Miss Julia Raises the Roof

by Ann B. Ross

  “Lillian,” I said, “if you’ll find another blanket or something for him to lie down on, I’ll get the one out of the car and put it in the trash. Do we have any air freshener?”

  Between the two of us, Lillian and I started the medication protocol, following the chart that Dr. Marsh had given us. He had been right—Ronnie loved the massage that went along with the eardrops. He moaned with pleasure as I rubbed the medicine in. I scrubbed my hands for ten minutes afterward.

  “Law, Miss Julia,” Lillian said as she looked over the diet pamphlet, “to fix all this, I got to go to the grocery store an’ the drugstore, an’ maybe get a doctor’s prescription.”

  I looked over her shoulder at the instructions. “My word, lean hamburger, lamb, rice, organic butter, wheat germ, calcium nitrate, yogurt, ginger, carrots, collards—of all things—and that’s just a start. What in the world is turmeric? Lillian, forget all this. I’ll pass it on to Helen. For now, fix him a mixture of hamburger meat and rice. Then throw in an egg or two, and whatever leftovers you have in the refrigerator. But no beans.”

  Ronnie twitched his ears and sighed again. Then he stretched out on the fresh coverlet in the corner of the kitchen and, without moving his head, flicked his eyes from one to the other of us as we discussed his special diet.

  “Yes’m, I ’spect he’ll eat most anything, as empty as he is.” She went to the refrigerator, opened the door to look in, then, as she straightened up, said, “They’s a light blinkin’ on the telephone, Miss Julia.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, hearing Hazel Marie’s message to call her as soon as I came in. “What now?”

  When I returned Hazel Marie’s call, her first words came tumbling out. “Oh, Miss Julia, you won’t believe it, but they’re over there right now with a man from Jason’s Remodeling Services. I know because that’s what’s painted on his truck that’s parked out front. They’re starting to fix up that house, which means they’ll be moving in before long. Can’t Binkie do anything to stop them?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Just hold on, Hazel Marie, we’ve barely started.”

  Chapter 12

  Binkie, however, was in court, where she seemed to spend more time than she did in her office, so I had to leave an urgent message for her to call me.

  Even exercising the patience of Job, I had to wait until suppertime before hearing from her. “Binkie,” I said, “Hazel Marie tells me that those Homes for Teens people are already remodeling the Cochran house. What is going on? Have they responded to your letter?”

  “I’ve not heard from them, Miss Julia,” she said. “But nothing has changed. They cannot use that house for their stated purpose, so maybe they’re updating it to put it on the market again.”

  A great feeling of relief swept over me at that possibility. “Wouldn’t that be grand? Ask around, Binkie, and see who might be handling the sale. I might be interested.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you want to get into the rental business—too many headaches.”

  “Why, Binkie, I’m already in the rental business up to my neck. What’s another house or two?”

  “Well, but residential rentals are a whole ’nother ball game from commercial rentals. I wouldn’t recommend it for you, but, of course, do as you like.”

  Thinking to myself, I certainly will, I urged her to pursue the status of the Cochran house and let me know.

  So with that anxiety hanging overhead, I set myself to medicating Ronnie, wondering all the while why in the world I hadn’t left well enough alone. Just by trying to alleviate a suffering animal, I had bound myself to an every-four-hour schedule that would play havoc with my time, to say nothing of my sleep.

  I had called Helen with an update on Ronnie’s condition that afternoon, hoping that she might tell me to bring him home so she could administer his medicine through the night. She didn’t. Instead she had eagerly accepted my halfhearted offer to care for him during his medical crisis.

  I can’t say I blamed her, except she was the one who’d made the arrangement to care for Thurlow—for which she was being well paid—and as far as I was concerned, caring for Thurlow included caring not only for his house but also for his dog.

  When Lloyd came in from school, he was delighted to find that we had a houseguest. Wanting to encourage him in the care and feeding of animals, I let him administer the second application of eardrops around six o’clock. Ronnie tried to respond to the boy—there is a natural affinity between boys and dogs, you know—but his efforts availed him little. He—Ronnie, that is—soon lay back down as lethargic as ever. I waited the four hours for the third application before going to bed.

