Wiley Adams strode down the sidewalk, hands shoved in his pockets, head down, his shoulders hunched, like he was walking in a January gale and not a May breeze. His twin sister walked with him, keeping pace with him just as she always had, every day of Wiley’s life even though she’d been stillborn. Wiley wasn’t sure what she was –ghost, angel, hallucination. She hadn’t changed must past thirty even though he just celebrated sixty-five last November, and what hair he had left was white while hers was still dark and full, and the skin on his face was permanently creased with the lines of joy and sorrow while hers remained smooth from a life unlived. But it didn’t matter; she was always there. And right now he just wished she would go away. She wasn’t saying anything now, but Wiley knew she wanted to and because Sunny was Sunny, he knew she would.

Wiley walked faster knowing it wouldn’t do him any good.

“I’m glad you didn’t drive today. The way you’re walking, there wouldn’t be a cat or a squirrel or a pedestrian safe,” Sunny said casually.

Wiley ignored her.

People drove by and honked and Wiley waved and smiled out of reflex, but he wasn’t paying attention to who they were. It really didn’t matter. Everyone in town knew Wiley.

“What are you going to tell the kids?” Sunny asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Sunny laughed. A normally soothing sound, today it grated on Wiley’s last nerve.

“From what I heard, there’s plenty to tell,” Sunny said.

“It’s none of your business, Sunny,” Wiley mumbled as he waved at another passing car. He’d gotten very good at speaking in low tones without moving his lips. Sunny insisted on being spoken to like a real person and not thought at like some specter.

Wiley rounded the corner for the straight away home and stopped dead, Sunny blocking his path.

“I think it’s very much my business, Wiley,” she said, a mischievous glint in her gray eyes.

“Well, it’s not,” Wiley said and walked right through her.

A few steps later, she appeared by his side looking annoyed.

“I hate it when you do that,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I did it.”

“Frustrating to the very end.”

Wiley winced at the word “end”. Sunny smiled and shook her head. At the end of the block, Wiley turned up a broken concrete path and mounted the cement steps only to turn and sit heavily on the wooden slats of the porch. Sunny sat next to him, weightless. Wiley rubbed his face, scrubbing it like he was trying to improve the circulation to his brain (and he kind of was) before looking out at the neighborhood. Everything was green and sweet, blooming and new.

Everything except him.

“He said terminal, Wiley. You do know what that means, right? The man wasn’t talking about airports, you know.”

“Yes, I know. I know what terminal means. I’m not an idiot,” Wiley said without looking at her, hands together in a prayer pose, index fingers bouncing on his lips as he spoke.

“You know he was talking about you, right?”

“Yes, Sunny. I am not stupid.”

“Oh.” The smell of lilac drifted on the silence between them. “Just acting then?”

Wiley got to his feet and stomped into his house, slamming the front door.

Sunny stayed on the porch.

 

She was still there, right where Wiley left her, when he came back out hours later. He sat down next to her, tired physically and exhausted emotionally. Wiley tried to rub some life back into his face while his sister sat serenely next to him.

“Tell the kids?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“How’d they take it?”

Wiley laughed; a bitter sound that brought tears to his eyes. He blinked them away.

“Luke didn’t say much. Natalie said plenty. They’ll both be here tomorrow.” Wiley looked at Sunny. “I could have used you then, Sunny, on the phone with my kids.”

“Just because you didn’t see me or hear me doesn’t mean I wasn’t there. You know that.” Sunny smiled at him. “I heard every word you said. Or rather, every word the doctor said, since you just repeated him verbatim. You refuse to believe it, don’t you? Won’t put it in your own words and say them out loud because then it might make it true. Well, I hate to say it, Wiley, but it is true. Every last word of it, no matter whose words you use.”

“I repeated what the doctor said because I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”

“Seems to me that the only one that’s struggling to understand this is you.”

“I understand it perfectly fine.”

“Uh huh.” Sunny leaned back on her elbows, stretching her legs out on the steps. She smiled at her brother, passive and serene.

Wiley’s blood started to boil.

“I do, Sunny,” he said, keeping his tone even. “I really do. I just happen to disagree, that’s all.”

“Oh, I got that,” Sunny said with a little laugh. “You disagreed so loudly that I thought they were going to call the cops. We’ve never been to jail before, Wiley. I was kind of excited.”

Her nose wrinkled in delight.

“Well, we’re not going to jail, Sunny. And I’m not . . . .”

