The boys seemed like trouble makers. On summer evenings, Henry watched the three of them through his kitchen window. He dined lightly, two eggs and a vegetable, something steamed, then washed and towel-dried his pan and spatula, and a single plate, fork, and knife. By this time the sun had set, bathing the neighborhood in a blue-gray haze. When the street lamps popped on, Henry dimmed the kitchen lights. He pulled up a chair beside the window and settled in with a finger of scotch as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

Henry didn’t know where the boys lived but reckoned it was nearby. His ears perked up at the din of their skateboard wheels, and if he turned his head in time, he glimpsed them weave down the street, their outstretched arms grazing the side mirrors of parked cars. They came to a stop just one house down from Henry’s, where the street lollipopped into a cul-de-sac. There they sat on their boards and chatted until they had to go home.

They bitched about life, mostly. Their teachers were boring, their parents too strict, the ninth-grade girls didn’t put out. They spoke of other places, like California and Miami, as if the promised land was near water. Henry smiled at their banter as he sipped his scotch. He had seen the boys ride the bus, BRANDYWINE streaked across the side in black letters, its destination the best high school in the district. And although Henry’s eyesight was fading he could still detect privilege: popped collars, pricey sneakers, fancy phones. If they wanted to get out, he thought, their parents would provide them every opportunity.

When the boys left, Henry found himself staring at his reflection in the kitchen window. He closed his eyes and imagined his wife, Virginia, standing beside him.

“They’re just boys,” she would say before tugging his earlobe. She had been dead five years, but Henry still traced her motions. She laughed at the jokes of talk show hosts. She restocked the bird feeder in the backyard. She asked Henry how he had slept. She was everything Henry had hoped for in old age. The sickness had hit fast and hard, like the upper cut of a prizefighter. Not one to contest her wishes, Henry wheeled her out of the hospital and brought her home.

The two sons Henry and Virginia had brought into the world flew out for the funeral. Afterwards Henry had called them for a while, but even before the service they hadn’t spoken much; they lived far away and had their own families. When they spoke it was always the same: weather, health, the woes of some sports team.

A few years after Virginia had passed, Henry thought to buy a pet. In the dead of winter – a particularly cruel February, sunless, with snow that refused to melt – Henry struggled to get out of bed and thought an animal might help. That spring, he stumbled upon a bird with a bum wing, hopping beneath the feeder that Virginia had hung from the birch tree. He papered the bottom of a cage she had bought at an antique shop. Through local bird blogs he figured it to be a robin and named it as such. He fed it and nursed it back to health, but the thought of setting it free was too much, so he kept it. A pet.

One evening, soon after the boys had skated home, a car rumbled past Henry’s window, its brake lights coating the street red. It was a Cadillac and it belonged to Ray, a retired salesman who lived in the lone house in the cul-de-sac. Henry didn’t know Ray’s age, but figured their births weren’t far apart, as they shared the same white tufts of hair billowing from their ears, the same brown moles beneath the sallow skin of their arms. After some forty odd years in the neighborhood, Ray felt he had earned the right to complain about how things had changed for the worse. Ray’s wife, his third, was also dead, of a brain hemorrhage while pruning rose bushes. He had no children. Some evenings Henry would wander outside to stargaze, long after the neighborhood had gone to sleep, and stare into the bay window of Ray’s house, his huge TV hanging on the wall. More than once he had caught himself watching a game through his window.

Henry checked his watch. It was 9 pm; Ray was returning from Tuesday night salsa dancing. Henry watched as the garage door rolled up and Ray tucked the Cadillac inside. He carried his chair back to the dining room table and turned the kitchen light off. Then he washed the slick film of whiskey from his glass and went to bed.

Henry didn’t know the boys’ names. They slighted one another to no end, throwing about nicknames that fused curse words with body parts; insults like shithead and fuckface shot through the dark and rattled unpleasantly in Henry’s ears. He soon began to call them Andy, Ben, and Chris. They grinded against the curb, the painted metal of their skateboard trucks staining the concrete a rainbow of colors, which Henry had grown to like. Something like a pomade lifted Ben’s hair from his scalp at opposing angles, but Henry knew it wasn’t pomade anymore. When Virginia fell ill, he had seen tubes of hair product on his trips to the local pharmacy. Flecked with glitter, they had names like Boomerang and Celestia. Chris’s hair was too short for product, shorn to the scalp. But ink decorated his ankle, something small and round that Henry couldn’t make out; he wondered how a parent could allow a fifteen-year-old to get a tattoo. Sitting with Ben and Chris, in jeans and a green T and high-tops, Andy was almost anachronistic, slung from a 1950s photo.

