That gave me pause. Maybe Richard had made up the alligator too. Maybe he was trying to drive me crazy. Then I thought maybe I was the paranoid conspiracy nut and I just didn’t know it. Then I made myself stop thinking.
Hank and I pulled and cut the grape vines off trees, shrubs, and structures. When we’d finished with that, we began cutting back the brush and hauling it to the curb.
When it was almost dark, we finished up and parted company for the night. Hank said he’d swing by the next day and pick up the yard trash and take it to the dump, and I was happy to let him do it.
*****
Two days later, Hurricane Cindy was upon us. The National Hurricane Center had predicted Cindy would make landfall as a Category 2 hurricane in Tampa, but Cindy had a mind of its own. It underwent rapid intensification and made landfall south of Tampa as a Category 4 hurricane on Friday the 13th, but nobody was making any jokes about bad luck. At least I wasn’t. I’d always been superstitious. One remark by me about bad luck might ruin Florida for good.
We’d been given Friday off just in case we had to take care of any hurricane-related tasks. Prior to Cindy’s landfall, I hunted all over for Little Boy but couldn’t find him. I finally gave up but periodically, after the high winds started that evening, I went from front window to French doors, looking for him. In between trips, I lay in bed listening to the shrieking wind, wondering if my windows would hold. I couldn’t believe that a hurricane on the other side of the state was causing such a howling of wind on this side.
The next thing I knew, it was morning and I still had power. I turned on the television news and was shocked to see the destruction Cindy left in its path. Being ninety miles south of its Daytona Beach exit point, we were close enough to experience plenty of damage, so I added socks and rubber boots to my typical shorts and halter top. I slathered my face with sunscreen, followed that with mosquito spray to the rest of me, slid a visor and sunglasses on, and went outside to take a look.
Branches were down everywhere, but it wasn’t that bad, considering. The worst damage was to a wax myrtle that had split apart on my fourth lot. It hadn’t been in good shape to begin with, and the high winds had finished it off. Now I’d have to cut it up.
I trekked around my property taking a good second look, with a view toward finding trees that were damaged enough that they would fall apart during another storm, because I had a bad feeling we would have some more. It wasn’t yet the height of the tropical season, after all. Many of my trees had branches that should be cut before a hurricane cut them for me.
On Saturday morning, Hank showed up with bagels and coffee, which I lingered over for as long as I could. Not so much because I didn’t want to get to work, but mainly because staring across the table at Hank while we made small talk was an activity that basically couldn’t be beat. Well, it could be beat by one thing, but I wasn’t sure my relationship with Hank would evolve into that. As Granny had noticed, there was definitely a spark, but Hank didn’t seem inclined to fan the spark into a flame.
We worked that entire weekend, Monday after work, all day Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Thursday and Friday after work. The following weekend we were back at it again, this time with a little enthusiasm since we knew we could finish off the fourth lot completely. Of course, the fourth lot was the easiest. Although there was one tree to cut down, there weren’t any structures to pulverize or weeds to yank out by hand. And the fourth lot wasn’t possessed by a swamp.
By Sunday afternoon the clean-up had gone so well, I decided I could do most of the work on the other three lots by myself. I felt a burst of elation at the thought that I wouldn’t have to work too much with Richard. For some reason, I wasn’t looking forward to working with Richard. Then I remembered that some of the clean-up required power tools, which I didn’t know how to use.
I glanced over at Hank, who was carrying the weed trimmer toward the weeds that ran the length of the fence. I could learn how to use that power tool. In fact, I could start my education immediately.
“I’d like to try that,” I said, closing in on Hank.
“Why?”
“I want to see if I can do it.”
A corner of Hank’s mouth tipped up in a quasi-smile. For some reason, I was reminded of my mother’s smirk, probably because her smirk always started at one corner of her mouth. And probably because she smirked whenever I presumed to think I could do something.
I immediately went on the defensive. Hank didn’t think I could do it?
I put my hands on my hips. “What? How hard can it be? You’re just walking around holding that thing in front of you. I know how to walk and I know how to hold. I can even do both at the same time.” Because I’m a woman, I wanted to add, and everyone knows women can multi-task. Unlike men.
I didn’t speak my thought but the truth was, I was feeling a little indignant. I’d been doing my share of the work, but my share hadn’t required any skill. My share consisted of throwing vines and twigs and weeds onto the tarp, dragging the tarp to the sidewalk, and dumping the cuttings. Why should Hank get to do the work that required skill just because he already knew how to do it? I was capable of learning, wasn’t I? Hell yes, I was.
I marched over to Hank and grabbed the weed-wacker. He relinquished it to me and it promptly crashed to the ground. Hank’s quasi-smile turned into a real one.
“What? I didn’t know it was so heavy, is all. You could have warned me.”
“It’s heavy,” he said.
Damned tooting. I hoisted it up and lugged it over to the weeds. I held it off the ground at about the same distance Hank had been holding it and felt around for the power switch. Nothing.
I set the wacker back down and looked it over. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?”
“The power switch. All I see is this little button here and nothing happens when I push it.”
