Page 11 of Chasing Fireflies

“I don’t know.” I stand up just as a guy gets out of his truck, and I see it’s Mark from the hardware store.

“Hey there, you two.”

“What brings you out this way?” I ask, walking down the steps.

“Oh, just wanted to see if I could give you a hand on this old house. I see you’ve been working?”

“Yep.” I turn to look back at the porch. “Just replacing some old boards.”

“Well, you wanting any help?”

“I couldn’t put you out like that.”

“You’d be doing me a favor. My wife has ten dogs at the house right now. Says she wanted to get them all bathed because they go to new homes tomorrow. Don’t know why she has to do it at our house. She works at the animal shelter downtown, always bringing pets home,” he says, shaking his head. I laugh and so does Sara.

“I guess if you don’t mind, I’d probably get done a lot faster.”

“Let me just grab my tool belt.” He walks back to his truck, and I take a sip of my beer.

“Time to do man work, baby.” This makes her laugh.

“Well, you get to it then.”

“You down the rest of this beer for me.”

“I’ll do my best.” She winks.

*

“What made you two want to move to a small town like Green Ridge?”

“Just needed a change, is all. We grew up about thirty minutes from here, in a small town just like this one.”

“Really, and y’all wanted to move to another? Man, my wife would love to leave here and move to the city. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it.”

“Sara wouldn’t care for the city.”

“Why is that?” he asks. I lean up on my knees and run a hand over my face, feeling I need a trim soon. Truth is, Sara gets anxiety around too many people. Large crowds make her uncomfortable, and sometimes she has panic attacks. So we decided to pick a small town on the map not extremely far from home. We picked here and packed everything up. Sara’s mom almost killed me. She smothered my girl, and everyone saw it but her. But I don’t know this man enough to talk about my wife’s issues. Maybe one day I will.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine.” He reads my mind.

“Just too crowded,” I say, grabbing another nail.

“That’s exactly how I feel. Can’t get to know people when there are too many of them.”

“You said your wife works at the animal shelter?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Yeah, on Fifth Street. Been there since we graduated high school. She seems like a hard ass, but she’s a softy. Like I said, brings home stray animals all the damn time. Thankfully, she’s good at finding permanent homes for them or else we’d be overrun.” He laughs as he nails another board in. “You know, a tin roof would look good on this house. Something to think about for the future.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.

*

The sun starts to go down and the crickets start to chirp, so we pick up the old boards and Mark helps me load them onto the back of Old Blue to take off tomorrow.

“Come on over to the house this weekend. We’ll get the grill out, and I’ll buy a few steaks to pay you for the work you helped me with today.”

“Only if you let me do the grilling,” Mark says.

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