Snow Globe: 2007 Winner of the Long Island Pulse Story Contest

The old man stood at the edge of the creaky old dock, his little fishing boat bobbed behind him, Christmas lights blinking red, green, and white, as they outlined the square little cabin that was the wheelhouse. His face was hard to make out in the dim morning light and the thick fog laying heavy over the bay.

"You probably never heard this and your mother never let me see you before but you look just like your father when he was a kid. I want you to know that it's all my fault," he said. "That's why I never came to see you. I asked your father to come back because I was in trouble. He gave it all up for me. That's the kind of boy he was. It was in his blood. I just want you to know if you have it in you too."

I held the box of matches in my hand that he handed to me just a moment before. The top of them read The Snow Globe. There was a line drawing of a baseball that looked like it had a baseball player standing inside of it. Just like a Christmas snow globe there were little dots flurrying down around the player in a perpetual batting stance. I slid open the box. They were wet for some reason and the sulfur of the tips had all melted away to a yellowy much inside. He had obviously not given them to me to start fires.

"He had some of these on the boat in his cabin. Everything else was lost in the accident," he said referring to the little wooden matchbox. "I saved this one for you. You're going to have to ask your mother what it means. I'm afraid I was too stubborn to ask him myself."

I was only eighteen years old and yet I felt like I had lived two lifetimes already. My father had disappeared from our lives when I was only eleven. I could hardly remember him for all the time that he spent out at sea.

"You have to decide if it's in your blood. But do it quick. I don't have much time."

The images that I had were from old, worn photos from happier times, engagements, birthdays, fishing trips and holding me and my sister as babies. The old man was wrinkled like dried seaweed and he funny unfocused look in his eyes with a voice like an Evinrude, 2-stroke stuck in the mud. More than that, he looked familiar to me. I was convinced that he was the man I was expecting, the one from the background of all those family pictures. He lurked, blurry and unimportant behind the smiling faces of those who the photographer intended to shoot but I knew that this man was important, though no one ever told me who he was, or why he was there in my photographic ancestry.

He turned to go. I wanted to shout out to him. Scream that I didn't understand what he meant. He ducked into the cabin; the motor puttered to life. It puffed a little black smoke from the top of a long pipe affixed to the side of the cabin as if the engine were clearing its throat. I got the impression that he made the entire boat from spare parts and wreckage. The fact that the thing even floated impressed me.

His face turned to look out the circular window and he smiled a very mischevious smile. The one eye glinted as the lights inside the cabin went on.

How could I have missed it? In the fog I couldn't really tell but I knew there was something strange about his face. Everything about the old man reminded me of something that had been around for too long without care or comfort. Except for that eye. It clicked as soon as I saw the glint. He had a glass eye! The man in the pictures that I remembered had a patch over the same eye socket. That was why I didn't recognize him right away.

The boat puttered through the water avoiding the little floes of ice that collected in the bay. Usually, the bay was frozen over by now but this year it had been too mild. Not that it was warm. It was freezing with the wind whipping around me, exposed fifty feet out over the water like that.

I stuffed the cold, wet matches into my pocket and ran down the long dock back up to my house. The front door that led into the kitchen area always creaked so I tried to open it as slow as I could manage but she heard me anyway. My mother walked into the kitchen, her robe wrapped tight, curly hair more to one side than the other. She wore the same slippers that she always did, brown, manly-looking moccasins, frayed at the seams. My father's old slippers, I suspected. She had no sleep in her eyes so she'd obviously been up for a while.

"Where were you?" she asked in a voice that dared me to lie.

"Outside," I said. It was true. I always tried to test her with the general truth. If she accepted it then, hey, no damage done.

She was having none of that, especially today. "Outside? Doing what?" she asked. "It's early."

I knew that. I had been outside since before dawn, watching the little boat chug toward our side of the bay. Not really waiting for the old man, but knowing, somehow knowing he would come.

"Just walking around," I said to her. It was something I always did. I loved walking along the bay in the early morning.

