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The Third Tarp
Harold’s eyes jab at the tarps again like a tongue probing a missing tooth. He sighs in disgust at all of it.
Two missing teeth. Two. The first two, now two more.
It’s the heat that bothers him the most today. After the power went out for the third and final time, that was the next bad thing: the end of electricity- the end of air conditioning. In Georgia, summer mornings can be breezy, almost pleasant, but the afternoons and evenings are reliably hot and humid. Sheryl called them sweltering.
He sits in his rocker and waits for the sun to dip behind Springer. It will still be hot, but with enough damp rags, he imagines he might sleep again, just like he has every night since he spread the tarps on the lawn. He remembers removing eight stones from Sheryl’s wall that ran along the creek. He remembers the tears as he placed each rock on the tarp corners.
“It sure is a hot one today. I’m going to make an iced tea. You want?”
He winces.
She knows we haven’t had ice since everything fell to shit.
He turns his head to the left, away from her rocker, and mutters something they knew meant, ‘No, thank you.’
His eyes flick to the two tarps to the right of the paved stone trail to the carport. Neither his truck nor Sheryl’s Accord have moved from where…
