Rain tapped rapidly upon the tin roof, then gathered and cascaded from the eaves to the earth, puddling before the old wooden porch. The gray sky spilled forth continuously, soddening the fields and painting them more viridescent than before, and beyond them stood a forest thick with longleaf pines and saw palmetto.

Old Moses Henley sat rocking in his chair on his porch, watching a distant man dressed in a straw hat and overalls walk toward him across the wet field. With every step the man took, the grass beneath his feet would wither and die, despite the rain giving all else around him new life.

Soon, the man reached the wooden steps at the end of the porch, and as he ascended out of the rain, Moses noticed that the man was completely dry.

“Mind if I join you?” The man asked. Moses nodded, seeing as the man, now taking a seat in the other rocking chair, would be joining him, regardless.

“Quite a downpour, ain’t it?” Moses said, more out of nervous civility than a desire for conversation.

The man looked out to where he had just come from, watched the rain fall, then asked, “Do you know why I’m here?”

“Well… I reckon you’re Death.”

The man turned to Moses and smiled, his mouth host to only about seven teeth, several of which were rotted and ready to go. “That is correct.”

Moses took in a shaky breath and looked back out on his land. “You ain’t how I imagined you.”

“You’re on in years, Moses, and you’ve forgotten that you’ve seen me before. I used to live not far from here.”

Moses looked at the man and tried to remember but could not get past what felt like a heavy fog that had, in his final years, seemed to have surrounded his memory. “What were you doing out there?”

“Living in this world, same as you. See, we’re all life and we’re all death, Moses, and it wasn’t much earlier a fella from a town over came to me and said it was my turn.”

“Your turn to die?”

The man nodded. “And now it’s yours.”

“Will I be visiting the next person?”

The man stood and smiled and said, “That’s right, Moses. That way they know they ain’t alone,” then he placed a hand on Moses’s shoulder.

Looking out into the field, Moses could see where the man had walked and the grass had withered, had regrown, lush and green. Then, Moses stood from his chair and stepped off the porch and headed on.