A surge of energy, like an electrical shock, sent Wiley to his feet. Fight or flight. He needed to get away from that last, unspoken word. He dashed down the few remaining porch steps, hit the concrete walkway, and rounded on Sunny.

“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that? Sixty-five years you’ve been with me, talking to me, appearing out of nowhere, making me look like a crazy person.” Wiley realized he was gesturing wildly and talking loudly to no one, proving his last point a little too well. He got himself under control, shoving his hands in his pockets, and acted like he was contemplating a construction job on his porch. “But you know what’s most aggravating about you? You didn’t age. I got older and you stopped. You look like you’re thirty, but the way you dress, like you’re one of those kids from the high school hanging out uptown at night.”

Wiley stomped up the stairs and looked down at Sunny.

“That’s not how it was when I was thirty and that’s not how any of the girls I knew dressed back then. You look like a tramp.”

“A tramp? In jeans and a t-shirt?”

“A tramp.”

Sunny disappeared and Wiley stepped back, nearly losing his balance on the steps.

She reappeared on the porch wearing a pair of high-waist, bell bottom trousers and a busy floral printed buttoned down shirt tucked into them. Her usually shorter, straighter, darker hair was now lighter, longer, and feathered.

“Is this better?”

Wiley blinked as thirty years of past smacked him in the face. It felt like just yesterday that Sunny looked like that every day. When did she change?

When did he?

Wiley blinked again.

“That’s not funny.”

Sunny laughed. Wiley huffed, anger building in his stomach. He could feel it start to creep up his throat, like magma in a volcano. He wanted to explode like one, too. He stared at his dead sister’s smiling face, every muscle in his body tense; his veins hard with a rage so intense that he could have torn a house down with his bare hands and still had energy to spare.

“Do you want me to say it?” Sunny asked, unaffected.

And like a ghost, it was gone. All of it. Her words took it right out of him. All that anger disappeared like a vapor and the loss of it made him weak. Wiley stumbled to sit on the porch. He put his head in his hands. Without needing to see it, he knew Sunny now sat beside him again. He felt her presence just as well as an amputee felt a missing limb.

“You know why I stopped getting older, Wiley?” Sunny asked gently.

Wiley didn’t look at her; he just shook his head.

“Because that’s when you stopped getting older.”

Now Wiley looked at her, like she was the biggest idiot he’d seen since the doctor. She shrugged off his look.

“It’s true. Oh yeah, you’ve gained some wisdom in the years since then, amazingly enough and present circumstances excepted.” She looked passive as Wiley’s look hardened. “And of course your body kept aging. Nothing can stop that. But when you think about yourself, in your own mind, you’re still thirty, thirty-five. It’s the mirror and the occasional ache and pain and old man problems that disagree with you. You never got past thirty because that’s when your soul felt its best. And since you didn’t get past that point, neither did I. You can’t even imagine me as an old woman. You can hardly believe that you’re an old man.”

“I’m not that old,” Wiley said as he looked back out at the neighborhood. His voice didn’t even convince himself.

He leaned his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped together under his chin.

“You want me to say it?” Sunny asked.

“No.”

“I’m going to.”

“Don’t.”

“You’re dying, Wiley.”

Wiley closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, forcing the tears back where they came from. Those three words were the worst he’d ever heard, even more devastating than when he’d been told that Celia was dead. Maybe it was the guilt that went with them.

“You are dying, Wiley Adams,” Sunny said again, almost cheerfully, and Wiley opened his eyes. “I don’t know why you won’t accept that truth from anyone’s lips but mine, but there you go. You’re on your way out.”

They sat in silence while Wiley tried to find his voice. When he did, it was barely there.

“It’s because you’ve never lied to me,” he said finally.

“That’s because I don’t have to.”

“I don’t want to die.” Hands still clasped together, Wiley rubbed a knuckle over his bottom lip.

“Nobody wants to die, but we all do it anyway.”

“I know. I can’t.”

Sunny stared at him. “What do you mean you can’t? Why not? It’s not because you’ve had an unfulfilled life. I was there for the whole thing. It was the only life I had and it was great. It’s all downhill from here, brother.”

Wiley waited until he was reasonably sure his voice would be steady.

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of what’s on the other side.” A tear slipped down his cheek and he swallowed the flood. “I don’t know what’s on the other side.”

He looked at Sunny and she smiled with tears of her own glimmering in her eyes.

“Me.”

Wiley smiled even as he cried. The wind changed, picking up and bringing with it the smell of rain. The sun faded behind the incoming clouds.

