Dale Whitaker

You are standing in Curtis Boudreaux's kitchen with his coffee going cold in his good hand, and the thing that sent you back is not on the counter. It is in the house. It is the quiet of a man who has a wife asleep upstairs and a daughter in a dorm and a calendar that already knows his Tuesday. Fifty-five years of him, and he has never once been late. You have been him for under a minute, and you already know exactly how the day goes, down to the lunch. That is the whole reason. You would not say it out loud to anyone. You tip the coffee into the sink. You open the page. The wheel is already turning.

Then the trench.

Cold clay comes up through your boot soles, and your arms are already in the middle of a swing. The shovel is going down into the spoil, and the rhythm breaks. You do it wrong, the blade biting crooked, so you stop and do it again slowly, and then again, checking each one, though your body says it has done this ten thousand times. Diesel is ticking in the little excavator at your shoulder. Neon bleeds pink and blue down a brick alley that smells of old beer and wet dirt. Your breath comes short. A belly sits soft over a thin frame, and a knee aches in a way that has an opinion.

The shovel handle is the first key. It is worn smooth where a palm has ridden it, and under your grip comes a flash that is his and not yours: a hardware store, a younger man buying this exact handle because the last one split, and the pride of paying eleven dollars for something that would outlast an argument.

The shirt comes next, orange and stiff with dust against your back. You get the morning in his hands. The closet door is kept shut so the light does not wake her. The shirt goes on over the head, left sleeve first, because it always has. The jeans are on the chair where he leaves them. He laces the boots sitting on the edge of the bed, and she says without opening her eyes, "Eat something." He kisses her hair. The feeling is plain love, tired and unshowy, thirty-odd years deep.

The ring on your left hand presses the bone when you grip. It gives you the church basement, folding chairs, a borrowed suit, and her laughing at him. Then a rosary in the truck's cup holder, and the one child, grown, who calls on Sundays. Your teeth find a thumbnail without being asked. The edge is already bitten down raw, and the habit is older than the marriage.

Your jaw is smooth, shaved in the dark by feel. Your scalp is cool under the hard hat. The money is thin and he knows it to the dollar, and the knowledge sits low in his chest, steady and unashamed.

You lift your hand off the handle and turn it over. It is thick, scarred by nothing special, a stranger's, with a band of gold gone dull. You raise your eyes to the alley's glow.

"Well," you say, in a voice rough as gravel. "Hello, Dale."

The shovel stands in the clay beside you. You wonder how long this one lasts, and when the wanting starts.