Yellow Light
By Nicholas Grider
With Frank, what you see is what you get: a part-time ghost alone and calm in a humid apartment. Outside, there’s scattered spruce needles on wet sidewalks and signs whose buildings don’t live there anymore and citizens who think loudness is a good way of convincing people.
Samuel should call. Said he would. The phone hasn’t rung all day.
Doug at the station before Frank walked home in muddy sandals said before he left that people won’t chase after you if there’s nothing to hold onto. He might’ve meant it as a joke.
Frank is not waiting but if anyone were to watch him that’s what they’d think he’s doing. He sits in the corduroy recliner because that’s what it’s for. The recliner is in the center of the room because the room is small.
The walls of Frank's apartment are a lemon yellow intensified by incandescent lights but Frank knows changing it would cost more money than leaving it alone. Yellow walls mean yellow light, and yellow light is cheerful but warns you to slow down.
From other people’s open windows in the building it smells like skunkweed and stuffed crust. People out in the yard are arguing about a crisis. Upstairs neighbors are thumping something in waltz time.
Not everything always happens. Not every phone call gets placed and picked up. Not every uniform gets dirty from being worn.
A green light is almost always calm unless it’s an approaching summer storm. Doug said the reason the world gets brighter before it ruins you is because everything looks brighter when it’s too big to push and too close to aim at.
Something will happen. Something will probably happen soon.
Frank has barricaded himself in but has a system so the wall can vanish fast.
The snapshots on Frank’s fridge are not soldiers, they are men like us dressed up like soldiers, waiting in muddy clay to resume warfare Frank bought tickets for and plays with rifles that don’t shoot bullets. Frank’s there. The uniform reminds everyone he knows how to participate.
Last weekend at the milsim in the abandoned high school, they’d decided Frank should be the sniper on the roof, like a choosy angel of death, and even though he killed a lot of guys after a while, people forgot he was there.
Samuel had apologized and said he would call.
Erin Taylor Kennedy, Building a Bird’s Nest in a Cactus, 2023, digital scan 35mm Ilford HP5, 12" x 8".
Frank is not a violent person. Feet in wet crabgrass, chin up, devices off, he doesn’t think about conquering anything. On the roof in mismatched camo, holding a BB gun, he doesn’t think about being the only person left in the world.
Sometimes Frank goes out at night on the lawn and thinks about if surveillance cameras still operate even when the room is as empty as it is dark. Sometimes he goes for a walk. Sometimes he goes back in the first-floor apartment and barricades himself in, not because he has to but because it’s easy, it’s all set up and waiting.
Samuel said the call was about something, not just a how are you.
Frank is not worried. Frank checks his phone: is it charged? Is it working? Is the sound on? Is it within reach?
Is the phone within reach when Frank stands up and walks to the kitchenette fridge and looks in it, and doesn’t grab anything because it was just all the stuff he already knew was there and had already decided against?
The apartment, a “half-basement” because the whole foundation sunk in the 1970s, is small. The phone is always within reach. Even when “within in reach” doesn’t sound right.
If he could’ve kept his last job, Frank would’ve been happy to be home from it.
Trust me, Frank says to the humid room. I’m a regular guy. Trust me, he says again, because repetition feels like practice and practice feels like improvement.
Before the game Samuel had said something to him about how he would make a good angel. Not because you’re pure, Samuel said, but because you’re impossible and quiet.
Samuel was supposed to call by now. Samuel did not call. This might not mean anything.
Samuel had something about being there. Showing up. Making history.
Frank is not worried.
The phone’s right there.
Even the light through the TV-screen shaped basement windows is yellow. Not gold. Not sunflower. Just yellow.
He puts the news on, then turns it off. Is everything okay? If everything is okay, there’s no need to worry.
Out in the yard behind the building they’re having debates again. They don’t agree about why, but they do agree: no one is going to rescue us. Maybe “us” includes Frank.
Sometimes the world is safer when all doors are cracked a little bit open, maybe so as not to make a humid world upset. But Frank has weights and stones in storage tubs to easily barricade even the closets and drawers, just in case.
If everything is okay nobody ever needs rescuing. Not even Frank.
Samuel had said something — not a promise — about survival. He’d said Frank could be a guardian angel of history, if he wanted it bad enough.
If everything is okay Frank could stop worrying. Get back to work. Be a specific person. Not always an angel, but maybe sometimes.
It’s okay, Frank says to the air between him and the door. I’m sorry, he says.
Nothing is being forgotten. There’s more than one uniform in the next room.
The phone doesn’t ring. Maybe it won’t but maybe it will.
Nicholas Grider's story collections include Misadventure (A Strange Object/Deep Vellum) and Forest of Borders (Malarkey). "Yellow Light" is from a novel in stories, other parts of which have appeared in or are forthcoming from Dishsoap Quarterly, MoonPark, Wireworm, The Rome Review, and other publications.
Erin Taylor Kennedy received an MA in Documentary Film from University of London, Goldsmiths College. After graduating, she worked as a documentary producer, cameraperson and editor. Over the past decade, she has worked almost exclusively as a commercial and documentary editor. In addition to her professional work, she has produced various personal projects using photography, video, and archival material. Her photographic work draws on her experience in video editing and visual storytelling, exploring how meaning emerges through the sequencing and juxtaposition of images. Through independent publishers Rayon Vert Editions and Basic Battle Books, she has released four photography books in the past decade. She cherishes the moments away from a screen, whether it's in a garden, a cinema, a dream, or a remote part of the world.