Mom was in the kitchen cooking flapjacks, just like she did every morning.
Dad was on the living room sofa watching the TV, work shirt still unbuttoned down to his chest, loose tie limp around his neck, hand reaching over the armrest with fingers stopped inches from his mug of morning coffee. It was the blue mug, like always.
Timmy was standing on the stairs in his night shirt, a yawn creeping over his tiny face. I could see his molars this morning. That was new.
Even though I already knew what would be out there, I glanced outside as I passed the living room window, and there he was: The mailman, smiling and waving to Ms. Crawley next door as he stuffed a handful of paper into the box at the end of our driveway. His canvas saddlebag was fraying on the bottom, and you could see little white corners sticking through the ripped seam.
Nothing much changed here in Little Springs, Montana.
I scoured the pantry for something to eat. It was getting bare, forlorn almost, with its silent rows of dusty cans and mold-etched pasta boxes. I selected a can of peaches with only a spot of rust around the rim and maneuvered around my mom for the can opener in the junk drawer beside the stove. The flapjacks were black in the pan. The peaches were still fresh. I ate them on the deck out back, watching brown leaves swirl through the scum on the surface of the pool, artificially sweet juice dripping down my face.
The skin of Dad's cheeks was getting tighter as he aged, drawing in around his jaw and cheekbones. It pulled his lower eyelids taught, giving him a wide-eyed, leering expression. Mom's face, in the constant warmth of the south-facing kitchen, was doing the opposite: sagging, drooping, slipping. Her smile was slowly disappearing at the edges under a mudslide of wrinkles. In an obscene and unexpected way, she was beginning to look like her own mother.
-
I waved to Terry as I walked through the open doors of the grocery store. He smiled back, just like always. I'd never spoken to him, but I knew his name from the tag pinned to the breast of his apron. The aisles were filled with shoppers poised in the routine of gathering bright boxes and packages of food, shopping carts full or half full or still empty, browsing, perusing, calculating prices. The same faces as always. The same routines.
I maneuvered my own cart around their bodies, mentally running through the list of items I needed. Toilet paper, trash bags, canned peas, canned beans, canned peaches. I plucked a jar of pickles from a shelf in front of a young businessman. His hand was reaching out for the same jar. I smiled an apology and hurried on.
Terry smiled at my back as I walked out the door.
-
By the time I got back with the food, Dad's coffee was cold. I brewed a fresh pot and placed the blue mug back onto the table near his hand. It was a small thing, but I thought he'd like it.
Across the street, a buzzard landed on Ms. Crawley's shoulder.
-
I skimmed the pool, mowed the lawn. Sweated as hard as I could. Past the hedge, Rodney Bellam, two years younger than me, smoked a secret cigarette behind the thick elm in his back yard. The butt was black and something white shone through his crooked finger. I couldn't help it; I squinted for a better look. It was bone.
-
The next morning, Mom was in the kitchen, cooking flapjacks. Timmy yawned a little wider. Dad's coffee was cold again. Ms. Crawley was missing an ear.
I decided to check the mail.
This was a tricky prospect, since the chainsaw wouldn't crank. I settled for a hacksaw and carried it to the edge of the driveway, its plastic handle slick in my sweaty palm. The mailman waved at Ms. Crawley under a haze of black flies. His other hand was inside the hinged door of the mailbox, a wad of envelopes wedged between his fingers. I set to work on the wooden post.
The hacksaw's miniature teeth chewed the wood cleanly but slowly, leaving a paper-thin slit behind the blade. Nearly through, the rear frame of the saw bumped into the post. I worked the blade out and kicked it, striking my heel against the slit. The whole structure jerked and sagged, hanging on the mailman's outstretched hand, sharp splinters dangling from the bottom of the broken post. I slid the aluminum dome off the mailman's hand, casting sunlight on the bundle of pamphlets, magazines, and letters for the first time in over six months.
It was futile. The mail was wedged tight. His fleshy hand had no give under my prying fingers, although the skin sank into black, recessed dimples wherever I poked and prodded. Giving up, I tore away what I could and carried the pieces into the house, into the kitchen, laid them on the table, ticked the calendar. Seventeen days without rain. Mom cooked on, oblivious to my presence.
-
Pieces of mail are more exciting than the whole thing. I sat, leaning over the kitchen table. We had either a bill or a promotion from the cable company. A coupon from either the hardware store or the office supply store. A government letter urging us to get out of somewhere, go somewhere, evacuate because something was coming.
A thump from the stairway made me jerk straight in the wooden chair. The living room blinds were drawn, but dim sunlight radiated through in defiance. Timmy yawned from a shadow, halfway down the stairs. Two steps lower rested his hand from the wrist up.
I tied it back onto his arm and replaced the coffee in Dad's mug. Anything to keep busy.
Across the street, a buzzard picked at Ms. Crawley's lower lip, and a storm cloud crept in from the west.
