Small Acts
The Second Grave

The Ambulance

August 25, 2026 · Part 6 of 10 · 2 min

He wasn't at mile fourteen the next Tuesday.

I told myself he was sick. Told myself an eighty-year-old man skips a walk sometimes, especially after the kind of scene we'd had, especially in weather like that week's, rain coming down in ropes since Sunday. I idled at the shoulder for forty minutes with my hazards ticking before I gave it up and drove the rest of my route with my stomach in a knot the whole way.

I didn't know where he lived. Four weeks of rides and I'd never once asked. All I had was a first and last name and a county the size of a postage stamp, so I started at the diner on Route 9 where the waitress knew everybody by their coffee order.

"Wendell Pruitt," I said. "Older fella, walks out to Fairview every Tuesday."

"Sure, Wendell. Lives out on Millbrook, little blue house past the feed store." She topped off a mug three stools down without looking. "Ain't seen him in here in a week, now you mention it."

Millbrook Lane took me past six houses before I found the blue one — paint peeling, porch light dead, a week's worth of mail wedged half-out of the box and gone soft with rain. No truck in the drive. No lights on anywhere.

I was still standing at the end of the walk when a woman came out onto the next porch over, arms crossed against the chill, watching me the way you watch a stranger loitering outside your neighbor's empty house.

"You looking for Wendell?"

"Yes, ma'am. I've been giving him rides out to the cemetery. He didn't show today and I got worried."

Her face changed, softened into something careful. "Ambulance came Tuesday night. Late — I heard the siren, went out on my porch, saw them wheeling him down his own steps on a gurney. Collapsed right there in his yard, from what the paramedics said to me after. Might've been a stroke. Might not make it, way they were talking."

My knees went a little loose. "Which hospital?"

"County General, I'd guess. That's where they always take them." She hesitated, pulling her cardigan tighter, like she wasn't sure whether to say the next part. "Poor thing was hollering when they had him on that gurney. Same name, over and over, whole way down the walk."

"What name?"

She looked at me steady.

"Foster," she said. "He kept calling for somebody named Foster."

Continue the story Part 7: Noelle →

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