The Pyramid of Canned Peaches

Arthur sat on his back porch, Buster — his golden retriever of fourteen years — resting his grizzled muzzle on Arthur's slippered feet. Through the kitchen window, the radio broadcast drifted out, crackling with the bottom of the ninth. Baseball, still played at its own deliberate pace, unlike everything else these days.

His grandson Toby was at the kitchen table, carefully stacking canned peaches into a pyramid structure. "Grandpa, this is how they built them in Egypt, right?"

"Something like that," Arthur smiled, though his thoughts wandered to that trip with Martha — the pyramids at sunset, her hand in his, both of them young enough to believe they had forever. That had been forty-seven years ago. Martha's photograph on the mantel still caught the morning light, her smile frozen at thirty-eight, while Arthur had somehow reached seventy-nine without quite noticing.

"Grandpa?" Toby looked up from his construction. "Mom says you're becoming a zombie because you watch TV all day."

Arthur laughed, a dry, chuckling sound. "A zombie, am I?" He scratched Buster behind the ears, the dog's tail giving two thumps of agreement. "Well, let me tell you something about zombies, Toby. They're the ones who walk through life not seeing anything — not the light through the trees, not the way their dog looks at them like they're the whole world, not the peaches in January that taste like summer."

He gestured at the pyramid of cans. "Real zombies don't build things. They don't remember. And they certainly don't feel the ache of missing someone after nearly five decades."

Toby considered this solemnly, then added another can to the pyramid. "So you're NOT a zombie."

"Not yet," Arthur said, as the radio roared with a home run. "Not while I'm still building pyramids out of peaches with you, and not while that old dog of mine needs his breakfast. That's the secret, Toby — stay building something. Even if it's just a memory."

Buster sighed contentedly, and for a moment, the pyramid felt like something that would last forever.