Free Every Little Thing by Chad Pelley Page B

a ballet of litter blowing in the wind. “It’s the litter—the McDonald’s burger wrappers and Tim Hortons’cups—that bothers me the most. I mean,” she pointed to a sidewalk, “it’s everywhere.”
    She was scanning the street for fearless children and other potential driving hazards as she spoke. She’d swerve from potholes like they were land mines and look at him with her cheeks puffed out like they’d just dodged an explosion. Allie had definitely gotten her license on the first try.
    Downtown Grayton was one main street, called Main Street, with a strip of restaurants and retail stores on one side and a stony beach on the other. When she pulled up at the curb of Main Street, she told him to wait in the car. That she’d only be a second. So he did. He could see the wharf, stretching out from the beach like a strip of brown carpet, and he could hear boats knocking off of it like wooden wind chimes. She was pumping some change into a parking meter when Cohen noticed an older man sat at a collapsible vendor’s table on the sidewalk. The old man had been eyeing Allie from the moment she’d stepped out of the car. He wore thin black dress pants and a white V-neck shirt: his chest hair visible and grey. White really. Cotton-white. Fluffy like a cloud. He’d been carving wood, with a tool-like knife, into what looked like a lighthouse; his hands almost too shaky to get the job done. He laid down the block of wood, but kept his fist tight around the knife, and he stepped toward Allie.
    Something was off about him. He was skinny, and yet his skin sagged from bones: there was a lizard-like flap hanging down from his chin and droops of flesh flapping off his elbows. Both jiggled when he moved, like a rooster’s throat wattle. His body looked frail, finished, but his bright blue eyes and animated facial expressions were full of life. When he started walking towards Allie with that knife still in his hands, Cohen got out of the car, defensively. He felt like a fool when he saw Allie walking towards him; her arms thrown wide open for a hug. She held him close, it was a been-too-long kind of hug. She was rubbing his back and calling him Lee.
    â€œLittle Allie Crosbie! Don’t tell me you braved that big ol’ highway just to visit me?”
    After a few good-natured insults back and forth, the man fell into his seat as if standing too long had weakened every bone in his body. He wore black combat boots, scuffed white in places. His cheap black dress pants were tucked into his boots.
    â€œCohen, this is Lee.”
    Lee. Casual, yet formal enough an introduction to rule out grandfather.
    â€œNice to meet you, Lee.”
    A handshake, and Lee cracked a joke about her driving. “So, how many near-accidents did she have on the way out?”
    â€œI counted zero, but she got up to a dozen before we hit the highway.”
    Lee flung his head back and hacked out a laugh. Allie changed the topic. “Lee and I have an arrangement. He sells my photos at his table on Saturdays and Sundays, and we split the profits at the end of the month.”
    Lee was nodding along. He nodded a lot. He was staring at Cohen, and his eyelids were a crusty and sore-ish shade of red: he had vulture eyes and they were picking Cohen apart. She had a hand on Lee’s shoulder, the other hand arranging photos on Lee’s table, taking so many at a time from a box at her feet.
    Cohen, taken off guard by the way Lee was visually dissecting him, turned to Allie for an escape route, “Do you want me to grab the rest of the photos out of the trunk?” Allie shot him a look, widened eyes, and shook her head, once, quickly, while Lee wasn’t looking. Cohen took the cue to play stupid.
    â€œNo, this is all the photos. And listen,Lee, you don’t mind if this Cohen fellah joins us for lunch, do you? Because I can leave him in the car while you and me eat if you