Who is Spring?

Who is Spring? What is her name?

Many words describe her.

Spring is a tease who warms your limbs until you fall asleep in her embrace, 

only to be rudely awakened as she unfurls a chilly wind.

She is a flirt who dresses in brilliant finery. It glows in the sun, and you stop to admire her beauty, 

only to find it diminished by passing clouds.

She is a heartbreaker who entices you with promises of picnics, egg hunts and barefoot strolls, 

only to laugh as you stare out the window at the snow flurries.

She is a seductress who tempts you to dig into the back of last summer’s closet and don your prettiest, barest sundress, 

only to find yourself shivering in an unexpected rainfall – and not a warm one.

She leads us on but is undependable, playing with us, causing us both joy and angst. 

But, oh, how we love her! How we miss her when the calendar turns, and she is no more. Other seasons have their charms, of course. 

Summer, with her patio brunches and softball games under the stars. 

Autumn, with her kaleidoscope of colored trees and the scent of wood burning stoves. 

Winter, with the taste of hot chocolate and her ability to create a whole new, silent world with her pure drifting snow.

But Spring. Well, she is the darling of the seasons.

And when those patio brunches are a distant memory, and the trees once again have bare branches and all the snow is dirty and melting, we long for her once again.

And she will come. 

And one bright, sunny morning, we will stand barefoot in the new grass with the sun on our shoulders and a soft breeze around us, and consider the lilies of the field, and then – and then we will know her name.

Because before the lilies, there was the hard, cold earth. Before the robins, there was the empty nest. Before the blooming cherry trees, there were the plain, bare branches. And before the new light of Spring, there was the cold dark of Winter.

She will come to us and fill our hearts and our souls. And in that moment, we will see, and we will know her name. 

Spring – her name is resurrection.

Ordinary Time

It's mid January, but  no matter how many times I vacuum, I still find Christmas tree needles in my living room carpet. Those little suckers are stubborn.

But, for the most part, Christmas is behind us for another year. The ornaments are packed up and back in storage, the stockings tucked away in their boxes and already the first hints of spring are popping up in department stores.

The church calendar calls this Ordinary Time. 

Well, doesn't THAT sound exciting? Seriously, the characters in our nativity sets are relegated to the attic - even the wise men (those late comers to the party) have disappeared into the sands of time. The next High Holy Day will be Easter. 

What do we, as Christians, do with Ordinary Time? What even happens on that dusty road tucked between cradle and cross - birth and resurrection?

Let's imagine.

It's Ordinary Time, and somewhere in Bethlehem an innkeeper yawns as he pours early morning feed into a trough. As the cows and donkeys press in around him, does he sometimes think of the young couple he let shelter there and the newborn that slept in this very manger and wonder what happened to them? And those rough looking shepherds who showed up in the middle of the night - he had never understood what that was about, 

It's Ordinary Time, and somewhere in Egypt, a young boy with dark skin and curly black hair laughs with his friends as they play leap frog in the sand. He teases his younger brother and pulls his sisters' hair. 

It's Ordinary Time, and somewhere in Nazareth a young couple grow older. They are busy with children and work and home. Days, maybe weeks pass and they don't think of it at all - the angel, the shepherds, those regal men from the east with their expensive gifts and beautiful clothing. But often, at night, as they lay in bed, they whisper to each other and marvel what it all means. 

It's Ordinary Time, and somewhere in Jerusalem the same parents frantically search for their son. When they find him, they scold (wouldn't you?). They must have been baffled. This same adolescent who has to be reminded to feed the lambs is in the temple. And he's the center of attention - in a group of spiritual teachers, no less.

It's Ordinary Time, and somewhere building a wall or repairing an oxen yoke, a sweaty woodworker pauses in his labor because he hears the voice of his Father. It's time.

He wipes his brow, wraps his tools and finds his brothers. He tells them to take care of his mother. He steps out of his doorway and pauses. Then he walks out onto the road. 

It's time to change the world.

And for us, life can be extraordinary.

  

The Bird I Didn't See

Several years ago my husband and I vacationed in Key West, Florida. One of the first things I noticed were the wild roosters roaming the streets. These guys are apparently descended from fighting roosters. This terrible "sport" has long been outlawed, and now the roosters rule!

We also saw birds on wallpaper, courtesy of the James Audubon House.

But some of our favorite bird viewing took place at the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory. Here, we saw flamingos, and many bright and lively little winged creatures.