  When Lloyd and I retired for the night, we left Ronnie, full from a rice-and-ground-beef casserole, and properly walked afterward, apparently quite pleased with his temporary room and board. As I turned out the downstairs lights, Ronnie was lying peacefully in the corner of the kitchen, and after Lloyd had petted him for a while, we’d gone upstairs, where I set the clock for the ungodly hour of two a.m.

  Even though I was dreading the trek downstairs in a cold house in the middle of the night, Ronnie had foreseen the problem. When the alarm went off at two, I swung my feet out of bed and landed on Ronnie, who’d transferred himself to my bedside. I didn’t know if he’d craved company—mine in particular—or whether he would’ve preferred Lloyd’s. It was an unanswerable question under the circumstances for Lloyd’s door had been closed and mine had not.

  Whichever it was, it was a settled fact that Ronnie had grown accustomed to the application of eardrops. When that dog saw me reach for the bottles, he lay right down on his side and held his head still while his eyes rolled up in expectation. And when I massaged the medicine into his ears, a low, luxuriating moan issued from his throat—much as happened with me when Sam gave me a back rub.

  When the alarm went off at six for the next application, I decided that I might as well stay up—especially because Ronnie started sniffing around my bedroom as if searching for a spot. I took him downstairs and outside for a walk around the yard—nearly freezing in the process and hoping no early morning runners would notice my bathrobe. That’s the one big problem with having a dog in the house—they have to be let outside on a regular basis. Or, as in Ronnie’s case, put on a leash and taken outside because my yard wasn’t fenced.

  Still, there is something quite touching about having a dog make every step you make and rest his head on your feet when you seat yourself. And I must say that with Ronnie in the house at night—even with Lloyd there—there was a double dose of comfort. No burglar would dare try our doors with that huge animal on guard—his size alone would deter the most determined invader.

  And it occurred to me then that if Thurlow could be persuaded to let him go, Ronnie would be a sizable deterrent in Hazel Marie’s house if, despite Binkie’s assurances to the contrary, a horde of potential mischief makers moved in next door.

  * * *

  —

  “Miss Julia!”

  “What! What is it?” I nearly dropped the phone at the sound of Hazel Marie’s distress call. It was midmorning that Saturday, and Ronnie and I were resting in between eardrop applications.

  “J.D. got in early this morning. I couldn’t believe it, because I wasn’t expecting him till later today. But here he came and I wasn’t ready for him.”

  “Well, Hazel Marie, he is your husband. What do you need to do to be ready for him?”

  “I mean about that house next door. I wanted to plan out how to tell him—you know, to kind of ease into it, so he wouldn’t fly off the handle. But I ended up just telling him straight out as soon as he got in the door, and now you won’t believe what he’s doing.”

  Knowing Mr. J. D. Pickens, PI, as I did, I probably would. He had a mind and a will of his own, both of which I had come up against on a few occasions. Recalling some of those, I was almost afraid to ask
.

  “What’s he doing, Hazel Marie?”

  “He’s building, like, a . . . a fence or something. That’s what he says he’s doing, except from what he just had delivered and stacked in our driveway, I think it’s going to be a wall. He’s even got a surveyor out here—and on a Saturday morning, too—to make sure of the line. Miss Julia, he’s got a load of concrete blocks for the posts and a stack of boards almost as high as the garage sitting out there, and he’s got two men mixing cement. I don’t know where we’re going to park, or what the neighbors are going to say, but he’s like a crazy man.”

  “Can’t you talk some sense into him? We just need to give Binkie a little more time—”

  “He says he’s taking no chances on those little hellions messing with our girls, and, Miss Julia, it’s going to be six feet high or even higher, he’s not sure yet. And, you won’t believe this, but he’s planning to build another fence on Jan Osborne’s side—he’s already talked to her—so the Cochran house will be fenced in on both sides, and he’s talked Mr. Pickerell into letting him extend it across the back. The Cochran house will be practically enclosed, and you know it doesn’t have much of a yard in the first place.”