When the boys sat for long stretches, Henry would log onto his computer and study the skateboard argot they nonchalantly threw about. He stared wide-eyed at videos of kickflips, of teens in baggy shorts flinging themselves off ramps, soaring above the earth. But he’d wait giddily for something to draw him back. On more than one occasion he witnessed Ben and Chris wrestle Andy to the ground, pummeling their fists into Andy’s thighs. But before Henry could lift himself from his chair, to see if he might need to intervene, the boys would erupt in a fit of laughter.

***

That Saturday morning, Henry walked to the street to fetch his newspaper.

“Morning, partner,” a voice called from across the street. He turned to see Ray in his driveway, rubbing a small cloth across the hood of his Cadillac. He wore neon orange shorts and a tank top, a style Henry had overheard the boys call a wife beater. A bright blue robe hung from his large frame, the belt ends dangling.

“Morning, Ray.” Henry turned to head back inside, but Ray began to shuffle across the cul-de-sac. Henry felt a neighborly obligation to greet him. When Ray arrived at Henry’s driveway, his breathing was labored and sweat dotted his brow. Henry glanced at the front page of the paper, hoping a headline might help break the ice.

“Baseball team stinks,” he said.

“Did you see this?” Ray lamented. He was pointing at the curb. It was streaked with red and yellow paint, and a chunk of cement had been jarred loose.

“It’s those boys, them and their skateboards,” he said, bending over to finger the cement. As he stood he side-armed it into the cul-de-sac; his belly, covered in hair, spilled from his robe.

“They’re alright,” Henry said. “They’ll head back inside when the temperature drops.”

“Wait until winter,” Ray said, snapping his newspaper against his palm. “They’ll have snowballs. A weapon endorsed by Mother Nature if there ever was one.”

“That’s true,” Henry said. He figured if he was agreeable Ray might leave. Ray was silent for a moment, his eyes darting about. Henry wondered if he was combing the suburban landscape for something to bemoan.

“You’re right, H,” he said, looking at the paper. “The team stinks.” Then he shuffled back to his Cadillac.

Henry stepped back inside, the screen door rattling behind him. He washed his hands and sat down to breakfast. Across from him on the table lay Robin’s birdcage, covered in a piece of old bedsheet he had cut. He had read that the cage should be covered at night. Each morning as he removed the cover he felt like a magician, the audience gasping as he revealed his trick – a once-empty cage suddenly inhabited.

“Good morning, Robin,” Henry said. He opened the cage and sprinkled berries and sunflower hearts into a bowl. Robin pecked at the feed.

Henry lowered his head to his paper and fixed his eyes on an article about an upsurge of local vandalism. The acts had transpired on the opposite end of town, down in the valley. Henry raised his brow in thought, and estimated the valley to be a good three miles away. Still, he pictured the boys on their skateboards, coasting down hills, their youthful legs pumping towards their destination almost as fast as Henry could drive there, their pockets rife with spray paint and switchblades and cigarettes, and whatever else Henry could put his mind to.

After dinner, Henry scooted his chair up to the window and dimmed the lights. He sipped at his scotch. As if on cue, the boys raced down the street on their boards. After a few tricks, they sat on the edge of the curb and plucked phones from their pockets. Henry watched as their fingers swept across glowing screens. Just then Robin began to chirp.

“What is it?” he asked. He fetched some bird seed and changed Robin’s water. He placed the cage next to him on the counter, with a view out the kitchen window. Nothing worked.

“Alright, Robin,” Henry said. “I’ll look for your beloved worms.”

He grabbed a flashlight and walked down the front path, kneeling next to the seam of gray rocks flanking the driveway. What’s the allure, coming to the same spot every night, Henry thought to himself. But he remembered the boys were fifteen and carless. Henry pulled on one rock, then another. The rocks were purely decorative, and Henry had never liked them, not with the extra weeding they demanded. But Virginia had insisted.