“That’s the primer. There isn’t a power switch. Do you see a power cord connected?”
I looked around. “No.”
“You’re not very observant, are you?” he asked.
I wanted to make a sharp retort to match the sharp pain I was already feeling between my shoulder blades from hoisting the trimmer up, but Hank spoke the truth. I wasn’t very observant when it came to things. People were another matter. I was damned observant when it came to people. I was so observant I could tell what most people were thinking just from the look in their eyes, and I was only wrong half the time. I gazed into Hank’s eyes, expecting to see a superior look, but all I saw was curious interest. At least that’s what it looked like to me.
“You gotta yank on that string there to start the motor,” he said.
I held the trimmer up in the air with my left arm. Jeez. It wasn’t exactly easy to hold one-handed. My arm trembled; I hoped Hank couldn’t tell.
“You’re too unstable holding it like that. You need to do it this way,” he said. He took the trimmer from me and squatted, holding it horizontal to the ground, with the motor end resting steady and the cutting end several inches up in the air. I squatted down beside him and moved Hank’s hand out of the way.
“You need to—”
I gave him a death glare. I didn’t know why I was so determined to prove I could do this without Hank’s help, especially when I probably couldn’t.
“I know how to yank,” I said. Yanking was something I knew from way back. Nicole had enjoyed yanking my hair when we were toddlers, and I had learned to yank in return. I’d become pretty good at yanking over the years.
I yanked on the string, but nothing happened. I did it again and again. My elbow ached and sweat ran down my face and chest. I couldn’t decide whether to cry or scream.
“You have to prime it first,” Hank said. “Like this.” He leaned in close and pushed the button a few times. “Why don’t you let me start it for you? Startin’ takes a bit of strength.”
I let him have it since I had no choice. He tugged gently on the string and the motor
roared to life.
“Keep it a couple of inches off the ground,” he shouted as he handed off the puttering, juddering, gas-powered vibrator that was only pretending to be a garden tool. “And use the throttle to give it gas.”
I lurched my way to the overgrown area, doing my best to keep the wacker far enough away from me that it wouldn’t whack off my legs. As soon as the string hit the weeds, the motor died.
“Now what?” I screamed.
“The weeds got tangled up in the string. Usually happens if you run the motor too fast or don’t have the cutting string close enough to the base of the weeds. Here, let me fix it.”
He took back the trimmer. While I stood there wishing I were dead, he untangled the tangle, started the motor, and passed the stupid thing back. I huffed and he smiled.
It only took me two hours to do what Hank could have done in one. Less than one. Less than half of one. While I struggled through the weeds, trying to prove I could do anything Hank could do (when all I really proved was that I had a stubborn streak a mile wide), Hank cut up the wax myrtle, finished everything else in the yard, and dragged all the trimmings to the street.
Through it all, Hank kept cutting his gaze back to me, checking me out. I couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes even when I was close enough to see it. Was something troubling him or was he in fantasy land? Maybe he was just keeping an eye on me because he figured I’d slice off my legs.
When I killed the motor for the last time, I said, “What?”
“What what?” he said.
“Why do you keep giving me that look?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Sorry. Didn’t know I was doin’ it. You remind me of someone I used to know. If anyone told her she couldn’t do somethin’, then look out, because she would prove them wrong.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothin’. I like it.”
I wasn’t sure that was all of it, but maybe the rest wasn’t my business. Of course, I didn’t usually care if something wasn’t my business, so I wondered who the girl was. Maybe she’d been his wife. My heart clenched at the possibility that Hank could have been married. Heck, for all I knew, he could be married now. Maybe he was married but separated from his wife. I didn’t like to think about that, so I stopped thinking.
We were tidying up the pile of yard trash on the sidewalk when Richard stopped by to confirm that he’d start the next night. I didn’t bother to tell him I would do most of the work myself because it had become apparent to me that I couldn’t.
When Richard walked back toward his truck, I made a point of checking out his butt. Wide and flat. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The city picked up yard trash on Mondays, so everything we’d dragged to the curb would be gone tomorrow afternoon. I felt a wash of satisfaction, but it was tempered by the knowledge that I had three lots to go and by the unhappy realization that I couldn’t handle the equipment on my own. I would be spending a lot of time with flat-butt Richard, whether I wanted to or not.
Hank and I were sweaty and dirty, and the mosquitoes were on the attack, but I forgot about everything else when Hank stuck his hand into the ice chest that I thought contained only bottles of water and pulled out two Coronas. We toasted the end of the work on lot number four and chugged our beers.
Chapter 13
The next day when I got home from work, I immediately changed into yard clothes. We’d just had an afternoon rain shower, which had cooled off the temperature slightly but left the air muggy as hell. Muggy and buggy. Insects always came out after a rain.
Richard showed up thirty minutes later, knocking at my door. He’d brought with him a gas-powered shrubbery trimmer, a Weedwacker, a chainsaw, and an assortment of yard tools. I thought about asking for a lesson using the chainsaw, but my back ached so badly from the weed-wacking I’d done the day before, I could hardly stand straight. Maybe another time. Or not.
