The Firefly Hours (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 19

 

Fireflies
by Erte

Chapter 19 – The Collector

I collected baseball cards when I was a kid. Every time I got my allowance for doing my weekly chores, I would rush to the store to buy a pack. When I got them home, I spread them out and studied them they way a scholar might obsess over a recently unearthed manuscript by Shakespeare. Each new set of cards brought the possibility of finding a gem. Those baseball cards are in a box in a storage unit. I kept them because, like all collectors, they connect me to something I love, a passion. That’s how collections work. Each one seems to say: This mattered. Please don't let it disappear.

By Sunday afternoon, I had become convinced someone in Laurel Lane understood the Firefly Hours better than the rest of us. Call it hunch. Call it intuition. Call it remembering something Arthur said to me almost in passing. But it gnawed at me the way some lady behind me at the coffee shop that morning was chewing her gum. Loud. Smacking. Annoying. And just like I told that gal to take it down a notch with the chewing, I was about to take charge of this hunch.

Arthur had mentioned him almost accidentally.

"You've met everyone now,” he said.

"I think so."

“Almost.” He stirred sugar into his coffee

I looked up. "Who's missing?"

Arthur hesitated. "I suppose that depends."

"On what?"

"Whether he's still one of us."

His name was Walter Ashcroft. Once a high school history teacher, Walter was a widower of seventy-eight who lived alone in the oldest surviving house bordering Laurel Lane. His property had somehow escaped development when the neighborhood was built. The county maps curved awkwardly around his land as though modern suburbia had politely said, “Ope, lemme scooch around ya there.”

"What makes him different?" I asked.

"He doesn't avoid the Firefly Hours." Arthur looked toward the woods. “He waits for them."

Walter's house looked less lived in than remembered. The porch swing moved without wind. Dozens of old mason jars lined the railings. Each held a handful of fireflies. They weren’t dead. They glowed patiently, slowly. As though each jar contained one small evening that hadn't completely finished.

I knocked. The door opened before my hand fell a second time.

"I wondered when you'd come." Walter Ashcroft smiled with the calm confidence of someone greeting an appointment he'd made years earlier.

"You know who I am,” he said.

"I know who you've become."

"Those aren't always the same thing." He stepped aside. "They rarely are."

His house felt like a flea market. Shelves were lined with old ticket stubs, pressed flowers, cassette tapes carefully labeled in neat handwriting. Children's drawings hung on a wall in the living room. A cracked coffee mug repaired with gold lacquer sat on desk next to some old baseball cards.

Baseball cards.

Hundreds of ordinary objects displayed carefully and adorned with labels:

First snow together.

Last piano lesson.

Tuesday before college.

Summer lemonade.

"You collect memories,” I said.

"No." Walter gently adjusted a framed photograph. "I collect anchors."

I followed him into a sunroom overlooking the woods. Every window faced west toward the place where the Firefly Hours always began.

"You've been watching us,” I said, taking in the view.

"I've been watching everyone."

"For how long?"

"Long enough to know you'll eventually ask the wrong question."

I sighed. "What wrong question?"

"'What causes the Hours?'" He poured tea. "It isn't the important one."

"So what is?"

Walter handed me a cup. I took it even though I’m not a tea drinker.

"'Why do they remain?'"

"Do you know?"

He looked out the window. "I have theories."

"I'm listening."

An intentional silence settled between us. He sipped his tea. I waited for his theory.

"Have you noticed something about every memory you've seen?" he asked me.

I thought about the windows. The dancing couple. The birthday. Harold. Calico's mother.

"They're happy… I guess?”

"Mostly."

"What about Danny?" I set my tea cup on the small table between us.

Walter nodded. "Even tragedy begins somewhere beautiful."

He walked toward one of the glowing jars, held it carefully like a lit candle.

"People think memories fade,” he said. "Actually, they become inaccessible." He looked at me. "That's different."

He carried the jar onto the porch. The fireflies had begun gathering over the neighborhood. The Hour approached. Walter loosened the lid. One tiny point of light drifted upward. Instead of joining the others, it circled him once then floated toward Laurel Lane. I stared after it.

"What was that?"

Walter smiled. "Thursday."

"I'm sorry?"

"The Thursday my wife laughed so hard she snorted tea through her nose." He watched the tiny light disappear into the evening. "I've always thought Thursdays deserved better representation."

"You can preserve them."

"I can help."

"How?"

He shrugged. "By remembering correctly."

The words landed harder than I expected. I'd been assuming the Firefly Hours happened to Laurel Lane. Walter spoke as though people participated. Fed them. Strengthened them.

"You've been keeping them alive,” he said.

"I've been keeping us alive." He looked at me, eyes softened. "There's a difference."

He led me to the edge of his property where the grass gave way to trees. The neighborhood shimmered beneath the first appearance of twilight. Children laughed somewhere in another summer. A lawn mower started twenty years too late. The familiar layering of time settled over the block. Walter breathed deeply.

"Listen."

I did. "I don't hear anything unusual."

"You will."

The overlapping sounds slowly resolved into individual voices. Conversations. Birthdays. Apologies. Wedding vows. Arguments.  Bedtime stories. Thousands of ordinary moments quietly existing together. All simply remaining.

"Tell me.” Walter closed his eyes, speaking almost reverently. "If all of that disappeared tomorrow..." He gestured toward the neighborhood. "...would the world truly be better?"

I didn't answer. Because I wasn't sure. Walter opened his eyes.

"I know what you think,” I said.

"You do?"

"You think memory should comfort the living."

He smiled sadly. "I think memory is part of the living."

The fireflies brightened. The sky darkened in a blend of deep oranges and purples.  Walter watched the lights drift through the trees with unmistakable affection. Then, almost as though he were introducing an old friend, he quietly said,

"Some things deserve to stay."

*****

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