The candle I put in the front window

The candle in the jar was 14 cm tall on the night the power went out. It was 7 cm tonight. On the ninth evening I walked to the corner of the street, 38 m from my own front door, and looked back at the house. My partner held the candle where it always sits.

Seven centimetres of candle

The candle is a pillar in a glass jar on a metal tray, on the kitchen table. Three hours a night for nine nights is 0.8 cm a night, so the 7 cm left is nine more nights. That is the number on the card now, in centimetres, not litres: nine.

The tray is 22 cm across, nothing above the flame. NFPA's rule is 30 cm from anything that burns; the curtain is 60 cm away and I moved it back another 20. Half of candle fires start with something too close, and there is no fire service here.

The headlamp came out of the garage drawer this morning, dead. I thought I had six AA cells. I had four, and two were in the kitchen clock. I assumed the lamp took four; it takes three, so the true stock was one spare. I ran it four hours on low in the basement this afternoon; it was still bright at the end. I do not know the runtime and I am not going to write a number I cannot stand behind.

The difference is not brightness. A headlamp throws a beam where I am facing, which at night is a window. A candle throws light in every direction at once, into the room and out through the glass. I had not thought about the gap.

What the street sees

At 8:10 p.m. last night I walked the dog to the corner. Four houses showed light. The woman two doors down had one window at the back. The man across the street had a blue glow from the radio dial, and a house on the far side had a television, which I did not understand. My house had the front window lit top to bottom, and a 4 cm stripe where the curtain panels do not meet. That stripe fell on the snow 3 m out from the wall.

I read my own house the way a stranger would. Someone is home. Someone is awake at 8 p.m. without utility power. Someone has a light that is not a phone, which means someone has stores. That last step took no effort at all.

I wrote it on the card at 8:30 p.m. and went to bed. That was the second mistake, and it cost more than the first.

The fix took twenty minutes this morning. Blanket over the curtain rod, black bag taped over the bottom 40 cm of glass, candle moved to the back room with the door shut, headlamp kept below sill height. From the same corner at 9:05 p.m. tonight: a 5 cm glow at the bottom of the back door, nothing at the front.

The can, and the prints

The jerry can was 20 L, steel, with about 3 L of old gas in the bottom. It had sat by the front door since Day 5; the garage is full and the porch is covered. At 7:10 a.m. it was gone. There was a clean rectangle in the snow where it had stood, and one set of boot prints in from the sidewalk.

I followed the prints the 40 m to the sidewalk and stopped. I did not follow them across the road. I went back inside and wrote four lines on the card: 7:10 a.m.; one 20 L steel can; about 3 L of gas; one person, right heel worn through. Then I carried the rest indoors — the axe, the ladder, the two 4-litre jugs, the camp stove.

I did not call anyone, because the phone died at 9:20 p.m. on Day 0, the detachment is 22 km away, and the car is near-empty. I did not go door to door. I did not tell the man across the street about the prints; he would have gone knocking on every door by noon, and I would have been the reason. I did not leave a light on as bait.

I told two people the fact, not the theory: the woman two doors down, and him. He said it was probably kids. Maybe. I was angry for twenty minutes, then did the arithmetic. Three litres of gas in a car that cannot use it is worth nothing. The can is worth $30 and no shop is open. What I lost was a container, not fuel.

He sent over 8 L in two 4-litre jugs that afternoon, unasked. He had 20 L and offered 12; I took 8 and said no to the rest. I fixed the latch on his storm door, which had swollen shut, and carried his ash bucket to the bin. The ledger reads 10 L this morning, plus 8, minus the 8.6 L we drink and cook with, which leaves 9.4. The card says 9.

The mistake was mine and it was the window. Nine nights I put a candle in the front glass and told myself the curtain was enough. I never walked out and looked back. The can had been visible from the sidewalk for five days.

Three in the morning

The house has no hum. I noticed that on Day 2 and I notice it most nights around three, when the dog gets up, turns around twice, and lies back down against the bedroom door. My partner sleeps in a hat and one of my sweaters and does not complain. In the daytime she has started making the bed, which she never did when we both had jobs, and I have not asked her why. At six we ate crackers and peanut butter and she said the dog was eating better than we were. I laughed at that for too long. She looked at me, then laughed too.

At three I was awake and the anger was still there, which surprised me. I do not think of myself as a man with a temper. I lay there and ran the block in my head, house by house, and worked out which porches could be seen from which angle. I got as far as planning to walk the alley behind the street this morning.

Then I stopped. I want to be exact about what happened next, because it was not forgiveness. I said the prayer I learned before I could read, the four lines of it, and it turned into an argument inside two sentences. I did not get an answer and I did not expect one. What I got was the plain thought that whoever took the can is somebody's son, which is true of everybody and settled nothing.

I have not forgiven him. I am not going to write that I have. I decided twice now not to go and look for him, and the second decision took longer than the first. She said, when I told her, that whoever took it probably needed it more than I did. I did not believe that for a second. I have thought about it four times since.

The what-if I keep coming back to is not the month. It is what happens if this becomes a habit on the street: one can this week, a doorstep next. The answer is not a weapon. I do not own one and would not use it well. It is a steel box bolted through the porch boards, and nothing left outside that a person can carry. It is the two of us agreeing in daylight what we do if someone knocks at night. We agreed on that much: I go to the door, she stays back with the dog, and neither of us goes outside.

What I should have had on day zero

• A headlamp and 12 AA cells in one drawer, dated. I had four cells and I was wrong about how many the lamp takes.
• One dark blanket and a roll of tape cut for the front window, about $12 together, hung before the first night rather than the ninth.
• A steel box with a padlock bolted through the porch boards, or nothing left outside. The can sat in the open for five days.