I’m old and I’ve seen things that shouldn’t ever be seen and learned more than I wanted to know. People not yet old say that elders forget, but that’s not the true half of it. Having too many things you can’t not remember makes you old. I’ve outlived any use I ever figured for myself, but, no credit to me, my eyes still open each morning. My wife, Grace, is gone now seven years⁠–⁠she was my grace, God love her and I miss her⁠–⁠but, my boys, well, I think young folks have a harder time remembering than parents, and I don’t see them much. Not to complain.

Most mornings I ease out of bed and then take care of whatever needs tending that day. I clean breakfast dishes and then putter about the yard. All those chores, like clipping grass and dusting roses and painting window sills peeling on the sunny side of the house, seem irksome to a young man but are about all that’s left of living now. Plus keeping an eye on the neighborhood. I work a while and then set a while. I notice what and who’s going up and down the block. Generally, I don’t stick my nose in. As a young man I wanted to set some things right, but Grace said that God won’t hold me account for others’ mistakes while they did the best they knew to do. She’d cup my chin in her palm to calm me. She was smart that way. Well.

A neighborhood has a face you come to know, but never recollect how you first met. Last August we were short one family after Mitch Wilkins moved his psychiatrist practice to the city. Apparently, my neighbors don’t accumulate enough of his particular type of mental issues or maybe too many to tackle alone. Anyway, that family moved closer in to town. That house sat empty two, maybe three months. I sneaked up every other week to trim the grass, which kept the lawn tidy, but I felt the lack of a family in that house like a tooth missing in my own jaw. Not a hurt exactly, but your tongue always finds the hole. Now I wish that house had stayed empty.

Like I said, I’m in my yard pretty regular, so I saw the new family arrive. A typical house move: van drove up, backed into the drive, and two guys, muscly but with guts hanging over belts, unloaded boxes and furniture down the ramp. I saw children’s bikes and a bunk bed. After the van left, I saw two adults and two children roving the yard. Across fences they seemed a fine young family. The lady dressed well, with clothes that seemed fancy for unpacking boxes, but still. They owned two cars, both newish, so I figured them hard working in some line or another and felt glad of it. After dinner I clipped some roses which were blooming beautiful, dusted off a bottle of wine, and ambled up the street. I introduced myself and wasn’t surprised to find the man of the house introduce himself as a lawyer and she, she stayed home with the children.

“Peter Mueller,” he said, still standing at the door. “Thank you for the wine. And the flowers.” He half stepped outside but kept hold of the door frame with one hand.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Sorry about the mess, but this isn’t our best day.”

“No problem. Moving day never is.”

“Jill⁠ ⁠… will be sorry she missed you.” He waved vaguely towards the stairs. “But she’s upstairs.”

“No problem. I’m Jim Grant, two doors down. It’s a real nice neighborhood. I look forward to meeting you all when the dust settles.”

“Yes,” Peter said as he shut the door and clicked the lock.

Like I’ve said before, if you live long enough you know things and don’t know how you learned. I never did meet the Muellers properly. I’d see them come and go. He left for work early, before I got up most days, and returned after dark. She - Jill - brought the children to school in the morning, and they took the bus home afternoons. Something got me curious, though. Two somethings, the Mueller children. Some might call it nosiness, but I’m a friendly neighbor, always have been. I know most kids on the block. You’ve got to be careful now, but I wave and say hello. I know names and where they go to school and which boys toss their lunch bags into garbage cans down the block on their way home. I don’t know what those fellows eat at school, but it’s not what their mothers pack. I don’t tell parents, of course, but the boys smile at me sometimes as they pass, and the younger ones hang on the gate and talk while I weed along the fence.

The Mueller children — a boy and a girl — never passed my house on school days. I saw them Sundays when the family paraded past on their way to church. Weren’t they a postcard. The parents seemed stylish with those kids shined clean and ironed smooth. If God cared to look, he must have been impressed. The boy wore a bow tie cinched to his neck and his top shirt button fastened. I do not know to this day how that was possible. Most boys his age, I guessed eight or ten, have trouble just getting shirts tucked and shoes tied. Since Grace died, I haven’t felt the need for church. If I find myself edging into dementia or with cancer, I might go back, but after a lot of amiable years, God and I simply tired of each other. I got nothing more to ask of him, and he’s lost interest toying with me. But I’d wave on Sunday, and the Mueller parents would usually wave back or say hello.