  “Well, as long as he makes sure he’s not building on the Cochran lot, there’s not much they can do about it. And maybe a fence will make them understand how unwelcome they are in the neighborhood. I wouldn’t worry about it, Hazel Marie, you have the nicest yard on the block and a fence can only improve on it.”

  “A nice rail fence would be one thing,” she said in resignation, “or even a picket fence, but what he’s planning is more like the Great Wall of China. Of course, I should be thankful that’s all he’s doing, because his first thought was to build a shooting range out there.”

  I had a wild urge to laugh, but I refrained. “Just plant a nice row of shrubs or trees, or both, on your side, Hazel Marie, and maybe a flowering vine to cover it. Or what about planting some pyracantha and espaliering it on the fence or the wall or whatever it is. That would be lovely.”

  “J.D. says he’s planting kudzu, and you know that stuff will cover anything, including cars. We may wake up one morning and find our house buried in it.”

  “Oh, Hazel Marie, surely not. But think of this, it could be trained to cover the Cochran house.” I was teasing, of course, but it was a fact that kudzu had to be carefully watched. It had a way of growing stealthily and getting away from you.

  But better a crop of kudzu than what I had feared would be Mr. Pickens’s reaction to his possible new neighbors—and that was that he would sell Sam’s old house and move his family, including Lloyd, to no-telling-where. As far as I was concerned, he could build whatever he wanted—including a concrete wall with barbed wire on top—as long as they stayed right where they were.

  Chapter 13

  On Sunday morning Lloyd and I went to church, but I could’ve stayed home with Ronnie for all the good it did me. I was a little leery about leaving him alone in the first place, but we’d made sure to close all the kitchen doors so he couldn’t wander through the house. He seemed well pleased with the snug corner that Lillian had made for him, and well he should’ve been, for she’d provided him with an old three-hundred-thread-count comforter to curl up on.

  We entered the church, took our places in the fourth row from the front on the side aisle, and prepared to hear another movie review from Pastor Rucker. I’d said nothing to Lloyd about my dissatisfaction with our new pastor, but he was sharp enough to know the difference between a biblical text and a line from Star Wars. If I heard Pastor Rucker start off with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” one more time, I’d wish that’s where he was.

  Actually, though, it hadn’t mattered what the sermon topic was—not a word the pastor uttered entered my head. He’d done me in during the announcement time right before the sermon when he’d urged the congregation to put the Homes for Teens on their prayer lists because the sponsors were having trouble with noncompliant neighbors and the zoning board.

  “My friends,” he’d said, “there are two hundred homeless teenagers in this county, and it’s not only shameful, it’s a public disgrace to allow any child to wonder where he will sleep at night.

  “I’ve been deeply saddened to learn that there is resistance from the neighbors of the house chosen for a few of these homeless children. That resistance is a result of unfounded fears that result in a lack of Christian compassion, and they need our prayers.”

  It was all I could do to continue sitting there. I wanted to stand up and ask why his—not one but two—guest rooms were empty last night, but my rigorous bent against creating a scene kept me rooted to my pew. I was, however, steaming inside, and he could’ve preached on the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey and I wouldn’t have heard a word.

  As soon as the last note of the recessional sounded and the last choir member was out the door, I grabbed Lloyd’s arm and headed toward the back. I knew it was best that I avoid the pastor as he stood in the narthex shaking hands. I might’ve been tempted to wring his off.

  But the idea! The very idea that concern for the welfare of one’s own children as well as of one’s property values was indicative of a lack of Christian compassion was self-righteousness run amuck.

  Ronnie’s delight, however, on our return to the house distracted me from such troubling thoughts. He went first to Lloyd then turned his attention to me, sniffing appreciatively as he waited patiently, it seemed, for another ear rub. Another good thing about having a dog the size of Ronnie—you could pet him without stooping over.