And, of course, we had to visit the Hemmingway House to see the famous five toed cats!

  

All these creatures are wonderful examples of God's handiwork. The bravest. The brightest. The most unusual. The creatures that people travel to and pay money to see. 

Were there sparrows in Key West? I'm sure there were. Did I notice them? No.

Although, I should have. This blog, Sky Blue Sparrow, is named in honor of these little guys. Because Jesus mentions them by name.

He tells us in Matthew 10, verse 29, that although two sparrows are sold for a cent, not one of them will fall to the ground apart from our Father. In Luke 12, verse 6, it's five sparrows for two cents. Bottom line is that sparrows were cheap.

If a person was too poor to purchase a lamb or goat for sacrifice to God, a sparrow was acceptable.

Tiny, dull grayish brown, plentiful and cheap, That's the sparrow. And yet. And yet...God sees every one. Not one falls to the gound that God does not see. 

Because God sees. God SEES! He always sees. Not just the rich. Not just the powerful. Not just the beautiful, the most holy, the eloquent speaker and the soaring eagle. God sees the tiny sparrow, pecking on the ground. 

And because God sees him, we can believe that He sees us. We matter. Just as we are.

I find comfort in this, and hope you do, too.

Blessings, Debbie

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Holly sat on the floor and sipped her coffee. She stared at the photographs scattered around her like steppingstones to the past. Unearthed after years of hiding in the recesses of the 

bedroom closet, these artifacts were now coming to light as a result of extreme boredom.   

One does tend to get bored while stuck at home during a worldwide pandemic.   

Once exposed to the light of day, the pictures had taunted her with their disarray until she had sorted them into vaguely chronological piles. She let her eyes wander over them. 

First was a stack from her childhood. Early years of black and white baby pictures co-mingled with ancient relatives, few of whom Holly recognized. And her old school pictures.  Have mercy!  

An 8x10 glossy peeked out and she retrieved it. A prom picture from 1968. Seventeen-year-old Holly clutched a bouquet of pink carnations - French bouquets the girls called them. Her hair cascaded down her back in ringlets and she seemed to float in a cloud of tulle. Her date had been named Tom. Or Tim? She didn’t remember. What she did remember was the transformation of the high school gym into a fairyland of lights and music.  

She set the picture down and moved to the next stack. 

Wedding pictures. Several professional wedding pictures of her and Dan were displayed throughout the house, but these were snapshots from friends and family. If Dan were still alive,  they would reminisce about the ceremony and reception. They would laugh about his ex-girlfriends and her stuffy relatives. Now, though…well.  

She put the pictures aside. 

There were quite a few pictures of Holly during her career as a librarian. She had loved her work. Most of the time.  

Being the librarian of a small town was sometimes like walking a tightrope, and during the fall of 1979, she had almost been fired for her refusal to ban Catcher in the Rye from the collection. She was again called on the carpet in  2001 for allowing the town’s homeless few to feel at home in the library, occupying the chairs and using the restrooms.   

But she stood firm. Holly believed that people mattered more than things. And no group of people mattered more than any other. Anyway, like most things, the problems blew over 

eventually. Now she chuckled at how her hairstyle had evolved through the years. 

 

She moved on to the next group of pictures, which followed the transformation of her daughter, Cecily, from a blurry spec on an ultrasound to a lovely young woman. Now, this was 

nice! She leaned back against the wall and stretched out her legs. 

  

There was Cecily, in a white Christening gown, screaming into the ear of a stoic Father Melrose. And there she was on her first Christmas morning, sitting in front of the tree, surrounded by tissue paper and bows. There was Cecily on her first day of Kindergarten. Cecily on a pony. Cecily with birthday cakes and at school programs, church youth choir and school 

dances. 

Cecily at her White Coat Ceremony. Who would have guessed that her little girl would grow up to be a pediatrician? 

She leaned forward and surveyed the pictures again. So many moments. So many years. Not to mention the ones safely stored on her phone and available to her at the touch of her finger any time and any place. 

It had been a good life.  

And now? Now, there was a listlessness that, all too often, hovered nearby; like a mosquito that droned constantly, but evaded the fly swatter.

 

She gave herself a shake. Life is good right now, she thought. Why, just last night Cecily came by and they shared take-out tacos while sitting six feet apart on the porch. Holly did love a 

good taco! 

She noticed a last group of pictures that had been pushed aside and reached for them. College pictures.  

