by Patti Abbott
The house was on the market fourteen months. Would-be buyers trickled down to none in a short time. His street was patently undesirable, located two blocks from a major freeway. The houses were modest, sided in cheap vinyl and measuring less than a thousand square feet. The street needed paving and was unlikely to get it, and boarded-up windows were becoming commonplace. A squatter had recently been evicted a block away. This had been a respectable street ten years ago. Now it was on the circuit for cars with enhanced music systems. The possibility of late night drug deals had been raised at a neighborhood watch meeting a few months back.
Twenty-three feet lay between Bob’s house and one next door. He planted a row of hydrangea in the area between the houses the next summer, just inside his property line. He double dug the soil, peppering it with chemicals to make the flowers bloom blue. Even though it was the “sleep” year for the plants, they made a respectable showing. There was not a single plant in the yard next door except for some badly overgrown yews. He was tempted to divide a few of his lilies or hostas and plant them next door, but he let it be.
Wendy Larsen moved in the next winter. A divorcee, he figured, as he peered at her through an upstairs window. She was standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, directing the moving men. The movers couldn’t make it past her without making a slightly off-color remark or sneaking a look. Despite the cold, Bob raised his window just high enough to hear them. Laughing at what they said from time to time, the woman didn’t seem to mind their flirtatious remarks. Twice she went inside to grab a cold beer for the men despite the frigid temperatures. The three of them sat, half-reclining on the ramp, tossing back their Miller Lights. When it began to grow dark, the men had to hustle to finish the job.
Wendy chose the room across from his bath as a bedroom and often forgot to close the curtains at nights. Bob wasn’t sure why. He never saw more than a flash of bare skin, but watching for that moment passed the time. She got home from her shift at some downtown restaurant about ten most nights and was usually in bed by eleven. He began waiting for her light to go out before going to bed—it became a ritual.
Wendy wasn’t in the house more than a week before she knocked at Bob’s door. He peered out, and despite his aversion to getting involved, opened the door a crack.
“Wonder if you could give me a jump. Car won’t start.” Her voice was throaty, warm. She waved an arm in the general direction of the street outside her house where an old green Saturn sat. She stamped her feet. “Lord, it’s a cold one.”
“Got jumper cables?” He’d bet a million bucks she didn’t.
“My ex must have gotten them in the settlement.” She laughed. “No, not really. Doubt we ever had ‘em. He was the kinda guy never expected stuff like this to happen.” She stamped her feet again, probably assuming he’d invite her inside. “Thought you might have some,” she finally repeated when he didn’t respond. “Mr. Mason, right? Saw your name on a piece of mail.”
She practically had her foot in his door. He nodded, pushed by her, and hurried back to his garage, coatless. She followed.
“Boy, you keep a neat garage,” she said, looking around. Every tool in Bob’s garage had its own peg—even implements like a barn fork and a flashlight. A series of tightly closed bins contained tools that wouldn’t hang from a hook. He hated clutter, mess. Soil, fertilizer, and such were double-bagged and tightly tied. He had a dread of walking in and finding vermin.
“Most of the stuff’s for gardening,” he said, taking the cables from his car trunk. His words came out hoarsely and he wondered when the last time he’d spoken to someone had been. “When the ground warms up, I’ll be outside getting the yard into shape.”
He didn’t know why he was telling her this. From the length of her fingernails and the height of her heels, it was unlikely she did much manual labor. He couldn’t picture her on her knees pulling weeds or handling a pair of hedge trimmers.
“Well, you keep the place real nice, Bob. Some men garden or cook, but I never met one who liked to clean before.”
He started to correct her, to say he didn’t like cleaning per se—but let it go.
“I ought to warn you; I don’t bother much with gardening,” she continued. “Anyway, I might buy a dog and he’d probably tear up any flowers. You know puppies.”
He shrugged non-committaly, although the idea of a dog worried him.
The driveway was icy, but she negotiated it in heels without a slip as he slowly backed the Ford out. Her hair was twisted into some complicated design, a silver butterfly holding it in place. He didn’t know what to call the style, but women had worn their hair like that when he was young.
