Lenny on the Porch

By Pineapple | Content Warnings

For my brother

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From this angle, he could almost forget everything was going wrong. He could breathe in the fresh air of the farm and listen to the sound of the breeze sifting through the tall grass and leaves. He could get lost in the colors of the Texas sky, watching the Earth turn and the wind blow from the way the clouds moved across the endless blue. He could swat away mosquitos, hear bees in his ears as they buzzed by. It was the way he lived his life, and it was the way he would die.

When The Last Earth War started, those that could afford it left the planet. Intersystem travel was newly commercialized, with flights going often between Mercury, Mars, and Earth. Some people went as far as Saturn even, if they had the money and the adventurous spirit to find a new frontier.

But Lenny couldn’t imagine leaving this view behind.

He’d lived in the suburbs until the war started, and he was a true Texas boy. When his wife suggested moving out of the densely populated cities, he suggested buying land and building a house. She’d smiled, something sad in her eyes, and said that creating in times like this was possibly the best thing she could imagine. She didn’t know at the time that she was pregnant with their daughter.

Land in Texas was cheap. A commodity nobody needed now that the nuclear war had made deserts out of most of the planet. Texas was mostly the same. So were New Mexico and Arizona, from what he heard. But other places suffered, losing their evenly spaced seasons. Where it wasn’t dry, there was flooding. Big city dwellers used gas masks on the daily. The planet was dying around them.

“Dying,” he would say to his wife, “but not dead yet.”

Hope and optimism welled in them once Anjelica was born. Lenny quit his job at the raw goods store down the road so he could take care of the house while his wife, Rowayna, made the money. She was really the breadwinner, working at a medical facility in the city proper. Lenny did odd jobs for the people around them, driving with the baby shotgun as he did deliveries or hard labor. They worked to make a living, and they worked hard to be happy.

But there was always the lingering fear that today might be the last. Because of that, every day, they made sure to kiss goodbye before they left home, so they wouldn’t have to settle for clanking the fronts of their masks together instead.

Every time they went into the city to run errands, they made sure to get a coffee—a latte or an americano, something they couldn’t make in their own kitchen—and a cake or another dessert. It was special because Lenny’s old school friend worked there. They weren’t even close school friends. But they’d grown up together, tangentially always around each other. The barista, Connie, was a fixture in Lenny’s life. Nostalgic the same way the sunlight in autumn is, but more tangible. Familiar the same way 3am feels when playing the oldies on shuffle.

They walked through stores slowly, hands linked or pushing a stroller, taking in everything. They chatted with business owners and let themselves get talked into buying things. They tipped extra when they could. Lenny had practiced making sure people could know he was smiling, even with the gas mask, since the mandates had been placed. It was what Rowayna said she fell in love with, way back when they were college-age kids.

When the doctor told him he was sick, everything felt surprisingly more normal than ever. Anjelica was an adult by then. She’d moved out years ago, happily married to some guy she met in her French class in college.

For some reason, the first thing Lenny thought of was the flower pattern on the gas mask they’d gotten for Anjelica when she was a baby.

“There isn’t… much research on it,” the doctor explained. “Since long-term radiation exposure hasn’t been a problem as much as a quick, high-levels have been. Historically speaking. Hiroshima, Chernobyl, New Mexico. You know.”

She had a habit of rambling, sometimes devolving into speaking to herself. Lenny wasn’t sure if this information was really meant for him or for herself.

The doctor looked back up at him. “The best thing for you to do would be to leave Earth,” she said. “Mercury has the leading institute on radiation research in the system. I could send you there on a medical grant. You wouldn’t spend a penny.”

 The hair on Lenny’s neck rose, his skin and spine prickling. “Can I think about it?” he asked.

“Of course.” She nodded and jotted something down on her device. Lenny’s phone pinged with a notification. When he checked it later, it was setting up the next appointment. He could change it from there, if needed. “I’d like to see you monthly to check your condition.”

“Alright.”

So he went home.

Rowayna didn’t cry when Lenny broke the news. They were sitting on the porch, sweet iced tea in glasses on the table between them. She didn’t say much, just reached across the space and held his hand—clammy from the cold of the tea. “I’m with you,” she said, and they stared out at the land they owned, at the sun as it set somewhere far, far away from them but brilliantly, brightly, big enough that it felt like it could be touched if they ran down to the fence line.

During dinner, they were quiet. There was a heavy air around them and they both knew there was nothing they could do to change it, so they endured it together. The sound of knocking at the door cut through the atmosphere, reminding them that they weren’t the only ones on the planet.

The knocking came again, more urgently. Rowayna rose first and opened the door. It was their closest neighbor, Dewey. From where Lenny sat at the dining room table, she sounded near tears.

“Sorry to bother you guys so late at night,” she said.

“It’s fine, Dewey.”