 

She flipped through them. Those were the real formative years, Holly thought. At least for her. There was her first roommate, Cindy. Cindy had been a barrel of laughs. They were Facebook friends now. There was Holly at a bonfire and Holly at chapel. There were football games and debate teams and boys. Lots of boys. And one or two special boys. 

There was a Holly dressed as a pirate on a long-ago Halloween. And dressed as a hippie. No, wait! That wasn’t a costume. That was how she had dressed. Holly studied the image. 

The girl in the picture had long brown hair held back by a beaded headband. She wore a tie-dyed T shirt and bell bottom jeans with leather sandals. She held a poster with the words, “MAKE LOVE NOT WAR!”  

Her mother had been scandalized.

 

Where was that girl now?   

Holly regarded the picture for a long time. She carried it into the kitchen and leaned it against the saltshaker. She looked at it while she ate dinner. She carried it to the bathroom and 

looked at it while she brushed her teeth. 

She put it on her bedside table. It was the last thing she saw when she fell asleep and the first thing she saw when she woke up. 

Holly spent the next morning returning the pictures to their boxes and filing them away in the closet again. They weren’t going anywhere. Then she found some cardboard in the garage and some paint. 

As she carried them to the kitchen table and set to work, she realized she was humming. When was the last time she had hummed? 

Holly ate an early dinner that night. At 5:00, she dressed, then went to her bathroom mirror.   

The woman in the reflection had short grey hair held back by a Lilly Pulitzer headband. She wore a red polo shirt and white capris with leather sandals. 

She held a poster with the words, “BLACK LIVES MATTER!”  

Holly topped off her outfit with a blue face mask and, still humming, headed downtown.   

The End

The Lord is My Shepherd

If you are like me, you have a morning routine. 

Get up.

Let the dog out (and Chip is not a morning dog).  

Get coffee.

Read a devotion (well, most of the time).  I am currently enjoying Glimpses of Grace by Madeleine L'Engle, a gift from a friend.

Check CNN app to see what happened overnight in the world.

Look at email.  

Ah, email...there they are, waiting like old friends, those emails you get on a routine basis.  Some of them you can't get rid of.  I once ordered a subscription to Golf Digest for Dad and it took me forever to get them to STOP!  Some of them are coupons - 95% of which you care nothing about, but you don't want to stop them just in case you miss an outstanding sale. 

One of my daily emails comes from K-Love, which if you don't know is a Christian Radio Station.  I get their "verse of the day" each morning and I do like it.  Some days it's just nice, but some days it really strikes a cord.  This is one of those days.

This verse - familiar from Psalm 23 (the Good Shepherd Psalm). - was the verse of the day.

I grew up on the King James version which reads Surely good and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  Now I usually use the New Revised Standard which reads nearly the same.  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

Which is nice.  Amazing and wonderful, really.  But follow is not the same as pursue.  Is it?  

Then I looked the verse up in The Message, another favorite translation of mine.  It reads, 
Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I'm back home in the house of God for the rest of my life.   How awesome is that?

So, just for fun, I looked up the verse in some commentaries and found that it's one of those words that can be translated either as follow or pursue.  

Being humans, I know for a fact that sometimes we need to be pursued.  We need to be chased after, found and rescued.  It can be scary out there in the world and it's nice to know that we are safe.

MacArthur Park - Love it or hate it?

Recently, Steve and I found ourselves having a discussion about music.  Old music.  Which is pretty much the only kind I know.  Now I tend to listen to audio tapes of books.

Which is good and bad.  I hear a lot of wonderful books, but I miss a lot of great music.  I need to find a balance I guess.

So, somehow we were talking about Richard Harris and the movie Camelot. 

Steve asked me if I remembered MacArthur Park.

Do I remember MacArthur Park?  Do I remember MacArthur Park?  Best song ever!

I was thirteen when it came out and if there was ever a song to reflect teenage angst, that was it.

The image of a cake being left out in the rain. (Sob).  

A cake that took a long time to bake. (Sob, Sob.).

And to never have that recipe again. (Buckets of tears).

I didn't know that Harris was the first to record MacArthur Park.  And Steve didn't know that I could on and on about the song. 

Fast forward to the next night when we had friends over for dessert and a game of chicken foot.