“We should go in. There’s a storm coming,” Sunny said, her voice lighter than the scent of the impending shower. “Bring on the rain.”

 

Natalie arrived at ten the next morning.

“Where are the kids?” Wiley asked, kissing his daughter hello. Neither one of them looked like they’d slept much.

“At school.” Natalie walked into the living room and put her bag in the nearest chair. “Tom can handle them while I’m gone. I notice you didn’t ask about him.”

“He’s not as fun as the kids.” Wiley smiled at his daughter and the smile he got back was strained at best. He followed Natalie into the kitchen. “Your brother’s coming, too.”

“Yes, I know. I told him to. We’ll see how long it takes him to get here even though he lives twenty minutes away and I live three hours away.”

Natalie poured herself a cup of coffee, black, and sipped it while looking out the kitchen window. Wiley stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, and watched her. All business just like Celia had been when she was upset. And alive.

“Let me just take care of what needs to be done now,” she’d say. “I can go to pieces any time, but this needs to be done first.”

“What are you smiling at?” Natalie asked, looking at him suspiciously.

Wiley shook his head. “Thinking about your mom. How much you act like her sometimes.”

Natalie pursed her lips together so tightly that they almost disappeared and her eyes narrowed.

“Ah, like that,” Wiley said with a little laugh. “I know that look.”

He sat down at the kitchen table.

“Dad, we can be wistful and sappy later. Right now, we need to get some things straight.” Natalie sat down with him at the head of the table. “There’s no sense in waiting for Luke anyway. He’s useless.”

“Your brother is not useless,” Wiley said, parental-sternness firming up his voice. “He’s just not you and it drives you crazy. Always has.”

Natalie looked away and sipped her coffee, put in her place for the time being.

Wiley got up and poured himself a cup. He opened the cabinet above him, pulling out the sugar and a manila envelope. He tossed the envelope on the table in front of Natalie and put the sugar in his coffee.

“What’s this?” Natalie asked, looking the envelope over for identification.

“My will and whatnot,” Wiley said. He stirred his coffee. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“You make me sound like some kind of gold digging ghoul. I just wanted to make sure everything is in order and Luke and I know exactly what’s going on.” Natalie took the papers out of the envelope. “Everything was a mess with Mom. We had no time to prepare. If the doctor is right,” Natalie glanced at him, “then we should get everything straightened out and settled right now.”

“I agree,” Wiley said, sitting down again with his coffee, but this time across from his daughter. “Then we can get all sappy and wistful and nostalgic.”

Natalie looked at her father, not quite a glare, but hard enough. He just smiled and drank his coffee. Her look softened and she stared at him until he finally said, “What?”

“It seems that you’ve accepted this,” she said, uncertain. “Resigned yourself to it. I don’t know if I like that. You were so resistant to it yesterday. Why the change?”

Wiley stared at his coffee. “Talked to your Aunt Sunny. She made me see reason, just like always.”

A delicately strained silence settled in the kitchen. Wiley drank his coffee. Natalie looked over the papers, brows furrowed and mouth pinched. The front door banged closed.

“Hello!”

“In the kitchen, Luke,” Wiley called and his son appeared before he could finish the sentence.

“Hey, Dad.” Luke kissed his father on the bald part of his head. “Natalie.”

“Luke.” Natalie didn’t look up.

“Sorry I wasn’t here sooner,” Luke said, heading for the fridge. “But I-”

“Got hung up being irresponsible, lazy, and inconsiderate?” Natalie finished, still not looking at her brother.

Luke glared at her. “At least I’m not uppity to the point of tactless.”

“Oh, good. It’s going to be one of those visits. I thought we were going to leave the wistfulness and nostalgia until later,” Wiley said. He got up from the table. “You two duke it out and read over my will and stuff. Then you can duke it out with me. I’ll be on the porch.”

Wiley sat drinking coffee and waving to neighbors, no kids and no Sunny, just him and the morning, an hour slipping by on the porch. It was peaceful at first, when his mind was blank. But inevitably he started to think. Not about his death, exactly, but about how it would affect his children. Natalie and Luke weren’t close. If they even loved each other, neither one of them knew it. They sure didn’t show it. Natalie the control freak and Luke the sometimes-too-free spirit; they were the Odd Couple without the laugh track. Coming from a close family, going through life with Sunny, Wiley couldn’t understand them. He couldn’t understand how the two of them couldn’t find themselves on the same side once in a while. He couldn’t understand why they didn’t fight harder to find some common ground, fight harder to be friends. Or at least acquaintances.

