(Some of the things I need to do, even the trivial, sometimes seem to get themselves done without much help from me. For example, after planning to write about a serious subject this month, I decided at the last minute to do something light instead. “What about that piece of very-short fiction that’s never seen the light of day,” I thought. That led me to wonder what I had done this time last year, so I checked. Lo, and behold! I had posted a piece of very-short fiction. Discovering that led me to further wonder when I had written the piece I am posting today, so I checked that, too. The date was August 12, 2017. Funny how things work out.)

Paint

     It is that time of the summer when the full Moon casts its light through their bedroom window and directly onto the bed. Rose had noticed it one night three summers ago, their first summer in the house. They have looked forward to it every year since, waiting for this first-of-three nights when the window frame forms their very own lunar monolith.

     As they lie in bed, Rose asks, “You know what I want you to do, don’t you?”

     He grunts in response.

     She lightly pinches his arm in gentle rebuke. “Well?” she asks.

      “Okay. Tomorrow. Okay?” he says, relenting to her three-year request.

     “You’d better,” she warns.

     They know she could easily have done the painting herself by now, but she persisted instead in reminding him that he had said he would do it. Though it takes a while at times, Rose always has been good at finally getting him to do things he is reluctant or less than enthusiastic to do. She had succeeded in convincing him to give up his life, his job, and his apartment in the city of his birth and move to this tiny southern town her family has inhabited for generations. He has had none of the regrets he thought he might.

      They moved into this big, sprawling house left to her by her grandmother. He loves this house, though he could do without the knocks and thumps and bumps and creaking he has heard on occasion, noises that has caused him to get out of bed in the middle of the night expecting to confront an intruder. The only thing he’s ever encountered is the interplay of shadows caused by the collision of darkness and the ambient light of the night sky coming in through the kitchen windows’ faux-lace curtains, shadows that for a moment can seem like something more. Rose had said it is just how an old house sounds and had laughed when he told her about how the shadows had made him think he was seeing things out of the corners of his eyes.

      He had taken his time in taking care of the many things the house needed to have done when they moved in, but even he knows it is ridiculous that he still has not gotten around to painting the front porch. It isn’t as if the old paint is peeling and causing the neighbors to suck their teeth in disapproval as they pass by, and he doesn’t care one way or the other about the present color. But for Rose, it is the fact that the color, a pale mint she had loved when she visited as a girl, does not reflect the house’s new tenants. She had been no help when asked what color she thought suited them. “Surprise me,” she had said. “Alright, but just remember you said that,” he had answered, intentionally trying to make her wonder if he might choose something that would make her sorry she had left it up to him.

     In the morning, he is in the town’s only paint store and decides that, like the house itself, the porch’s spandrels and balustrades and columns will be white, with the floor being a standard grey. As for the ceiling, he smiles as the inspiration comes to him: he chooses a bright rose. Not long after, he is back at home in the t-shirt and raggedy jeans he wears for chores, up on the ladder with paint brush in hand, whistling happily as he applies Rose’s namesake-color to the porch’s ceiling.

     After a while, he pauses, sensing the presence of something; he wipes his brow with the back of his hand and glances around. There, under the gnarled elm that stands just beyond the front yard, is Mr. Crawford, watching him.

     The first time he had ever seen Mr. Crawford, strolling up the street toward him, it was if the man had been walking from out of the past. He was impeccably dressed for what turned out to be just a regular constitutional, but his clothes were not in the style of men his age, men who had been born right after World War II; his raiment was that of a nattily arrayed gentleman born a generation earlier. This morning, there he stands, cane in one hand, one hand resting against the tree.

     Upon being noticed, Mr. Crawford speaks. “That’s not what you’re going to need. Haints are strong around here, especially the ones in your wife’s family. You’re going to have to go and get yourself some of that Haint Blue.” He gives a slight doff of his straw fedora and moves on.

     Having no idea what the old man had been talking about, he recounts what happened over dinner. Rose’s explanation leaves him staring at her in disbelief. “Ghosts?” he asks. “Are you serious? He was talking about ghosts?”

     “No, not ghosts, evil spirits,” she says, the distinction lost on him. “Haint Blue is to keep evil spirits from coming in. They can’t cross water, so the Haint Blue on the porch ceiling fools them.”

     “So, if he believes in all that stuff, why is he so sure the ‘haints’ in your family are strong.”

     “Well, Mr. Crawford and my folks didn’t always get along,” Rose laughs, “and I can’t say that none of them might’ve seemed evil at times. Anyway, all haints aren’t necessarily evil. Some are just stubborn and selfish, some are just lost and confused.”

     “I don’t know if you’re just messing with me right now, or what, but I wish I didn’t know any of this.”

     Now they lie in moonglow once more, the only sound being that of Rose’s quiet breathing as she sleeps and the soft, ubiquitous din of the night creatures outside. Now he hears something else. “Just an old house,” he reminds himself, but that is not enough. He rises and creeps downstairs, as if hopeful of catching someone by surprise. There is nothing to be seen anywhere, just the shadows caused by darkness and light. In the kitchen, he pours and drinks a glass of water. He sets the glass in the sink and turns to take the back stairway up to bed. He stops; he is certain something has just suddenly and swiftly moved to avoid him. He stands stark still, his eyes sweeping the dark, his ears primed for the slightest sound. He sees nothing, hears nothing.

     Back in bed, he silently plans what he will do in the morning. He knows Rose will chide him, but he doesn’t care. “Well, Mr. Crawford,” he thinks, “Haint Blue it will be.”