Henry turned over a third rock, and – with the flashlight clenched between his teeth –spied three earthworms. He scooped his index finger deep into the soil and pulled them out, placing them on the driveway. As he stood, he felt the boys’ eyes bore a hole in the back of his head. A halo of almost unbearable whiteness shone at his feet, illuminating everything around him. One of his sons had sent him the flashlight as a Christmas present. It boasted a throw distance of 200 meters. Henry suddenly wanted something old fashioned, something with D batteries that required a good smacking to work, something that didn’t make him feel so on stage.

“Did you find it?” Henry heard one of the boys ask. He clicked off his light. He looked for the boy, but they were no longer under the street lamp.

“Find what?”

“Whatever an old man stores under a rock. Whatever an old man retrieves at night when he thinks nobody’s watching.”

Henry heard shushing, followed by muffled laughter. The boys sat on their boards somewhere, but Henry couldn’t see them. He liked it better when he observed their conversation, not when he was part of it. At the end of the cul-de-sac near Ray’s driveway sat three cars. They were large and blockish; too much car for Henry, but what every other white man his age seemed to buy when their own mileage was running low.

“Yes,” Henry called out into the dark, unsure where to project his voice. “I found it. Have a nice evening.” The boys laughed, but again Henry heard the shushing, as if one of them wanted to take back what they had said. Henry hoped it was Andy.

He glanced over his shoulder as he walked up the path to his front door. Through Ray’s bay window he saw four men at a table, playing cards. Henry imagined them laughing and drinking, without a care in the world.

***

Much to his chagrin Henry woke to a light rain, the kind that burrowed and made his joints ache. In the kitchen, he pulled the cloth off the birdcage and greeted Robin. After breakfast, Henry was pleased to see the clouds part. He walked outside and picked up his paper. Weeds bloomed through the cracks in the driveway, and the grass along the sidewalk needed edging. He thought of Virginia.

“I’ll get to it,” he said. “I promise.” As Henry raised his head to walk back inside, he froze. An explosion of yellow was caked to his garage door. Shards of egg shell lay on the concrete.

Henry fetched a rag and cleaner, then wheeled his head around and squinted at his neighbors’ spotless garage doors. Who would do this? he thought to himself. I have no enemies. As he scrubbed, he pictured the boys whizzing by on their boards, one of them lobbing the egg before disappearing into the cloak of darkness. They’re good kids, Henry said under his breath. It could have been anyone. As he returned to the egg, he heard a throat clear behind him.

“Excuse me.” Henry turned around and saw Andy. He said nothing but raised his eyebrows, shaking shell from the rag.

“Is that egg?” Andy asked. Henry stared at him, much longer than he would a grown man, but Andy didn’t flinch.

“It is,” he said, then turned around to continue scrubbing. “Can you believe a bird could hit my garage door?”

“Great aim.”

“One in a million.” Andy was a few steps closer now, but not uncomfortably so, and held a cupped hand over his brow to block the sun. A loose smile dangled from his mouth, like he wasn’t sure if now was the time for one.

“I’m Henry Lilly. How can I help you?” Andy extended his hand.

“I’m Max,” he said. “I live a few streets over.”

“I’ve seen you. You and the others.” Max nodded.

“I was wondering if you needed any yardwork done.” Max paused and stared at the driveway. Max was wearing sneakers and cargo shorts and a Polo t-shirt. You don’t need the money, Henry thought to himself. He could almost feel the blow of Virginia’s elbow in his ribs.

“Can you give me a minute?” Henry asked. Max nodded. Henry went inside. He dropped the rag in the kitchen sink and placed the bottle of cleaner on the kitchen table next to Robin.

“We have a visitor,” he said. “Keep it down, if you don’t mind.”

“Max, come in,” he called. Max stepped inside. Henry sifted through a mental list of household chores.

“How about some weeding?” he asked. “Or dusting?”

“Okay.”

He saw that the boy was scanning the new surroundings, his eyes darting in and out of rooms, down the hallway, up the staircase. Henry suddenly noticed things with heightened sensitivity, as if he were in his own house for the first time. The titles of books on the shelf in the hallway, the knickknacks hanging from the wall.

“Is that your family?” Max asked, his gaze settling on a picture beside him. Henry picked up the frame from the table, smoothed his index finger across the top.

“That’s me,” he said, chuckling. “My hair was brown.”

“And the others?”

“My two sons. And my wife, Virginia. She’s not here anymore.”