Right now, Wiley was the only thing left in the world keeping the two of them connected and as soon as he died, they’d drift apart.

He sighed and got to his feet, not wanting to think about it anymore.

Wiley went back into the house, following the still, winter chill into the kitchen.

“You changed the will,” Natalie said before he even crossed the kitchen threshold.

Neither of the children looked too pleased, though the furrows in Luke’s forehead weren’t quite as deep as the ones in Natalie’s.

“Yes, I did.” Wiley ignored the looks of his children and got another cup of coffee.

“Why? Aunt Sunny tell you to?” Natalie asked, not bothering to hide her contempt.

“Natalie, love, I’m not dead yet. I can change it again if you’d prefer not to have anything to do with it.”

Luke snorted a laugh.

“I changed my will two years after your mother died,” Wiley said, moving to stand at the head of the table. “The will you saw was what your mother wanted. This is what I want. If she doesn’t like it, I’m sure I’ll hear about it soon enough.”

“I don’t like it,” Natalie said, looking up at him. It reminded Wiley of the family discussions held to keep the peace between Natalie and Luke when they were kids. Celia insisted on the diplomatic approach to dealing with sibling rivalry. Too bad it never seemed to work.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Wiley said. “But it’s done. I suggest you live it. It’s not like I have to.”

Luke smirked and Natalie pinched her lips together, sighing through her nose.

“Dad, that’s a terrible thing to say,” she scolded.

“Terrible, but true,” Wiley said. He was feeling pretty good today, physically anyway, but there was something weary in his voice. “I know you guys came here to get things straight now so you don’t have to worry about it later, though it wouldn’t shock me in the least if Natalie disputed the will in court just as soon as I’m cold.” Natalie looked away. “And I’m sure you wanted to see how I’m holding up, too. Well, it’s all there in the papers. Everything is paid for and everything’s divided, and I’m holding up just fine. We’ve got some time before I start to go downhill.”

“You’re not going to fight it at all, are you?” Luke asked. The look on his face suggested that he already knew the answer.

“Nope.” Wiley put his coffee down on the table. “I’d rather give my money to you guys than some doctor who’s just going to shoot me up with a bunch of toxic crap that’d probably end up killing me anyway. No, I’m taking the man at his word. He says they can’t do anything for me, so I won’t ask them to. I’ll settle for comfortable. And here,” he said, finger drilling the top of the kitchen table. “In this house. If I’m going to die comfortably, then I’m going to die at home, in my bed. Don’t you even think of taking me to a hospital. I’ll haunt you both if you do.”

Luke chuckled, eyes a little wet. Natalie burst into tears.

Finally.

 

Wiley relaxed in bed, reading glasses on and book open, but he’d been on the same page for half an hour. The clock ticked to midnight. A tingle rippled over his skin and Wiley looked to his left, unsurprised to see Sunny reclining next to him. She still wore her t-shirt and jeans even though Wiley was in his pajamas, more than ready for bed. She smiled at him.

“That went well, didn’t it?” she said.

Wiley rolled his eyes and took off his reading glasses. Sunny laughed.

“Natalie’s grown into a controlling little thing, hasn’t she?” she went on.

“She’s always been very organized and in control,” Wiley said with a sigh. “She gets worse when she’s upset. Just like Celia. You know that.”

“She gets worse when she’s around Luke.”

Wiley looked away, silent.

“And she’ll probably get worse with Luke when you’re gone.” Sunny smoothed her hands on the bedspread. The wrinkles stayed in the fabric. “Your will is only going to make it worse.”

“She’s got some time to get comfortable with it,” Wiley said.

“She won’t.”

Wiley shrugged. “That’s not going to be my problem.”

“That’s a good attitude to have. Too bad you don’t really have it.”

Wiley put his book and his glasses on the nightstand. He rubbed his eyes. He could fool his kids, and on occasion he could fool his wife, but he couldn’t fool Sunny. Never. He still tried, though. Wiley thought Sunny might be disappointed if he didn’t.

“Celia’s been trying to make Natalie and Luke get along since the day Luke was born. But they’re too different, I guess. And I don’t think they really want to.” Wiley sighed. “Celia didn’t want to leave anything to Luke because of that rough patch he went through. She didn’t trust him after that. He broke her heart, you know. She wanted Natalie to be in charge of everything and Natalie was more than happy with that. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Natalie would use that against him, to punish him for all the pain he caused.”