She seemed to contemplate that for a minute and then shook her head, giving up ever figuring out her oldest child's impulsive ways. She said the same thing every time: "Just like your father."

I smiled and ran past her, up the stairs two at a time until I reached Cindy's room. She was sleeping. I never understood how she could always sleep so late on Christmas Morning.

"Wake up," I said, shaking her. "Wake up."

She groaned, turned over, looked at me and turned back to her pillow.

"He came, Cindy. He came!"

That made her come awake in an instant. She sat back against the white painted headboard. The little purple flower ringed around her head like a halo.

"What was he like?" she asked. "Was he like the pictures? How come you didn't wake me up?"

"I tried but you wouldn't. I went without you. He came to me, Cindy. He did look just like the picture. He had a wooden boat, a white beard and he was all wrinkly."

"Did he have... You know, the eye?"

"Yes. I couldn't tell at first in the fog but I saw it shine in the light of his boathouse. It was a glass eye! I didn't recognize him at first because in the pictures he always had a patch." I stopped because it occurred to me that the pictures were taken many years ago and not only were they back and white but they were faded from being in the attic. "He looked different."

"That was a long time ago. Most of them were taken before we were born."

"I know, but he looked really old."

"Mom says all the fisherman look old from the salt water and the wind," Cindy said, tying back her hair in a purple and gold ribbon she found on her nightstand. "What else?"

"He gave me this." I showed her the wet matchbook.

"What's that?"

"Matches. It says The Snow Globe. I don't know what it is but he said to ask Mom."

"Well," Cindy swung her legs around and dangled them off the side of the bed, her toes, painted alternating colors of red and green like the stripes on a candy cane, brushed against the wood floor. "Did he say anything else?"

"Justin! Cindy! Come on down now. Hurry up!" My mother yelled from downstairs.

"I'll tell you later," I said.

We both barreled down the narrow stairs to the kitchen. Mom had gone all out as usual on Christmas morning with eggs, French toast, bacon, the works. Usually we had cereal or toast with honey and jelly. This was a feast and the smell of real bacon made me drunk with hunger. For the most part we were poor. Mom said it all the time. Most fishing families were poor to begin with but since Dad died we were especially poor. Lots of times friends and family came by with old clothes and food for us but we never had anything close to what you would consider extravagant.

My part time job in the auto shop helped and so did Mom's job as a bank teller but there wasn't a lot of work out there.

Cindy had handmade gifts for our mother from school, some hangers that she decorated with yarn tied tight around it in Christmas colors.

We got the usual: Stuff that was unasked for, but appreciated anyway. Hand me down or donated dolls and a pocket book for Cindy, a new shirt and a book for me. None of it mattered though because all I could think about was the old man with the glass eye and his words to me that morning.

While cleaning up the ripped brown wrapping paper I got the courage to ask my mother about it all. There had always been an unspoken rule in our house that we did not talk about Dad. She could mention him all she wanted but whenever we broached the topic, she shut down, got a far away look and went silent until the moment passed. Again when I started to talk about it she did the same thing.

"Why did Daddy leave us?" Cindy asked, really digging in. It was the same question she asked a hundred times before and it got the reaction I expected. The house went silent except for the small sound of crumpled paper slowly coming loose. She pressed on. "I know that he died, you don't have to lie anymore."

Tears already streamed down her face and she shot me a look because she knew it was me who told her. I was old enough to know that he was lost at sea but for some reason I could never understand why my mother never told Cindy. Even then, I really didn't know the whole story. All I had so far was a hint of the truth, a man with a glass eye and a wet book of matches in my pocket.

"Mommy?" Cindy's voice was small and pleading.

Mom sniffed and sat up dropping all the rumpled paper in her hand to the floor. I could see her change her composure, like the story she was about to tell was putting itself together in her mind. It reminded me of the time we organized the old pictures in the boxes. The ones where I first noticed the mysterious man in the background who I was convinced that I had met that morning.