“Where—” Max began before stopping himself. “I’m sorry.”

“Come into the kitchen,” Henry replied. “There’s lemonade in the fridge.” Henry walked down the hallway; he heard Max’s shoes behind him, padding against the floor.

“You’ve got a bird,” Max said. Henry poured two glasses and set them on the kitchen table.

“I do.”

“Why a bird?”

“It keeps me company. No idea what the gender is. Don’t even know how to check. I call it Robin.”

“But birds don’t do anything.”

“They do. They sing songs. Sometimes they talk.”

“Can this one?”

“No,” Henry said, conscious of his one-sided conversations with Robin.

“Dogs are the best. They’re practical. I mean there’s no bomb sniffing bird or a bird that rescues you from an avalanche.”

“I think the neighborhood’s pretty safe,” Henry said. Max smiled and got up from the table. He rinsed his glass and left it in the sink and sat back down.

“Thank you.”

Henry wanted to talk more, to ask Max about kickflips.

“So,” Max said.

“Yes. Chores. Can you start tomorrow?” He almost asked Max if his two friends needed work, but then thought better of it. They would do the chores half-heartedly, snoop around his house. Steal things. Scare Robin.

Henry proposed an hourly rate; fair, he thought, for a high schooler. Max agreed and thanked him, then walked out the door and up the street. It was the first time Henry had seen him without his skateboard.

Henry soon found himself at the hardware store, where he bought an extra trowel and gardening gloves. On his return, he found himself attuned to the wealth of his neighborhood. Sharpley had been meticulously chiseled into a boulder at the entrance, and each street sign he passed read like centuries-old British wealth: Whitby, Foulkstone, Brockton. As he pulled into his driveway he suddenly questioned Max’s motives. Did he really need the money, living in this neighborhood? Did he and the boys have designs on something in his house? But as he considered these transgressions, he reminded himself that the boys had parents, and the parents of this neighborhood were good people.

Max arrived at nine, as Henry had instructed.

“Good morning, Mr. Lilly.” Max wore athletic shorts and a t-shirt for a band Henry had never heard of.

“Good morning, Max. You can start with weeding.” Henry handed him the gardening gloves and pointed to the green tendrils sprouting between the cracks in his driveway, and at the creeping Charlie around the rosebushes. Weeds had also commandeered the sidewalk and the path in front of the house.

“I can do that,” Max said.

“When you’re finished you can dump the trash can out back, in the woods.”

“Alright.”

“I’ll be inside if you need anything.”

Once inside, Henry opened his paper. Robin flitted its head about, releasing an occasional chirp. “That’s right, Robin. We’ll see if he’s any good.”

After breakfast, Henry peered out the window. Max checked his phone once or twice – to text one of his friends, Henry suspected – but otherwise he worked. White buds were lodged in his ears, and a long white string wishboned around his neck. After an hour, the doorbell rang.

“I’m finished,” Max said. Henry had expected the work to take longer. He thanked him and paid him.

“You’re not going to look at it?” Max asked.

Henry walked out the front door and down the path, bending over occasionally to inspect. He paced once around the driveway’s cracks and down the sidewalk. Max walked by his side.

“It looks great,” he said.

“Then I guess that’s it.”

“I could use you tomorrow,” Henry said.

Max returned in the morning. Before long, Henry changed into some old clothes and grabbed a baseball cap from the hall closet.

“Max,” Henry called. “Give me a hand.” Max saw Henry struggling with a bag of mulch. He put down the edger and walked over. Together they lifted the bag and walked from one end of the rose bushes to the other, dumping the mulch where Max had weeded.

“What’s it do?” Max asked.

“Suppresses weeds, moistens the soil,” Henry replied. “Looks pretty, too.” He said this coolly, as if he had known it for years. “My wife taught me that. If it was up to me, I’d let the weeds run the show.”

Henry kept Max busy in the yard, working alongside him. Max weeded beneath the dogwoods that hugged Henry’s property line and in the trenches of pachysandra at the front of the house. He used the metal loppers to cut dead branches that Henry couldn’t reach. Henry stood beside him as he did this, picking up the branches that fell to the ground, cracking them over his leg before dropping them into the trash can.

“Those two boys. They your friends?” He almost said Ben and Chris, but caught himself. “The other two on the skateboards?”

“Mike and Rick. Been friends since kindergarten.”

“Who’s who?”

