Mixtape

Jeff stared down at the cassette, the one labeled “DAD’S MIXTAPE” in thick black marker. To this day, he couldn’t remember who’d put the tape together. Probably Mom. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had it now. Today.

          He placed the tape carefully in the dusty cassette player which had lurked on the cabin’s back porch since the first Bush was in office. He pushed the deck shut with his thumbs, checked that the volume was set to the right level, and hit play. The two knobs of the cassette carriage began turning like twin wheels of time, and Jeff heard the static nothingness of blank tape. Every year, before the first song started playing, fear would clutch him by the throat as dark possibilities swarmed through his mind. Maybe this will be the year that it all goes wrong. The thin plastic ribbon will snap. The mixtape with Dad’s ten songs will be gone forever.

          Finally, breaking free of the staticky silence, came the opening notes to John Denver’s “Country Roads”.

          “Everything alright, son?”

          Jeff closed his eyes, a chill running down his spine. Never got used to that.

          “All good, Dad.”

          Jeff turned from the cassette player. Dad sat at the old wooden card table by the side windows, shuffling his deck of dog-eared New England Patriots playing cards. Dad cocked his head, like their old retriever, Shep, used to do when he heard a loon calling from the other side of the lake.

          “That my tape? Huh, I get it. You think I’ll go easy on you if you play my favs.”

          Dad riffled the cards from one hand to the other like a street magician.

          “No such luck, Jeffey-boy. Now come take your whupping like a man.”

          Jeff took a seat, the familiar screech of the folding chair across the floorboards sending ten thousand memories flooding through his brain as his father began dealing the first hand of gin-rummy. Dad wore his green flannel shirt that still smelled like the woods, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Tufts of gray chest hair stuck out over the top of his faded Red Sox t-shirt. As he dealt, the old man sang along with Denver, not caring in the slightest that he couldn’t carry a note with both hands and a bucket.

          Dad looked up and Jeff took a breath. Jeff always forgot about the eyes. Those sharp brown eyes, perpetually dancing to the tune of mischief’s fiddle. Those eyes that Jeff had only twice seen shed tears: once when Shep died, the other when the Sox lost the ’86 World Series.

          “You going to play there, Sparky?” Dad said. “Or are you calling it quits now and saving yourself some grief?”

          Jeff swiped up his cards. “Let’s see what you’ve got, old man.”

          As the rounds swept by, Jeff quickly lost track of the mixtape which jumped back and forth from John Denver to Elvis to Garth Brooks to the Beach Boys like a radio unstuck in time.

          Evening shadows stretched long on every side as Dad squinted down at his cards.

          “Worried about your brother. Cooped up in that room all day staring at those blinking screens. Gonna have to learn a real skill one of these days.”

          Jeff smiled to himself. He knew Billy would go on to write lines of computer code that would make him the most successful member of the O’Malley clan since they’d piled off the boat at Ellis Island.  

          “He’ll figure it out, Dad.”

          Dad gave a ‘hurumph’ that took Jeff back to nights standing by the hood of the old station wagon, trying to hold a flashlight steady while Dad did battle with the alternator.

          “How’s Stephanie?”

          Jeff hesitated, just like he did every year. What was he supposed to say? That three years in the future he and Steph would have one fight too many and she’d fly back to Arizona?

          “She’s fine.”

          “Yeah?”

          “Yeah. We’re…we’re good.”

          Dad nodded, leaning forward on his elbows as he studied his cards. “You have a good one there, kid. Do right by her. That’s been the way with me your mother. You do right by each other, and you’ll be alright.”

          “Okay, dad.”

          Jeff leaned back in his chair, happening to catch the last bars of Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A”. Jeff turned to the cassette player, heart in his throat. That wasn’t right. Couldn’t be right.

          And yet he knew it was. He waited, helpless, for the final song to begin. After a brief period of silence, it did. Soft and haunting, slipping into the air with the gentle strums of a solo guitar.

          Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”.

          Jeff turned back to his father, watching the man mouth the words to the song. His favorite song.

          The song that had played at his funeral.

          Jeff stared down at his cards, eyes blurry. He knew there was no point in telling his father. Why waste the three minutes they had left? He wouldn’t squander their last moments explaining how the mixtape worked.

And that it only worked once a year.  

          As the craggy voice of the country legend slipped slowly from the cassette player, Jeff took in the magic details all around. Clutched them tight to his heart. Moonlight trickling over the water out the side windows. The familiar chirping of crickets outside. The soft footfall of his father keeping time with the music.

          “Dad?”

          “Yeah?”

          “Just want you to know…”

          “Yeah?”

          “Nothing.”

          Dad looked up, the ever-present twinkle in his eye.

          “It’s ok, kid. I already know everything there is to know.”

          Jeff smiled.

“I hope we can do this again next year.”

          Jeff’s dad nodded as the last notes of the mixtape echoed through the cabin.

          “That sounds good to me.”