The Captain had precise and careful fingers.   

Steady hands that were connected to steady wrists without any sign of arthritis, and his body was solid and tight due to carefully executed pushups and long swims at the YMCA.  The Captain knew right from wrong, for the most part, just like he knew good from bad.  He knew truth from lies, he knew fact from fiction, his brain was stuffed full of hard-earned knowledge and his brow was furrowed with years of calculated thought, practiced trepidation, and somewhat-warranted suspicion.  He took great care in all things.  He was one of few remaining men who had lived a significantly historical life-span, born just in time to live through the great depression, grown just in time to be drafted into war, and old just in time to see the world around him start to fold in on itself with the weight of immorality and carelessness.  Some days he wished he could trade his long life for the ones he’d seen get cut much too short. 

But that, The Captain knew, was a dangerous and selfish train of thought. 

The Captain’s study was a haven nestled deep into the back corner of his house.  The walls were covered in richly dark cherry wood and the floor was blanketed with plush navy blue carpet.  A desk, he thought, was a useless thing unless it was covered completely in papers and books, and so his stood cluttered and comfortingly messy in a house that was otherwise impeccable.  Two of the four walls in the room were made completely of bookshelves, housing countless encyclopedias and nautical texts that The Captain spent more time dusting than actually reading.  Harold, however, sometimes climbed up onto the ladder that leaned against the wall and pulled out some of the larger ones, books filled mostly with photos and drawings of ships from various wars and various countries.  Harold had a habit of spreading them open on the floor and laying there, his silent mouth pursed in serious consideration.   

When he looked at Harold, The Captain sometimes confused the pang of sadness he felt with the ache from an old gunshot wound in the lower left area of his abdomen.  Grief and gunshots were similar things, in his mind, so it was easy to accidentally think one was the other. 

He remembered clearly when Harold used to speak. 

He remembered clearly his five year old eyes flashing in youthful excitement and his five year old tongue tripping much too fast against his teeth to try to push out what it was he was thinking.  He remembered clearly the sound of Harold’s voice and he remembered clearly the day when that lilting sound had gone silent. 

These were the kinds of things that The Captain knew.   

These were the kinds of things that The Captain considered when his steady hands were gluing together pieces of tiny model boats, building them into their bottles, sticking stubbornly to the imitations of the decks of ships he’d actually walked upon.  He built them over and over again because of some sense of nostalgia, some sense of brotherhood and camaraderie, some sense of duty that still lingered in the red-white-and-blue blood pumping through his veins. 

He was completing the hull of his most recent project when the doorbell rang and his hand slipped, dragging a sailor’s curse word back into his mouth after countless years without them.  He looked at the clock as if that would explain why somebody was calling on him unexpectedly, as if he’d suddenly remember that he had an appointment with the American Legion or social services.   

Grumbling in resignation, he rose and made his way slowly to the front of the house, deliberately taking his time and forcing nervousness upon whoever was disturbing his diligently crafted peace and quiet.  It was an old trick, this enforced discomfort, but it was consistently reliable.  When he finally reached the screen to the front porch he paused and squinted in thought, taking in the shaggy haired, suit-wearing, twenty-something guy calmly waiting for The Captain’s bulky frame to appear.  He licked his lips. 

“Yeah?” he greeted, and the boy flashed a smile that was probably meant to be charming.   

“Uh, hi, I’m Jim.  I work Saturdays over at the Boys and Girls Club,” the kid told him and The Captain felt his irritation climb just a little bit higher because he’d had this conversation with some other slouching vagrant and he didn’t feel like having it again, no matter how good the intentions happened to be. 

“Look, Jim,” The Captain muttered, leaning into the doorframe but stubbornly refusing to push the screen open at all, “I talked to somebody else about this already and I have no mind to do it again, so unless you’re here for some other reason…” he drifted off and lifted his eyebrows expectantly.  Jim shifted on his feet. 

