Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  Harry looked doleful. "I thought he was supposed to pull mine from the swamp."

  "This is probably fascinating for you two," Elaine said jealously, "but it's pretty deadly to me. Next thing, you guys'll be talking about weight lifting or prostate trouble."

  Harry was massaging his fingers in his lap, probably unnoticed by anyone but Keese. He winced at Elaine. "Who cares about what you think?"

  Keese's breath was taken away.

  But Elaine was chastened by the rebuke. She even seemed grateful to Harry. "I sometimes tend to babble pointlessly," she said, "because of a basic feeling of unimportance, I suppose. Isn't it ridiculous to try to counter this by making an even bigger fool of oneself? It would be helpful to me if you continued to point out any flaws of mine that you notice."

  As if this were not enough, Enid, who had been aloof thus far, now was reconquered and came to the table, drawing up a chair. Harry was now bracketed by both of Keese's worshipful women.

  "Glad to," Harry told Elaine. "First of all, your hair could use a restyling—a cut, a new shaping, and I would leave this up to you, but frankly I think a change of color might do wonders. You'll never be a beauty—who is?— but you could more than get by with a few improvements."

  Keese was finally able to speak. "You degenerate!" he cried. "This girl before you has always been celebrated for her beauty. How dare you take that superior tone, you punk?"

  The women were frozen by this outburst, but Harry good-naturedly threw up his hands. "So tastes are different from here to there," said he, "not to mention that love is blind. I certainly didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

  "Please go on," Elaine said eagerly, "I can profit by this."

  Hearing this, Keese could not keep his balance. He sank upon a chair, and now the kitchen table was fully occupied once more.

  "You seem reasonably bright," Harry said to Elaine. "You have some difficulty in expressing yourself, but that's generally true of young girls, and it's not necessarily due to a feeble intelligence. At least sometimes it's merely shyness."

  Keese was shaking his head involuntarily. This was too bizarre to be happening. This abominable lout, talking to Elaine in an insufferably patronizing tone—how could it be real?

  Elaine chuckled gaily. "Well, I know where that leaves me! I've never been shy."

  Enid chimed in, chuckling: "That's certainly true, hahaha."

  "Of course, you understand this is all impromptu," said Harry. "I could do a much better job if I had a few days. I could write it up if you like, with numbered points."

  "Number One," Keese shouted at Harry, "you're a moron. Two, you're a crook. Three, you're a liar. Four, you're a pervert. Five—"

  While he continued to count and assign another abusive epithet to each digit, Elaine said, ignoring her father: "I'd value that, Harry. I'm very happy to have you as next-door neighbor. I know your friendship will do me all the good in the world, and I think it's wonderful that an important person like you would help a little nobody like me."

  Keese finally stopped his count and went into a kind of coma. When he came to, he heard Enid addressing Harry: "I don't suppose you could spare any time for me?"

  "Why, sure I could," Harry said, visibly puffing up with vanity.

  "Enid!" Keese shouted, but it was as if he had kept silent. Neither of the three persons present acknowledged him in any way.

  "To begin with," said Harry, looking sympathetically at Enid, "you are a nervous wreck."

  "Haha!" jeered Keese. "There you are! How wrong can he be?"

  "Harry," said Enid, reaching for his hand, "you're a genius."

  "Oh, yeah," said Keese, "sure he is."

  Elaine looked at her father in—well, if it wasn't supreme disgust, then it was a heartbreakingly good imitation. "Daddy," she said quietly, "what's happened to you?"

  "If I could only talk to you alone," he half-whispered.

  "I think if any explanation's to be made, any excuses, they should be made before the whole group," Elaine responded, in a voice louder than normal. "I don't want to form a little cabal with you."

  Enid and Harry were not distracted from their colloquy. Keese listened for a moment. Harry was saying: "—definitely, moreover." To which Enid replied: "If, and then depending."

  He returned to the appeal to Elaine. "Please be on my side. They are intentionally talking nonsense so as to drive me mad."

  "Daddy, will you stop? That's ridiculous. You're simply not listening."

  Keese lost patience. He turned and shouted: "He is talking nonsense, vicious nonsense, at the kitchen table in my house!"

  Harry sighed, pushed himself away from the table, and stood up. "Sorry, Enid. I tried."

  Elaine cried in dismay: "Harry, you're not leaving?"

  "Yes, he is," said Keese. "Good-bye, Harry."

  Harry smiled bitterly. "Are you throwing me out again?" He looked at Elaine as if for support.

  And it was forthcoming. "Daddy, can't you see that Harry just wants to be friendly?"

  How could he refuse his daughter's plea? Harry's well-being was neither here nor there. It was Elaine's that concerned Keese. He realized that he could not sustain a hostile role in her presence.

  "All right, darling," he said. "Harry, I'm willing to bury the hatchet."

  Harry looked skeptical. "Not in my back, I trust?"