"I need to show you something," she said. After disappearing down the short hall that separated our little living room with the backroom where we kept all of our junk, like tackle boxes filled with rusting hooks and weights that my mother refused to throw out after my father died.

She came back with something in her hand. It was a baseball, all chewed up and dirty like it had been scratched up by a dog or hit too many times against a tree.

"This is your father's ball," she said. "it was the last one he ever pitched."

Cindy and I drew close to her. It was nothing special, just an old baseball. She saw our confusion. I didn't understand what she was talking about.

"Your father was going to be a baseball player once," she said, setting the chewed up ball down on the floor. It was so misshapen by the marks that it didn't even roll, just sat there. "He played for Cabot Hill. He was really good."

"The Minor League team?" I asked excitedly. It was a farm team for the Major League. I knew that some very good ballplayers had started there.

She smiled.

"He pitched for them. He couldn't tell his father because they needed the help during the summer on the fishing boat. He had to pitch for the winter league."

I pulled the matchbox out of my pocket and showed it to my mother. They were still damp.

"Where did you get those?" she asked, taking the matchbox from me with shaking hands. She rubbed her finger across the cover as if she were connecting to the past. She wiped the dampness off her fingers and again tears came to her eyes.

"Tell me what they are first," I said. I wanted to know what this all meant. The chewed up baseball added another piece to the puzzle that was my father's past.

"The Snow Globe was what they called the league that your father pitched in during the winter. Where on earth did you find these? I haven't seen them in years. Your father used to save these matchbooks for his cigars."

"I got them from this old man down at the dock this morning," I said. "He contacted me a while ago. I think he's dad's father." I looked at Cindy who was looking back at me with wide eyes. "Our grandfather. The man from the old pictures with the patch on his eye except he has a glass eye now."

"I told him never to contact you." She was angry.

"Mom, I needed to know. You never told us what really happened. And he wants me to join him like Dad."

"That's why I never let him see you. I knew that he'd try to convince you to go to sea. I don't want you to do it. I don't want you to go."

"We've been suffering for all this time. I can do this. I always knew that I wanted to try and you did everything to stop me. I'm tired of stocking parts for the garage. At least I might be able to make something of myself."

"Or you could end up dead like your father," she said.

"Mom, I'm not going to die. But I am going to try it. I'm going with him."

I had a decision to make. Not to go or not to go. I had to decide if I had it "in my blood" like my grandfather said. He had the sea in his blood and so did my father. I know that now because he never would have given up his dream to settle down with my mother and take over his own father's fishing business. Now that the old man, my grandfather, left it all in my hands and I had the choice.

I chose the sea.

I didn't understand it all at first. Then, everything about my family began to make sense. That summer he took me on the boat to the bay and then out to the open water and I understood why my father left his chance at baseball. It had nothing to do with the work. That was hard. And hard work makes the mind clear so you know yourself, what kind of man you are.

It was also the freedom and beauty of the ocean. The way the sun made diamonds glint on the surface in the choppy water. The colors of the horizon, the smell and the connection to my maker when I am out at night and feel like the stars are falling on my head. Breaking free of the inlet and seeing the blue water spread out before me knowing that the world is bigger than I ever imagined it could be in my small little town. There were thousands of ghosts traveling the lanes, thousands of years of taking to the water for food, for exploration and for freedom. I was one of those men now.

The old man with the glass eye died later that year of cancer. He knew he was dying and he wanted to finally give me a chance to take over the business. He left what little he owned to us: The boat, his dock and his house where he ran his business. For all those years he kept up his business to give it all to me because of his guilt about my father's death. He thought that he owed it to us, to me, for taking away his son's future, my father. He thought that I needed to have the same choice and he knew that my mother would keep it from me.

I took his ashes out to the middle of the bay and spread them out over the same water that claimed my father. A part of my life was just beginning but another part was done. I first met the old man who was my grandfather and nothing made sense in my life. When it was all over, I remembered that strange episode on the dock last Christmas: The old man with the glass eye, his words to me, the Snow Globe, the chewed up baseball and the box of wet matches all made sense.