The distinction was important.

Nobody needed to salute me while carrying a ladder.

Our first project was Isaac’s house.

He was the veteran whose blue tarp had appeared in Samuel Pike’s binder years earlier.

The roof had eventually been patched, but the front steps were unstable and the bathroom doorway too narrow for his mobility aid.

“Walter said he’d come back and fix the steps,” Isaac told me when I arrived.

“He tried,” I said.