Page 3 of Challenged By the Next-Door Veteran

"Mm." He turns toward the panel, and I realize I've been standing on his left side. He angles slightly, a small tilt of the head to bring his right ear around to me.

I don't say anything about it. I just step around him to the right, so he doesn't have to turn at all.

He glances at me then, quick. A look that lands and files something. Then he points his flashlight at the panel.

I read Mr. Alfred's tape under the beam. L: HOLLIS (lamps, heater, DON'T). Beside it: R: New Fella.

"He labeled me 'New Fella,'" Ben says, flat.

"He labeled me 'Hollis, Don't.'"

"What's the 'don't'?"

"Heater and the lamps. Together. Which I was doing. Which I'd like to point out I was warned about after."

"Mm," he says again, and this time his mouth does move.

He reaches past me, an arm as long as my shoulder to hip. I see it for the first time in the light: a pale ridged scar running from his wrist to his elbow, thick as a rope. Across the back of his hand, a shiny smooth patch of old burn.

His hand doesn't shake. It flicks the left breaker, and the whole house hums back to life. The basement bulb stutters on, yellow and buzzing, and I see him all at once.

He's big. Not just tall, but broad through the chest and shoulders in a way that makes the low ceiling look like a design flaw. Dark hair cut short and graying at the temples. The kind of stillness that tells you he's been trained out of fidgeting. He looks about as tired as a man can look and still be standing.

He's looking at me like I'm the first interesting thing that's happened all day.

"You've got something," he says, and lifts a hand toward my face and stops, an inch from my skin. "Blue. Here."

I scrub at the wrong cheek.

"Other side."

I try the other cheek. He nods. His hand goes back to his side, and for some reason I feel the inch he didn't cross like a thumb pressed into a bruise.

"What are you painting?" he asks.

"A banner. Fourteen feet of apple trees. It's for Founders' Day."

"Tomorrow."

"You know about Founders' Day?"

"I know there's a flyer on my door and a casserole on my porch and a note from a woman named Bunny that says attendance is expected."

I laugh, a real one, and it echoes weirdly in the stone basement. "That's Bunny Fenwick. The casserole is a summons."

"Is it?"

"Expected? It's practically legally binding. She'll find you. She'll bring the whole committee. They travel in a pack."

"I'm not much for crowds," he says. He says it simply, like he's telling me his shoe size.

"Then you've bought in the wrong town. We don't just have crowds, we have rotary clubs."

I hear myself running, as I always do, filling the quiet with words so it can't fill with anything else. I make myself stop. I look at the label on the right side of the panel.

"Did you buy it, or are you renting? Mr. Alfred said the other half had sold."

"Bought it."