Marcus Greene's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The man with the dog finished his tea. The woman with the grocery bags checked her phone and frowned at the sky. The sun had dropped behind the roofline across the street. Marcus felt the porch dim around him. Without light, they would leave. He needed to hold them here past dark. He stood up from the swing. "Give me a minute," he said. "I've got something inside." He went through the front door and stopped in the hallway. The overhead porch fixture had been broken since spring. He had never called an electrician. He didn't own string lights. The hardware store closed at six. He thought of candles and pictured the wind knocking them over. Then he thought of the closet under the stairs. He knelt and pulled boxes aside until he found it. His grandmother's oil lantern sat where he had put it after the funeral. The metal frame was scratched. The glass chamber was clean. He unscrewed the base. Still half full of oil. He carried it out to the porch and set it on the small table between the chairs. "That yours?" the man asked. "My grandmother's," Marcus said. He struck a match and touched it to the wick. The flame caught. He lowered the glass and turned the knob until the light steadied. It threw a soft circle across the table and up onto the striped cushions of the swing. The woman set her phone down. "I haven't seen one of those lit in years," she said. She slid her grocery bags closer to her feet and settled back. The dog put its chin on the man's shoe. The man refilled his cup from the cooler. Marcus sat down on the swing and pushed off with one foot. The chains creaked. The lantern held the three of them inside its light while the rest of the street went black. They stayed. The woman told a story about her mother's kitchen. The man laughed at the right places. A teenager cut across the lawn on his way home, saw the light, and slowed. He didn't come up the steps, but he looked. Marcus marked that look and filed it away. By nine the woman gathered her bags. The man whistled for the dog. They thanked him and went down the steps into the dark. Marcus stayed on the swing with the lantern burning beside him. Three people. Two hours past sundown. The light had done it. He looked out at the quiet street. The houses across the way glowed blue behind their curtains. His porch had voices in it tonight, but only until the tea ran out and the stories thinned. He had lit the space. He hadn't filled it. The porch was too quiet between sentences. His grandmother had never let a silence sit that long. She'd had the radio for that.