A New Kind of Dan
- Mar 24, 2023
- 4 min read
by Kyle Seibel
In the photo in question, the girl is young, no more than nine, dressed as a bride. Her father, mid-stride, beside her in a tux. His goatee cropped close. His gray skin hangs. A tight-lipped smile below zombie blue eyes.
His name is Dan.
Dan from work.
Dan from the office softball league.
Different from the Dan with the desk near the lobby. Different from the Dan in charge of new business. Not Tall Dan or Airsoft Dan or Mormon Dan or Hockey Dan.
This is Regular Dan.
Something off with that photo though. Everyone agrees. And it’s not the framing or the colors or the glossy finish.
Maybe just the way it was used, we think.
Front and center on the cover of the program. Key art, that’s called. Next to the casket and outside the chapel.
We know why it was chosen. After all, we were there when it was taken.
Some Saturday last April at Blackburn Park. Quite a sight with all the dogwood blossoms. Those soft pink petals against cartoon clouds.
No groom awaits the pair in the photo. No reception planned for after. Regular Dan’s daughter wasn’t getting married. This day wasn’t about her.
It was about the impending death of Regular Dan.
According to the email he sent to the whole company, it was about Regular Dan getting to do something he wouldn’t otherwise get to do. On account of this newly discovered abnormal genetic thing, he wrote. This accumulation of harmful mutations. The point being he didn’t have much time. His prognosis meant he’d never hike the Appalachian Trail. He’d never see his favorite team win the big game.
But there was one thing Regular Dan could do. He could walk his daughter down the aisle, even if she wasn’t getting married.
That was the idea, anyway. A man’s last request sort of deal.
Word got around. The school got involved. People started to wonder how they could help, what they could do for Regular Dan.
Different ideas were pitched.
Messages were exchanged.
A plan hatched over phone calls and emails.
The day before the aisle walk, a delegation from the office went to Regular Dan’s house with balloons and a printed certificate. When he opened the door, we crowned him employee of the year. Not for work he had previously done, we explained, but rather for the work we’re sure he would have done in the future.
“This is an enormous surprise,” Regular Dan said, voice shaking.
But that’s not all, we told him. We asked him to follow us outside. There we gathered an entire group. They assembled into a line, just as we had rehearsed.
First up was the man who edited a gardening magazine. He presented Regular Dan with the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award for Excellence in Recreational Horticulture.
“But my hedges — ” Regular Dan said, before the magazine man cut him off.
“We know,” he said. “You would have one day.”
Next was the dean of the community college. He awarded Regular Dan a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. The dean opened the padded folder and wagged his finger. “Not honorary,” he said. “The real deal.”
It went on like that all down the line. By the time he was through with everyone, Regular Dan was a church deacon, a board member of several businesses, the alternate for a bowling team, an extra in the upcoming community theater production of Godspell, and the presiding grand marshal of the box car derby.
There would be a day named after him, the city manager promised. They’d hang his basketball jersey on the wall of the high school gym.
Regular Dan was moved to tears. He wept through his fingers. The athletic director covered him with a hug. Jubilation broke out. The librarian’s bracelets jangled as she double pumped her fists in the air near the rear of the crowd.
And then the next day at Blackburn Park. The dogwood blossoms covered the ground. Someone raked a path between the folding chairs.
They had music and everything. Two photographers. It felt like a movie. And you know, everyone mentioned, at one point or another, there was nothing regular about the Dan who walked his daughter down the aisle that day.
It was a time in our town where miracles were possible. That was the party line in the weeks that followed.
Hadn’t the McClorey boy walked away from that bicycle collision? What about the police scandal? Couldn’t that have been far worse? And wasn’t there always some toddler being saved from drowning? Those asteroids that come close and then bounce away?
We were certain something like that would happen. He would emerge from the struggle a new kind of Dan. We couldn’t wait to welcome him back to our world.
Things didn’t happen like that, of course.
During the funeral, we stare at the photo on the program and on the easel next to the casket of Regular Dan on that day in the park. It has gone from vaguely off to fully bothersome and somewhere during the scripture reading is when we see it. We don’t know why we didn’t before.
The photo contains a blue sky in the background, the edge of the backstop from a t-ball game, a few falling dogwood petals, and a dying man walking next to his daughter. She’s the source of what feels so wrong. Her face, her smile. Though not a smile, exactly. A grimace, in truth. She is leaning forward and baring her teeth, bracing for something we can’t yet see.
Kyle Seibel is a writer in Santa Barbara CA. His work has been featured in Joyland Magazine, New World Writing, and Wigleaf. His debut collection of short fiction, HEY YOU ASSHOLES, is currently looking for a publisher. Follow him on Twitter at @kylerseibel. He’s been getting a lot better lately.
