Spending all day outside in the present, past and future.

Neal flings his sunburned legs to the end of his bed. His calves and feet hang over the folded jersey-knit sheets. Pink sunspots pulse like a dog's tongue hanging out of its jowels, lapping up mouthfuls of water. Sweat on his forehead beads and rolls into his eyes. The sensation stings and reminds him of the doctor.


Sounds of hammers pinged against dented robin's egg blue siding. Kids pumped their squirt guns and ran circles around the base of his ladder. The soles of their shoes made tracks in the spots of the lawn where the August drought turned grass brown. Neal hoped a piece of siding would come off and fall to the ground, slowly swinging around in a fat circle like one of those tree seed helicopters that dogs chase after.

Kids annoy Neal. He does handy work in his town on the weekends to make up for what he doesn't get paid at the garage. A few weeks ago, Neal fixed the leaky spigot at his boss's lakeside cabin and regrouted the faux-granite tile in the enterance way. He always marveled at how straight he could get the odd-shaped pieces to fit that were cut at uneven angles. It was his favorite thing to do. Setting pieces stacks of squares onto the wet stone cutting saw, spraying cloudy water onto his safety goggles.

One boy tugged on the leg of Neal's shorts,"I can tell you're not wearing sunscreen. You might get cancer." He dug his index finger into his left nostril, "doesn't that bother you?"

Neal placed his hammer into the loop on the side of his shorts. "Not as much as kids."

Later in the afternoon, Neal will be headed to Bordeaux Lane where he'll fix a rotting wooden floor filled with holes in a woman's kitchen. The water-soaked panels will bow under his sneakers and hiss like a snake. The women will pat Neal on the shoulder and say "Good job, good job," over and over again.

She'll pay in lemonade and stories about her husband. "He was deputy sheriff for over twenty years when we lived on the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. He was hit by stray fire during a bank robbery in 1983."

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It'll be one-hundred twenty-five dollars for the floor." Neal will pick at the nailbed on his left pinkey. He will hope the woman to pay him for his work in something other than lemonade.

"Or maybe it was 1984, I'm not entirely sure."