Caleb Thomas Rideout

Raymond Yazzie's knees ache on the porch step in Miami, a Sunday before the sun is up. Wet grass and mowed-over mulch are on the air. For three minutes you have been a fifty-eight-year-old groundskeeper with a soft belly and a short beard. His back is already complaining about the day. You have not even needed him yet. You open the page with his thumb, and the thumb is steady. Last night he stood in his yard and watched a neighbor's boy ride a bike in circles, and he felt nothing at all about it, and neither did you. That is the whole reason. You pay. The wheel turns.

Cold arrives first, then a fork in your right hand, halfway up. The container is in your left, still warm through the plastic. The counter's edge presses your hip. You are standing in a kitchen, and a coat is heavy on your shoulders.

The coat comes through your collar and the canvas cuff. Thursday: he pulled it off a nail by the door, one arm and then the other, and the right sleeve was stiff with dried clay. He shrugged it up onto his neck the way his father did. A flash of shame follows, thin and quick, over the sleeve's torn lining.

The shirt under it is flannel, soft at the elbows. He put it on in the dark, buttoning from the bottom, and the second button was missing. The reflective shirt was folded on the chair. He was tired. He had been tired for weeks, since she left.

The keys are on the counter, by your right hand. When your eyes touch them, her name is there. He used to hang them on a hook she put up. Now they lie in the pile of unopened envelopes. His chest tightens around something he refuses to look at.

Under the sleeve, on the upper arm, the skin itches where script lettering sits, a name and a date. You do not read it. His arm knows it anyway, and the knowing is warm and ruined.

The body is twenty-seven and strong. Your shoulders ache from shoveling in a trench beside the little excavator, spoil piled high. Your palms are rough. Your jaw tingles where the beard has not filled in, and the bald scalp is cold. The noodles taste of salt and too much pepper. A glass of something later, he thinks, one or two, like most nights. He has a little money put away and no plan for it.

Out the window the dark is going blue, with a gray line of sea over the dooryard traps. There is no one else in the house.

You look at your hands. They are broad, scarred across the knuckles, and entirely yours now. You turn them over.

Then you look up and say, quietly, "Okay. Let's see how long."

You do not know if you will still be him by dinner.