“Rick’s the shorter one.” Henry thought for a moment. Rick was stocky. The hair gel helped him look taller. Mike was big, close to six feet, taller than Henry. Henry figured the tattoo artist hadn’t cared if Mike was of age, that he looked the part enough. He wanted to ask Max what he saw in them.

“I think I got them all,” Max said. “The dead ones.” He closed the loppers and handed them to Henry. Max stooped to a knee and tossed a branch Henry had missed into the trash can.

Henry noticed how young Max was; the boyish stubble on his face, the stalks of shiny brown hair falling from his scalp.

“They seem like trouble,” Henry said. “They push you into things.” Max let out a laugh.

“You sound like my mom.”

“Are we right?”

“Who?”

“Your mom and I.”

“I know who I am,” Max said.

Henry wanted to ask about Mike’s tattoo, about the foul language the boys volleyed about. But he couldn’t. Max would know that Henry had been close, listening in on their conversations. He feared they’d start skating elsewhere.

“And your father?”

“He’s dead,” Max said. Henry felt his heart slosh about in his chest. Max picked up straggler twigs from the ground and dropped them into the trash can.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said. “I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t have.”

“So it’s just you, then. You and your mother.”

“I’ve got to go, Mr. Lilly.” Henry stared up the street and counted eight homes; each carried the weight of secrets.

Henry dug into his pocket and handed Max some bills. Max thanked him.

“I’m sorry,” Henry said.

“You already said that.”

“I shouldn’t have pried.” Max shrugged, as if to say stuff just happens sometimes. Henry was sixty years older than Max, but for the briefest of moments felt younger.

Back inside, Robin chirped incessantly in the cage. Henry checked its water and food dish. They were full.

“What do you want?” he said and walked out. He sat down in his reading chair in the den and turned on the TV. He flipped through a few channels, an infomercial and a soap opera, a celebrity golf match. Then he fell asleep.

Until the end of summer, Max dropped by on occasion, but never with the regularity he once had. Henry's yard looked immaculate: weeds plucked at the root or otherwise drowned in mulch; trimmed branches and pruned hedges; spotless windows and the shutters touched up. Max had also done some work indoors. He had helped Henry rearrange furniture and carry some old boxes from the attic out to the trash. Henry had even guided Max through larger projects—one afternoon they swapped out a garbage disposal and changed a ceiling fan; on another they stained the back deck and rewired the doorbell. As Henry ran out of things to clean or repair, he conceded their time was almost up.

On a crisp day in late summer, the kind that seeped under Henry’s skin and made him dread the oncoming winter, he and Max stood in the backyard. A truck had dumped a cord of firewood at the rear of his property, and Henry wanted to split it before a cold front rolled in. He instructed Max to drag an old chopping block from his back shed, along with an axe, wedge, and sledge. He hoisted the first log onto the block and struck it. It was a clean hit, the wood crackling down the middle.

“It’s an easy stroke,” Henry said. “Technique, not power.” The impact of the axe head against the log rattled throughout his body, like he was being tossed around on an old amusement park ride. When he turned to hand the axe handle to Max, he noticed a boyish grin.

“What is it?”

“Bingo wings.”

“Bingo wings?”

“The flab under your arms,” Max said, pointing at the place on Henry’s arm where his biceps used to be. Henry lifted his left arm. The skin dangled like a shirt on a clothesline. He flicked it with the middle finger of his right hand.

“That’s it,” Max said. The confusion on Henry’s face remained. “Imagine old people at a community center,” Max explained. “The winner stands up and yells ‘Bingo!’”

“Oh,” Henry said. He pictured himself in a retirement home, eating dinner early, watching television shows he hated, turning in before dusk. He positioned another log and swung harder this time, no technique.

“You’d be lucky to get bingo wings,” he said, wiping his brow.

“How’s that?”

“Old age. An achievement I’m proud of.”

Henry and Max split wood, making good progress on the cord. Afterwards, Henry and Max split a cola on the porch. They were silent for a moment when Robin began to chirp, as if it had something to add to the conversation.

“What do you feed it?”

“Seed, berries. Sometimes a worm.” Max stared at the cage.

“What happened to your wife?”

“Cancer.”

“That’s it?”

“There’s more, but I’ll spare you the details.”

“Tell me about Mike and Rick.”

“You’re still hung up on them.”