Since it was fresh on my mind, I brought up MacArthur Park and what a great song it was.  It turns out NOT EVERYONE AGREES!  While one of my friends and I belted out that we didn't think that we could take it cause it took so long to bake it, another one of those present laughed and called the song dumb.  I was amazingly hurt.  In fact, I found myself kind of worked up about it.

But, she's not alone.  Apparently.

MacArthur Park was named in NPR's, All Songs Considered, The Worst Songs of All Time?  It was considered by some to be a song that takes itself too seriously.

Well, whatever.  I did learn a few things I didn't know.  MacArthur Park is in California and is dedicated to and named after  Douglas MacArthur

Here is a bright and beautiful picture from 2015 of the park with artsy spheres. 

But to me, MacArthur Park will always be a mystical, magical place where lovelorn tragedy co-mingled with heart-breaking lyrics. 

MacArthur Park.  Do you love it, or hate it?

Memories

While looking over this blog recently (with plans to revamp and renew) I found one of my fiction stories that wasn't published on here at the time of its writing.  It was a finalist in the Carnegie Center Writing Contest of that year and I still love it.  It is a little dated, now, but not much.

Take yourself back a few years and meet Anthony, a well-loved and respected and just retired drama teacher of a small high school.

When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory, too.
And a new day will begin. From Cats, the Musical

The last load. 

He eased the front door closed behind him, carefully leaning to the right as the three cartons balanced in his arms swayed to the left. Two battered travel mugs and a grinning stuffed squirrel teetered on top of the boxes. He tilted his body back slightly and felt it all settle into place. Good.
Something brushed his ankle. Gus. He began to walk in the shuffling gait of an old man, neither foot actually leaving the ground as he moved forward. He imagined the headline in tomorrow's paper.

“BELOVED HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA TEACHER FOUND DEAD. Anthony Caprice apparently tripped over his own feet, hit his head on the dining room table, and died on his first evening of retirement from Gerald R. Ford High School. Survived by one bad cat”. 

Eventually making it into the dining room, Anthony set the boxes down on the table. Gus promptly pounced up to check out the wealth of unexplored riches. Cat heaven!

Anthony stared. The assortment of odds and ends he had accumulated in his teaching career was dismaying. Coffee mugs, lost for decades, had emerged from dark corners and from under ancient props. And no telling what was lurking in those boxes. 

“Just look at this, Gus! 32 years worth of stuff!”

Anthony talked to his cat frequently and was not ashamed of the fact. After all, being “artsy” had its advantages. People expected a little eccentricity in the creatively gifted, and who was he to disappoint?

While Gus tentatively sniffed at the squirrel, Anthony's eyes fell on two things among the jumble. A scrapbook presented to him by the cast of the senior class play, and a bottle of Scotch; a gift from Principal Ellis.

He picked up the bottle and walked to the kitchen where he got a juice glass from the cabinet above the microwave and poured a shot. He opened a can of Fancy Feast, forked it into a bowl and watched as Gus came running.

“Have some dignity, Pal,” he said. “What do you think you are, a dog?'”

While the Himalayan chowed down, Anthony moved to the window and peered through the slated blinds. Shriveled leaf corpses from last autumn covered the porch and the few pieces of lawn furniture were dingy from spending winter months exposed to the elements. Anthony hated his backyard. 

He took the bottle, glass and scrapbook to the easy chair by the front window. He reclined back, and set the bottle on the end table where his parents (tanned and healthy) smiled at him from a framed photo taken on the golf course. He'd have more time to visit them in Ft. Myers now. That was good.

As Anthony sipped, his mind floated over the past week; all the emotional good-byes and best wishes. Just today, Principal Ellis had tried again to talk him out of retiring.

“But everyone loves you!” he had pleaded, over coffee in the teachers' lounge.

“That's the point.” Anthony had replied. “If there is one thing a good actor knows, it is when to exit the stage.”

“At least you are leaving in good standing,” the principal sighed, referring to Rich Slator, the freshman class math teacher. Rich had resigned the previous year in lieu of being fired for inappropriate behavior with a female student.

“No skeletons in your closet, Anthony. That I know of.”

“True,” Anthony had said. “I'm too boring for that.”

The scrapbook on his lap was heavy and thick. He took a swig, relaxed deeper into his chair and opened the cover. 

1980. The beginning. His own 23 year old face smiled back at him. Shaggy blond hair and blue eyes. He hadn't changed so much (he didn't think). Silver threads among the gold and all that, but still, for a 55 year old guy, he was OK. 

