The Finger in the Matchbox

FIRST PLACE SUDDEN FICTION

LUCAS CARPENTER

The first time he showed it to us I was about seven, my brother six. He took it from the high bureau drawer that also contained his condoms, the iconic nude Marilyn Monroe calendar, where she’s on her side on red felt, never looking blonder or whiter, and the unloaded Walther PPK Nazi officer pistol (inside a greasy argyle sock, the ammo in a box underneath) he said he took from a surrendering SS general near Manheim, bequeathed years later to my fighter pilot brother who carried it with him on every sortie he flew over the rice paddy geometry, sugar beaches, serrated mountain ridges and black green jungle of our first lost war.

My father slid the matchbox open. There on a bed of dried- up bloody cotton lay the finger, remarkably well-preserved, he said he’d cut off a dead German.

My brother and I recoiled in thrilling horror, not only from the gory digit itself, but from the equally gory knowledge that he – husband, father, Methodist deacon, decorated veteran – had mutilated a German corpse. Our father: mild-mannered civil service drone with a tax return business on the side, working fourteen-hour days in the seasonal rush, all to make and save as much money as he could (which turned out to be not much), for us.

At the first opportunity, we searched the drawer, discovering in no time the finger hole in the bottom of the matchbox that could never explain what I wanted it to.