  "No, no," Keese murmured. "I'll even drink on it." He went to the table and took Elaine's glass. "Do you mind, dear?"

  "I'll pour," said Elaine, and did so.

  Harry came to get a refill. He bent over her as Keese stepped back with lifted glass. Keese could smell the fiery liquid, which was far from being odorless: it smelled like liniment.

  Harry said to Elaine: "You're some little peacemaker." He put his hand in the middle of her back and slid it down onto her behind.

  Keese transferred the glass to his left hand, and with his right fist he hit Harry in the eye with all his strength.

  Harry did not fall, and he did not retaliate. His eye already closed and beginning to discolor, he deliberately drank the vodka, put his glass down, walked in a dignified stride to the door, opened it, and left.

  CHAPTER 8

  KEESE had no regrets, but he dreaded the denunciations he would hear from Elaine and Enid.

  "What else could I have done?" he asked of them both (or perhaps of neither). "How could I stand by and—"

  Elaine broke in, relieving him of the search for the mot juste (if one existed when speaking of Harry): "Daddy, you're a hero!"

  Keese heard this warily. He had never known Elaine to use irony on him, but there was always a first time. "Seriously, Elaine," he asked, "do you think I did the right thing?"

  But Elaine gave him no spoken answer. She merely smiled at him.

  Keese sank onto his chair. "You both approve, do you?" Oddly enough, only now did his respiratory rate increase and his heart grow thunderous. He felt as though he could easily faint, but he resisted this lure. A discrete victory, of course, was nothing: true success was a sequence. He must not question the merit of his actions. If he punched Harry in the eye, then that punch must be seen as deserved by the recipient, necessary in the situation, and a triumph of the thrower thereof. After that it should be forgotten, for there was new ground to gain.

  "Well," he said, "then that's that."

  "Of course," said Elaine, "with that type you can expect revenge."

  "What's that?"

  "Harry will retaliate," Elaine said. "I'm certain of that."

  "To hell with him," said Keese. "Let him do his worst." He remembered Greavy, and he thought that he might be in the right rhythm now to pay off that old skunk, who would just have got home and climbed into bed again. A man is most susceptible to terror when he is in the earlier phases of his night's sleep. Let's see, he could go to Greavy's house (the phone book would tell him where), pound on the door, and when the man came stumbling, half-asleep and confused, to open the door, hurl a paper bag of excrement into his hous
e.

  The plan in this simple form was not immune to objection: perhaps Greavy wouldn't open the door but would call the police to investigate the disturbance; or would open, but be armed with a gun; or perhaps his wife would answer or some other relative. An alternative procedure was needed.

  "Dad," said Elaine, "I think you'd rather I hadn't come home this weekend."

  He was called back to the current moment. "Don't say that, Elaine! It's just that it's new for me to be under these attacks, and I am trying to adjust to a life in which chance encounters can be brutal."

  "You're blaming me, I know," Elaine said. "But what could I do? I was trying to placate him. He looks dangerous. He's the kind who would murder you without a second thought."

  Enid had listened with the thinnest of smiles. She seemed to be deliberating. At last she spoke.

  "There isn't an English muffin in the house."

  How irrelevant could you get? But in point of fact Keese was grateful that she had made this seemingly absurd statement. He didn't want to discuss Harry with Elaine.

  "I'll get up early," he said, replying to Enid but speaking for Elaine's benefit, "and go down and get some breakfast stuff in the village."

  "But there's no car," Enid pointed out. "Didn't you tell me it was hauled off?"

  "It was returned," said Keese. He still felt Greavy's gut-punch: perhaps his entrails had been ruptured. He hated that old swine, who for no reason at all had intruded into the private thing between himself and Harry. With Harry his primary purpose had been to correct the man's behavior. Had there been a more effective and less violent method than punching him in the eye, he would have used it. "That is," he added, "I think it was brought back. I suppose I should check. The way things have gone around here this evening, I must get out of the habit of making easy assumptions: that's the way I've got in trouble." He turned to Elaine. "If the car's not there, I'll walk to the store. You might join me if it would amuse you. Remember how we used to do that when you were a small girl, walk to the village?"

  Elaine blandly shook her head and said: "No."

  Suddenly Keese was not certain himself. "Well, maybe we didn't do it, then. Maybe I just thought we did." But Elaine was in no mood to help with the reminiscence. She continued to shake her head.

  Enid said: "Why don't you go to bed? You look very exhausted."

  "Yes," Keese chimed in enthusiastically, "that's good thinking. Go to bed, Elaine, and you'll find that all these things are a distant memory in the morning."

  "But I meant you, Earl," said Enid.

  "You're not condemning me, are you?" Keese asked sharply.

  "Certainly not! How could you think such a thing!" Enid's voice was absolutely false, and even Elaine's attention was drawn away from her brooding.

  "Mother," she said, "if you're thinking something, out with it!"