Fact is, I did not get to know that family, but I still had the rest of the neighborhood and my garden. One Saturday in the spring, months after the Muellers moved in, I shuffled around my front yard working. In springtime you’ve got to unburlap the shrubs, shovel thawed dog crap from heaps all over the front lawn, and rake soggy leaves, so I had plenty to do. Some of the boys were playing ball at the house across the street. I saw the Kellys, of course; Jacob Klein, Jeet Sandhu, and a couple of other young fellows I did not recognize, perhaps from around the corner. Miriam Kelly played which surprised me, though I suspected the boys needed a body to even the sides. Anyway, I wasn’t paying attention, just listening to the noise and background yells as I went about my business. As I raked along the porch, I saw the Mueller boy in a striped t-shirt sidling along with his back to my fence. He stared across the street.

I do not think — in fact, I am sure — he did not see me. He had the pasty winter skin we all do that time of year. His close-cropped brown hair sported a cowlick at his forehead. I stopped raking. That cowlick gave a comical look, almost as if at the boy’s birth, God reached back as an afterthought and said, “Wait just a minute there, son,” and twisted a thumb at the infant’s hairline to mark him. The boy hung over my fence with both arms looped behind him and gaped at the ballplayers. I could not see his eyes from my angle, but he had some of the longest eyelashes I’ve ever remarked on a boy. Camels don’t grow longer lashes than that boy, I swear.

When he stopped outside my gate, I said, “Those are the Kellys. They’re good kids.”

He whipped around as though I had electrified the fence. I saw that his eyes were big. And with those big eyes, he looked at me standing there holding my rake.

“Pardon me.” It should have been a question, but he said it like a fact.

“No need to pardon yourself. I said those Kelly boys and the others are nice. They usually make a spot for someone new to play ball. Do you play?”

“No,” he said quickly. “Well, yes, I can. I know how. But I can’t.”

“You could ask. Or I’ll ask for you.”

“No.” His eyes looked into my face as though for a clue. I only hunted one time, but I remember seeing a doe’s eyes like that, wide open as though waiting for the bullet. I never fired a gun any second time. Still facing me, the boy began to slip in the opposite direction back towards his house. I noticed that he wore camping pants, impossibly clean and certainly never used for camping, snapped at his hipless waist.

I shifted the rake and stuck out my hand. “I’m Jim Grant. You’re a Mueller, I think. I’ve seen you walk by and your mother drive you to school.”

He shook hands gravely. “Joey. I’m Joey Mueller. I moved into the brick house, Mr. Grant.”

I looked up our block at the row of almost identical brick houses. “Yes, I know. And Joey Mueller, you can call me Jim. Most kids do and get a kick out of it. And I was wondering maybe, if you’re not doing anything and if you’re not going to play ball, if you’d like to help plant some garden flowers. It’s time for my crocuses and daffodils. I don’t know if these old bones are up to it today.”

“I couldn’t,” Joey said. “Call you by your first name. We have to say Mister to adults. But I could help you plant the garden. For now.”

I winked at him. “Call me whatever you like if you help me get bulbs planted.”

“My mom is getting her hair done,” he added inexplicably. “She gets her hair done on Saturday. I like flowers.”

He came in and we worked. I’d call that boy smart and industrious as an ant. A lot of people call beavers busy, but ants are the hardest workers God ever created out of Earth’s dirt. They never stop. Indefatigable is the word, I think. Once Joey came in the gate, I couldn’t hardly keep pace. I explained my yard layout one time, and he started planting bulbs and raking the ground over them smooth as a grave. He laid out flowers as fast as I pointed him to a fresh plot. He dug holes with my trowel, dropped in a bulb, and patted the earth with his hands. He chuckled as he named the color of the flower he tamped into the ground. Once he even slipped and called me Jim. “Sorry,” he said.

After about an hour, the boy grew restless. “That’s enough for today,” I said. I aim to be friendly, but I’m no jailer. He seemed to enjoy himself though, and I felt sorry for the little fellow. He set the trowel down with what seemed real regret. “It’s just that my mom is getting her hair done,” he said.

“Yes?”

“It takes about an hour and a half,” he said. I waited.

