my father had a randall knife my mother gave it to him when he went off to world war ii to save us all from ruin now if you ve ever held a randall knife you know my father well if a better blade was ever made it was prob ly forged in hell my father was a good man he was a lawyer by his trade and only once did i ever see him misuse the blade well it almost cut his thumb off when he took it for a tool the knife was made for darker things you could not bend the rules well he let me take it camping once on a boy scout jamboree and i broke a half an inch off tryin to stick it in a tree well i hid it from him for a while but the knife and he were one and he put it in his bottom drawer without a hard word won there it slept and there it stayed for twenty some odd years sort of like excalibur except waiting for a tear my father died when i was forty and i couldn t find a way to cry not because i didn t love him not because he didn t try well i d cried for every lesser thing whiskey pain and beauty but he deserved a better tear and i was not quite ready so we took his ashes out to sea and poured em off the stern and then threw the roses in the wake of everything we d learned and when we got back to the house they asked me what i wanted not the law books not the watchi need the thing he s haunted my hand burned for the randall knife there in the bottom drawer and i found a tear for my father s life and all that it stood for