The second I saw what that man had gone to all that trouble to hide before he disappeared, I forgot to breathe, because the false bottom held a young mans things, a baseball glove, a high school letter jacket, a stack of photographs of a smiling boy, and a folded flag.
I sat down on my carport step, and my throat tightened.
The man who owned the freezer had not run from the law, he had run from a grief too heavy to live beside, and what he hid was everything he had left of a son he had lost.
The notebook told the story, and it broke my heart. His name was Ron, and his only son, Danny, had been killed young, in service to his country. Ron had kept everything of Dannys, the glove they played catch with, the jacket, the photos, the flag from his funeral. But the house was too full of Dannys absence, and Ron could not bear it, so he had preserved his sons things in the one place he would not stumble on them and break down.
And then, the boy said, he took off in a hurry. The notebook explained: the grief had finally overwhelmed Ron, and he had gone to stay with his brother out of state, unable to live alone with his sorrow another day, telling family only to keep his things.
The last entry read: These are my Dannys things, all I have left of my boy. If somebody finds them, please, do not throw them away. Find Dannys mother, we split up after we lost him, the grief was too much. She should have these. Tell her our boy is remembered. Tell her his daddy loved him every single day.
I could not let a fallen sons things sit in a freezer.
I found Dannys mother through the notebook. Ron, I learned, had passed at his brothers home, his grief never fully lifting.
She wept when I brought her Dannys things, the glove, the jacket, the photos, the flag. She had thought them lost when Ron disappeared into his sorrow. Now she had a piece of her boy back, and she understood, at last, that Ron had not abandoned Dannys memory, he had been crushed by it.
She and Rons brother arranged a proper memorial for both Danny and Ron, father and son together at last. And Dannys things are honored now, in a display his mother made, so the boy who gave everything is never forgotten.
I keep those wing nuts in a coffee can. My wife tells the story and nobody believes her, but they held down a fathers grief for his fallen son, and I got to carry it home to the boys mother. I bought a dented freezer for thirty-five dollars. I ended up making sure a young hero, and his heartbroken father, were both remembered. Some things are worth more than any price.