There were scenes from his first senior class play (My Sister, Eileen), along with a list of What was happening in 1980. America watched Dallas on Friday nights. Billy Joel topped the charts with “It's Still Rock and Roll to Me”, and John Lennon was gunned down at the entrance to his New York apartment building.

In 1981, Anthony had helped with the prom committee and was faculty sponsor of the Tri-Hi-Y. He was reading a quote from President Reagan that "You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans,” when the book was suddenly buried under a pile of white and brown cat. Anthony moved Gus to the side.

“Say!” he said to the cat. “Did you know that the musical Cats was first performed in New York in 1981?” Anthony's fondness of that particular musical was a source of great amusement to his friends. Gus appeared unimpressed.

He read through 1982, 1983, 1984, refreshing his drink at 1985; the year of the first annual cast party. Anthony had hosted it here. Lights twinkled in the trees and white cloths
covered the picnic tables. He bought dolls at the Dollar Store; spray painted them gold, and presented them as Anthony Awards. He insisted the kids dress up and they loved it.

The party was a yearly fixture until 1994. Anthony remembered that night all too well. The decorating committee had hung lanterns from the trees, and placed luminaries in the grass. But he hadn't felt well. Not well at all. The garden was freshly tilled and the smell of the damp earth had made his stomach roll. He had barely made it through the evening.

The next year, (and every year since) the party was held in the private room of a nearby Ponderosa. Much easier, really.

1986, 1987, 1988, 1989. Anthony's cell vibrated, bringing him back to the present. He glanced down at the name. Hadley - his current girlfriend. Ignoring the phone, he returned his attention to the scrapbook.

Sometimes he grew melancholy, as he remembered friends and students who had died. Some had been ill or in an accident. A few were casualties of war.But other times he laughed out loud. If there was anything more unpredictable than live theater, he didn't know what it was. 

Take Kathleen Morrison, for example. The petite brunette had appeared perfectly poised as Juliet, in her purple velvet gown. Until the balcony scene. Now that was some projectile vomiting. He could still remember the look on Tyler Gains, aka Romeo's, face as he tried to dodge the putrid shower from above.

Or their high school adaptation of 1984. Felix (Amber Smith's white rat), made a break for freedom during the second act and flung his small self into the audience. Moses, when he parted the Red Sea, had nothing on Felix.

1990. What a year that had been. He had broken both legs while cleaning the gutters of the old Victorian he had inherited from his grandmother. 

Anthony loved that house. Not only was it located in the historical district, and was worth much, much more than he could ever afford on his own, but it was a honey of a chick magnet. Women took one look at it and wanted to fill it with children.

His last memory of the gutter incident was standing on the top of the ladder singing “Billie Jean is NOT My Child”. (Yes, he repeated to people time and again in the weeks to come….he knew you were not supposed to stand on the top of the ladder. He knew that.)

And, still, it would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the wretched little demon that attacked as he stretched to reach the end of the gutter. He had no recollection of the neighbors running to his aid or the paramedics loading him into the ambulance. But by all accounts, he had been screaming one word over and over until the morphine kicked in. 

“Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!”

He returned to school a couple of weeks later in a wheelchair. At the winter assembly, Principal Young grandly presented him with Rocket J. Squirrel, a plush toy animal. Rocket became a regular fixture in the senior plays, perched on a bookcase or nestled in a corner. He received billing in every program for the next 22 years.

Anthony chuckled, drank, and then waded through the next several years watching himself grow older. 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994. 

1994 had been the year of Jessica.

He recalled the day when Mrs. Gates, the school's ancient guidance counselor, waved him inside her office. It was shortly after the auditions for Our Town and Jessica Byrd had won a small part in several crowd scenes.

“I love it that Jessica is in the play! This could work wonders for her self-esteem.” The petite white haired woman paused, adjusted her bifocals, and said, “I think I should tell you something on a 'need to know' basis. Jessica's father is a turd.”

“Is that a technical term?” Anthony had asked with a grin.

“It's a professional opinion. I believe the legal terminology is alcoholic and child molester.”

“Then why isn't he is jail?” Anthony asked.

“It is hard to make things stick when Jessica won't talk about it. We just need to get her through high school, out of the house and then on to college. I have been working with her on scholarship possibilities. She’s a bright girl.  My point is that her mother works second shift at the bread factory leaving Jessica in charge of the house. I'm not sure how Daddy will take to her participation in the play if it means disrupting his “schedule”. Just be prepared for unpleasantness if he shows up at school.”