“I am, actually,” he forced out and The Captain fought hard to keep from rolling his eyes.  “I don’t want to force you or Harold to get involved in the baseball program, I just thought that maybe, um…I was wondering if maybe there was something else I could do,” he inquired gently, his eyes squinting in concern, and The Captain gained a bit of respect for him.  He frowned and sighed, shaking his head.  “If you don’t mind my, um, my asking…why doesn’t Harold speak, sir?” Jim wondered.   

“It seems to me that this is none of your business, son,” The Captain warned and Jim nodded as if he’d been expecting that. 

“I realize that, and I’m sorry for prying.”   

They both waited.   

This would normally be the moment when any intruder would politely excuse himself and allow The Captain to retreat once again into the shadowed confines of his solitude.  Instead Jim just stood there, and The Captain was reminded for a moment of the fresh-faced rookies he’d stood beside in training. 

The Captain weighed his options.  He considered rights and wrongs and truths and lies and he thought about younger generations and leftover emotions and he wondered if maybe he liked this kid.  He sniffed and he pushed the screen open and stepped out onto the porch, shoving his careful steady hands into his pockets and making his way toward the dusty old rocking chair in the corner.  Instead of sitting in it he leaned against the porch railing and looked down at the muddy remnants of his once impeccable front lawn. 

“What’s your last name, boy?” The Captain inquired.  Jim stayed put, choosing not to crowd the older gentleman’s personal space.  It was the sort of thing The Captain appreciated. 

“Halpert, sir,” Jim responded easily, his shoes staying motionless against the weathered floor boards beneath them. 

There was a long, heavy silence as neither of them moved and The Captain wondered, not for the first time, whether he was equipped to handle the kinds of things for which he was now responsible, like the growing up of a world-weary seven year old and the shaking loose of a tongue turned to stone.  Finally he stood up tall and he turned back toward the young man on the porch, squinting against the afternoon sun, audibly inhaling and visibly sizing him up.

“You seem like a good man, Halpert,” he stated and Jim’s head tipped in silent gratitude.  They watched each other for a long while and The Captain assessed that Jim’s might be the sort of life that sometimes went by unknown and unnoticed, affecting others without pomp or glory.  That happened to be precisely the kind of life that The Captain took careful note of, precisely the kind of life that The Captain related to and understood.  His mind drifted for a second to the hull of the model ship he’d been building and he sniffed again, running his tongue along his front teeth the way he used to in his days of having a mouthful of chewing tobacco.   

In that moment he quietly decided something, and he happened to be a man who stuck to the decisions he made in the way that captains should.  So, clearing his throat, he gave in to Jim Halpert because he had a feeling this was somehow important. 

Jim Halpert had a certain kind of look in his eye and The Captain knew enough to know things.   

“Harold’s mother was a fine young woman,” The Captain finally offered gruffly, feeling the wound at his left side tighten ever so slightly, “and that’s all I’d like to say about it at this time,” he finished.  Jim nodded, patient, silent, and The Captain lifted his eyebrows in response, wanting to change the subject and ease the ache in his rock-hard stomach.  “What’s a good man like you think about chili?” he asked, tossing the question out haphazardly so that it fell like led at their feet.  

Jim grinned at him, then, and The Captain knew enough to know things. 

“I’m a big fan, sir,” he told him. 

“I’ll be making some tomorrow,” The Captain announced.  “Should be finished by dinner time,” and the proclamation, the intention behind it, the tone of his words were clear enough that Jim’s mouth tilted in understanding before he muttered thank you and turned back to the street.   

It was obvious that was all The Captain was going to say about it. 

At that time.   

****************************************************************** 

Summer was like rich, warm cinnamon, and Pam was trying hard to trust this heat and the foreign flutter of hinted happiness flirting with the blood in her veins.  Jim looked at her sometimes and she smiled at him, and she stayed awake at night thinking about all of the things he’d said to her that day and all of the ways she’d stared at his body and his smile until the sweat on her brow was not exactly because of the weather.   