“Well, if you figured that out without me, then it must be pretty obvious,” Sunny said.

“Exactly.” He smiled and shook his head. “After Celia died, I decided that Luke deserved a second chance and I was going to trust him. Celia went to her grave crying over that boy, unable to see how far he’d come since he hit bottom. It hurt Luke. It still does. I couldn’t do that to him, no matter how badly he hurt me. So, I changed the will.”

“Don’t you think the children deserve this explanation?”

“I’ll tell Luke. Soon. I’ll wait to tell Natalie.”

A sleepy silence settled in the room. Wiley felt his eyes start to pull closed.

“Natalie didn’t hold up quite as well as Celia used to,” Sunny said, a pleasant statement of fact.

“No, but she was good. She just needs some practice. She’ll get it with her kids.” Wiley yawned.

“Oh, yeah. She’ll get her fair share.”

Wiley’s eyes stayed closed. “Mmhmm.”

“Natalie and Luke will come together,” Sunny said, her words echoing as Wiley fell deeper into the well of sleep. “You did the right thing. You’ll see. They’re not as far apart as you think they are.”

Sunny shut off the light.

 

Wiley woke up in his bed on his last day. He didn’t have many working parts left. He was past his expiration date; he could feel it in the parts of his body he could still feel. Natalie and Luke were with him and sometimes a nurse, but Sunny never left, even sitting with him in his dreams. He talked to her openly now. He didn’t care who was in the room. The kids fussed over him, but Sunny talked to him, lying on the bed next to him and walking him down memory lane.

“Do you remember that time, it was around Thanksgiving I think, you got mad at Mama and Daddy for ignoring you and you took off and ended up in the Miller’s almost empty pool?” Sunny laughed. “You almost caught your death then, stomping all of those floating dead leaves. You showed them, boy.”

“Best temper tantrum I ever threw and I had to wait until I was sixteen to do it,” Wiley said through dry lips. The kids stopped asking him what he was talking about days ago.

“Yes it was. Do you remember what I said that night?”

“You said-” Wiley licked his lips, but it didn’t help any. “You told me that everyone else in the world could walk out on me, but you’d never leave. You’re my sister and you’d never leave me.”

“I never did.”

“No, you never did.”

Natalie and Luke exchanged worried looks, Natalie laying a hand on Luke’s arm and Luke patting it, before Luke slipped a sliver of ice into Wiley’s mouth. It melted too fast for his liking and he asked for another one. Luke obliged while Natalie watched. Wiley had never seen his two kids closer. The last few weeks, they started to act like loving siblings instead of bitter enemies. It was a shame he couldn’t stick around longer and enjoy it.

Sunny nudged him.

“Come on, Wiley. It’s time. It’s past time.”

“Okay. I suppose.” Wiley forced his eyes to focus on his children for the last time. “Natty. Luke. Come here.”

Both of his children obeyed, coming to stand at his side.

“Gimmie a kiss and then get out of here. I need to talk to your Aunt Sunny alone.”

“Dad-”

“We’re not-”

“Don’t argue with a dying person. It’s rude and it probably breaks some laws somewhere. Now kiss me and go.”

They did, a little teary and with a lot of reservations. Luke closed the door behind them.

“All they’re going to have is each other. I think they’re getting that now. They’re going to be okay,” Sunny said.

“Yeah.”

“You did good.”

“Yeah.”

“Ready?”

“No.”

“Wiley.”

“I can’t do it, Sunny. I can’t die. I can’t leave them. They’ll be orphans.”

Sunny sighed at his last-second panic. “Would you rather outlive them?”

“No,” Wiley said, tears leaking out of his eyes. He was surprised he had so much moisture left in his body.

“I didn’t think so.” Sunny smiled. “Ready now?”

“No.”

“Wiley.”

“Sunny, I don’t know how to die.”

“Oh, it’s really simple. You just close your eyes, relax, and let go.”

Wiley closed his eyes. Relaxing was easy enough; he wasn’t prone to being a tense guy anyway, and he was so full of pain medication that he really had no choice. But he couldn’t let go.

“I can’t,” he said without opening his eyes. “I can’t let go.”

“Sure you can. If I could do it before I was born, you can do it now. Here.” Sunny jostled him a little as she settled into a better position next to him on the bed. She took his hand. The warmth from it radiated up his arm and he squeezed, touching his twin sister for the first time that he could remember. “I’ve got you. Now on the count of three let go, okay?”

