Fourth Coat

Earl looked at the bottle tree. Then he went to his truck.

Lynn screwed the new doorbell to the frame. "$39, with a camera," she told Cal. "It draws a box round anybody on the porch and sends it to my phone."

"What for?"

"So whoever's painting, I'll have a face by morning."

"I didn't do it."

"Then you've got nothing to worry about."

"She died out here," Cal said. "In that chair."

"At quarter past two in the morning, because she would not come in to bed," Lynn said. "Broke her hip in March and still sat out every night. 91, and stubborn as a nail."

"She wasn't stubborn."

"Baby, I lived with her 18 years. When I was five, I'd stand at that window every night and say goodnight to a man on the steps. Made up, the way little girls do."

"What did Gran do?"

"Yanked the curtain so hard the rings sang. Said if I did it again, she'd paint me blue too."

Earl laughed from the ladder. "Where do you sleep, Cal?"

"Front room. By that window."

"Huh," said Earl, and kept rolling.

"And get that bucket off the porch," Lynn said. "It looks like a mop closet."

"She kept water by that chair every night I knew her," Earl said. "I always thought it was for the ferns."

"She didn't have ferns."

Cal carried the bucket in and set it down inside the door.

---

"Person at your front door," Lynn read off her phone. "That's 31 people, Cal, and 97 degrees, and it's only two."

"Why's the ceiling white?" asked a woman in a straw hat. Her father waited in a wheelchair at the foot of the steps. "Every porch on this street is blue."

"Fresh start," said Lynn. "You're Pam? You called."

"I'm Pam, and that's Dad. He's 88 and he wants a porch to sit on. He grew up on the Carolina coast, so he'll make me paint it back on day one."

"Then you'll know where to buy the paint."

"Full price," Pam said, "if I can." She frowned at the yard. "Your tree's talking."

"It's a dead bush with bottles on."

"There's no wind, though. Listen." Clink, clink, clink. "One bottle, then the next, from the street end toward the house."

"Old glass," said Lynn. "It ticks in the heat."

"Not like that, it doesn't," Pam said. "Dad. Dad, are you seeing this?"

At five past three the last car left, and the phone buzzed again.

"Cal, come look. Top step, full sun, nobody there. And it's drawn a box round nothing."

"How tall?"

"Tall. A tall man." She deleted it. "Glitch."

---

The phone woke her at 2:14 a.m. She rang Earl before she let herself think.

"Lynn? I'm on 16, halfway to Macon. They called at midnight, she's in labor."

"The camera says there's somebody on the porch. It's the box again, Earl, round nothing, on the top step."

"Is it moving?"

"Up one step. Under the roof. Now it's on the porch."

"Where's Cal?"

"In bed. No, the front door just went. That's Cal on the screen, with Gran's ladder and a can of paint."

"Is he awake?"

"His feet are bare. His eyes are open, and there's nobody in them."

"He's asleep."

"He's asleep." She almost laughed. "Oh, thank God, it's only him. I'll go get him in."

"Lynn. Where's the box?"

She looked.

"It's moving toward him along the white. It's stopped at the foot of the ladder. He's climbing."

"Lynn."

"He's painting over the door, one stroke, another. And the box is going back, Earl. Every stroke, it goes back a foot."

"Like it's at the edge of the water," Earl said.

"It wasn't a vandal," Lynn said. "It wasn't Gran being spiteful. He's been out there every night we've been here."

"And before you came?"

"Gran, in March, with that hip. She couldn't climb. So she sat in the chair."

"In the way," Earl said.

"He's nearly done, and it's backed right off. Okay. I'm going out to get him."

"Lynn, wait. Watch it."

"It's going sideways along the white, round the end of his stripe." She was already running. "Earl, it's going round."

At the screen door her phone pinged.

"Earl. There are two boxes."

"Where?"

"One's me."

"Where's the other one, Lynn?"

"Right outside the screen. Right in front of my face."

The screen door opened a hand's width on its spring, by itself. And held.

"Earl, the door's opening. It's holding the door."

"Water. Is there any water?"

"Gran's bucket." She shoved the screen wide and threw the water, hard and low, across the boards, rail to wall. The screen banged shut. "It's on the far side of the wet."

"How long does wet last out there?"

"In this heat? Minutes."

"Then get the brush off him. Wide strokes, rail to wall, right across in front of the door. Forget pretty."

"Cal, baby. Give me the brush."

He gave it to her without waking and stepped down. She climbed. The paint smelled of chalk and pond water.

"Talk to me, Lynn."

"Two strokes wide. The boards are going pale under me from the edges."

"Keep going."

"Four more feet. Two. Last stroke."

She turned the phone over on the rail.

"It's backed off, Earl. Right back to the top step. It's not coming up."

"Then go in," Earl said. "Bring the boy and lock it. I'll come with a roller."

---

Cal woke on the front room floor at six with blue on his hands. His mother sat against the door.

"I did it again," he said.

"You did it again."

"Gran said I would. She said once your hands learn it young, they do it on their own."

"When did she teach you?"

"The summers you sent me down, from when I was six." He picked at a nail. "Every night it walks, you paint. She did it since she was a girl, till the hip."

"She called me in March," Lynn said. "Nearly every night. She said she was lonely."

"She said that so you'd send me."

"I said you had school."

Cal did not answer that.

Earl's truck pulled up at noon. He climbed out grinning. "Girl," he said. "Seven pounds, loud as a kettle. Her mama threw me out to come and paint."

"Earl, I need a fourth coat. Blue, the ceiling, the door frame and the windows. I'll pay you double."

"I'll get the roller," Earl said.

Lynn sat down in Gran's chair. From there, she saw, you looked straight at the top step.

"Cal. What does it want?"

"Gran said it wants back in. It used to have the front room."

"Have it how?"

"When you were little, if she was late with the brush, it would come in and stand over your bed."

"I'd have seen it."

"She said you did. She said you used to say goodnight to it."

He looked at the window, at the curtain rings.

"She said that's why she yanked the curtain. It was starting to say it back."