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Seth’s opinion of Ezra, at first, was that he was far too chatty and too involved for his tastes.
Seth resolutely stuck to the back the first time Ezra walked into the hardware store and let Sol handle the interaction. He bought a few screws of a particularly small size so he could fix his daughter’s headphones.
The first time Seth then met Ezra’s daughter, he realized there was a different story there. Her name was Cee, and she was adopted. She called him Ezra to his face and clearly didn’t like much of Ezra’s disposition. Seth supposed they had that in common. But sometimes she would come into the store on her own. She was clearly a capable young woman, and one day Ezra came in and said: “She’s quite taken with this establishment of yours.”
He spoke as if he were from a book.
“She knows her way around hardware quite well for a girl her age.”
“I know. She constantly surprises me.” Ezra then smiled. “She is also quite the writer. And it’s my hope that one day she can hold her writing in her own hands.”
“As a published author?” Seth said.
“If that’s what she chooses.” Ezra drummed his fingers on the countertop as Seth ran up his purchase. He figured Ezra was some sort of mechanic, but he couldn’t quite peg it as to what he did for a living.
“You know,” Seth said. “If you wanted to surprise her, you could take her to a book binding class at the community centre. Might be a fun time for her to learn how to do it by herself.”
Ezra’s face broke into a wide grin. “That,” he said, “is an idea for the ages, Mr. Bullock.”
Seth wrinkled his nose. Ezra only knew his name from his nametag. Not many people called him Mr. Bullock. He didn’t know what he thought of it.
Ezra picked up his purchase and left through the door, pushing upon it with his back as he saluted Seth with two fingers at the temple
Seth shook his head.
Three weeks later, Ezra returned with a specific request of a solid worktable top. Something that could withstand knife cutting.
“Cee greatly appreciated the book binding tutorial,” Ezra said as he watched Seth climb up a ladder among the aisles to get Ezra what he needed. He was leaning on the ladder even though he shouldn’t.
He really shouldn’t, but Seth didn’t want to tell him off.
“It’s nice to know she did,” Seth said. He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like he was the one who taught Cee how to bind.
“I feel as if I am ill suited to the position of being her adoptive parent,” Ezra went on to say. “But I have learned there are things she has admitted to me that she did not to her father.”
His words settled oddly on Seth, and he thought back to himself as a child much like Cee, who may not have had the best relationship with her father.
He could’ve used a father like Ezra.
Seth blinked and gathered the material he needed to ring Ezra up at the till.
“You are as helpful as ever, Mr. Bullock,” Ezra said.
“Seth,” he said, looking up quickly from the till to Ezra and catching sight of the blond patch Ezra had in his otherwise dark hair. “You can call me Seth.”
“And I shall endeavour to do so on your behest.” He nodded his thanks and collected his purchases and headed off into the world.
There was, at this time, a period of six weeks when Seth did not see or hear of Ezra.
Cee came into the store on her own one day, a pair of headphones over her ears as she looked at the bird feeders. Seth stepped out from around the till and approached her, trying to come up from the side so he didn’t spook her.
Eventually, she looked up and pulled her headphones down.
“Anything I can help you with?” he asked, unsure of what to do with his hands so he let them sit as his sides uselessly. Maybe he should tuck his thumbs into his pockets? No, that felt weird, so he settled for crossing his arms.
“Just looking at bird feeders,” she said.
“Well.” Seth looked at their feeders. “Any type of bird you’re interested in attracting?”
She shrugged. “Anything will do, but Ezra said we should try avoiding attracting rats and stuff.”
“Then you might want to get one that won’t let them climb up all over it.” He reached for one of the so-called rodent-proof feeders and held it out to her. She picked it up and looked at the price tag. “After that, all you need is the seed.”
“All I need is something that attracts birds. Ezra needs something to look at while he recovers,”
“Recovers?” Seth asked.
“Mmhm.” Cee looked at the general songbird feed. “He was in a bad accident a few weeks ago.” She sounded disinterested in the conversation, but that could’ve been a ruse if it was a bad accident.
“Is he okay?” he asked. He didn’t mean to pry, but he had enjoyed the times Ezra joined him in the store. He was an interesting sort. Of course, Seth wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him. But he didn’t know how any of this made him feel.
Cee shrugged. “He will be. As long as he sticks with is PT.” She wandered along the bird feed, holding the feeder in one hand as she let her hand drift over the bags of seed. “It was a full amputation of his right arm. His doctor said there was too much deep tissue damage on the arm to save it, so it had to be cut.”