She got into her car when he had the cables hooked up—inadvertently, he thought—giving him a quick flash of thigh. Thinner than he liked, but nice.
“I don’t feel right living here alone. Good guard dog might help.”
When he didn’t respond, she rolled her window down further and said, “I guess you’re not much of a dog lover, huh? Neither was my ex.” She paused, thinking. “It was one of the few good things—after the divorce came through. I thought to myself I could finally have a dog.”
He got her car started, put the cables and truck away, and went back inside his house. It took some time for his pulse to stop racing though he held his wrists under the hot water tap, a trick his father taught him.
“A woman will do that to you,” the old man explained. “Warm water calms things down when that feeling you got ain’t gonna do you no good.”
The puppy was outside the next week. She’d tied him to a post on her porch and he ran back and forth between the two houses on his long leash, barking in a tiny voice. The sound was slight, almost a squeak, but when the dog was full-grown, it’d probably sound deafening, and more than that—grating, nerve-wracking. A mixed-breed puppy, he didn’t look like a dog who’d turn out to be small either. But she wouldn’t pick something small for a guard dog.
Bob was not one for noise, hardly even listened to music. It was one of the issues that drove his once-upon-a-time wife, Edna, crazy.
“What kind of person doesn’t like some kind of music?” she asked him back then, whirling the radio dial this way and that while he shook his head.
It was hard to explain it, but music was mostly noise to him, noise that played in his head for hours after hearing it.
“I’ve heard of being tone deaf, but it’s something else with you,” she said, finally taking her vast collection of albums to another state.
“Cute, huh?” Wendy said now, coming out on the porch and down her steps.
A large man followed her—the kind of man who looked like kicking a dog was not out of the question for him. His head was shaved, and he wore an old army jacket with the sleeves rolled up despite the cold. There was a tattoo on his neck and one on each arm. Cryptic symbols done in murky ink. Right off the bat, Bob hated him, knowing his type of man.
“Dog’s named Georgie. And this here’s Buck,” Wendy said, waving an arm at her companions and grinning.
Ignoring the introductions, Bob turned toward Wendy and said, “My hydrangeas will be blooming in a few months.” He nodded toward the spot where the dog was taking a piss. The hydrangea plants didn’t look like much yet, but come late June they’d bloom for six weeks or more. It was the creep year. Sleep, creep, leap, an old gardening adage.
Not getting it, Wendy nodded, saying, “That’ll be nice. I bet I can see that patch from my kitchen window. What color are they? Always did like yellow flowers.”
The man with her—Buck—laughed. “Don’t you get it, Wen? He’s telling you to keep your damned dog away from his flowers. Gardeners don’t much like dogs trampling through their flower beds. Or taking a leak on them either.” He turned to Bob. “Guess you know exactly where your property ends, right? Got some paper spells it out tucked in a drawer?”
The two men looked at each other for a few seconds. Then Bob looked over at Wendy and said, “Hydrangeas come in
pink, blue, or white. Once in a while, you see one almost red.”
The man laughed again. His laugh sounded even less happy. “Guess you’ll have to live with pink, blue or white then, Wen. If you want to look at something yellow, you’ll have to plant it yourself. I’m sure old Bob here can tell you which flowers to buy.”
“Mine are blue,” Bob said needlessly. They both looked at him blankly. “My hydrangeas have blue flowers.”
Then he turned and walked around to the back of his house where his cold frames needed a few more nails knocked into them. He split the first piece of wood from the force of the hammer and threw it aside disgustedly.
That man—Buck—had thirty pounds and thirty years on him. He remembered a time when no man would’ve spoken to him like that. A time when he could lift heavy equipment all day and think nothing of it. When he could handle hot, sharp, and dangerous machinery, barely needing gloves. He looked at his hands now. Gardener’s hands and gardener’s muscles. Negligible. He was an old man. No one would ever lose sleep over him again.