Daddy didn't show up at school. Oh, no. If he had, things would have gone differently. If he had, Anthony could have still enjoyed his backyard.

In fact, Wilbur Byrd disappeared a few days later. The police made inquiries, but given his drinking problem, everyone assumed he would eventually turn up, fit as a fiddle and mean as ever.
He never did. 

1995 through 1999. O.J. Simpson stood trial for murder, Dolly the sheep was cloned and the movie Titanic was released.

During this time Anthony let his garden go. (It was too much work. He said this to anyone who would listen). He laid sod and carefully tended it until there was no evidence he had once harvested tomatoes from that piece of ground. He began to drink at night and often woke up from alcohol-infused nightmares involving blood and fireplace pokers. 

“Dark days, Gus. Those were some dark days.”

During this time, life at good old Gerald R. Ford had rolled on. The school year had its rhythm and Anthony was busier than ever. He learned to compartmentalize his life, keeping
school and personal life separate, and in 1998 was voted Teacher of the Year for the school district. His parents were very proud.

He made it to New York twice to see Cats on Broadway.

Jessica graduated, made it into the state school and vanished from Anthony's radar. Speculation about her father's disappearance dwindled. He was soon forgotten. 

Well, by most people. 

Anthony thought of him every time he looked at the tools by his fireplace. Or at the garden that was no longer a garden.

In 2000, something shifted in Anthony. He could not have said why, exactly, but with the dawn of the new millennium, he felt a rising sense of optimism. He was alive, still relatively young, and healthy. He had a job he loved and friends. It was time to get a grip.

Over the winter break, he emptied the cabinets of liquor, scrubbed the house from top to bottom, and adopted a tiny ball of energy which he named Asparagus after the theater cat in his favorite musical. He also loaded the set of fireplace tools into the car, drove them three counties over and left them behind a Goodwill Store.

2001-2011. The pages through the next several years were even more detailed, thanks to the advent of digital photography and on-line storage. Anthony enjoyed re-living the past decade as he poured another drink. 

The photos showed how trends changed as years passed. Boomboxes gave way to Walkmans, which gave way to iPods. The school was renovated in 2008, and after an excruciating year in portables, Gerald R. Ford was now a state of the art facility. 

In 2009, America elected Barack Obama as president. Anthony remembered the furor when he suggested doing “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner” as the class play in the early 80's. 

2012. Anthony Caprice retires.

Wilbur Byrd had been missing for 17 years. 

Wilbur Byrd had been dead for 17 years.

He closed the book.

He picked up the remote and cruised the channels, landing on the travel channel. Anthony loved to travel. Unfortunately, travel required money. At least, serious travel did. And a teacher's retirement would only stretch so far.  Maybe he would sell the Victorian. His grandmother would have been happy for him to do so if he wanted. It would bring a nice price, that's for sure. 

“ We could go to Paris and London. Want to see the London Bridge, Gus? Or maybe a Caribbean cruise. Just miles and miles of water and beaches!” Was it his imagination or did the cat look horrified? “Cat on a boat! Thas funny.” His thick tongue made speech difficult.

But something was wrong with that plan. He tried to think what it was, but his head was fuzzy. He couldn't sell the house, because....

Because....

Why?

Then he remembered. He couldn't sell the house for the same reason he had never married and had a family. Or never considered relocating. Or never went into his backyard unless necessary.
If he sold the house, someone would buy it. And if someone bought it, they might decide to put in a garden. Or a pool. 

Anthony turned off the TV. He put the chair in its upright position and attempted to stand up, dumping an angry Gus to the floor.

“Sorry, Pal. Forgot you...you were there.”

Anthony found his legs uncooperative. He wove back and forth on his way to the kitchen.

“Take a lesson, Gus. Don drink. He was drunk the night he came here. That Byrd man. He shouldn’t have come here. He shouldn’t have pushed me. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have grabbed the poker.” Anthony's words were slurred as he poured the Scotch down the drain.

“You know...you know I really just wanted him to leave, thas all. He shouldn’t have come here.”

Holding the walls for balance, Anthony chuckled as he started down the hall to his bedroom.
“No skeletons in my closet. Nope. None in my closet at all.”

Gus waited until he was out of sight, then leapt to the kitchen counter and onto the narrow window sill over the sink. He looked out into the night. The yard was still and the night was quiet.