Clyde Liffey lives near the water.
Bench
“Where’d you say it is?” one of the men asked.
“Out back. Follow me.”
“You bet,” the younger man said as she swiveled down the hill.
“Nice place you got here,” the older man said.
She scrunched her nose. “You think so?”
She surveyed the unmown grass, the sticks and parts of branches scattered about it, the sickly trees, the untended flowerbeds. “I’d do more out here,” she said, “if he wasn’t so creepy.”
“Who?” the older man asked.
“My father-in-law: he just loves the bench you’re taking. He sits there all morning. He’ll be furious when he comes back from his walk and sees that it’s gone.”
“Looks like he didn’t get out today.” The older man poked the body prone on the bench. “Wake up, sir.”
She called her husband and recounted the above omitting the parts about the workman leering at her and the sympathy hugs.
They had a late cold supper. Their son was asleep in his chair. Her husband said, “Dad had a bad heart. It was time for him to go. At least he died where he loved to be, on that rickety bench. Do you remember how he said they’d have to take it from him over his dead body?”
The boy woke up. “But wasn’t the bench under his body?”