“Yes, well. Joey Mueller, can I pay your wages in chocolate chips? You should get to know Mrs. Kelly. She lives across the street, and she bakes mean cookies. I mean good ones.”

“Yes, please.” He smiled. I realized I had not before seen him smile. His whole face lit up except the eyes. “I could maybe eat one.”

“Well, let’s find that one then.” I smiled and headed towards the door. “Even if we have to eat the whole batch to find it.”

He walked behind me to the porch. When I held open the door and gestured, he stopped and said, “Mr. Grant, I can’t.”

I laughed at his politeness. “I have more than I can eat. Not to worry.” I motioned him in.

“No, I can’t go in.”

“You don’t have to worry about dirty feet in my house.”

“My parents say I’m not allowed to go inside.”

My smile faded. I’ve lived on this street and in this house thirty-two years, and now this particular day and at my age in this neighborhood which I know like the face of my wife, and someone’s suspicious of me? Just inside my front door I keep a friendship plant⁠—least that’s what Grace called it⁠—some kind of fern that folds its leaves when touched, like it’s whispering a prayer. Children like it, and when Grace set that pot out the morning of our fortieth anniversary, she said it was a prod to pray for whoever outside our door needs help. I tap a frond as a reminder every time I leave the house, and it’s been there thirteen years while no one ever said they feared to enter my home.

“Wait here,” I said and let the screen slam shut. That irked me, I swear. It pissed me off royal. Sometimes I wish I remembered only old days. I carried out a plate of cookies and two glasses of cola. I do not like cola.

Joey accepted his glass gravely. “Thank you,” he said. “Mr. Grant, I’m sorry I can’t go inside. It’s a rule.”

“That’s OK, Joey. Rules are important. It’s just been a long time since I had a parent make me a rule. And I wish we lived in a world where you didn’t worry to sit at an old man’s table and eat a neighbor’s cookies.”

“It’s not that. I don’t worry. I like you.”

“What is it?”

“I cannot go in anyone’s house.”

“Anyone’s?”

“No.”

“How about a friend’s house?” Joey shook his head. We both ate a cookie. “Why?” I asked.

“It’s a rule. Mom says,” Joey said as if that explained it all. And perhaps it did. We sat on the front porch, but I could see that Joey felt uncomfortable. He said funny things, and God knows he seemed an odd child, but it chafed me to think a boy would feel uncomfortable on my porch. But I noticed that he kept looking up the street at his own driveway.

I think right then I understood something I had no way of knowing. Except to the extent that I thought we should be able to drink a coke and eat a cookie in peace. Whether tired of me or not, God owed me that much. “You know, it’s sunny on my old eyes out here,” I said. “What say we go around back where there’s more shade?”

Around back Joey’s appetite improved. I refilled the plate twice until I feared he might upchuck into my flowerbox. I pointed out my favorite bushes and a gray squirrel who ate sunflower seeds from the bird feeder. Joey laughed at the jay who fluttered down to peck up cookie crumbs, and he chattered about school and his dad the lawyer and his sister Jean. She was too shy to come out, but maybe he would bring her over some time. He loved to pound nails, but he was not very good with hammers. He could help me build a bird house out in the garage if I needed some help. He did not know how to prune roses, but could learn if I showed him. Definitely he⁠—

“Joey. Jo‑o‑o‑ey.” We heard the call.

“Got to go,” he whispered. “Mom’s home from her hair.” He scampered for the gate. He stopped. “Thank you,” he said.

“I’m out in the yard most days,” I said, but I doubt he heard me.

That started it. Like I said, every neighborhood has a face, and I didn’t, for a long time, peer into ours close enough. Every Saturday morning about 11 o’clock I’d happen to be out fiddling in my front yard. That’s the time Jill Mueller, looking perfectly groomed on her way to the hairdresser, would drive off in her sedan. For the life of me I could not tell the difference in her hair when she returned at 12:30. Peter Mueller worked half day on Saturday, and I saw him drive back home at about three in the afternoon. I guess that equals half a lawyer’s day. At any rate, just after eleven, Joey would slip down the block and wait outside my gate. Every Saturday he waited, never once entering uninvited. After I swung open the gate, he’d grin and skip in, and we’d do whatever needed doing around the yard. I never again suggested that he come in for a soda; we had our snack out back with the jay and the squirrels. He swung his thin boy legs as he sat on my patio bench.

