Home: Part 21

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for a while.

November 1976

 
After Thanksgiving dinner was over and the table was cleared, Ron and I found ourselves outside again. I'd been standing alone on the redwood deck and enjoying the cool air after being cooped up inside the house through dinner. The sky was clear. I recognized a constellation, maybe two. My sister's laughter through an open window reached me just before Ron opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the deck. The redwood creaked beneath the added weight.
"A nice night," he said. I hadn't turned around.
"It is," I said. I hoped he had found me to inquire again about my religious bent. The pine trees--or maybe they were firs--were a wave of silhouettes when the breeze picked up.
"You get enough to eat?" He set his cocktail on the railing we both leaned against.
"I did," I said. "Enough to fill a hollow leg."
He laughed, though not comfortably.  "Cindy says you were in the Philippines."
"I was. For a bit."
"Business?"
"Mostly."
He lifted his glass as if to toast the forest in front of us. "I've never been to that part of the world. Is it nice?"
"In some ways, it is. A bit dicey in a few areas, still. Nothing too serious if you know the places to avoid, though."
He held his glass to his mouth in a way that made it seem as though he wasn't sure of whether to speak or drink. "Sometimes I come out here and stand, and i just watch the sky. Cindy gets a bit spooked when it's so dark like this. Something about bats."
"She's never liked rodents," I said. 
"Bats are rodents?"
"She's always thought that anything she doesn't like is a rodent."
The ice in his drink seemed too loud outside as he used his finger as a stirrer. "Your mom and dad seem to be doing well. We don't see them as often as we'd like. Cindy gets worried, you know?"
"So do I, Ron," I said. "Cindy and I offer to help them with things, but they're a bit stubborn."
Ron turned so that his back was against the railing, so he could look through the glass door.  He gestured toward the house with his free hand. "Tom and Michelle, both of their parents are the same way. Tom's mom can barely walk, and his dad is almost blind."
"Old age is a hell of a thing, isn't it?" I said. I was ready to go back inside, the deck and the forest both having lost a bit of their luster now that I was no longer alone.
"You traveling someplace soon?" Ron asked.
I didn't answer right away. To a fault, I preferred keeping most of my plans private, though it was something that historically resulted in no small amount of frustration with people who moved in and out of my life. "Probably going to stick close to home for a while," I said.
"Be here for Christmas?"
"Most likely."
"Both of our kids will be here. Wendy will be home from Guatemala in a couple of weeks."
"She done with the Peace Corps?"
Ron had finished his drink and seemed ready to go back inside, too. "I think so. Who knows?"
I started toward the house, but I noticed that Ron stayed back."
"You know," he said.
I turned around and looked at him, and I didn't move. Half a moon was setting over his left shoulder, just above where the trees hit the horizon.
"Nothing," he said. "Let's go back inside and see if there's still some pie."