Wanting something was a tricky thing.   

Tricky and frightening and addicting all at once, and she was unfamiliar with the slow kind of ache that this wanting was bringing her. 

She’d never sipped whiskey or scotch and she’d never had rich enough chocolate for it to give her heartburn, so she was unaccustomed to the pulsing down her center, the warmth and the deliciously sour taste in the back of her throat.  Summertime sipped at her thoughts as if her mind was a cool glass of lemonade and she crossed her arms to try to burrow into that.  She crossed her arms and she watched him clap his hands.   

Pam Beesly haunted the parking lot.   

Jim had no idea she was there and he had no idea, she was sure, that she was watching him look like some kind of black and white photo on the wall of a diner.  He looked like a planned image, an all-American, General Motors, good old boy in jeans and white sneakers, his hair a messy mop of brown and blonde on the top of his head.  Boys were scattered around him, running and laughing and screaming to each other over the clink of metal against a baseball and the stretch of grass between them.  She leaned back against the hood of her car and she thought about falling down for miles like Alice into a rabbit hole.  Her eyes blinked and she smiled gently at Jim’s voice echoing off of the trees around the field. 

 “Why do you three look like you’re having a slumber party in the outfield?  Wake up, guys, this is baseball, not naptime,” he called and her smile widened when the three boys in outfield snapped to attention, their gloves dropping down to their knees and their free hands reaching to readjust their caps on their heads.  “Oh, there you are. Welcome back to the game,” he greeted sarcastically.  She was chuckling at him when the sentiments in her head were interrupted by the sound of gravel scratching against blacktop.  She glanced to her left and she blinked a few times in interested curiosity. 

“Harold,” she greeted quietly. He looked up at her, shielding his eyes with a small hand against his brow and pursing his lips in thought.  “Here to watch the baseball?” she wondered, her brow furrowing as one of his shoulders lifted in half of a shrug.   

Pam considered herself to be a woman of few words, someone who was prone to choosing silence over noise and giving into fear at the worst possible moments.  She thought of herself as a quiet sort of person.  However, in that moment, with Harold purposely mirroring her position against the hood of her car, crossing his arms and leaning back a little, watching the game play out in front of them, Pam had the distinct tickle of words on her tongue, and so her mouth fell open.  

And she spoke to him.   

“You know,” she said quietly, “when I was a kid I used to draw with chalk on my driveway.”  The confession was careful and easy, casually calm.  His gaze crept up toward her cautiously, so she went on as if trying to convince him of something simply by continuing.  “I used to draw lines, two right next to each other, so that it would look like a road,” she murmured, “and then I would ride my bike around it, and pretend to be in a car.”  The thought of it pulled a genuine smile to her lips because she remembered it being fun.  She remembered feeling clever and grown-up at the innocent age of six or seven.  “I would draw red lights at some places,” she explained, “and then I would stop on my bike and wait until they turned green.”   

Harold watched her and she wondered whether some children were simply born serious, born solemn and cautious and determined the way that Harold seemed to be. He watched her and she watched him, and the sounds of Jim echoed in the back of her mind, her focus narrowing so that she could barely make out what it was he was shouting just a few feet away.  Harold tilted his head at her, and she let the silence linger.   

She let the silence settle and she met his open stare with a practiced one of her own, thinking back on the day she’d first met him and the way he’d gripped a mud-covered stick tight in his little fingers, pushing it deep into the ground and licking his lips like that would help him get it exactly right.  There had been method there and Pam could appreciate that, even in a seven year old.  She could appreciate the act of silent communication and pushing at something instead of speaking it aloud.  She knew things about Harold.  She understood.  So she stared back at him until eventually she took in a deep lungful of the humid air and she squinted at him, offering him his own expression as well as a delicately chosen question that she hadn’t even realized she’d wanted to ask. 

“What are you drawing in your yard, Harold?”