26. Ladybug

Ed can feel a sting at the back of his neck. He slaps hard and then inspects the squashed remnants of a mosquito in his palm.

“Got you,” he mutters to himself proudly.
He walks at his regular pace on his route around the neighbourhood. He makes a stop at the end of the street. As his dog Ollie does his business, Ed inspects the house on the corner. It’s been about three years since he went inside, back when his youngest had rented it from the previous owners. He can’t make sense of the kids that bought it. They painted the front door bright yellow and let the garden bed get out of control over the summer. They never walk their dog and they never bother to say more than “hello.” Over the weekend he’d seen them weeding it and couldn’t help himself.
“I should take a picture!” he shouted from the road. The young man, whose name he can’t remember, gave him a polite wave and chuckled but the girl didn’t even look back at him.
Now a couple of days on he can see what a complete mess they’ve made of it. He can’t figure out kids that age, always keeping to themselves yet they don’t even know how to write a cheque.
When Ollie is done, he moves along.
On the next street over is where Ed’s walk really begins. He does two laps of each street, morning and night. With any luck, he won’t cross paths with his wife Helen at all. She walks their second poodle, Ginny, and makes sure to leave ten minutes after Ed. He can’t stand how much the woman talks during her walks, always stopping to chat with every neighbour all morning long. Ed doesn’t care for all that.
He walks past the same houses every day and notices the tiny changes that nobody else does. Number 12 has a new ornament in the yard, number 21’s cat is skulking around number 19’s fence watching the new chicken coop, and number 34 needs to put more air in the back passenger tire of their SUV.
According to Ed, nobody pays enough attention. He can’t prove it, but he’s certain he’s being watched through the television. He tried to talk to the girl from the house on the corner about it once but Ed could tell she thought he was nuts. He thinks she’s nuts too, people who work from home have no integrity as far as he is concerned.
As he comes around the familiar bend of the street he sees Helen walking towards him. He grunts disapprovingly. They’re supposed to follow his path. He can’t stand that Helen lets Ginny run wild on their walks.
“Keep her reigned in,” he orders as he approaches. Ed can see Helen rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses.
“She’s a dog Ed, she needs to sniff around when she’s on a walk,” Helen croaks. Whenever they cross paths like this on the street he can see how old she is. When they’d moved into their house fifteen years ago she was approaching 60 gracefully. She was slender and had soft features. But all these years living directly under the sun have withered her. She doesn’t move the same way, her back is beginning to hunch and her hair hasn’t been cut in years. Even tied up high on her head it swings from her visor like a horse’s tail.
He keeps his pace as he passes his wife.
“Give Ollie some more slack,” Helen quips as they pass each other. Ed grunts at her in response and keeps moving.
As Ed moves on to the next street looks at his watch. 8:03 a.m., right on time.
Ed allocates approximately 45 minutes to walk Ollie and gives Helena an hour to do hers. When they’re done, they cross-examine who they’ve talked to. It’s Ed’s favourite part of the day.
“The kids on the corner have made a mess of the garden bed,” he said on Saturday.
“The young man tells me they’re going to plant Indian Hawthorn,” Helen would add.
“Ha!” Ed scoffed, “It won’t last two months under their care.”
“Well, at least it’s not invasive. Who knows, maybe they’ll learn,” Helen had commented. He can’t stand the way she believes in people like that.
As Ed and Ollie come to the end of the walk they end up in the same spot. The dog sniffs the patch of grass across from the house on the corner with the yellow door. While Ollie does his business again, Ed can feel something crawling on his hand.
He turns his hand over, gearing up to slap it hard, and is surprised to see a little ladybug carefully crawling over his thumb. Ed holds it up closer to his face, pushing his glasses up closer to his eyes as Ollie furiously sniffs at the grass some more. He can’t remember the last time he saw a ladybug since he moved here.
As Ed inspects the insect crawling on his hand he can feel something bubbling up inside of him. A memory, maybe even a dream, of catching bugs with his brothers in their yard and looking at them in jars. A minute ago he was there, in that yard, and now all of a sudden he’s here. Out of nowhere, Ed feels a sharp pain in his gut. He longs for those summers. As he feels a tear drip down his face, he hears the familiar sound of the yellow front door slam. The girl is walking toward the car in the driveway, not paying him any mind. He gives Ollie a hefty tug and moves along, back to his home, careful not to disrupt the ladybug he’s carrying on his hand and softly wiping the tears from his cheek.