Free Autumn Blue by Karen Harter

up? Who on God’s green
     earth really gives a hoot?”
    “Dad, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. I just want you to take care of yourself, that’s all.”
    “Maybe taking care of myself is not in my best interest! Did you ever think of that?” He strode to the front door and slammed
     it behind him. The first thing his eyes fell on was the cockeyed downspout on the trailer-house across the road. Rita came
     out and followed him all the way to the garage. He yanked his keys from his pocket.
    “What are you doing? Where do you think you’re going? Dad, do
not
get in that car just to spite me!”
    He ignored her, unlocking the garage door and walking past the Lincoln, then pulled the metal ladder off its hooks on the
     back wall of the garage. The drawer of his red tool chest stuck at first, but gave way with a violent jerk that almost pulled
     it off its track. Millard gathered nails, hammer, and screwdrivers, anything he thought he might need, stuffing them into
     the leather tool belt that Molly gave him one Christmas and strapping it around him. His daughter watched silently from the
     open door, hands planted on hips. When he proceeded forward, the ladder in front of him like a battering ram, she backed away.
    “I’ve got some work to do,” he said.
    He felt her watching as he strode across the street. Though the ladder was somewhat heavy, he deliberately held it high, back
     straight, chin up. He might be pushing his mid-seventies, but he was
not
pushing up daisies. Give up his car! He’d sooner give up Sundays. Move to Haywood House! Pull a wheelchair up to the window
     and watch for Jesus to come again on the clouds. Wouldn’t that just sew everything up neatly for Rita and Dan? Dan, her real
     estate agent husband who kept getting market appraisals on Millard’s house, practically salivating as he told Millard that
     the value would go up now that the new supermarket and strip mall were going in down on Highway 12. Rita, no longer looking
     up to him, not so much as a glint of admiration in her eyes. He remembered how she used to beg him to twirl her in his arms,
     how proud she was of her daddy when he came to her school on career day. At her wedding she hugged him so tightly that he
     knew she had a hard time letting go. At what point had he become nothing but a worry and a burden to her?
    Millard lowered the ladder to the weedy flower bed at the far corner of Sidney Walker’s house and leaned it up against dirty,
     gray siding. He could see that it was a simple fix. All he had to do was reattach an aluminum strap meant to hold the downspout
     in place. With each step up the metal rungs, he relished the knowledge that Rita was still standing over there, holding herself
     back, biting her tongue. He would show her. He was still useful for something.
    It was not until he found himself staring through a bedroom window that he began to feel like a Peeping Tom. Was anyone home?
     His being there was really as much a surprise to him as it would be to anyone. It had not even occurred to him prior to that
     moment of frustration to fix the neighbor’s downspout, but here he was, peering into the window of a pink bedroom with two
     unmade twin beds. It was too early for the little girls to come home from school, and their mother was usually at work during
     the day. He glanced across the yard, dismayed to see that for once her oxidized red car was actually parked at the end of
     the gravel drive. Perhaps he should have knocked first.
    He would just get the job done and be gone. He knew Rita was still watching, whether from his driveway or in the house he
     didn’t know, but as sure as fleas on a stray dog she was fretting and fuming right now because he wasn’t sitting safely in
     his recliner, where he belonged. He placed a couple of nails between his lips and grasped the metal tube, hoisting it up toward
     the gutter. It was heavier than he’d thought. This was a bit difficult with only his left