After dark, Bob watched Wendy Larsen and the man make love from his bathroom window. At least he imagined that’s what was going on from the shadows thrown up. Every so often a sailboat seemed to glide across her wall. She must own one of those rotating lamps with cut-out shades that made shadows. A mood-maker, he’d heard them called. He opened the window and heard a groan or two, although it could have been the wind or the branches on the oak tree.
Things got busy as March turned into April and finally May. It was hectic in Michigan gardens come May. Everything had to be planted in a few short weeks. Wendy Larsen was often outside in the mornings before she left for work, Georgie sniffing around beside her.
When Bob came upon her one day, she waved her cigarette in the air and said, “Buck doesn’t like smoke in the house. Kind of a health nut.” She frowned briefly and added, “In his own way, at least.”
“It’s your house, isn’t it? Your rules?” Bob said before he could stop himself.
He thought he saw a bruise on her neck, but maybe it was a love bite. Her eyes looked reddish, too.
“Yeah, but he’s worth smoking outside for, Buck is. Probably keeps my smoking down. The price of it….” Hearing some sound behind her, she turned calling, “Georgie!”
The dog came swinging around the house, hardly a pup at all now. He barked with the volume Bob had expected, too.
“I had one of those what-d’ya-call-it fences put in to keep Georgie from running into the street,” Wendy explained. “Those invisible ones?” she added when he looked at her blankly. “You know.”
He remembered seeing signs on neighborhood lawns. “But not between the houses,” he said, looking down at the dog who was pissing on the flowerbed again. She looked at him blankly. “They didn’t install a fence along here.” He drew a line in the air.
Wendy flipped her cigarette, not even putting it out first. “You don’t have to worry about Georgie, Bob,” she said, misunderstanding. “One good shock and he’s never gone near the street again. Georgie’s no hero.”
“Good, good,” Bob said, giving up.
“I’m gonna get a collar for Buck soon, too,” she added. “Wonder what voltage it’d take to keep him off the street.”
Every day or two that spring and summer, Bob made a circuit of the area, collecting more than a dozen butts each time. Using a shovel, he picked up dog feces that had scorched his lawn in several spots. Beer cans often sat on the fence posts in the backyard and litter of all sorts blew from her yard into his. Wendy’s place seemed to be a magnet for refuse. She was simply oblivious to such things. Sometimes she even followed along, never connecting the dots. Georgie, wisely perhaps, settled into the deep shade that gathered between the two houses and watched.
Bob’s windows were open nearly all the time by June, and he could both see and hear Buck, over there two or three nights a week. Sitting on her porch like he owned it, popping the tops on beers and yelling for her to bring him another one before he was finished the last, hollering at the dog, listening to the Tigers’ games on his boom box. Buck’s nearly nonstop laugh was mean; Bob understood that laugh. He usually remained inside on those evenings, wrestling with the idea he was being intimidated. He concluded that he was and would have to live with it.
The first time he heard Wendy scream, he was on the other side of the house watching The Killers. Initially, he thought the scream was coming from the throat of Ava Gardner. But when the movie ended and he heard it again, he got up and went upstairs into his bathroom, trying to remember what a scream of passion sounded like as opposed to a scream of pain or fear. The house was dark, but Georgie was barking in some downstairs room. The barking was so cyclical, Bob wondered if the dog had been shut in. His stomach knotted. A door slammed, a thud or two followed, and then something fell and broke—probably a lamp. But there were no more screams. He watched for Wendy the next day and the one after, but didn’t catch her. He wondered if she was avoiding him but decided that was a silly idea; she barely knew he existed.
The third day, Wendy and the dog were in the backyard again. He leaned over the fence and said hello.
“Hi, Bob,” she said, her voice subdued.
She was sitting on a rotted picnic bench, her knees tucked up under her chin. Her cut-off jeans were streaked with paint and a short, ruffled pink blouse showed off her tanned middle. She waved a can of beer at him although it was only noon.
“Come on over.”
