An Evening Walk
by Donald A. Ranard
[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]
“C’mon,” he said. “It’ll be interesting.”
They’d been taking their walks at night, when the streets were empty, but today he suggested they go out in early evening, while it was still light.
“Long as we social distance and wear masks,” she said.
They walked up Culpeper and turned left on Beauregard, a normally quiet street that now, with no traffic, was busy with kids racing about on bikes and scooters. People who usually preferred the privacy of backyard patios and decks had gathered on front porches; others sat in their front yards on lawn chairs carrying on conversations with neighbors across the street.
As they walked along the tree-lined street, they waved and shouted greetings to people they’d never met.
“I feel like we’ve wandered into a Norman Rockwell painting,” she said.
Ahead, two pre-teen boys approached, deep in conversation. One wore a mask, the other didn’t.
“Vectors at twelve o’clock,” he said, and she laughed.
Before they could cross to the other side of the street, the masked boy suddenly noticed them and veered off sharply to the left. The other boy followed him across the street.
“Is that for them or us?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I read in the community newsletter that parents are telling their kids to steer clear of the elderly—you know, because they’re more vulnerable.”
“I don’t know if I’m impressed that our neighbors are so responsible or depressed that I’m now considered elderly.”
At the end of the block, they came to a Cape Cod with a wheelchair ramp. The house belonged to an old Chinese couple from Hong Kong. They’d never met the housebound husband, but they’d become friendly with the woman. She took long, slow walks in the morning and would sometimes stop and chat if one of them was in the garden working when she passed by.
“I just realized we haven’t seen Rose lately,” she said. “Hope she’s okay.”
“With all the anti-Asian attacks in the news, maybe she’s afraid to go out.”
“In our neighborhood?”
As they turned the corner onto Dinwiddie, a gray pick-up truck sped toward them, flags flying: One was a Confederate flag; the other showed a skull wrapped in the American flag under the motto “Live Free or Die.”
“Yep,” he said, “in our neighborhood.”
As the truck roared by, the driver stuck his head, bearded, bald, and unmasked, out the window.
“Sheeple!”
“Live free and die, asshole,” he muttered, then whirled around, middle finger raised.
She yanked his arm down, a look of alarm on her face. “What’re you doing?!”
They walked for a moment in silence.
“That wasn’t smart,” she said. “Suppose he had a gun.”
“I’m thinking of getting one.”
She stopped and stared at him in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“What, a Democrat can’t own a gun?”
***
In the gathering dusk, a tall black man wearing a dark mask walked toward them. As he came closer, they crossed to the other side of the street, waving and shouting loud greetings to the man in unison. He looked at them but said nothing.
“I wonder if he thinks we’re racist,” she said.
“More likely he’s wondering why we’re knocking ourselves out to be so friendly to someone we don’t know,” he said.
There was a pop-pop-pop. They stopped, looked at each other and then at the man. He looked back at them, but behind the mask his expression was unreadable.
“What do you think he thinks now?” she said. “Talk about unconscious bias.”
“Well, at least we have something to talk about tomorrow.” For the past month they’d been zooming with friends, and last week, after running out of things to talk about, someone had suggested the idea of topics. Tomorrow’s topic was racism and white privilege.
Another series of pops. She looked at him. “Those are firecrackers, right?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
“Why now?”
“You’d know if you still did Facebook. It’s a sting operation by the police. Or it’s rival groups of young people. Or it’s an antifa operation to erode respect for the police. Or it’s a police psyop against black and brown people to get them used to the sound of artillery fire that will come in Phase Two. Or it’s—”
“Oh my God! Stop! That’s exactly why I don’t do Facebook anymore. How about bored kids with nothing to do?”
He made a face. “That won’t get any likes.”
***
On their right, two houses, side-by-side, displayed Black Lives Matter signs.
“I didn’t realize our neighborhood was so woke,” she said.
“Woke! Listen to you! I didn’t realize you were so—”
“Woke?”
He laughed.
“Get with it, old man.”
“What’s the opposite of woke?” he said.
“I don’t know. . . unwoke? Why?”
He pointed across the street. In front of a brick rambler was an All Lives Matter sign on one side of the manicured lawn and on the other side a sign with a message so long they had to stop to read it:
I will not be masked, tested,
tracked, poisoned, or chipped
to support this orchestrated lie
This is NOT my new normal
I AM AN AMERICAN!
# I DO NOT CONSENT
***
Afterwards they sat on their back deck, surrounded by trees, and watched fireflies under a star-lit sky.
“Our refuge,” she said. “We’re so lucky to have this.”
“I haven’t seen so many fireflies since I was a kid. I wonder if it’s because of Covid.”
“How so?”
“Less pollution.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “It may not all be terrible, this pandemic,” she said. “I mean, we’ve never been closer to Sam.” It was true: Pre-pandemic, they’d hear from their daughter once or twice a month; now they talked to her every other day.
In the distance, the rat-a-tat-tat of small explosions ended with a loud boom.
She looked at him. “Were those firecrackers?”
He shrugged. Can you buy a gun online? he wondered.
Donald A. Ranard’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Vestal Review, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, 100 Word Story, War, Literature & the Arts, and elsewhere. His essay “The Accidental Hotel” is anthologized in The Best Travel Writing 2005. A resident of Arlington, VA, he has lived in a dozen countries in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
See what happens when you click below.
What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “An Evening Walk”? My story is an imaginative reworking of the evening walks in our neighborhood that my wife and I have been taking since the pandemic began. The neighborhood, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., is heavily blue but with pockets of red. The story began as a playful piece, full of banter, about the deeply weird, paradoxical moment we find ourselves in, but dark, unfunny observations kept creeping in. While some of the humor remains—because life is funny, even, sometimes, when it’s not—a simple evening walk in a quiet suburban neighborhood is spooked by omens of violence and social collapse.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.
Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
09/15 • Abbie Doll
09/22 • Karen Regen Tuero
09/29 • Amy Speace
10/06 • Jennifer Edwards
10/13 • Joseph O’Day
10/20 • Carolyn Zaikowski
10/27 • Sunmisola Odusola
11/03 • Sara Cassidy
11/10 • Liz Abrams-Morley
11/17 • Alison Colwell
11/24 • Lucy Zhang
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD
11/17 • TBD
11/24 • TBD
12/01 • TBD
12/08 • TBD
12/15 • TBD
12/22 • TBD
12/29 • TBD