“They’re not like you.” Henry knew he was preaching, but the timing wasn’t altogether bad, not with the somber tone of their conversation.

“They’ve got my back.”

“Just be careful.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s something adults say, and they mean it.”

When fall hit, Henry took care of the little yardwork he had – raking leaves, mostly. In the evening, he returned to the perch in his kitchen, but the boys skated down to the cul-de-sac only on weekends. With school in session and the sun setting before dinner time, Henry reckoned they had to be home earlier.

One Saturday evening deep into fall, Henry heard the boys ride down the street, their wheels cutting against the asphalt.

“Here they come,” Henry said. “The entertainment.” He dimmed the lights and settled in with one scotch, then another. The conversation was spotty, like a song on the radio fading over a mountain pass. He mostly heard Mike and Rick, their voices heavy on the cool evening air. As darkness took over, he listened to their boards crack against the concrete. And then the voice of Ray. Ray’s voice was clear and thunderous.

“This isn’t your street,” he said. “Destroy public property somewhere else.” Henry pictured Ray in a polyester track suit, annoyed at the interruption of some sports game, a dinner napkin dangling from his shirt collar.

“Public property is public,” someone replied. Henry couldn’t see the boys, but he was sure a sneer was pasted to Mike’s or Rick’s face, one that told Ray they weren’t leaving.

“Watch your tone,” Ray snapped.

In an instant the stage had escalated, and Henry felt his body warm. He quietly went outside, not wanting to be noticed, determined to stay out of it. He crouched next to his car.

“Where do you live? I want your address,” Ray barked.

“Fuck off. We’re on the street, not your property.” In the shadows of the street lamps, Henry saw Ray bend over and pick something up.

“This isn’t your property,” Ray said, waving a chunk of concrete in the air. “But you’re destroying it.” Ray stepped towards the boys and in an instant two silvery lights lit up the street. The boys were filming it, almost goading Ray to do something he’d come to regret.

“Turn off the damn light,” Ray pleaded, deflecting the light with his hands.

“Make us do it.” Ray began flailing his arms about. The boys laughed and beamed their phone lights into his eyes. Henry wondered what Max’s role was in all of this when his voice pierced the darkness.

“Guys,” he called. “Turn the lights off.” Max stepped in just as Ray took a blind swing, and caught a fist in the upper lip. Max dropped to a knee and brought his hand to his mouth. Mike and Rick stopped filming and their phone lights went dim. They had captured the drama they sought.

“I’m sorry, son,” Ray called out. “That was an accident.” He reached out and touched Max’s elbow, but Max pulled away. He stepped towards Mike and Rick.

“You alright?” Rick asked.

“I’m fine.” The three of them now faced Ray.

“Why don’t we call it an evening, boys. I’m sorry about what happened.”

The boys said nothing, but Mike raised his hand and teased Ray with his phone. Ray pursed his lips and walked towards his house. Henry watched him vanish into the night. The boys skated over to the sewer drain, where Henry heard the metal of their boards rip into the cement. Within minutes the boys skated back up the street and were gone.

A month passed. Leaves spangled the streets in a fire of colors. Silver glistened on the lawns in the morning. If Henry fetched his paper early enough, he could see his breath.

As the days grew shorter, Henry found himself doing odd chores long before dinner. He swept the garage and emptied the gutters and purged his basement window wells of spider webs. On weekends, he brought Robin into the living room and watched football, where the bird seemed to take to the whistles and the roar of the crowd. Henry even baked a pie, but it went bad, half uneaten. He wanted Max to ring his doorbell.

On the Saturday evening before Thanksgiving, Henry heard the boys skate down the street. Their wheels slashed the calm of the night. The cicadas were dead. Lawnmowers had long been stored in their sheds. The boys’ voices were clear, but Henry wanted to see them. He cut his front light, put on a jacket and headed outside. He positioned himself against his car, like he had before, and watched the boys from a distance.

Rather than skating the boys sat on the curb, feet atop their boards. They wore hoodies, their faces buried deep beneath the tugged-tight drawstrings, and gloves with the finger tips cut off. Max sat between Mike and Rick. For a while the glare of their phone screens faded in and out. Henry noticed one boy nudge Max, then the other. Max swept at his phone but the boys did it again.

