He put a piece of bread in the toaster and waited for his eggs to cook. The doctor was also trying to get him to stop eating eggs, or if he did, only the egg whites. Walter patiently ignored that request. The doctor might have gone to school for ten years so he could tell other people how to act, but that didn’t mean any of them had to listen to him.
A few minutes later, Walter was sitting down at his table, alone, of course. When he was younger, he might’ve put on the television and listened to the morning news. The world seemed a whole hell less threatening back then, and you could watch your local news without fear that World War Three was around the corner.
But not anymore.
Nowadays, whenever Walter watched a news story, it was as though they were actively trying to give him a heart attack; and making a man with high cholesterol have a heart attack wasn’t exactly something hard to do. One station hated the president, the other loved them. One thought that the new laws were good, another said that they were terrible. Walter said to hell with it and decided to stop watching. He was old, after all, and it wasn’t like this world was meant for him anymore. He might have helped build it, but nothing ever lasts, no matter how hard one tried to preserve it.
He finished his meal and washed his dishes, putting on gloves as he did so. The water was apt to dry out his knuckles, and while he didn’t like the thought of having to wear gloves when cleaning his dishes, he loved being able to move and his fingers in relative peace all the more.
He walked into the shower, careful to avoid the mirror.
Then he walked back to his room and got his clothes for work. Jeans and an old flannel, not one of those cheap ones that were worn to be stylish, was good enough for him. No, this was a pure flannel that was practically a carpet cut into the shape of a shirt. He laced up his work boots and stood up.
It was snowing outside, but why wouldn’t it be? The snow was sort of the norm when you lived in upstate New York during the winter. It wasn’t as bad as Canada, but it was awfully close. Almost everyone that Walter had known had gone down south to live, enjoying the high temperature and the low taxes.
Walter was born in upstate New York, and he figured that he’d die there as well. His family had been farmers before him, from Argyle, a small town that almost nothing important ever happened, which was part of the allure. No cites there to ruin your way of life with their petty politics and all that other crap that universities seem to teach people these days.
The country was going to hell, but it wasn’t like it mattered to him, though. People could get into massive amounts of debt, get useless degrees, and demand other people listen to how they wanted them to act.
Walter had never gone to college, and considering that he was able to get to the middle class without a degree, proved to him, at least, that college was a waste of time and money. Let the desperate and broke dreamers build their utopias. They could have all of that since Walter figured he’d probably be dead in twenty to thirty years already. He just didn’t want to be forced to be okay with it.
He looked around his house. It had been a lovely house once, and he had never expected to be there alone. He looked down the hall to the twin’s room.
For a second, his right foot lifted off the ground, suggesting to him that maybe it was time to clean up that old room, turn it into storage or something. What Walter would be storing he wasn’t sure, and what he would do with his kids’ now-faded bedsheets and dust-covered clothes and the spider web-covered windows? Probably nothing.
Not today, he thought, his foot going back down. If Walter couldn’t get rid of any of Beth’s things, then he doubted he’d be able to do any serious work on Jack and Anabelle’s room. Besides, he had to go to work.
He put on his jacket and headed out.
****
The Stewarts by his house was always open, rain, or shine. They used to not be open twenty-four-seven, but one of the higher-ups somewhere thought it would be a good idea, a way to get rid of the competition. Walter was thankful for that change, even if the shop would have been open at this time regardless.
Walter had to explain to a friend from down south once what a Stewarts was. He could have done the easy thing, saying it was the damn near best gas station/small grocery store of upstate New York. He settled for the simple answer, though; it was a gas station. A nice one, mind you, but a gas station all the same. All across America, there were similar gas stations, all going by different names but with the same sort of service. Stewarts felt better, in Walter’s view, though, so it worked for him all right, especially the one by his house.
The lady there, Janice, was about the same age that Walter figured his own daughter would have been. Sometimes the two of them would have a pleasant