  The ear medications were doing what they were supposed to, for he had a little more life to him. Lloyd hooked Ronnie’s leash to his collar and walked him around the yard while I got out the makings of lunch. Since Sam was away, I was giving Lillian more paid days off than usual, although she rarely came in on Sundays anyway.

  “Let’s go see what J.D.’s doing,” Lloyd said as we ate egg salad sandwiches. “I didn’t see them at church, so I’ll bet he’s working on that fence. If it’s all right with you, I want to help him this afternoon.”

  “There was a time, you know, when no work at all was done on Sundays,” I said, “unless one’s ox was in the ditch. But after what we heard in church this morning, I think Mr. Pickens’s ox is mired in deep. Let’s both go. Change your clothes, though, if you’re going to help.”

  Thinking that Ronnie could use an outing, we took him with us, although I worried about his sensitive stomach. But it was only four blocks to the Pickens house, so I counted on his ability to control his gag reflex until we got there.

  * * *

  —

  The Pickenses’ yard looked like an anthill—stacks of lumber, cement mixers, stakes with string outlining the area, two men carrying concrete blocks, another man laying them, James bringing water, the two little girls standing aside to watch, and Mr. Pickens, unshaven and sweaty, in full directing mode.

  My word, but the man was muscular. It was a clear but nippy October day, yet his T-shirt clung wetly to his body. I couldn’t help but notice, for even his mustache dripped with perspiration.

  He managed a brief smile when we got out of the car at curbside—there was no room in their driveway.

  “Hi, bud,” he said to Lloyd. “Where’d you get that horse?”

  Lloyd laughed. “He’s our houseguest for a few days.”

  “Well,” Mr. Pickens said, “if you’ve come to help, I can sure use you. Miss Julia,” he said, turning to me, “what do you think of my fence?”

  I surveyed the area, seeing only five tall but stout towers of concrete blocks spaced along the surveyor’s string, with a sixth one under construction.

  “Hmm,” I said, “so far, so good, I guess. What will you put between the posts?”

  “Horizontal boards of treated lumber six feet high and so close together that not even a beam of light can g
et through. There’ll be no Peeping Toms on my watch.”

  “That sounds lovely,” I said, because there are times when it’s better to be diplomatic than truthful. “I’ll just go in and visit with Hazel Marie awhile.”

  The little Pickens twins—Lily Mae and Julie—had raced to pet Ronnie as soon as he’d jumped out of the car, and he seemed to love the attention. He looked, in fact, more like his old self, his head held high and his tail wagging as the little girls made a fuss over him as if he’d been a rock star.

  Lloyd took his leash and led him to a ringside seat next to the house where he could watch the activity. The little girls sat with him, cooing and talking to him, rubbing their hands over him, and Ronnie regally permitted it. He watched with bright, interested eyes everything that was going on. What a difference from the sick and ailing dog of two days before—thanks to modern canine medicine.

  Hazel Marie, looking stressed and worried, met me at the front door. “Oh, Miss Julia, how awful do you think it’ll look?”

  “I think it’ll be fine.” I followed her into the living room where we took our seats. “I wouldn’t worry about how it looks, Hazel Marie. Anybody would do the same thing if faced with what you’re facing. Have any of your neighbors complained?”

  “No, actually they’ve come around offering J.D. advice, but you know how he is. He’s going to do it his way no matter what. I’m so glad we’re on a corner lot. At least we won’t be fenced in like the Cochran house will be.”

  “Have any of those people said anything? Made any complaints about being closed in on three sides?”

  “No, but J.D. hopes they will.” Hazel Marie pushed back her hair and sighed. “He’s just waiting to tell them what he thinks.”

  “Well, let’s hope they have enough sense to steer clear of him. But, listen, Hazel Marie, I hate to bring this up, but I wouldn’t care if he built an iron curtain out there and staffed it with armed guards. I’m just so afraid that he’ll decide you should sell this house and move.”