The Parable of the Package

Last year, the holidays had meant a bright tree, a jumble of colorful presents and weeks of exquisite anticipation. That was with mom.

This year, with dad, Chip contemplated a scraggly, eighteen-inch green plastic pine with a thin box in a plain brown wrapper nudged up against it. His dad saw the look.

"I used to have an old Mustang painted in three shades of primer that looked like it was about to skid into the junkyard," he said. "But if there was good moonlight and an open road, I could fire up the radar detector and get her over 130. You know what I mean?

"It's not the wrapper, it's the wow." He winked.

Chip was not impressed. He ran his finger along the edge of the package. "Can I shake it?" he asked.

"Sure. Just don't thrash it around too much."

The present was so light Chip wondered if anything was actually in it. He shook it tentatively, but nothing rattled, no weight seemed to shift.

"I'll give you a hint tonight," his dad said. "I've got to go out and check the line, so no fair peeking. You can watch the TV, or, you know, just hang out."

His dad, stepped out into the heat, gave a last, little wave, and sped off in his pickup, sending up plumes of dust that seemed to rise until they faded into the sky. Chip had no expectations of a white Christmas this year.

The double wide sat at the base of the canyon wall. A brown patch that might have been a lawn sloped away from the door step, but the short grass was so brittle, it crunched beneath his feet. Beyond that, stretched the desert, flat and scrubby, as far as the eye could see. Even the bugs seemed beaten down by the heat.

He went back inside.

Chip had never seen a television like the one his dad owned. It was a small, boxy thing with a black and white screen. He scrolled through the channels until he'd determined there was nothing to watch. He rummaged through the fridge, but found nothing worth eating.

He plopped onto the thin cushion of the sofa and kicked his legs back and forth idly, marking time. It was starting to get dark by the time his dad got back.

"You have a good day?"

"I guess."

"Figure out what you're getting for Christmas yet?"

"No."

"You know, one thing I learned from your mother is that wondering about something can be a helluva lot better than knowing about something. Know what I mean?"

Chip's mom kept a large, brown jar in the kitchen with a slot cut in the lid. Her doctor or somebody had told her she shouldn't say anything bad about his dad, so whenever she did, she put a quarter in the jar. On Chip's birthday the year before last, she bought him a bicycle with the quarters.

Last year, there was enough for a baseball glove. It looked like he might get a movie ticket and popcorn this time, so he wondered how he might suggest a comparable system for his dad.

"The longer you can keep a mystery going, the more it gives you back," his dad went on. "Once you know the thing, you'll never get as much fun out of it as you did just wondering about it.

"That little box might have a treasure map, or a thousand-dollar bill. It might have the autograph of Mr. Albert Einstein, or it could be a new version of your favorite video game."

"Who's Albert Einstein?"

Chip's dad wiggled his eyebrows and looked at him. "Smartest man ever to walk the earth. Not many folks have his autograph. The reason is, he was so busy writing down equations about space and time and this and that, he never had much time to sign his name to a piece of paper. You know what his handwriting looked like?"

"No. What?"

"Maybe you'll find out on Christmas. Or maybe you'll decide on Christmas that you'd rather just think about what the signature of a genius looks like, so you won't open the box at all."

That night, Chip dreamt that he was in a huge, air-conditioned store, where demonstrations of one cool thing after another played out on the flat screens -- as big as his bed -- that hung over every aisle. He wandered among endless shelves of colorful boxes, utterly seduced by the sights and sounds, and the precious, comforting scent of plastic packaging. He finally came to a single, flat box, wrapped in plain brown paper. He shook it and listened to it. He sniffed its corners and felt for heat.

To his surprise and horror, the paper tore away beneath his hand. He didn't know whether he should drop the scrap of paper -- or the box itself -- when he woke up.

Chip could tell his dad was trying to be quiet, but he could follow the track of the man's boots across his mental map of the little house. His dad came out of the bathroom, stood near the TV for a minute or two, and then went to the fridge, paused briefly, and headed out the front door. The sun had not yet risen.

