“Back from the garden center again?”

Earl smiled. “Oh yeah. Never a day I’m not down there.” He paused. “So how goes the writing?”

“Not a bad day.” I think Earl had a hard time understanding how I can make a living sitting inside the house all day, not getting my hands dirty. I said, “Walked down to the corner, sent off my property taxes.”

Earl looked off in the direction of the mailbox. “How’s the house?”

I shook my head. “I’ve gone through three tubes of caulking on our bedroom window. I don’t even bother to put the ladder away. Every time it rains, a little more water gets in.”

“You complain?”

“I’ve phoned the developer. They say they’re going to come, nothing happens. I’m gonna drop by the office; maybe appearing in person will make a difference. You hear that thing on the news?”

“What?”

“Guy comes into a variety store, shoots the owner right in the head, right in front of his wife.”

“Jesus. Here?” He tossed his butt onto his driveway, reached through the front window of his truck to grab a pack up on the dash.

“No. Downtown. Sarah phoned from work, she’d sent a reporter and a photographer out to cover it, was telling me about it, then I heard it on the radio.”

“Jesus,” Earl said again. “I’d never live downtown.” He stuck a new cigarette into his mouth, lit it, took a long drag, then blew the smoke out through his nose. Earl’s history, as he’d explained it to me, involved living out on the East Coast, a bit of time out west. He was divorced, had no children, and seemed an unlikely candidate for the neighborhood, rattling around in a big, new house all by himself. But he’d told me he felt he needed to put some roots down somewhere, and a new subdivision, where a lot of people could use his talents as a landscaper, seemed as good a place as any to make a living. Paul had called on him several times for advice, although “pestered” might be a better word. Earl had been reluctant at first to let my son into his world, but finally, maybe just to get Paul off his back, he’d agreed to give him a few tips, and a couple of times on weekends I’d noticed Earl and Paul shirtless and sweating under a cloudless sky in the far corner of our yard, digging holes and planting small bushes.

“Well, we’ve been that route,” I said. “Living downtown. It was a worry, especially with kids, you know? Teenagers? There’s so much they can get into in the city.”

“Not that they can’t get into trouble out here,” Earl said. “You know kids, they’ll find trouble wherever they are. Who’s that clown?”

Earl had been looking down the opposite side of the street, a couple of houses past Trixie’s. It was a guy going door to door. Tall and thin, short gray hair, about fifty I figured, armed with a clipboard. He was too casually dressed, in jeans and hiking boots and a plaid shirt, to be anyone official.

“Beats me,” I said. He had drawn a woman to the door, who listened, hanging her head out while she held the door open a foot, while he went through some spiel.

“I’m betting driveway resurfacing,” Earl said. “Every other day, some asshole wants to resurface my driveway.”

The woman was shaking her head no, and the man took it well, nodding politely. He was moving on to the next house when he saw me and Earl. “Hey,” he said, waving.

“Or ducts,” Earl said to me. “Maybe he want to clean your ducts.”

“I don’t have any ducks,” I said. “I don’t even have chickens.”

“You guys got a moment?” the man said, only a couple of yards away now. We shrugged, sure.

“My name’s Samuel Spender,” he said. “I’m with the Willow Creek Preservation Society.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I didn’t give my name. Earl didn’t give his either.

“I’m trying to collect names for a petition,” Spender said. “To protect the creek.”

“From what?” I asked.

“From development. Willow Creek is an environmentally sensitive area and one of the last unspoiled areas in Oakwood, but there are plans to build hundreds of homes backing right onto the creek, which will threaten a variety of species, including the Mississauga salamander.”

“Who?” It was the first word from Earl.

“Here’s a picture,” Spender said, releasing a snapshot from under the clip of his clipboard. We looked at a four-legged, pale green creature with oversized eyes resting in a person’s hand.

“Looks like a lizard,” Earl said.

“It’s a salamander,” Spender said. “Very rare. And threatened by greedy developers who value profit over the environment.” He thrust the clipboard toward us, which held a lined sheet with about twenty signatures on it. There were other pages underneath, but whether they were blank or filled with names I couldn’t tell.

I hate signing petitions, even for things I believe in. But when it’s an issue where I don’t feel fully informed, I have a standard dodge. I said to Spender, “Do you have any literature you could leave me, so I could read up on it?”

“Yeah,” said Earl. “Likewise.”

Something died in Spender’s eyes. He knew he’d lost us. “Just read The Suburban. They’ve been following the story pretty closely. The big-city papers, like The Metropolitan, they don’t give a shit because they’re owned by the same corporations that put up the money for these developments.”

This didn’t seem like a good time to mention where my wife worked. Spender thanked us for our time and turned back for the sidewalk to resume door-knocking. “That house?” I said, pointing. “That’s mine, so you can skip it.”

“Salamanders,” Earl said to me quietly. “Think you can barbecue them?”

“They’d probably slip through the grills,” I said.

We chatted a moment longer. I told Earl, even though he hadn’t asked, that Paul intended to pursue his interest in landscaping, maybe go to college someday for landscape design. It was, for me, a surprising development. Most kids his age wanted to design video games.

“He’s good,” Earl offered. “He doesn’t mind getting his hands in the dirt.”

“It’s not my thing. Writers, you put a shovel in our hands, we start whining about blisters after five minutes.”

It was looking very much as though Sarah was not going to come to our front door and retrieve her keys. I felt I’d given her long enough to redeem herself, told Earl I had to go, and headed back to our house. On my way in, I took Sarah’s set of keys from the lock and slid them into the front pocket of my jeans. I could hear her in the kitchen, and called out, “Hey!”

“Back here,” she said. It was a good-sized kitchen, with a bay window looking out onto the backyard, lots of counter space, and a dark spot in the ceiling above the double sink, where water from our improperly tiled shower stall had dripped down over several months. I tried not to look up at it too often; it made me crazy. I had to go over to the home sales office and make a fuss.

My earlier theory that Sarah had come through the front door weighed down with groceries was right. Empty bags littered the top of the kitchen counter. Some carrots and milk still had to be put into the fridge.

I turned to the fridge, which I seemed to recall was white, but was covered with so many magnets and pizza coupons and snapshots that it was hard to be sure. A large part of the door was taken up by a calendar that mapped out our lives a month at a time. It was on here that we recorded dental appointments, Sarah’s shifts, lunches with my editor, dinners with friends, all in erasable marker. I noticed, just before I opened the door to put away the carrots and milk, that we were to attend an interview with Paul’s science teacher in a little over a week. And a couple of days after that, Sarah’s birthday was indicated with stars and exclamation points, drawn by her.

“Hey,” she said.

“I heard about the thing, the shooting, on the radio,” I said.

Sarah shrugged. “They’re gonna take one story for the front, do a color piece for the front of Metro.”