She spoke about it with a detached manner, not looking anywhere near Seth and betraying none of her own emotions, but Seth understood. He remembered he was the same way when a cop asked him why he had run away when he was thirteen.
She, at least, was more open with the events that had led her here to buy a bird feeder than he was after he had run from his father.
He wouldn’t ask what had caused the accident, so instead, he helped finalize the purchase.
“Ezra like bird watching?” he asked at the till.
She shrugged. “He called me little bird all the time when he first started fostering me. Said I ate like one.”
That made Seth smile a bit.
“Hopefully it’ll keep him sitting in one place.”
“We can certainly hope,” she said, tucking the new purchases into a reusable bag. “Oh, he told me to tell you to swing by if you want.” She dug out a scrap of folded paper crammed into her pants’ pocket. She spread it out on the counter. It was an address. “I don’t know if it’s appropriate to give you that or not.”
“I’m not a doctor and he doesn’t work here.” He considered the piece of paper. “Tell Ezra I hope he gets well.”
“Oh, I was going to tell him that whether you said it or not. He’s bored.”
“I’ll bet.”
She eventually left, and Seth took the scrap of paper off the counter.
Seth worked up his nerve to go visit Ezra a week after Cee left the address.
He felt stupid heading down the street. He went out and bought some pastries from a local bakery. He didn’t know if Ezra had any food allergies. He only knew of him from a business relationship, and Seth wasn’t in the habit of building relationships with repeat customers. That was Sol’s business, but here he was, heading off to Ezra’s house to pay him a visit.
What do you even buy someone who had an arm amputation anyway? At least the pastries were edible by hand—one hand at that.
He came upon the house, a small thing in an older part of town with an overgrown lawn and a chipped white fence. He headed up the walkway and up the three steps that made the front porch and pressed the doorbell.
Ezra would eventually come to the door to answer it. The first he noticed was the obvious lack of a right arm, though Seth tried not to stare. It wouldn’t be polite to stare, and instead he focused on Ezra’s face.
The man looked exhausted. His hair was unkempt, longer than Seth remembered, but he smiled when he saw Seth.
“Do my eyes truly deceive me, or has Seth Bullock of the local hardware store come down to visit me while I remain infirm?”
Seth managed to smile. “Cee told me of your accident.”
“Ah, as I imagine she might have. Well, come in, Mr. Bullock. Or Seth, rather. I do remember you telling me to call you Seth.”
Seth followed him into the house. There was a funny way that Ezra currently walked, like he was partially off balanced, and Seth guessed that’s what losing an arm did to a man.
He was led to the kitchen, whose cupboards were distinctly a 90s era wood grain, which wasn’t a grain at all but instead just a laminate covering over some cork board no doubt. Seth set the pastry box on the table and watched as Ezra moved to pick up the kettle from the stove and work the cap off with one hand and move it over to the sink so he could fill it.
“I could—”
“Please, you are a guest in my household,” Ezra said. “And besides. The wonderful Dr. Cochran who has been overseeing my recovery has told me that I must get about and move. That it’ll improve my current condition.”
He popped the lid back on and set the kettle on the stove and set to lighting the gas operated stove top. Then he settled at the table, wincing only a bit, setting his hand on his injured side. He had his eyes closed and for a moment, likely rode a wave of pain before it settled, and he opened his eyes.
“It is nice to see you,” Ezra said.
“Well, when Cee came by and said you’d lost your arm.”
Ezra waved him off. “Despite all that. I had intended to ask more of you, though I didn’t quite know how to start that conversation.”
Seth blinked. “More of me?”
Ezra smiled. He had a crooked smile. It was nice.
“I didn’t want to come off as a customer flirting with you. I have a great respect for those who work within retail,” Ezra said.
The majority of customers Seth put up with were either angry at the quality of something Seth had no control over or that what they aimed to return was not covered by the return policy. Thankfully, Sol handled most of those conversations. Not many people were looking to flirt with a socially awkward retail worker at a hardware store.
The kettle began to whistle, and Ezra pushed himself up from his seat. He took the kettle off the stove, but then he hissed sharply. Seth stood.
“Do you need help?”
“Mm. It’s the strangest sensation. I’m so often in the habit of reaching for a mug at the same time I remove the kettle from the stove that my arm was reaching for what it cannot grab.”
“I can get it for you.”
Ezra directed him to where the mugs and tea bags were as he settled back in the chair and rubbed the remaining stump of his arm. Seth could feel his eyes on him the entire time, and it tickled something awful inside of Seth.
Ezra told him where some plates could be found, and Seth set everything on the table.
