Homebody by Orson Scott Card

years.
    Now that he had light, it was time to divide the firmament. Actually that was his dad’s old joke, to call furniture “firmament.” “Word doesn’t have any other meaning that anybody knows of,” he used to say, “so I can assign it to any meaning I want.” So it was furniture that Don moved, pulling it all up against the outside walls of the north parlor so it was out of the way. The cheap and filthy wall-to-wall carpet wasn’t worth saving, so Don had no qualms about taking his utility knife to it and baring all of the floor that didn’t have furniture piled on it. The floor underneath was what he expected—a badly beaten-up hardwoodfloor so solid and well made that it couldn’t be replaced today at any cost. This place had been built right.
    He rolled up the huge piece of old carpet and carried it outside and laid it on the grass next to the curb. Then he backed the truck up onto the lawn so he wouldn’t have to carry his tools so far. It took him about a dozen trips to get all the sacks and boxes of hardware in. He plugged in the cordless tools to freshen the charge.
    Three things were left in the back of the truck—the garbage can, the workbench, and his cot. The cot had to be last and the workbench was the heaviest thing, so he pulled out the huge Rubbermaid garbage can he had bought that morning and carried it around the outside of the house.
    He picked a spot near the back door. The really massive pile of trash would be established at the front curb where he had left the carpet, of course, but he had to have a place to throw leftover food and any dead animals he might find in the house; whatever would rot needed to be in a can with a lid.
    It was a hot afternoon, and all the carrying and walking had given him a light sweat. It felt good. So did the shade of the house and the tall looming hedge that cooled and scented the air and made the carriagehouse next door invisible. And at the end of the tall part of the hedge, there stood an old woman leaning on a rake, her white hair done upin a ragged bun that left strands wisping around her head like a halo, her face creased and cracked from a hundred suntans. A neighbor. And from the bright eagerness of her eyes, a talker. It was starting. But Don was raised right. He smiled and said hey.
    “Hey yourself, young man,” said the old woman. “Y’all fixin’ up the old Bellamy house or tearin’ it down?” Her accent was pure hillbilly, all Rs and twang.
    “House ain’t ready to die yet,” said Don.
    At once the old woman called out to somebody invisible behind the high hedge. “You was right, Miz Judy, the landlord’s gonna make this poor feller fix up the Bellamy house!” She turned back to Don. “I hope you don’t think a couple of locks on the doors are going to make you safe. Strange people go in and out of that house. It’s a nasty place!”
    What was she doing, trying to scare him into going away? That made no sense. The neighbors should be glad somebody was trying to fix it up.
    An old black woman now emerged from behind the hedge, leaning so deeply into her cane that Don wondered if she even had a hip. This must be Miz Judy.
    “I’ll bet you four bits, Miz Evvie, four bits says he’s bought the place hisself.”
    So the white woman was Miz Evvie. But of course those were names they called each other. Don knew better than to call them by name until he was given the right name to call.
    “Don’t be silly,” said the white woman. “People with money never do the work theirself.”
    Don hated to take sides. He remembered the story of the Trojan War in high school and how it all started because poor Paris got himself trapped into judging which goddess was most beautiful. Never get in the middle of arguments between women, that was the main theme of Homer, as far as Don ever cared—it was the only lesson that seemed to apply to the real world. These two old bats weren’t exactly Athena and Aphrodite—or was it Diana? Didn’t