The Stone Sphinx Waits

Arthur sat on his back porch, the old cable leading from the portable radio to the kitchen outlet tangled around his feet like a faithful pet. Baseball commentary drifted through the summer afternoon — the Dodgers versus the Giants, same teams he'd listened to with his father sixty years ago. Some traditions anchored you.

His wife Eleanor had called him a zombie that morning, half-asleep in his armchair, shuffling to the kitchen for coffee. They'd both laughed, but the word had lingered. At seventy-eight, sometimes he felt like one of those walking dead men from the movies his grandchildren watched — not from hunger for brains, but from the slow, sweet erosion of time that carried away pieces of the person he used to be.

The garden sphinx watched him with painted stone eyes. Eleanor had bought it at a hardware store in 1985, a ridiculous thing with chipped gold paint and a cracked wing. 'She asks the real questions,' she'd said. 'Who are we? Where are we going? Why did we buy this sphinx at a hardware store?' Twenty years since Eleanor's passing, and the sphinx remained, guardian of riddles without answers.

His grandson Michael would visit tomorrow. They'd watch the baseball game together, Arthur would retell stories he'd told a dozen times, and Michael would listen with the patience of a saint. Someday, Arthur would be gone, and Michael would remember these afternoons. The sphinx would ask new questions of someone else. The cable would run to another radio.

The baseball crowd roared. Someone hit a home run. Arthur closed his eyes, perfectly content. The dead don't walk, he thought. They simply find new ways to love the world they're leaving behind, one summer afternoon at a time.