Jack told the girl he’d just sanded all the whitewash off the H the high school kids painted on rocks on the low hillside every year. He said he was going to paint the rocks brown so no one would have to see the damn thing anymore. The girl hid her braces with her hand to laugh, then smiled and dropped three wooden paint stirrers into his bag.

“Couple extra,” she said. “Case you need ’em.”

She was pretty, with glossy dark brown hair, and he thought about her on the drive home, thought about the high round breasts beneath the orange jumper, even thought about the braces. Would she think he was retired, shopping for paint in the middle of the day? He was old enough to retire but not rich enough yet; royalties still dribbled from his leases, and he always had his eye out for the next one, the strike-it-rich claim, the find that would take care of him for good. He’d tipped his cap to her at the door.

At home he made himself a sandwich on the clean kitchen counter and ate standing up, looking out the window. He had hoped for a while to con Michael into doing the deck—maybe offer him the beat-up blue pickup that wasn’t worth selling. Michael wouldn’t have to marry the paint-store girl (Jack wasn’t sure now that he wanted to give her up); he could just come home and paint the deck and be around. They had three bedrooms, one for each of them: Jack, Michael, Marie, all in the house again. But Michael wouldn’t come home. Jack found an old T-shirt and tore it into rags.

Out on the naked deck, he opened the first paint can with a screwdriver and bent to fish one of the stirrers out of the sack. He gave the paint a good stir and the smell made him blink. The wood seemed dry enough for a first coat before Marie came home. It was best to have things neat for her: explanations, surfaces, rooms. No crud on the bowl in the dish rack. He poured the deep auburn stain into a tray and began to roll it over the stubborn flecks of old stain, the streaks of gray weathered wood, the bright yellow grain the sander had exposed. The fumes made him light-headed and he hummed to keep his concentration.

When the paint in the tray ran out, he gave the can another stir and rested his weight on the wooden stirrer, which snapped in the can. His hand plunged into the thick wet stain, and the ragged point of the stirrer drove deep into his wrist with a sharp dragging feeling, snagging open veins along the way.

“Okay,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ.”