My dad was sitting on the porch when I got home.

He sits there a lot now. Mom told me on the phone. Just sits and looks at the street.

He's sixty-four. When I was a kid, he was the strongest man I knew. Big arms, big laugh, sawdust in his hair. Now he looked smaller. Quieter.

His workshop in the garage was locked. Mom said he hadn't opened it in five years.

I sat down on the step beside him.

“You shouldn't have come back, son,” he said, after a while. “There's nothing here for you. Town's dying.”

“It's not dead yet, Dad.”

“It's dead.” He looked out at the street. “The day they closed the Works, I walked out of those doors with a cardboard box. Thirty years. They gave me a card and a pen.”

He shook his head.

“A pen,” he said. “I made four thousand chairs in that place.”

I wanted to tell him. Right there, on the porch. Everything.

But not yet. Not like this.

I wanted to show him.