, drop and roll.” The words popped into Jesse’s head as he regained consciousness. He was on his back, unable to move his arms. His legs seemed tied together, and something restrained him from sitting up, or for that matter, from rolling. And Jesse could tell from the heat: something very close to him was on fire. Smoke curled around him. Above him, stars watched and winked.

“You wouldn’t know, because you’ve never had any skin in the game!”

It was Greer’s voice, close by. Thin and wheezing but a furious complement to the bursts of wind that lashed at the flames.

“You never made a single fucking sacrifice. Even blew off your own father’s dying wish.”

Jesse tried to form words, but the noise he made was low and desperate and shapeless. Greer ignored it, or maybe didn’t hear it.

“Twenty-two years old and your uncle’s actions saved an entire platoon. You’re thirty-two. You haven’t saved jack shit.”

Jesse choked on smoke as Greer loomed into view, his Slayer t-shirt flapping gently.

“Your boy. What would he have grown up to be, anyway? Sorry, bud. It’s a dog-ass generation.”

Greer dropped a log on Jesse’s chest. It landed with a thud and a scattering of embers. Jesse realized he was inside a box. His eyes darted down toward his chest: he was wrapped in an American flag.

“Allen’s gonna feel sunlight on his skin again. That’s a gift your boy’s giving to his country. It’s a gift you’re giving.”

The hair on Jesse’s arms burned. His brain started to grope its way back to language. But the only words that came to him were “help help help help help.”

“Your dad would be proud.”

Dream Jesse stood in the doorway to the living room, watching Adria. She was sprawled on the couch with her back to him, nursing their infant son. The house was quiet except for the baby’s rhythmic sucking and the soft vigilant whoosh of a HEPA air purifier in the corner.

Greer had disappeared that night. He’d seen fire trucks and squad cars turning onto Jesse’s dad’s long gravel driveway and had fled into the woods. The authorities had been tipped off by the next door neighbor – the one his dad had never liked. Maybe that was his dad’s doing? Maybe he had put aside differences to make contact? Dream Jesse liked to imagine so.

The police search for Greer had turned up only dead ends. His wife in San Jose hadn’t seen him in eight years and was under the impression he was back in Hanoi. She was still active as a spirit medium in the Bay Area Caodaist community but claimed ignorance about Jesse’s dad, or Allen. She asked to be told when and if Greer was ever found, because she wanted to finalize their divorce.

Across the room, the rat snored in its nest of pine shavings. For Dream Jesse it was a fat, happy reminder of the darkest and least knowable parts of his dad. Had his dad really meant the rat and flag as an obscure sacrifice to his brother? Had he offered his own life for the same reason? Had he known Greer’s plans for Jesse? Had he wanted what Greer had wanted, or would the thought of it have sickened him and inspired him to actions every bit as heroic as Allen’s in Vietnam? The questions scratched inside of Jesse like little claws inside a box.

Dream Jesse looked for something in his son’s eyes. Something he wouldn’t recognize but felt sure he would know.

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