He was a good little worker and a good little boy. I’m sorry I started to notice. Things. I noticed things. You live in a neighborhood thirty-two years and you notice things. You live seventy-three years and you think you’ve seen all there is to see. And then you start seeing other things that ought not be there. Things you don’t want to know at a time after you think God has stopped messing with you. Like how does a little boy get welts on the back of his legs? When he bends down to pat the earth around a crocus, his camping pants hitch up and there they are. Three lines across both legs and maybe more, higher where you can’t see. I bite my lip, and when I bend over, I can’t see the ground for the tears I refuse to let Joey see. I give him cookies; I will give him as many cokes as he can drink. How many would make one welt go away? So, you notice. And you say nothing.

Summer time and he shows up in a turtleneck sweater. “Joey, isn’t it hot under there, son? It’s time for a T-shirt.”

“Yes, sometimes it is hot. Mom found it for me to wear.” Inexplicably. But soon you suspect every non sequitur. That’s a good word, because it is no non sequitur when he scratches his chin and you see pinch marks on his neck. There is blood on the wool of the sweater. You see it. You wonder if God marked that cowlick there as some kind of joke. You want to pick Joey up, old as you are, and hug him to your chest. But you don’t. This is a nice neighborhood; I know it used to be. I’ve lived here 32 years and never before thought to find sin hid here. You notice and you want to ask, you want to say that it’s not fair it’s not life it won’t always be that way. But you don’t know that, and you want to ask Grace if this is a mistake by that other woman doing the best she knows to do. At 11 the car drives by and 11:10 Joey slides down and waits for me to invite him in. I start to send him home with extra cookies for him and his sister. I go behind my garage and chop firewood until my heart wants to explode. Sometimes I wish it would. Except for Saturday.

We plant flowers. I dig out old bushes during the week so we have more planting on Saturday. We watch the flowers we’ve planted sprout and bloom. We cut flowers which he leaves by my back porch when he leaves. It’s a rule, he says. Then he stops and reaches down to pick out one pink crocus. “For Jean,” he says and smiles.

One Saturday we grafted a scion onto my cherry tree. He watched gravely as I slit the bark and cut into the green pulp of wood beneath. I slid the stem of the scion deep into the wound. “You cut into the tree, into the xylem and phloem, to make a scar so the branches heal together and grow strong. You see?”

“Seeum and fleeum,” he said and chortled at his joke. He helped me wrap the branch with a waxed cloth. The next week he unzipped the pocket on his camping shorts and pulled out a band-aid and taped it carefully over the graft. He had drawn a smiley face on the bandage. Every Saturday he watered the cherry tree and watched the grafted branch. The week the first buds appeared, he turned to me with a question in his eyes.

“The xylem and phloem. I swear,” I said.

“Not just xylem and filum,” Joey declared. “A happy branch.” In midsummer Joey wears a blue T-shirt, and his little boy arms stick out skinny as pipestems. Skinny, yes, but when they reach for my hammer, most arms do not show the bruise on his back and the crimson line that looks like the curl of an extension cord. I am an old man, and l love a little boy. I cannot not speak.

“Joey. Joey, what happened to your shoulder?” I say casually as I lift the sleeve of his shirt. I cannot see the end of the whip track on his back.

Joey looks at me. I see deer eyes for a moment and then a curtain. And I know it falls for me, not for himself. “I fell down, Jim. Against the edge. On the stairs.” Damn me if you will, but I did not ask more. “It’s all right, Jim,” he says. He says that to me. So, I’m not scared to death.

Like I said at the start, I’ve seen things I never wanted to see. And I had two sons of my own who played on every playground in this city and ran into every corner of my house and yard. I know that they never got pinched in the neck by a swing or fell off a bike that scratched welts across their legs and never fell on their shoulders. Not like that. Not against the edge. Not on the stairs. We ate our cookies, and the squirrel had such a funny look on his face that Joey laughed.

As old as I am and still a fool. We sat there side by side on the bench, perhaps over long, certainly too late. With the toe of my boot, I tapped the ground to spook the squirrel. Joey, his mouth full of cookie, looked up and caught my eye and smiled. Then I saw him look over my shoulder, and his jaw stopped moving. His smile ended; it did not fade, it died. He set his glass down, put the rest of his cookie back on the plate and stood up from the bench.

