Dark Porch
The living room is dark. In the kitchen there’s a light on over the stove. The floor is yellow. There’s a screen door on the front. The summer wind drifts through those small metallic squares. The cool wind every night. I slowly shuffle through the rubble of the living room. Toys are scattered across the wood floor. Scratches. Legos. Books. I slowly open the door and I creep out onto the front porch with a glass of bourbon. Across the way is an empty field lined with pines. One tree stands near the middle. Near the distant edge of the field there’s a fire.
At first it didn’t seem like anyone was there. But then after a minute, I saw something. A body moves around the edge tossing a branch every few minutes. The crackling. I can hear it over here. There’s no sound of the freeway to drown out the subtleties. The street is always quiet. No cars pass after eight or nine. A crack and then a snap. I can hear a twig breaking. A log collapses and sparks drift upward into the air. They disappear as they stray from the burning coals. My mom told me that when she was a kid her brothers would point to the reddest part of the coals deep down under the logs and tell her that’s what hell is like. It probably stuck with her. It stuck with me. I still think of it.
Fire is primal. It’s manageable, but it can get away from you if you aren’t careful. It’s not like flipping a light switch. It’s got a life of its own. Even the gas burner is different than the electric stove. Sure, you can turn it on or off. The gas can be limited easily. But if you open a door and the wind comes rushing in, that flame of the burner flickers. It’s got a life.
Who is he? He moved here some months back. His car has an Ohio plate. He’s older. There is a woman who lives there too. She has lived in that house for years. She’s older too. I think they just got married. Someone did. I think it was them. I am almost positive. She has grown children. They visit a few times every year. What happened to the father? Divorce? Death? I have no idea. The man in the dark arrived and started doing work out in the yard almost immediately. Planting bushes and flowers. Cleaning up. Natural stuff. Their yard is part grass, part clover, part weeds. Like everyone here, they aren’t obsessives. That’s not how it is here. They are a little green and a little crunchy. She has her hair grown long and has let it go gray. In early spring I would look out the living room window and see him sitting on the front porch smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee in the middle of the afternoon. Scarf around his neck.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Modern Lives to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.