The Porch I Swept for My Neighbor

The first morning

I started at the top of the steps because I did not want to be seen, and the steps were the part of that porch closest to the road. I did the leaves first. They had been wet and dried and wet again, and they came up in mats that I had to lift with the corner of the broom.

Then the cobwebs, in the corners, in the lamp, along the eaves. I used a rag tied to the end of the broom handle, the way Vernon used to do our gutters.

I filled a feed sack with leaves. I swept the boards, front to back, in long strokes, the way Roz had done, so the dust went off the end and not into the door.

The mail on the wicker table had been there eleven days. I stacked it in order of the postmark, oldest first, and I put a clean stone on top of it so the wind would leave it alone.

I carried the dead mums to the fence and rinsed the clay pots under his spigot and lined them up empty on the rail. At ten minutes to seven the light came up gray behind the orchard, and a mourning dove started somewhere, and I stood there with my hands aching inside Vernon’s gloves and looked at what I had done.

It was a swept porch. It was not a miracle.

But it looked like somebody lived there. It looked like the house was expected.

Then I made coffee and sat very still. I had just realized that I would never be able to stop.

The first plate

The porch was not enough, though. I knew that by noon.

A swept porch tells the road somebody is there. It does not tell a man alone in a kitchen that someone has thought of him. And I knew from my own March what a kitchen is like at six o’clock in the evening when you are alone. That is the hour. That is the hour the house gets so loud it hurts. You stand at the stove, and your hand reaches for two plates before your head catches up.

So I made supper that night, and I made it plain.

Meatloaf, the way Vernon liked it, with the ketchup and brown sugar glaze. Mashed potatoes with real butter. Green beans from my freezer, the ones I put up in August. A slice of apple pie from the pie I had made on Thursday and not eaten.

I put it on one of my good white plates, and I put a second plate upside down on top for a lid, and I wrapped the whole thing in a clean dish towel so it would hold the heat. I carried it across the yard at ten minutes to six, in the near dark, and I set it on the rail of his porch, on a folded towel, right by the front door.