He had a simple way of going about his business.
He’d wake at dawn, get out of bed, then take
a fresh white button down shirt out of this week’s motel
room’s closet, and a suitable tie for the day out of
this week’s drawer.

He wasn’t one to mix it up or make it needlessly complex.
Wasn’t the kind to choose a tie and then a shirt and then
get out of bed and only then get around to actually waking up.

No sir. He had a simple way of going about his business.

And that extended to how he got dressed.
One pant leg at a time. One shoe on, then the other shoe.
Not on the same foot, but on the opposite one. Simple.

And that simple way of going about his business
extended to how he went about his business
when he was in the act of going about his business.
One foot in front of the other. One foot on a higher step
followed by the opposite foot on the next highest step
not occupied by a foot so that an ascent of the steps
to the farmhouse door could be made. One set of steps
after the other. One screen door after another.
One doorbell after another. One farm after another.

His simple way of going about his business extended
to his approach on making the sale – sales, being his business.
He wasn’t one for gimmicks. Wasn’t one for reading books on sales
to learn the latest tricks of the trade. And he viewed them
as that – tricks. If what he was selling didn’t amount to
a good value for his customer, then he wasn’t going to
trick them into buying. He simply wouldn’t sell that product.
These principles had lead him to reject products other,
less scrupulous salesmen would have sold in a heartbeat.
But he’d been getting by with his current line by a) keeping it
simple and b) selling something he stood behind.

Sales to him was simple – you make a good offer, and
either they buy or they don’t. And if they don’t, you just
tip your hat, and move on. And whether it’s the first call
of the morning or the last call on a day of rejections and
defeat, you make the offer with genuine enthusiasm and –
most importantly – a smile on your face.

“Morning Ma’am. You look like a busy lady, so I won’t
beat around the bush. For the very reasonable price of $5,
I’d like the offer you the opportunity to bite into my face
as if it were a bright red candy apple.

“Now, if you have nothing but big bills on hand,
it’s very easy for me to make change. So,
should I get the bandages and disinfectant out?”

And the city slickers who like to make everything so very complex
might point out that this is not the proper way to execute
the assumptive close, that by asking “should I get
the bandages out?” he is making the classic sales mistake
of giving the prospect the opportunity of saying “no.”
That a much better phrasing of this particular assumptive close –
the by-the-book phrasing of it – would surely be:
“I’m going to get the bandages and disinfectant out
so we can get started.”

No matter. You see, it may come as a surprise to those city slickers,
but business was booming.

And when you have a simple way of going about your business,
you don’t even thinking about messing with something that’s working.

He pours the coffee out of an old Mr. Coffee decanter
so brown with the accumulated residue of mornings past
it looks full even when empty. He sits down at his kitchen table
and digs into the morning paper, his dog, a Chesapeake Bay Lab, at his feet.

After finishing the third cup – out of repetition timed to coincide
with his finishing the obits in section D – he gets up from the table
and puts the cup in the sink. After washing out the cup,
he opens a drawer just to the right of the sink and picks out
a clean tablespoon, saying to the dog as he holds it up,
“Time to go to work, Rusty.”

He grabs an apron dirtied with orange and brown smears
from the basement door, puts it over his head, opens the door
and trudges downstairs to get to the morning’s work.

He’s made this trip so many times, there’s no need to turn on the lights.
He navigates his way through the basement using the greyish light
from the cellar windows. He grabs a full mason jar of peaches
from bank of floor-to-ceiling shelves along the East wall.
He walks to a beaten up wooden table in the center of the basement
and places the jar on the table. He clicks down on the chain of
a single lightbulb hanging over the table, sits down on a rickety wooden
folding chair, opens the lid – listening for the unmistakable pop of
a vacuum coming unsealed – picks up a spoon and digs in.

When he is done the jar, he places it in a wooden box
on the floor to his right, walks back over to the rows of
jarred peaches, grabs the next jar off of the shelf,
and proceeds to eat it in the same manner – straight through
and in silence.

At noon he goes up for lunch – lunch consisting of
a single cup of coffee and some crackers smeared
with peanut butter.

Around 1PM, he heads back downstairs. Pulling jar after jar
off of the shelf and digging in – soullessly and without joy – all afternoon.

At 4:45PM, he rolls the large garbage can that’s been next to him
all day to a corner of the basement, picks up the trapdoor and
dumps out its contents, which don’t look too different after coming up
than they did before going down – maybe a little pulpier.
When its contents have been dispatched, he washes out the can
with a garden hose and brings it back to the table. He bends down
and takes the wooden box filled with empty mason jars
to the basement sink where he washes and dries jar each jar
before putting it back in. When all the jars are washed, he takes
the box of empties back to where he started his work for the day,
and places each empty jar back on the shelf – counting aloud as he does.

He goes back to the table and places the now empty wooden box
on the floor. Before clicking off the lightbulb, he picks up a framed photo
of his wife on the table, kisses it and say, “That was delicious Mawd.”

There are only 754 jars of peaches left.

At this rate, it will take him a little over 6 weeks to finish them all,
which means he’ll have to pick up his pace if the doctor is right about
how much time he has left after the last set of scans.

This is will do, as he is determined
that their bounty will not go uneaten
and that no one will eat their bounty but him.

Coming in from the mailbox,
Ned closes the front door behind him,
stomps the snow off of his winter boots,
shouts “I got the mail” to his wife
Ann Marie in the kitchen, throws the mail
on table in the hallway along with
his gloves, unclasps the buckles
of his winter boots, and, after stomping
few more of times, sheds them and
leaves them upright against the door.

He moves to their modest living room
where he takes off his red knit hat,
then his blue barn jacket, then the ugly
blue and yellow flannel shirt Ann Marie’s
sister gave him for his 58th birthday,
followed by his blue socks, then his
second pair of socks – also blue – his grey
thermal top, his flannel lined jeans,
his long-johns, his red boxer shorts,
his second pair of boxer shorts, which
are white, his black t-shirt, his white t-shirt,
the his second red knit hat, then his toupee,
his dentures, his contact lenses, then his
hearing aid, his medical ID bracelet,
his watch, and finally his wedding ring.

Once stripped bare,
there is no Ned anymore –
there is only a white mailbox atop
a white wooden post
impossibly balanced in
the middle of their living room.

“Anything good in there?”
says Anne Marie coming
in from the kitchen
looking down at the newspaper
in one hand while sipping
a mixture of vodka and wolf’s blood
from a steaming mug of coffee in the other.

She looks up and is startled.
“Ned? What the hell is the mailbox
doing in the middle of the living room?”

She notices that its flag is up
and moves closer to inspect.