Lenny heard the door close, heard Rowayna usher Dewey inside. “Come on in, hon, come in.”

Dewey was a small woman. Originally a scientist, she moved onto farming when she, as she puts it, “used up the grant money sending people away instead of saving the world.” She was one of the engineers involved in creating pods needed for growing Earth produce on the colonies, though she rarely talked about it. She’d been Rowayna’s junior in school. She was wiping at her nose when Rowayna brought her into the dining room.

“Hey, Mr. Lenny,” she said.

Lenny gestured to the food on the table. “Help yourself,” he offered, but she just shook her head.

“What’s goin’ on, dear?” Rowayna asked, taking her spot next to Lenny. “Want some tea?”

“Iced tea is an abomination,” she said nasally. “I’m fine, I just… What’s with you?”

Dewey had been avoiding eye contact with Rowayna, but her eyes landed on Lenny. She was looking at him hard, and Lenny looked back at her.

“What do you mean, what’s with me? You’re the one comin’ out here in the middle of the night crying.”

“It’s not the middle of the night—it’s like 8pm. Who eats that late?”

“We do. What about it?”

Rowayna laid a hand on Lenny’s arm. “Alright, children,” she chided gently.

“You look like you’re astral projecting,” Dewey said, not unkindly. “Like you’re tryna disappear.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, because he didn’t have a comeback. “You joining us for dinner or not?”

She pulled out a chair, but didn’t take any of the offered food. “There was a lizard,” she said, like that explained everything.

It did, to Rowayna. Dewey had a long-time, unexplainable fear of the creatures. It had only gotten worse after the initial fallout. Some of them grew bigger and more dangerous, more venomous than before. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, reaching across the table to pat her hand.

Lenny recognized the look on Dewey’s face and the tone of her voice from when Anjelica was a girl. Back when she was living at home, and a critter got into the house. Anjelica never quite got over the fear, but now it was her husband that was on bug duty.

“Alright,” Lenny said. “Let’s just finish eating and then we’ll go over and take care of your little reptile problem.”

Dewey looked like she might start crying again.

So once Lenny and Rowayna were finished eating, they clambered into the busted, old-fashioned pick-up. They’d never been able to afford one of the more environmentally friendly hovers. The truck was good enough for now, and it would serve Lenny through the rest of his life—through Anjelica and even her kids’.

Dewey followed in her own solar hover, parking in front of the house she’d commissioned on Rowayna’s advice when she first moved to Texas. The door was wide open. She gestured to the house. “It’s in there,” she told Lenny. “Ugly little dude. Lizards really thrived in the radiation.”

Rowayna chuckled, wrapping an arm around Dewey’s shoulders and rubbing her arms. She gave her husband a lopsided smile, her eyes betraying how sad she was at the comment. Lenny went into the house.

The lizard was sitting on her table, licking out of a cup one of them must have spilled. The thing was as big as a medium-sized dog, with solid-looking ridges on its head and down its back. It blinked slowly at Lenny. Its tongue shot out and took a bite of Dewey’s salad. It really thrived, huh. Be a shame to kill it then, he thought.

He picked it up. It wriggled, but he held it against his chest and shoulder and it stilled, its tail thumping against his stomach.

He went outside. “Got it,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

Dewey took a step away, grimacing with all her teeth on display. “What are you gonna do with it?” she asked, her voice three pitches higher than normal.

Lenny shrugged. “Take it home. It’s kinda cute, huh?”

“No!”

Rowayna laughed. “Seriously, Len?”

“Yeah, why not? It’s fine now.” He ran his fingers over its ridges. “Some things die in the radiation. Others live. Why not take care of them?”

Dewey’s eyes snapped onto Lenny for the first time since he’d left the house. “What?”

“What?”

“What dies in the radiation?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

He saw Rowayna’s hands tighten over Dewey’s arms again.

“I have radiation cancer,” Lenny said. “The doctor wants to send me to Mercury.”

Dewey swallowed. “Oh.” Her voice was hollow, and she was blinking back tears, gaze flitting between Lenny and her empty house. “Mercury would be the best place, but…”

“It’s okay, Dew,” Rowayna whispered into her hair.

Dewey shook her head and the tears fell.

“Want a hug?” Lenny asked, taking a step forward with the lizard in his arms.

“Don’t come near me with that thing!” she shouted, rubbing furiously at her eyes. “If you leave, who’s gonna get rid of them for me?”

Lenny laughed. “I’m not goin’ anywhere, Dewey, don’t worry.”

And he didn’t.

He couldn’t leave all this behind. Not when Connie still worked at the coffee shop nearby, when Dewey needed help getting lizards out of the house. Not when there were sunsets to see and beautiful days to sit around and do nothing on. Not when his daughter was still here and especially not once she was pregnant with Waylen.

So he chose to stay, to sit on the porch of his home and drink sweet iced tea and watch as the sun set in Texas.