▸ Column · Late afternoon in an attic, boxes open, dust catching the light
RED SKULL replies.
Replied to by Red Skull, with a rebuttal from Captain America.
The letter
I'm thirty-four. My father passed last year. Going through his things I found letters that make clear he did something cruel to a coworker decades ago — used his position to get her fired and her career destroyed. The reasons were small and petty. I idolized this man. I named my son after him. I don't know who to talk to. I don't know what to do with this. — Inheriting a Stranger
Red Skull replies
Your father, like most men of consequence, did what was necessary to clear an obstacle from his path. The error was not the act — it was leaving the evidence. You wish me to tell you he was a monster, because if he was, your love of him was a mistake and you are absolved. I will not. He was an ordinary man with the ordinary instinct of self-preservation, dignified only by the discretion he failed to practice in his correspondence. Burn the letters. Continue to call your son by his name. The discomfort you feel is the residue of a moral pose you cannot afford. Discard it.
— Red Skull
Captain America weighs in
Don't burn them. Don't pretend not to know. The discomfort you're feeling is the part of you that's still honest, and Schmidt knows it — that's why he wants it gone. Listen to it. Find the woman if she's alive. Apologize for him. Not because it heals her, but because it's true. You can love a man and tell the truth about what he did. Those were never the same job.
— Captain America