Chip dozed off again. When he finally got up, he found a note taped to the TV.

"I didn't want to wake you, but I have to get an early start checking the line today. You can watch TV or just hang out. I'll see you this evening. Love, Dad."

One thing Chip discovered was that if he sat on the sofa, with the package propped up on the cushion next to him, he could stare at it until his eyes drifted out of focus. At some point, the tan rectangle would let go of its shape and become some strange kind of a breathing thing, its edges toying with new angles and curves, flickers of color teasing its surface. And then Chip's head would snap back and the old package was back, in all its drabness.

"Figure out what's in the box yet?"

"No."

"You know, one thing I learned from your mother is that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. You know what I mean?"

Chip didn't know, but he thought some more about how to implement a fine for trash talk that would bridge the two households.

"Take your Christmas present, for instance." His dad rubbed his jaw and looked at the ceiling, like he was just working this idea out right now for Chip's benefit. "Sure, you can be like most kids, and open it on Christmas morning, but doesn't it give you a special kind of feeling to know that you've got something there that no man on earth has ever seen? Not you, nor none of your friends can say they've ever seen the likes of what's in that box of yours. Heckfire, every other kid would look up to you as the guy with the mystery box, the box nobody has ever been able to turn inside out.

"You might even figure to yourself that maybe you don't even want to open this on Christmas, because soon as you do, you lose that mystery. No matter how terrific that present is, it's never going to be as great as the power of that mystery that just keeps tickling at you and tickling at you until you can hardly stand it.

"I'm not saying this is right for everybody, but some really special kid might even figure, 'I'm never going to open this package and let its mystery run out all over the floor. I'm going to just save it under my bed or on the top shelf in my closet, and pull it out every now and then to look at it, before putting it away again."

His dad took a long look at Chip, but Chip pretended he was studying how many patterns he could trace with his toe in the shag carpet.

"Do you know what the other thing is, that I haven't even begun to tell you?" his dad asked.

"No, sir."

"'Course not." His dad couldn't stifle the laugh. "Because I haven't even begun to tell you. So if you did know what this other thing is, you'd be one of those mind reader fellows, and you'd already know what's in your package."

This made Chip laugh, too. But he didn't know exactly what to say. Before he could say anything, his dad went on, "The other thing I haven't told you is that lots of things get more valuable as time goes by. You know antiques, don't you?"

"Sure. Like old things."

"Very old things," his dad corrected. "And the older they are, the more valuable they get. So if you've got an antique chair that's worth a thousand dollars, do you want to sit on it and scuff it up and wear it out, or do you want to keep it someplace safe until it's worth ten thousand dollars?"

"No," Chip said. "I mean yes."

"Stocks and bonds, bank CDs, all that kind of stuff is stuff you can sell today and whoopee-do, or you can hang on to it for ten, twenty, any number of years, and you've got a king's ransom."

Chip realized some of this was over his head, but he didn't want to get side-tracked by asking too many questions.

Sometime before dawn, Chip heard his dad's footsteps again, and when he got up, he found the same note about checking the line and so on taped to the television.

He spent the day on the sofa, with his package propped up against the cushion, shimmering and shifting shape under his blurred gaze.

On Christmas morning, his dad told him that he wouldn't need to go check the line until after lunch.

They sat next to each other on the sofa and Chip gave his dad the present his mother had helped him pick out. Chip had paid for it with the quarters left over after his mom bought him the baseball glove.

"You know, I don't wear neckties very often, but I do believe this is the finest necktie I've ever owned," his dad declared, hugging him.

And he handed Chip the flat box in the brown wrapper, saying, "Merry Christmas, Chip."

Although he'd done these things a thousand times before, Chip ran his fingers along the seams in the paper, he shook the package and sniffed its corners. And he wondered what it would be like to be grown up with a king's ransom at his disposal. Or to own the signature of the smartest man ever to have walked this earth. Or to be the only kid he knew with a mystery up his sleeve.

"Dad, do you mind if I just leave this here until next time?" he asked.