Henry looked down to the end of the cul-de-sac and saw Ray’s house. The television was on; flashes of blue and grey swarmed in his bay window. Max stood up and said nothing, stepping over his board and across the cul-de-sac.

“Scare the shit out of that fat ass,” one of them said to Max.

Henry felt his throat tighten. His left foot took a step away from the car, then pulled back. As Max neared the edge of Ray’s property, he crouched down and ran sideways across Ray’s lawn until he reached the privet below the bay window. Henry could still make out Mike and Rick beneath the street lamp, gesturing wildly, egging Max on.

Max stood. He squeezed himself between a break in the hedges and leaned against the house. Henry watched him raise his right fist and rap it against the window. When he heard the window shatter, he dropped to his knees as if he had committed the act, not Max. What has he done? Henry thought to himself. Backed up against the wheel well, he heard the boys’ muffled voices, then the slap of sneakers against the pavement up the street.

Once Henry was sure the boys were long gone, he stood. He looked around at the houses, but no doors had opened, no lights had turned on. He figured Ray would exit his front door any second to assess the damage. Vandalism wasn’t the worst of evils, but Henry still disapproved.

Henry walked to Ray’s house. He didn’t slink across the lawn as Max had, but still squeezed himself between the privet, wincing as the branches scraped against his chest. It wasn’t until Henry reached the window that he noticed Ray’s head slumped on his shoulder.

“Ray,” Henry whispered. Max’s fist had knocked out most of one pane. Henry reached through and pressed a finger into the folds of Ray’s neck. When Ray didn’t respond, he tugged on his earlobe. A whistle blew and Henry raised his eyes to the television screen across the living room. A referee had just called a foul.

“Oh Ray,” he said. The glass had shattered across the floor, but Henry saw no blood. He slipped his hand back through the window pane, then turned around and looked up the street. The nearest houses were almost invisible in the darkness, the orange glow of their doorbells the lone sign of humanity. He cut back through the hedge and tiptoed across the lawn to Ray’s walk. At the front door he pulled his shirt over the knob and turned it, then walked inside. As he stood over Ray’s body, a slew of crime shows ran through his head, where the investigators find a hair or a sneaker tread at the scene, then arrest a suspect and solve the murder in a matter of days. He pressed two fingers into Ray’s neck again but felt nothing. He hovered his palm beneath Ray’s nostrils. He placed his hand on Ray’s chest. As he walked out, Henry left the TV on but made sure the stove and oven were off.

Back in his kitchen, Henry checked the clock. It was 7 pm. Elbows on the table, he dropped his chin into his palms.

“What would you do, Robin?” Henry opened the cage door. Robin sat on a perch. Henry raised an index finger to stroke a wing but Robin scampered across the cage. He closed the door and sat down in his chair by the window. He was frustrated with Max for doing such a silly thing, something with startlingly grave consequences, but angry at himself for cowering beside his car.

Thoughts of Ray crept into his head. He conjured images of a long-lost relative, or a fellow salesman Ray had met decades ago at a conference. In all the years he’d lived by Ray he couldn’t remember one visitor who Ray had hugged, someone who seemed close. He thought Ray had had a pretty good run of it. His life ending at 75, a nice three-quarter cut into a century, and that watching a game at home on a comfy sofa wasn’t the worst way to go.

Then Henry thought about Ray’s body. Who would find it? He stiffened in his chair, worrying about Ray not showing up for an appointment. He imagined the mail carrier spotting the broken glass, or maybe a canasta buddy dropping by to say hello. The only solace Henry could find was that Ray had no pet.

Henry thought of Max as well. He worried the police would piece together clues. He thought of Max’s future, a life with no record. College, a career, a family perhaps. Henry thought of Max’s now: new skateboarding tricks, a girlfriend, a driver’s license. He closed his eyes and could almost feel Virginia’s hands on his shoulders, her thumbs massaging the nape of his neck. He’s just a boy, Henry. He broke Ray’s window, nothing more.

The grandfather clock in the hallway rang half past, and that’s when it hit Henry. At first he cursed himself and shook his head, but as he pushed his emotions aside, he figured it was the only way, given the urgency of the circumstances. He stood up from the kitchen table, his chair legs scraping against the linoleum floor, and headed for the garage. He opened the door and switched on the light. On the wall, hanging from a long strip of particle board, were several tools Henry used for household projects. He tried to push away the thought of the mess that each tool would make. He looked at the wall again, in search of a tool that had a sense of mercy. He settled on a crescent wrench.