“Do you mind if I ask how it happened?” Seth asked.
“No, not at all. It’s not as if anything heroic happened at the time. It was simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. An unfortunate work accident.”
Seth frowned. He could only imagine what could have caused that type of injury. “Are you and Cee set up well here?”
“Well, the insurance pay out is certainly helping, but Dr. Cochran has been adamant that I make things easier for myself in the house. Change some things around. Add some things to help me get up and down certain places.”
Seth looked about the house. It certainly wasn’t rundown or in need of major repairs, but Seth could understand what might need to be changed to help someone with one arm. “I could help with that.”
“I couldn’t ask that of you.”
“Why not? It’s simply a friend helping a friend.”
“A friend,” Ezra mused. “You’re a very generous person, Mr. Bullock.”
“Just being a good neighbour. In the biblical sense.”
“Of course.”
He indeed helped with a few repairs around the house that Ezra couldn’t see to. But eventually, Seth started spending more time at Ezra’s place than not in his off hours. A lot of things needed to change with an arm amputation, especially since Ezra couldn’t cook as he used to, and he didn’t want Cee subsisting off of chicken nuggets that she seemed to prefer.
“What if you get one of those slap chop things from the TV?” Seth asked one night.
“Oh, Mr. Bullock, what a brilliant idea.”
It did give Seth a renewed sense of purpose, helping Ezra and Cee out. He grew to like it. He ended up staying for dinner every once in a while and helping Ezra to his doctor’s appointments so he wouldn’t have to take a taxi or try to ride public transit when he should be resting. He helped cut the grass, so Cee could focus on her studies, and woke Ezra whenever he fell asleep in front of the window watching the birds at the feeder when he should be lying down in bed instead. He started to become a fixture in their home, and it felt nice to be a part of it. Be a part of something he hadn’t been in quite some time.
They spent a night in the backyard around a fire. The temperature was beginning to change and it wouldn’t be long before the leaves on the trees would change. When Cee had learned they were having a fire, she suggested they have s’mores, so Seth made sure they had some proper fire roasters rather than an old wire hanger bent out of shape.
Ezra was the odd man out in the festivities. He liked to eat the graham crackers plain and avoided the marshmallows.
“He’s weird that way,” Cee insisted, pulling her marshmallow out of the fire to blow it out. She liked to burn them whereas Seth took his sweet time in rotating it evenly and preventing it from doing so.
“A graham cracker is a perfectly fine treat on its own,” Ezra insisted.
“It’s because you can’t make a s’more with only one hand,” Cee retorted.
“Hey. Be nice to the infirm.”
There was no malice between them, and Seth had grown to appreciate their bickering.
Seth removed the marshmallow from the fire and scraped it off onto the graham cracker and chocolate with another piece of the cracker. “Here you are, sir,” he said, handing it off to Ezra.
“Well, aren’t you a considerate fellow,” Ezra said.
“If you think I’m supposed to feel jealous of Seth getting the praise and not me, then you don’t know me at all,” Cee said.
“Perish the thought, little bird.”
After finishing her s’more, Cee stood up and dusted off her pants. “I’m heading in for the night. Good night, Seth. It was nice seeing you.”
“Same to you.”
As she left, Ezra licked the remains of the s’more from his fingers and sat firmly back against his chair. His legs were stretched out before him, extended towards the fire.
“It’s a shame we can’t see the stars out here all that well,” Ezra mused.
“You can still see a few,” Seth said. “At least the important ones.” He sniffed and rubbed the tip of his nose. He could smell fall on the air.
“You know,” Ezra said. “Despite this major life event I have lived through, I am thankful that before it I could meet you.” He turned his head in Seth’s direction. “You’ve made it bearable these last few weeks.”
Seth shrugged and looked to the fire. “You were needing help.”
“You’ve done more than help.”
Ezra lowered his arm and knocked the back of his hand against Seth’s. Seth looked at his hand and gently threaded his fingers through Ezra’s. He could say nothing in this moment, for he was afraid he would ruin it by sticking his foot in his mouth. He didn’t have a way with words like Ezra did, so he hoped this was enough.
“When I am more myself and more able,” Ezra said, “there are many things I would like to thank you for and in many different ways.”
Seth couldn’t tell if his face was hot from the heat of the fire or not. “We can wait on that.”
“Of course.”
“But I’m not opposed to hearing more about it.” He thought he could listen to Ezra's voice all night long.
Ezra huffed a laugh and pulled Seth’s hand up so he could kiss the back of it. “Then let me tell you the many ways I wish to show my thanks, Seth.”