  "Well, it just occurred to me that Harry would probably have a different interpretation."

  Keese snorted. "He is a monster of self-righteousness. The crimes he commits against others are nothing as opposed to the minor inconveniences suffered by himself. He thinks he's some kind of royalty. Notice that he doesn't mention having a last name. And for that matter, what profession does he practice? You can't talk long with the average man before he refers in some way to his work, but not Harry."

  Enid put her chin into her hand. "Have you told him yours?"

  "That has nothing to do with it!" Keese insisted. "We've been in my house, not in his. I don't have to define myself: I'm here. You see what I mean? Who's he? He's never been seen before, has he? I've lived right here for more than twenty years. I can be found, you see. I've got a history, a local habitation and a name. Nobody can question me on the basics. But if I were to move someplace else, I'd feel an obligation to establish myself before arrogantly trying to take over."

  "I'll tell you what I think he is," said Elaine. "I think he's a state trooper. Can't you imagine him in that wide-brimmed felt hat and those leather boots?"

  Keese saw no reason to suppose she was right (in fact, he had reluctantly to admit that Elaine's judgments had consistently disappointed him on this visit, for the first time in her life!), and Harry seemed nothing like a cop to him, but he nevertheless commended her for a striking idea.

  "The thing that worries me is that he might have gone to get his service revolver," she said next. "I don't want to get too alarmist, but it seemed to me that he showed all the earmarks of the unstable personality."

  "It's easy to excuse everything in some way," said Keese. "For example, murder can be seen in one light as merely getting rid of someone—as a mere removal."

  "For that matter," asked Elaine, "what did he really do?"

  "I think we should forget about Harry," said Keese. "He is really of no consequence."

  Elaine nodded solemnly. "Still, he weighs on my conscience."

  Keese could not help feeling exasperated with her. Until a few moments ago he should have called that impossible. Where was her old ebullience?

  "We haven't heard your news," he said. "Any funny incidents take place at college?"

  From his right side Enid chided him. "Is this the appropriate time for that sort of thing?"

  "O.K." Keese slapped the tabletop and stood up. "I say it's bedtime for all." He looked at the clock on the wall near the refrigerator. "Your room is ready for occupancy, Elaine."

  His daughter remained in place. "I think I'll stay here," said she. "In case I'm needed."

  "Needed for what?"

  "I have a sense of impending doom," she said.

  He was very near a total loss of patience. After what he had been through this evening! "Elaine," he said severely, "please let me handle this thing. There's no reason why you should be concerned. Harry won't try any more of his tricks on you, I promise. He's a bully, you see, and a coward. Call his bluff and you have neutralized him. Now, I don't say that he won't try some new way to get back at me, but it'll undoubtedly be underhanded from now on. I anticipate finding enormous holes in my yard, or garbage dumped there in the middle of the night. The car—he may very well do little jobs of sabotage on it, let the air out of the tires or wedge a potato in the exhaust pipe." It occurred to Keese that if Greavy had brought his car back, Harry might well have disabled it already.

  Elaine reluctantly got to her feet. She had unusually dark shadows under her eyes. Were they from cosmetics or illness? Keese gave her a once-over of the kind that is a preface to empty flattery, i.e., seeing nothing.

  "I like your boots," said he.

  "A campus policeman went berserk last week," said Elaine.

  "Good God!"

  "Lucky he was armed only with flashlight and club, else he might have pumped someone full of lead."

  Enid came between Keese and Elaine and embraced her daughter briefly. "Who would think of something like that!" she said. "In my day at college nothing happened but youthful hijinks."

  "Some people can't stand being defied," said Elaine. "Like Harry. He could make your life a living hell, Dad. He'll stop at nothing to pay you back."

  Keese shivered within. Such talk was unhealthy, and enough of it could bring on a disaster. If you continued to overestimate your enemy, he would eventually realize the prediction: some law worked in such cases, perhaps the reverse of Diminishing Returns.

  "Then you don't know me," he told his daughter, almost threatening her in return. "I'll give him more than he bargained for." His face was fiery; he was getting a sunburn from within.

  "Now, now, Earl," Enid said, "this is not the time to blow on the coals. I thought you were about to retire."

  He suddenly noticed that the vodka bottle had been emptied. By whom? Elaine? It would explain her melancholy state of mind. Why, anyway, had she carried a pint of vodka in her luggage? Elaine had always been beyond reproach: was she going bad now all at once?

  "Go on," Keese said to both, "I'll get the light." He went to the wall switch and put his finger in place. He had earlier looked at the cloc
k without seeing the time. When he looked now he could not believe it. "Is that two A.M.?"

  "All these things take time, Earl," said Enid. That was a strange comment if he had ever heard one. As if something had been accomplished!

  "Well," he said, "I'm wasting no more of it on the likes of Harry and Ramona. Or Greavy, for that matter. I'll deal with him tomorrow."