Eddy stood with his wife and his one child besides the coffin of his father. He felt the sun on his face. His father had worked eighteen hour days for most of his life and when he retired he took an interest in the raising of his grandson. He brought the boy to baseball games and drove him to school each morning. Eddy’s boy stood to his right, waist high. He sighed continuously. The boy had been crying for two days. Eddy put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and squeezed.

“A pint-sized giant,” his father coined him. “Grandpa’s pint-sized giant, come here.” His voice was all sandpaper, pipe smoke and steak.

Eddy didn’t remember much of his own childhood. He remembered the house and his father coming home and eatting dinner in front of the television with his foot crossed over his knee, size twelve hole-ridden socks stinking of all eighteen hours. At seventeen Eddy told his father he wanted to be an artist. “What kind of artist?” He wanted to know.

“Like Andy Warhol. Or Picasso.”

“Forget those two, be yourself,” he said. “And any time you need a job you know who to call.”

Eddy tried for ten years. He graduated and he worked in bars and restaurants. He produced decent oil paintings and abstract conglomerations: generally they included an assortment of garbage-picked items hot glued to plywood. He let his father pay for his schooling, but afterwards he refused assistance. And then he met Sue, and after ten years of her subtle hints at his lack of talent, he decided there were things more important than fish hooks and spray painted cardboard. Sue gave birth to a son.

His father had turned to God after he retired. The revival of his faith had been an attempt to accept death. Plus, the church membership gave him something to do: besides the biweekly sermons, he sat in on church Bridge tournaments Tuesday and Thursday nights; and, one weekend a month, a group of the elder gentleman went upstate to shoot deer.

The pastor at his father’s church offered to say a few words. He stood before the mound of orange dirt, squinting into the sun. He had been the hunting buddy of Eddy’s father, and his last best friend. He cleared his throat. “Some people live their lives like death is waiting for them every time they step out of the front door. Not Marcus.” He shared a story about spending a night in a tree hut, only two weeks ago, the two of them twenty feet in the air and scanning the forest with night vision goggles. “Which reminds me. If there is anyone over sixty, and not afraid to climb a ladder. There is a trip next weekend.”

And Eddy knew what he would paint next: two foolish old men up in a plywood tree house-manor, night vision goggles on their heads, shotguns slung over their shoulders.