I turned around stiffly as I do. She stood there at the corner of my house. The sun’s reflection off a window shone behind her coiffed hair.

“Mrs. Mueller⁠–⁠Jill, nice to s‑s‑see you,” I stammered. I haven’t stammered in fifty - sixty - years. She, that woman, looked at me for a second, no more, then turned to Joey.

“Home,” she said.

One word. I once sat on the front porch during a summer storm when lightning struck an elm across the street, and that single sucker punch word, mouthed more than spoken, felt the same: more a concussion than a sound and afterward the air splintered and acrid. Joey hitched up his camping shorts and immediately walked towards the gate.

“You’ve got quite a boy, Jill,” I heard myself say. “Planting’s not easy for me, bending and kneeling. He’s a treasure. Your boy.”

She looked at me again and smiled. “Thank you,” she said. Then a finger pointed Joey up the block, and she turned and left. Joey glanced sideways, not at my face but at the toes of my boots, as he walked past. He rubbed one hand along the edge of my brick wall before he turned the corner. Three words. She said three words. And I felt frozen huddled beneath blankets in bed that night.

The next Saturday, Jill Mueller did not drive by and return with curled hair. Joey did not slip down the block to wait outside the gate for me to invite him in. And I worked in my yard and I raked and raked until the fingers of my bamboo rake broke in the clots of dirt. I looked up and down the block, for what else is there for a man old or young to do? Every neighborhood has a personality; you learn it. I walked part way up the block past the Mueller house and mailed a letter back to myself. I sat out back and crumbled cookies for the jay.

The next morning, I sat on my porch with the paper, but I could not have told you the headlines. The Muellers headed off to church, and like I say, they make a pretty picture postcard. Joey had his bow tie under his chin. When they were in front, I waved and said, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Peter and Jill Mueller reply, his voice an echo of hers. The girl stares straight ahead, she never speaks. Joey says nothing, but he turns to look at me. I cannot say anything, but my hand holding the paper starts to shake as they walk down the block.

I don’t know how to explain what happened next. I must have stepped off the porch, because, the next I remember, I am lurching about the yard touching all the flowers we planted. Then I knelt on the ground, and, without even looking at what I’m doing, I’m pulling out plants with my bare hands, no shovel or trowel, just plunging my fingers into the earth, trying to pull them out by the roots but, if not, breaking them off at the stem. I pat the ground flat with my hands thinking Joey can come back, he’ll have to come back, please let him come back to help me. Then - forgive me, Grace - I went into the house and carried our fern out to the driveway. I grabbed the stem of that plant growing there for thirteen years and pulled it out like a plug, roots and all. I threw that fern up against the garage and then - I hope my wife understands, since I cannot - I stamped the prayers out of those branches and crushed them into green pulp and an empty hairnet of roots.

When the Muellers return from church, I am out at the fence. Like I say, I’m an old man, but as long as I wake each morning, I am not dead. I wait until they are nearly at my gate before I look up. “Why, Joey,” I say. “What happened to your eye?”

“He got himself quite a shiner,” Peter Mueller says. “I remember I got one myself playing ball at his age.”

“Boys,” Jill Mueller said. Inexplicably. And the family moved on up the street. Then, while the others walked on, Jill turned back to my gate. She touched the point of one slat with a perfectly manicured finger. “Joseph won’t be a bother to you anymore. He never should have,” she said quietly and clearly. She looked up full into my face and sliced through me with her eyes. “You⁠—,” she stopped. I waited for the blow, but she just turned away to join the others.

Again, I cannot understand or forgive myself, since I did not speak. I’d like to believe that I said, “I asked about Joey! He’s no bother,” and that I plucked him off that sidewalk and carried him into my yard. But I did not. Joey looked back over his shoulder and tried to wink at me. A hideous wink of a swollen eye. Grace, my ever love, I know what you said and forgive me, but for that day I’ll be held account. And He will, too. Three months later, the Mueller family moved away, and I never knew where.

God and I tired of each other years ago, yes, but as long as He wakes each morning, He must hear me. He must.

Son of a bitch, God.

I pray for Joey.