BBQ at the Hendersons
As we gathered, Mr. Henderson stoked the fire to a roaring blaze.
Mr. and Mrs. Henderson are my backyard neighbors who have lived in the house across the fence a few years before I moved in. I’ve been here for thirty-one years. Their kids have long flown, so it’s just him, her and their dog, Sally, who is a bit blind and barks at shadows. Mr. Henderson loves to grill and built himself a backyard fire pit. He burns a fire almost every night.
The Hendersons mostly keep to themselves, but occasionally they’ll have friends over, especially when Mr. Henderson gets a new load of logs delivered. He likes to split and stack his own wood.
“A man needs to know how to tend his own fire, how to stack wood so it dries out properly,” he has said more than once. “Otherwise, your fire gets too smoky if the wood is green.”
Mr. Henderson is getting older and he sometimes forgets things, but he knows his wood.
It was on the occasion of a wood delivery that Mr. and Mrs. Henderson invited me and a few neighbors to a BBQ. As we gathered, Mr. Henderson stoked the fire to a roaring blaze. I had never seen him build a fire this large before, but the air was chilly and we were grateful as the sun had set an hour or so ago.
“Where is Mrs. Henderson?” we asked. “Inside seasoning the steaks,” he replied. “She’ll be with us shortly,” and he promptly refreshed our beers.
The chatter turned to matters of fall cleanup, when was the last day the town will pick up leaves, how to prepare rose bushes for the winter, what the kids are doing these days, why they visit less and less… as Mr. Henderson busied himself with more logs and refreshing our beers.
We were getting hungry.
“I should go see what’s keeping Mrs. Henderson with the meat.” He trudged into the house to check on his wife.
A few minutes later, he emerged on the back deck, carrying a platter of seasoned steaks. We each stabbed into one and slapped it on the searing hot grill. A few minutes later, famished, we each tore into the steak.
“Delicious.” “Perfectly seasoned.” “Medium rare is the only way to go.”
It was then I noticed Mrs Henderson hadn’t yet joined us. “What’s keeping your wife,” I asked. “She’s missing a great BBQ.”
“Oh, she’s here with us,” Mr Henderson said as he cut a slice of meat off his steak, put it in his mouth, leaning back with a sigh as he chewed.
This is a work of fiction. It is a contribution to a flash fiction challenge held every week by Liz Riffle on LinkedIn. Almost none of it is factual except for the fire pit. Really, it’s what we weird writers do, a grain of fact and we spin an entirely different story from it. Sometimes, it get really weird. No apology will be forthcoming.
This was originally published on Medium, but I referenced it in a Note and figured I’d move a copy over to Substack as well.
Ha! In spirit or on the grill??!! VERY Hitchcock.
Really good.
This is a great story. I love this sentence, too "“She’s missing a great BBQ.” Something about it really stood out. Nice work, Gerard.