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Dan Marquis

There’s a paternally inherited know-it-all gene passed down through the entire Marquis family line. If there’s something to be done, there is no possible way it would be done to our exacting standards if we were to let someone else do it. You get two such people staring down the barrels of power tools at something that needs doing, it ends poorly. My old man and I rarely went more than a few weeks without a shouting match. He and his father were the same way. We are a completely insufferable people.

During his last few days, my father was only able to communicate through vague gestures—eye movement, a blink, a nudged finger. A few minutes into what would turn out to be our final conversation, I realize that he’s using the communication methods we’d worked out to argue with me.

I start laughing and crying in equal parts. “Really? You’re gonna pick a fight with me now? I’ll go get a screw gun and start taking stuff apart; what’re you gonna do, stop me?”

He grinned at me for the last time. With every ounce of strength left in his ruined body he lifted his hand from his lap, and he curled every finger but one.