“What’s this?” Richard said with a nod at a yellow paper that was taped to my front door. I ripped it off and took a look.
“Well, how do you like that? I’m in violation of code for felling a tree without a permit. Why do I need a permit to cut down a tree that’s already split in two?”
“How did they know you cut down a tree? Do you think one of your neighbors turned you in? Or do you think it was the trash guys who picked up the tree?”
“I don’t think the trash guys would’ve done it.” They’d better not have. I’d tipped them pretty good after Christmas and if I found out they’d turned me in, I’d ask for my money back. “More likely it was Mr. Carlson, the president of the homeowners’ association. He’s probably watching me with binoculars as we speak.”
We both turned our attention to the view from the courtyard, but the only thing we could see was the landscaped fence across the street. The light breeze carried the squeaks of baby birds awaiting dinner, the faint whistle of a train, and the chatter of squirrels.
I went back to the notice. “It says I have thirty days to contest the hundred-dollar fine. That really pisses me off.” Here I was cleaning up my yard to avoid having to pay a bunch of money, and now I would have to pay money because I was cleaning up my yard.
“I think most of the permits cost seventy-five dollars anyway, so you’re only paying an extra twenty-five.”
Yeah, right, I wanted to say. Unless you consider that yesterday I wasn’t paying anything. I didn’t say it though because I didn’t want Richard to see the side of me that complained about every little thing, at least those that had to do with money. He’d see that side soon enough, and it wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
I took the paper inside so we could get started on the yard. Richard had come up with a schedule, which proved he was on top of things, or at least that he had good intentions.
After looking the schedule over, I had to admit Richard was pretty good at planning. I’d figured on going into the yard and yanking up weeds wherever we saw them, trimming bushes or removing them as needed. Richard had an actual plan, which started with getting rid of the weeds along the property line at the fence out back, and then tackling lots one, two, and three, in that order. He said he’d intentionally left the swamp lot for last in case I could save some money between now and then to buy some fill dirt. I doubted that would happen, but I decided to keep my doubts to myself.
By dusk, which was the time mosquitoes came out for dinner, we’d finished weeding a little more than half the property line of the first lot, no small task since the weeds were about two feet high and ten feet deep. We dragged the plastic tarp that held the last load of cuttings around to the front and emptied it between the sidewalk and curb. My back ached so much I could barely walk into the house, but after twenty minutes under a hot shower massage, I was doing okay. I skipped dinner, brushed my teeth, and collapsed into bed.
*****
I stopped by Town Hall on my lunch hour the next day to check about the tree-cutting fine and learned that someone had tipped them off. I demanded to know who, but they didn’t have a name.
“So that’s it? Every time you get an anonymous call about something innocuous like someone cutting down a dead tree, you go out and check it and fine the person?”
The ponytailed girl behind the counter, who might have been all of eighteen, blinked. “Yes, I guess that’s what they do.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous,” I said. “What was I supposed to do? Let that tree disintegrate before my eyes? Let bugs and termites move in for the kill?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice quavered, and I felt like a jerk. Luckily—or unluckily—for me, someone else who worked there heard the quaver and stepped in.
“She doesn’t have anything to do with the rules,” said some crotchety gray-haired man wearing a white shirt and red bow tie with blue suspenders holding up his polyester pants. “I’m the one who wrote up the ticket, so if you’ve got a problem with it, don’t take it out on her.”
I mumbled an apology to the gi
rl, who was now blowing her nose into a tissue. I flashed a fake smile at the inspector, and he growled back. Then he jerked his head in the direction of an office behind the counter. He went and I followed. The name plaque outside the door said George Griffin.
“I just don’t understand what I was supposed to do,” I told him. “Here I had this dead tree, split apart by Hurricane Cindy, and I have to pay a hundred dollars because I didn’t ask if I could cut it down? I mean, it was already cut down. It was ruined by the hurricane.”
“You’re really only being fined twenty-five dollars because you cut it without asking. It would have been seventy-five no matter what.”
No, it wouldn’t have been, I wanted to say. It would have been zero if no one had called.
“That’s what I don’t get,” I said instead. “So you’re saying I have to ask permission to cut things on my own property? It’s my property. Why should I have to ask?”
“Because the trees benefit all of us, not just you. If everyone cut down all the trees on their properties, do you know what would happen?”
I shook my head. I had a general idea about plants giving off oxygen and trees providing shelter for wildlife, but for the most part I’d daydreamed through science.
“Well, air pollution would be worse, for one thing. And we’d have no protection that the tree roots offer against run-off into the drinking water for another. There’d be no homes for birds and beetles and squirrels, and—”
“I get it,” I said, cutting him off, glad to know I’d learned the essentials in spite of my daytime fantasies. “But this tree was dead.”
“That’s what everyone says when they want to cut down a tree. But sometimes they just want a different view or don’t want to fool with pine needles on their roof or something else. The permit means we get to check and make sure. We’re not running a free show here, so the inspector’s time—not just for the inspection, but for the paperwork and his gas and auto maintenance—all have to be covered.”
Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) Page 12
