He was watching TV when he said it, not looking at me. He turned the sound up before he spoke again.

“There’s not much,” he said. “Not as much as there should be, I’ll tell you that. So don’t get any ideas. You’re going to have to work, you know what I mean?”

“You haven’t figure out how to take it with you?”

“I could use a little of it too,” he said, “just to get through the gates, maybe.” He laughed at that.

He always had envelopes of cash laying around, under the bed, under the couch, under the silverware tray in the kitchen drawer, under the car seat. A couple hundred bucks in each white envelope. All my life, I never took a single bill. I think it disappointed my father. So, when he was lying there in his casket and a parade of men passed in front of him, I saw one of the guys slip a white envelope into his suit jacket, a gesture of respect, a little token for the afterlife, maybe. When everyone had gone I went up and lifted the envelope and took a few bills off the top – I wasn’t going to take all of it – and put the rest back in the envelope and put it in his suit. I had to leave something for him to take with him, an obol for the ferryman Charon, something to get him through the gates. I took just enough to make him happy, I thought, out of respect. To show him that I’d learned a thing or two. To let him know he didn’t have to worry.

That parade of men – contractors, masons, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, shop owners, city employees, all the men he had worked with over the years – many of them were the ones who used to come and go at the house. They all came to the visitation; they all came to the funeral. Not one of them came to the hospital. Except Froehmer. He didn’t come to any of it.