Deal

People who have accidents are not the only people who need to talk.

I’m shutting down my work computer when Telly Bishop, my ninety-two-year old neighbor from up the street, rolls a smoking grill right in front of my bedroom/office window and points down.  “I’m grilling,” he shouts. 

I step out onto my screened porch and Telly rolls the gill toward me.  “Stay on your porch,” he says.  “We need to social distance ourselves.”

“Got any food under all that smoke?”

“I’m going to let that go, because I have three salmon flanks and I don’t like to eat alone.  Hey Toby.”

The cat joins me on the porch and together we watch and debate how bad the smoke needs to be before someone calls 911. 

Telly’s wife, Alexi, passed years ago and now it’s just him in what he likes to call the outhouse, a spacious in-laws suite in his granddaughter’s back yard.  Sometimes he wanders down to my house and we visit with a cup of coffee.  Today it’s a smoking salmon.

“Does Ally know where you are?”

“My granddaughter doesn’t need to know every time I take a walk or move my bowels.”

“I just don’t want her to worry.”

“Don’t kid yourself.  She and that Republican she married forget I live in that outhouse and just pull the plug on my lights when it suits them.”

“Isn’t Ally a Democrat?  You know, it takes both to make a bi-partisan household.”

“Spare me.  When Alexi was alive, I had a real soul mate.  We thought the same things.  Held the same values.”

“Sounds like the same person.”

“The country could do with a little sameness.  We’re too divided.”

On this, Telly and I agree.  “But what if we all decided on the same things, and it was all wrong?”

My friend pulls a table and chair from my patio set and parks them outside the porch so that he faces the street.  He asks me if I have some plates or if I want to eat my flank directly off the grill.  I pass three plates through the screen door and he gives me two back.

“Is this all we’re eating?  Fish?  No broccoli or bread?  No potatoes?”

“I like simple,” Telly says.  Then he shouts, “Is this the best damn fish you ever had or what?”

I point out to him that the screen on the porch has lots of little holes and that I can hear him just fine.  That’s before I see who is passing by the house on the street. 

“Doesn’t stink like pork?  Does it?  Hey Big Jeff,” he calls down the driveway, over the head of the neighbor on the sidewalk closest to my house, to the big neighbor on the far side walking his dog.  “Sorry, Eddie,” he calls to the over-shouted neighbor, Ed Howell, who likes to smoke whole pigs.  “Didn’t see you.”

“Telly, what is it with you and Ed?”

“I don’t like the way he talks about you.”

“When do you spend time with Ed to hear how he talks about anyone?”

“I hear things.”  He taps his head.

“From other neighbors?  Or is this self-generated?”

“How is your fish?” he asks me with cool disregard.

“It’s the best damn fish I ever had,” I shout through all the little screen holes.

Telly laughs. 

I grab a couple Kombuchas from the fridge and pass one to Telly.

“I can’t wait for this virus to run its course and let my grandson-in-law start going back into the office again.”

“That bad?”

“Geezsh.  I pretend to feel otherwise, for Ally’s sake, God bless her.  Neither of us can say the words ventilator, shortage or preparedness, without Scottie getting all indignant.”

“Is that what you call Scott?”

Telly smiles.  “I like you Loch.  I like Toby.  Let’s not ever get on opposites sides of the line.”

“What line is that?”

“Any line that keeps us from using words that upset my dear Ally’s husband.”

“Deal.”

Basic food groups ungroup…sort of.