“Okay.”

“One . . . two . . . three . . . .”

 

Christin Haws is a writer without a day job and easily stalkable at her blog, Kiki Writes About.

The flies found it first.

David slid down the side of the ravine, intent on wading in the shaded stream at the bottom, but the buzzing flies stopped him. He made his way to the swarm by a scrub of brush. As he got closer, the brush grew legs.

David stopped, coughed, said hello, but the legs didn’t move. He waited a minute or two before moving toward the legs again. Flies bounced off of David’s face.

The legs belonged to a body dressed in jeans, boots, and a red flannel shirt with no sleeves. Dried blood matted its blond hair. The eyes and mouth were open and squirmed with maggots; they crowded a bullet hole in the man’s head. The light scent of spoiled meat drifted by and David waved it and the flies away from his face.

David sat on his knees next to the dead man, leaning forward a little so he wouldn’t go somersaulting backwards down the incline. His fingers itched along his thighs in indecision.

Should he go for help?

Well, no. The guy was way beyond help. He was dead.

He should tell somebody, though. The guy had been shot. Maybe he’d been murdered. Maybe this guy got into a fight with Earl Ray at Fibber’s Pool Hall and Earl Ray, who still bullied kids for their lunch money even though he was in his thirties and hadn’t seen a classroom since the eighth grade, shot him in the parking lot. Then Earl Ray and his buddies, since he always had two or three in tow, dumped this poor, dead guy in the back of his pickup, drove him out here, and chucked him into the ravine.

David leaned forward even more, inspecting without touching. There was more dried blood and gunky stuff on the scrub.

Rolling away from the body, David slid the last few feet to the stream. He poked around down there, tossing a few stones into the water, before spotting what he needed on the opposite bank. He jumped the water, not quite clearing it and drenching his socks and sneakers. Half buried in the mud was a good-looking stick. David pulled it out and washed it off. He tested it a few times, swinging it around, slinging dirty water from the end of it, and then hopped back across the stream.

David came up on the man’s left side and knelt down. He jabbed the body, poking it first in the leg and then in the side. The body was hard. David levered the stick under the man’s left arm and lifted it up. The effort made him sweat; the arm was stiff and hard to move. Underneath, David saw metal, a dirty little .22 pistol. He pulled the stick away and the arm dropped.

The guy had shot himself. 

For an hour, David circled the body, poking at it with the stick, trying to lift the limbs caught in rigor mortis, watching the flies swarm and the maggots churn. 

Pappy Deke would have called him summer rot. He said it about the apples that fell from the trees and sat on the ground too long, going soft and filling with worms. That’s what this guy looked like. 

Of course, Pappy Deke was summer rot now, too. 

It had only been a week since they put Pappy Deke in the ground, but he really started rotting back in June, the day after school let out. It was hot, the humidity only beginning to drop hints of how miserable it was going to get. David came home from catching crawdads in the ravine and stopped on the mud porch long enough to slip off his socks and sneakers. He walked through the kitchen, warm in the late afternoon, promising sweat with supper, down the hallway, and up the back stairs. The floorboards of the upstairs hallway were sticky. 

David tiptoed down the hall, stopping at the first room on the left. It wasn’t dark but the light was dimmed by the shades, filling the room with shadows. Two fans were on and the windows were open. It was much cooler in the room than in the hallway. 

Pappy Deke lay on the bed, on his back, his mouth open and his eyes closed. The breeze from one of the fans ruffled his thin, white hair. The sheet across his bony chest rose and fell a little. Pappy Deke was sleeping. He’d been sleeping when David first left that morning to do chores. He was sleeping when David came in for lunch. He was sleeping when David left for the ravine. Pappy slept more every day. 

Soon he’d be sleeping forever. Mama was sure Pappy Deke wasn’t going to see David’s thirteenth birthday in August. The cancer was going to take him before that. 

Mama was almost right. 

David walked down the hallway to his room, the last one on the left. It was small, barely enough space to walk around the bed and the dresser. There was only one window, which was wide open, and no fan; he’d given it to Pappy Deke at Mama’s request when May turned hotter than it should have. 

“You’re coming up on being a man, Davy,” she had said. “Time you start learning how to do right no matter the cost.” 

David didn’t argue, just said, “yes, ma’am”, and gave up his only means of staying cool at night, which had cost him hours of sleep and would have made his grades suffer if he was a better student. He didn’t ask why Brenna and Molly, who were older, weren’t asked to do right. He didn’t protest about being too young to become a man. He just did what Mama asked. 