He placed it on the kitchen table and poured himself a double scotch. In the cage, Robin sat on the wooden perch closest to the door. Henry opened it slowly, like he had hundreds of times before. He squeezed the wrench through the cage door, then raised his hand and struck Robin. Robin fell from the perch, stunned, onto the cage floor. Henry hit it again, and then a third time more lightly, until Robin lay motionless. He pulled the wrench from the cage and dropped it on the kitchen table.

Henry’s house was suddenly still, more silent than ever. He quivered at the thought of being the only living creature in his house. Again. He wiped his eyes. Gently, he lifted the bird from the cage and wrapped it in a napkin.

Henry slinked across the cul-de-sac. At the edge of Ray’s property, he scampered across the lawn and then, as he had before, squeezed between the hedges. Standing below the window, Henry pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it across the window pane. There were no traces of blood, and he released a deep breath, figuring Max’s skateboarding gloves had protected him. He turned off the flashlight and dropped it in his pocket, then peeled back the napkin edges that covered Robin. In the darkness Henry couldn’t see the bird; he only felt its weight in his palm. Picking it up with his thumb and index finger, he tossed it through the window. It made the faintest of sounds as it landed, soft as an apple dropping to earth.

Back in the kitchen, Henry washed his hands. He opened Robin’s cage and removed the food and water containers, then wiped it down. He stepped into the backyard and dumped the remaining seed, shredded the seed bag and shoved it to the bottom of his garbage bag. Then he hoisted the birdcage up to the attic, where he stored it in the back, next to a cardboard box of family photo albums. His tasks complete, he dropped his clothes into the hamper and stepped into the shower. He closed his eyes and stood under the hot water, letting his thoughts wander for some time.

The next day, at 2:47 pm according to the clock on the dash of Henry’s Subaru, a police car and an ambulance were parked at the edge of the cul-de-sac outside Ray’s house. Henry pulled into his driveway and cut the ignition. He got out of the car and placed a sack of groceries on the hood, then leaned against the car and watched. Two officers stood on the front walk, one fingering a notepad and nodding while the other spoke and scratched the back of his neck. When one of the officers turned and pointed up the street, Henry fumbled for the roof rack as his knees buckled. Get a grip, you old fool, he thought to himself. They don’t know a thing.

He noticed other neighbors walking down their driveways to the street. Bill Benson held a cell phone to his ear; Earl Hammond scooted out on a creeper from beneath the truck he was working on. When the two EMT workers wheeled a body bag atop a gurney out Ray’s front door, Kitty Patterson gasped, almost dropping her Pekinese.

In the excitement, Henry had failed to see Max sitting on a curb opposite Ray’s house, his feet atop his board. Mike and Rick were nowhere to be found. As the ambulance pulled away, the officers took advantage of the neighbors’ curiosity and walked across the cul-de-sac. They would all have something to say, Henry supposed; it was simply a matter of how useful the information.

Kitty gestured towards one of the officers, who seemed to pick up his pace as he laid eyes on the pink sweatpants hugging her legs. The other officer stopped at the center of the cul-de-sac and bent over to scoop up a piece of cement. Max rose to his feet, picked up his board, and stepped towards the officer.

Henry stepped out from behind his car and hurried down his driveway.

“Max,” he called. “Come here.”

Max turned his head to Henry, then back to the officer. His feet were anchored to the pavement. Henry beckoned him with his index finger, but as heat pulsed through his body, he gestured more wildly, this time with his arm.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. By now Henry had caught the officer’s attention; the officer looked at Henry, then at Max. “It’s about the yardwork you did.” Henry could see Max’s head pull towards the officer.

“Look at me, son,” he yelled. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.” Henry surprised himself with the volume of his voice. The officer lost interest and put his sights on Earl, who was wiping his hands on an old rag as he walked down to the street.

“What yardwork?” Max said, walking over to Henry.

“I have more for you.”

Max now stood a few feet from Henry. Henry wanted to hug him, to usher him inside for a glass of lemonade, to an easy chair in the living room for a football game. Max’s eyes were red, the corners swollen.

“I’ve got to talk to that officer,” he said, turning his head away from Henry.

“Never mind him,” Henry replied, his words firm yet calm. “Please, come inside for a while.”

Warren Merkel

Sharpley