“Been okay?” he asked, surprising himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked anyone such a thing. She looked so damned pathetic. Her yard was more untidy than ever. A row of brown plastic bags, some untied, lined the side of her garage. She must have missed several weeks of trash collection. His stomach turned at the thought of mice, and perhaps worse, running around the place at night. A messy yard was like a beacon for possums, raccoons, mice, stray cats.
“Sure, sure,” she said. Then she paused. “Buck and me broke it off a few nights back.” She looked down at the dog. “We’ve been keeping to ourselves. Not that Georgie was ever too fond of Buck. Or vice versa.”
Georgie and Bob might have their differences on proper lawn etiquette, but on the subject of Buck, they apparently agreed. Bob took a deep breath.
“Maybe it’s a good thing. He always seemed kind of…mean. You know.”
“Buck? Nah. Just has a temper. Seems most men do—or at least around me.” She looked at Bob closely. “I bet you heard us fighting the other night.” She waited for a response and when she got none, went on. “Well, so what. He’s gone now anyway.”
“What do you want a man like that for?”
His voice was stiff, scolding. Bob couldn’t believe he was saying these things.
“A man who hits women,” he added, chin out. He didn’t know this for certain, but he knew he’d been that kind of man once himself. Edna had had the good sense to run away, packing her car up while he slept.
“Buck doesn’t—” she started to say—when another voice broke in.
“Are you talking about me, you jackass?”
They both turned, shocked. Buck stood in Wendy’s driveway. “Are you giving Wendy advice about me?” His hands curled into fists as he spoke. “Do you hear me, old man? Are you saying I hit her? Smacked her around?”
Buck took several steps forward. The dog began to growl. Buck gave Georgie a quick glance, and the dog fell silent. “What the hell do you know about it? Have you been peeping in the windows, getting your jollies from watching us?”
Bob sought out Wendy’s eyes, but they were focused on a worn patch of grass. “Course not. None of my business,” Bob said, kicking at an old piece of hose.
“You got that right, old man. And you better remember that if you want to be turning over that dirt in your yard next spring. Stick your nose where it don’t belong again, and it’ll be dirt turning over on you.”
“You go on home now, Bob,” Wendy said, finally looking
up and motioning to him with her hands. She was actually chasing him away instead of Buck. “Buck and me, we gotta talk.” She turned around.
He’d been dismissed. Deliberately closing the windows facing Wendy’s house despite the heat, Bob put on the TV. The History Channel was showing a documentary about Albert Speer. He watched it with a small degree of absorption, followed by a bad Bette Davis movie, finally falling asleep in the chair, something he rarely did. But then, he seldom watched three consecutive hours of television. Walking stiffly up the stairs to his room sometime after 1 a.m., he heard nothing outside except a gentle rain. Good, his flowers needed it. His sleep was fitful due to all the dozing he’d done. He got up at four a.m. and threw his bedroom window open. The rain had stopped, and he watched as Buck got into his truck and drove away.
“You seeing him again then?”
Bob was standing in the center of her backyard for the first time. She’d just dragged out another bag of trash to join the procession next to the garage. A butt hung from her lips. Wearing a pair of mules, she clopped back across the cement. It was the clop-clop that had drawn him over. He’d thought of nothing except Wendy, his ears pricked for any sound of her outside or for a return of that truck.
She shook her head. “I told him not to come back. It’s over.” Her voice was shaking despite the firmness of her words.
“Think he’ll listen?”
A shrug. “I know how to take care of myself. I got rid of my ex, didn’t I?” She was unconvincing.
“Buck may be more persistent. Was your ex built like a sixteen-wheeler?”
She rolled her eyes, dropped the butt, and stomped on it with her foot. “Look, Bob, you gotta keep out of this. What you said to me last night—when he heard us talking out here—it just made him madder. Can’t fool around with a guy like Buck. He takes special handling.”
“And you know how to do that?”
Her nod turned into another shrug. He made a derisive sound with his tongue, walked over to an open trash bag and knotted it.
“You’re gonna get mice, you know. Maybe rats if you aren’t careful.” He pulled a cloth out of his pocket, wiped his hands, and looked up at her.