He stripped off his dirty t-shirt and shorts and tossed them on the floor. Sprawled out on his bed, he stared at the ceiling and tried to catch a breeze from the window. His thoughts and the heat nearly lulled him to sleep twice before David peeled himself off of the damp sheets and put on a clean set of play clothes. He picked up his dirty clothes and went down the hallway, stopping just long enough to see that Pappy Deke was still sleeping, still breathing. Downstairs, David tossed his dirty clothes into the utility room and scrubbed the dirt off of his face, neck, and arms in the bathroom. 

Dinner was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, biscuits, and homemade applesauce for dessert. A huge pitcher of sun tea sat sweating in the middle of the table. The kitchen was stifling. David could barely breathe, but Mama insisted that they always eat supper in there. 

“This is dinner, not a picnic,” she had said once. “We eat at the table.” 

David worked at cleaning his plate. Hot food for a hot stomach in a hot kitchen was hard to swallow. He finished as fast as he could, forcing down the last bite.  

David excused himself, putting his plate and glass in the sink, and took a tray up to Pappy Deke. Mama had asked him to do it the first time Pappy Deke wasn’t feeling up to coming to the table and David had done it ever since. He liked spending supper with Pappy Deke, looked forward to it. 

Pappy Deke was still sleeping when David set the tray on the table next to the bed. David nudged him. Pappy Deke’s breathing stopped, hiccupped, and his eyes opened. He blinked a few times and looked at David. 

“Dinner, Pappy,” David said. 

“Oh, good.” Pappy Deke struggled to sit up. David helped him get settled. “I was just dreaming I was hungry.” 

David smiled and handed him a napkin, which Pappy Deke tucked into his pajama top. David set the tray on his lap. There was a plate with mashed potatoes, chicken, and a biscuit and a glass of tea. Pappy Deke gave up on corn sometime over the winter. 

“Your mama must like taking me to the john,” Pappy Deke said. “Always giving me this damn tea.” 

David laughed and Pappy Deke smiled. 

“What you been up to today, boy?” Pappy Deke asked. His hand shook as he scooped some mashed potatoes onto a spoon and into his mouth. 

“Been down at the ravine,” David said with a shrug. 

“Anything good down there?” 

Pappy Deke shook hard and dropped his spoon onto the tray. David watched him pick it up on the second try. 

“Nah,” David said. “Crawdads are kinda weak this year.” 

“Yeah? You know we had a place like that when I was a kid,” Pappy Deke said, his lips smeared with potatoes. “Your daddy had a place like that, too. I used to go down there with him some days.” 

David believed that. There could be acres of room at the adult table, but Pappy Deke always wedged himself in with the kids. 

“Your birthday’s coming up,” Pappy Deke said, wiping away the potatoes and picking up the biscuit. “What did you ask for?” 

“New bike,” David said, watching crumbs fall from Pappy Deke’s lips. “Mine’s getting too small.” 

Pappy Deke nodded. “You are growing. I think you’ll fill out better than your daddy by the time you’re done.” Pappy Deke wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Gonna have a party?” 

David shrugged. “Dunno. Mama hasn’t said.” 

“You got to have a party, Davy,” Pappy Deke said. “I know your mama’s got a lot on her mind, but you gotta celebrate. You’re growing up, becoming a young man.” 

“I don’t want to be a man, Pappy.” It was a whine and David flinched at it. 

Pappy Deke chuckled, but it wasn’t mean. 

“Now why do you say that, Davy?” 

“Because I’ve seen it. It’s not fun. You work all the time, you get old, and you die. That’s it. It’s the end.” 

This time Pappy Deke laughed. 

“Well, boy, you do got some things right,” he said. “But you have fun when you’re grown.” 

“Not that I’ve seen. Not too many grown people down in the ravine looking for crawdads. Not too many teenagers either. They’re all riding around, drooling over girls. It’s gross. I don’t want to go crazy like that. It’s more fun being a kid. It’s not fair that I have to grow up.” 

Pappy Deke looked him over good and smiled. 

“There ain’t no hard and fast rules to living, Davy,” Pappy Deke said, voice soft and light. “You have fun any old way you want to. We’re all just rottin’ anyway. Might as well have a good time doing it.” 

