He’s taken to sleeping at odd times. Once he was in the supermarket queue so when he woke up, startled, he knocked over the bananas. His wife says he’s passive-agressive, just giving in to the universe. Maybe. Meanwhile, he lies on his front porch, waits to see what will happen.
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Once, an over ambitious do-gooder had tried to pretty the place up, planting gladiolas around the porch, but the dirt swallowed them whole, like winter would have done, only, it was just April. The house was a bad luck charm from rafters to bricks, but nothing a fire couldn't fix.
That's no porch, that's just a shed without walls.
There’s a swing-seat on the porch, still. Where he sat. Watching the street and all the people in it. And he’d wave. Holler a greeting to everyone who passed. Cheery. I remember that. Old Gruber, spiders in his ears and an unlit cigarette in his mouth, waving.
Seat’s empty now
It's a porch - sheds are on their way to you, Alex.
Love that ending, Grace - nicely menacing! As is the spiders in the ears. Funny how it seems quite melancholy - it was actually a jolly seat!
The view from beneath the porch wasn’t great. A torn patch of sky, a few feathery trees, the scratching dogs. But it was cool under there, and the dirt was packed into fine layers and smelt apple-sweet. You could burrow into it while you watched. Draw patterns while you waited.
It's not the seat is melancholy...(cheery old Gruber sitting in it and his hollered greeting to everyone). It's the emptiness of the seat is what's melancholy.
D
Come Sarah, and sit a while on the swing-seat of my porch. Sit with me some. Let my mother serve us fresh-pressed lemonade in tall glasses, and we will look out at the tilting world and talk of nothing and everything. And Gruber on his porch will laugh and laugh.
Oooh, that's lovely, Megan, and yes I'd love to, Douglas. Not melancholy at all - I think that was my mood and hence my reading first time round!
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