He filled it to the line he'd scratched with a key, not the one printed on the plastic. The scratch was lower. His shoulder had told him about the printed line back in February, during the cold snap, and he'd listened.
He passed the Szymanski mailbox without looking at it, already leaning into the turn. The oak had lost two limbs in July and the stump-wounds were still pale and raw - and he stepped four inches right the way he always did, his hips moving before his eyes caught up. At the corner he stopped, not because he was winded, but because he always stopped there, one hand on the rough bark - counting the Kowalski house across the street and the green Subaru in the drive and the smell of somebody's coffee.
His daughter had laminated it herself, he could tell by the bubbles trapped under Tuesday. He pinned it with the tomato magnet - the one with the cracked stem his wife had superglued twice, the glue still glossy in the seam - and stood there long enough to read that Silver Sneakers met at seven-fifteen, which was when he was already at the corner oak. The grocery coupons crept over from the left, week by week - until by February only the photo of Biscuit showed above them, the dog's ears blown sideways on the boat that last good summer. He never moved the coupons.
The fence bit into the meat of his palms and he held on, one boot still skidding on the black glass of the sidewalk, the other planted in the brown grass at the edge. His breath left him in a single white cloud that hung there longer than seemed right. He could feel each link pressing its diamond shape into his skin, and he stared at his own knuckles - the swollen one on the right hand - the wedding-ring groove on the left that never quite filled in - and didn't move until a crow landed on the Kowalski gutter and looked at him and flew away. Then he picked up the dented bottle from the ice where it had rolled and walked home holding the fence side of the sidewalk, the rough-brick side, both hands out just slightly from his body, the way his father had walked the last winter Walter was still counting.
The poles were green - the website had said something about the color, some word like "alpine" or "forest -" he couldn't remember - and the rubber tips left small paired half-moons on the Szymanski concrete that he noticed on the way back, pressed into a dusting of late snow like the track of some new animal. He passed the pale oak-wounds without stepping right, because the poles gave him the four inches. At the corner he still stopped, but now he leaned into the left pole instead of the bark, his palm wrapped around the cork grip the same way it wrapped around the dented bottle - and the crow on the Kowalski gutter didn't look at him this time, or looked and looked away faster, the way you do when something stops being strange.
The gray smear on the baseboard had grown a twin, two rubber commas now, side by side. He laced the left boot first - the one with the replaced heel, and when he stood he pressed two fingers to the cork grip the way you press a doorbell you're not sure works. Outside, the Kowalski drive was empty, the green Subaru gone, and the cold came under the door and touched his ankles while he stood there with his hand still on the pole - not yet opening anything.
