He kept the shoes on a piece of newspaper by the back door, left toe kissing right toe, the way he'd learned to pack a kit bag in the Army. The laces were gray from washing. Carl would pull into the driveway at six fifty-eight, never seven, never six fifty-seven - and my father would already have his jacket zipped before the headlights swept the kitchen wall.
The Shoes by the Back Door
The organizer was one of those plastic ones with the days in raised letters, each little hatch stamped AM and PM, and he had the Monday lid open and the Tuesday lid open and maybe Wednesday too, he wasn't sure, he said - he just wasn't sure. The mug had a ring inside from where the coffee had been sitting. I watched him close Tuesday, then open it again. He looked at me the way you look at a word that has come loose from its meaning, and then he looked back down at the little plastic grid, and I said do you want me to check, and he said he didn't want to take two - that was the thing, he just didn't want to take two. The newspaper under the shoes was still there by the door.
The car smelled like the pine tree air freshener I'd hung in October and never taken down, and he sat with his hands in his lap the whole way, not pointing at anything. At the bench he lowered himself by degrees, both palms flat on the armrest - and breathed through his nose for longer than I counted. A bird moved in the serviceberry above us, quick and red, and he lifted one finger toward it and said the ones, you know, and then stopped - and his finger stayed up there a moment, aimed at nothing. He looked at the branch for a while after the bird had gone. Then he looked at his hands.
The stick leaned against the doorframe at a slight angle, bark gone smooth in one spot about shoulder height. He'd touch it there, just the pads of two fingers, every Wednesday before he zipped up. Not every time. Every time. The new partner's name was Dottie - and she brought binoculars on a cord around her neck that left a red line by dinner, and my father had started reporting again - a merlin, he thought, though he allowed it might have been something else, he wasn't certain.
The Bench Without Carl
Dottie had a thermos the color of old mustard that she set on the bench between them while she looked things up - her thumb working the binocular wheel, and my father would pour a little into the cap for himself without being asked, because she had told him once that two cups made her hands shake, and he had remembered that, and she hadn't had to say it again.
The thermos was empty on a Tuesday in March - sitting on the bench alone, and when I called Dottie she said her daughter had needed her, it was fine, it was just the one week. My father walked the trail anyway, alone - and came home and sat in the kitchen with his jacket still on and didn't say anything about a bird. Three weeks later I found him at the window in the dark, not looking at anything, the stick still leaning against the doorframe, untouched, the smooth spot aimed at the room like it was waiting. He'd moved his pill organizer to a different counter - away from the door. When Dottie came back she brought a second thermos, small and green, and set it down in front of him without explaining, and he unscrewed the cap and held it a moment before he poured.
The newspaper was gone from under the shoes, finally - replaced with a piece of cardboard he'd cut from a cereal box - the Grape-Nuts, blue and yellow, still showing part of the bowl. Dottie's green thermos had a dent in it now, low on the side, and he noticed it every time he poured - running his thumb over the ridge the way you check a bruise. Wednesday he was at the door at six forty-nine, jacket zipped, two fingers already on the smooth spot of the stick. Carl had moved to his daughter's place in Tucson, and once in a while a postcard came, roadrunner on the front - and my father would prop it against the salt shaker for a few days and look at it while he ate, and then it would migrate to the drawer with the rubber bands, and he would go to the door anyway, and Dottie's headlights would find him there.
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