White Picket Fences by Susan Meissner

make things and give them away. I don’t really know why he does it.” The truck stopped just in front of him. Chase moved forward to grasp the back of the truck and lower the tailgate.
    “Maybe because it’s a nice thing to do.”
    Chase glanced at the shelves. His father had carved vines and blossoms into the sides and edges, and the beveled wood shone under several coats of varnish. He said nothing.
    Neil got out of the truck. “I forgot my cell phone.” His father started for the front door and then turned. “Chase, there are some old blankets in that metal storage cabinet. You can pull those out and lay them on the truck bed. I’ll be right back.” Neil dashed inside the house.
    Chase wordlessly walked to the cabinet on the far side of thegarage and opened it. Tally followed him, and he handed her two army-issue blankets. He watched her gaze meander across the worktables, piles of lumber, saws, and sanders.
    “Do you come in here sometimes and work on stuff too?” she asked.
    Chase grabbed a third blanket and nudged the cabinet door closed. He tipped his head toward the workshop. “This is his thing, not mine. I make movies, and he makes furniture.”
    “You say it like you don’t like what he does in here.”
    “You ask like you think I have to like it. He has his thing. I have mine. You don’t see Delcey in here, do you?”
    They walked back toward the open garage doors, and Tally nodded at Chase’s car, parked inside the third stall. “How come you get to have the only parking place?” she said.
    Chase tossed the blankets into the truck bed. “He hasn’t asked for my spot yet.”
    They spread two of the blankets over the truck bed and were quiet for a moment. “Do you think those two men are still at this nursing home?” Tally asked. “The ones Matt thinks you should interview for that project?”
    “Probably. I don’t know. Josef’s ninety-something. Eliasz, his roommate, is a few years younger. I haven’t seen them since Easter. My mom sent me over there with cookies. Easter cookies. And Eliasz is Jewish.”
    Tally cocked her head. “But a cookie is a cookie.”
    Chase moved toward the first bookshelf. “Especially to a blind man.”
    “What?”
    “Eliasz is blind.”
    “Did…did it happen at the concentration camp?” Tally asked.
    “No. He was born that way.”
    “What did happen at the concentration camp?”
    The door to the kitchen swung open and Neil stepped out.
    “I’ve never actually asked him,” Chase said, as his father walked over to them.
    Neil motioned to the bookcase closest to Chase. “Okay. Let’s get these loaded and go. I want to get them there before they start serving dinner and the halls get clogged with wheelchairs.”

    Chase had been to La Vista del Paz Assisted Care Facility twice before, starting when his father made a new podium for the dining room last year. A friend at church had told his father the facility needed some new furnishings and was having a fundraiser to pay for them. His father had decided he would cross at least one thing off their list.
    Chase met Josef and Eliasz the day he helped Neil deliver it. The two elderly men were sitting in the empty dining room with the newspaper’s crossword puzzle between them when he and Neil rolled the new podium in. Josef was reading a clue to the puzzle aloud.
    They looked like brothers. Silver white hair covered both their heads, elongated ears and noses disrupted their finely wrinkled faces, age spots polka dotted their sagging cheeks.
    They smiled in unison, their thick Polish accents—evenafter decades in the United States—dovetailed, and they both wore cardigans in shades of blue. The eyes of the younger man were clouded and colorless. The other’s eyes were clear and steel gray.
    “Have you come to give a speech, then?” the sighted man had asked as they wheeled it in.
    “Who is here, Josef? What are they doing?” The blind man’s gaze followed the squeaking sounds of the hand