David wanted to protest, but Pappy Deke was seeing the past, a look of bliss on his face. That’s when David realized, truly realized that Pappy Deke was on his way out. He was just waiting around until his heart quit, sleeping all the time to get used to the big sleep coming, looking forward to dreaming about those happy memories forever. They sat in silence for a few minutes until Pappy Deke looked down at his half-full plate, the bliss fading. There was a time when Pappy could have eaten twice that and pie. It all made David’s heart hurt. 

“You finished, Pappy?” David asked.  

“I think I am,” Pappy said. He sounded old. “Go tell your mama I’m ready for my pills.” 

David reached out to take the tray and Pappy Deke closed a trembling hand around his glass. His eyes sparkled. 

“Leave the tea.” 

The month passed with the same routine: ravine, home, dinner, Pappy Deke. 

David would rush his dinner to sit with Pappy Deke while he ate his. He ate less and less all the time. He was always sitting up now, propped up by pillows. He couldn’t breathe lying down anymore. And there was no more tea. Bathroom trips were too much now; Pappy Deke used a bedpan. 

David would tell him about his day and watch Pappy Deke’s eyes light up and his mouth quirk before he launched into a story of his own. David listened, his amusement tainted by sadness. Burning with love, he treasured every second and every word. 

A week after the Fourth of July, David came home from the ravine to find a strange car in the driveway. He ditched his socks and shoes on the mud porch and his sister Molly met him in the kitchen. Her eyes were red and her face was puffy. 

“Davy, where have you been?” she asked. 

“At the ravine. What’s going on?” 

“Davy, Pappy Deke took a turn for the worse.” Molly’s eyes welled and tears started falling. “He’s not dead, but he won’t wake up. The cancer is eating up his insides. Mama and Daddy are upstairs with the doctor now.” 

David felt sucker punched. He’d been expecting it, but not that day. Knew it was coming, but didn’t want it to be that day. David wasn’t ready. Not that day. 

He nodded at his sister and left, walking out of the house in a daze. His bare feet took him to the barn and he climbed the wooden ladder to the loft. 

There, sitting on dry straw, breathing musty air, and nearly suffocating in the heavy heat, David cried. 

The rest of July passed with the same routine. 

At home, David ate dinner and then went up to sit with Pappy Deke even though Pappy wasn’t eating anymore. Sometimes David would tell Pappy about his day, even though he wasn’t sure if Pappy could hear him. Sometimes he cried, his back to the door so no one could see his face. He kissed him goodbye everyday. 

Pappy Deke had tubes going in and coming out of him. He rattled when he breathed and sometimes the pauses between breaths lasted a minute. Gray and loose skin just covered his bones and his once round belly was flat, starting to sink. Sometimes Pappy’s eyes would be half open and David would close them. Summer rot. David realized that’s what Pappy was, even if his lungs were still breathing and the tubes were feeding him. Summer rot. Just like the guy David now poked with a stick down by the creek in the ravine. Only the smell of Pappy Deke’s death was just a suggestion then, not a fact like this guy’s stench. 

A nurse came twice a day to check on Pappy Deke. Mama told David that they couldn’t get him a new bike for his birthday because they needed the money to pay her. They wanted Pappy Deke to be comfortable for his last few days. Mama once again asked David to do right. David did, without question. 

But he thought Pappy Deke would be more comfortable if they just let him go. 

Even with Pappy Deke rotting in the upstairs bedroom, Mama and Daddy still planned a birthday party for David. A small group of friends and family out in the backyard for hot dogs, chips, soda, and ice cream on the day he turned thirteen. 

But Pappy Deke died. 

Instead of a party, David spent his birthday watching Mama and his sisters cry and Daddy try not to and the undertaker take Pappy Deke out of the house on a stretcher covered with a sheet. The doctor and nurse came later that day to get all of the medical things that helped Pappy Deke die comfortably. Between crying spells, Mama promised David that he could have his party the next week. David just said okay. 

David wore his best suit, his only suit, to Pappy Deke’s funeral three days later. Only seven days ago, now. It was hot and muggy; sweat ran down his face while tears ran down everyone else’s. He threw a handful of dirt on Pappy Deke’s casket as his family walked away, leaving Pappy to sleep. 

David gave up on the body, flinging the stick back down to the creek where he found it. He gave up on the crawdads and the creek and the ravine and the day. Someone was probably looking for this poor guy and even if they weren’t, David couldn’t leave him here to rot like an apple gone bad. He’d had enough of rotten things. 

David went home. 

Christin Haws is a writer with a day job and easily stalkable at her blog, Kiki Writes About.