DEAD MAN’S SHADOW

Not for the first time, I search the face in the photograph for some signs of commonality. I’m standing in the attic of my grandmother’s house on the Cape, surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of accumulated history. Dust moats glide down the sun lit avenues streaming through the windows.

The face staring back at me is literally one from another century. As devoid of color as it is of emotion, I’m stunned, as always, by its apparent indifference. I, who post images of myself almost daily, photoshopped shamelessly,  to garner the approval of total strangers, am mesmerized by the image of this man, who seems to care so little about what others might think.

Or so I surmise. I obviously never met the man, as he was my great great grandfather and passed away decades before I was born. Perhaps he was just a mass of indecision and anxiety like me, hiding behind a mask of cold steely determination so common to the portraits of the time. But I’ll never know, as I find myself in the interesting position of knowing as much about him as you do.

Yes, you’ve seen this picture before. The neatly trimmed mutton chop whiskers. The slightly ostentatious stick pin in his tie. And the trademark pince nez  glasses perched on the end of his nose. His Wikipedia entry styles him a self-made man. A rags to riches story. Horatio Alger in the flesh. A “Titan of His Age”. But who really was the man behind the cliché. In the end, who really cares?

My great great grandfather, the Titan. But how can you grow up in the shadow of a Titan? The money he amassed in his lifetime has somehow flitted away through the generations leaving only his stifling presence as my inheritance. “Your great great grandfather would be ashamed of you.” “Compared to him,  you’re just a small little man.” This last from my father who spent most of his life in a bottle.

I take one last look at the man who has haunted me for my entire sixteen years and slowly and deliberately rip him into a hundred tiny pieces that flutter to the floor of the attic.

Then, with a look of cold steely determination, I head back downstairs past the bodies of my parents and my grandmother, slinging the automatic rifle over my shoulder and extra ammo into my pockets.

I stride out the front door, out of the shadows, and head off to school.