Curtains Read online

  Robert Daniel Wells.

  He moved fast, got to the street, but Sid was gone.

  Vincent glanced at the crowd, among the eyes that seemed to shine like search beacons. Which ones belonged to Joey's people?

  He broke into a run. A laugh tore itself from his lungs, a spasm borne of fear and hysteria. He should have known that Joey's reach, even from a prison cell, was longer than the longest arm of the law. Vincent had been around long enough to know that Joey liked to play.

  Like a cat with a cornered mouse, like a spider with a stuck fly.

  Vincent ran on. He thought that maybe if he ran fast enough, someday he'd catch up to himself. But somedays never come, and Robert Wells had a debt to pay.

  Under any name.

  GOOD FENCES

  That fence post was leaning again.

  Herman could tell just by looking out the window, though the neighbor’s yard was over two hundred feet away. You’d think people would have a little pride. Back in Herman’s day, you kept your split rails pointing straight up to God, even here in the Blue Ridge mountains where level ground was as scarce as hen’s teeth. Of course, you were supposed to keep your grass mowed down close, too.

  A hippie lived in that house. The new neighbor drove by every morning, hunched over the wheel of a Japanese junkaroo with a ski rack on top. The hippie had waved the first week after moving in, but each time Herman had given him a no-nonsense, get-a-haircut stare. Nowadays the hippie didn’t even look over, just rattled up the road to whatever job Communists held while plotting the revolution.

  Too bad. The hippie could learn something about American pride from Herman. You keep your house painted and your windows clean. Your mailbox flap doesn’t sag open. The flag comes down when it rains, even if a stoned-out longhair would rather burn one than fly one. But most of all, by God, you set your fences straight.

  Fences were the first impression, the first line of defense against those who thought the world belonged to everybody. Herman would bet his John Wayne video collection that the hippie at 107 Oakdale had a peace sign poster on his bedroom wall. The peace sign was nothing but the footprint of the American chicken. Herman didn’t mind a peaceful neighbor on general principle, but the lessons of history were clear. Peace started with strong borders, strong fences.

  Herman was a picket man himself. There was something trustworthy about the sharp picket tips, a row of threatening teeth that promised to nip at unwelcome guests. Best of all, you could paint them church-white. Not that split rails couldn’t look proper if you took a little pride in them.

  The door to 107 opened. Herman dropped the curtain in disgust and sat again at his bowl of oatmeal. Doctor said oats would clean out his pipes, and if a healthy diet didn’t do the job, then a pervert with a medical degree and a hospital hose would. The fear of a stranger meddling up his backside was about the only thing that could make Herman eat oatmeal. The stuff was barely fit for livestock.

  As he spooned a butter-heavy dose into his mouth, he looked out the window. The hippie’s front door swung open wide, and a shaggy little dog raced out and squatted in the weeds. Hippie didn’t even have enough self-respect to get a boxer or a hound, something territorial that would chew the leg off a trespassing little brat. No, he had an overgrown lap dog, one that would probably be plopping piles of dookie all over Herman’s yard if the picket fence weren’t there.

  The dog finished its business and ran to the hippie, who patted it on the head. Herman scowled into his oatmeal. Public displays of affection were the mark of a sissy who couldn’t be trusted. He waited until the hippie’s car passed, then he went into the garage. Tools neatly lined the rear wall, hanging on pegboard and shining under the glow of a single fluorescent tube.

  He selected a claw hammer, then gritted his teeth and swung it viciously, imagining the hammer head sinking into the hippie’s skull. He swung again and again, his breath rapid and shallow, his heartbeat like the salvos of an anti-aircraft gun. His arm soon grew tired and he let the hammer rest against his thigh.

  The August morning sun was bright on the dew when he went outside. Mrs. Breedlove from 103 had her television turned up too loud. That was okay, because Mrs. Breedlove kept her flower gardens in military formation, heads up and rumps tucked in tight. She had her flaws, but maintaining appearances wasn’t one of them.

  Herman gathered a spare picket from the woodpile and tucked it under his arm. He stepped through the gate and walked down Oakdale, frowning at the dead leaves that clustered along the curb. He’d be needing the rake before long. One of the neighbor kids from 108 squealed in the distance. Brats. The budding delinquents would wear a path in your grass and not think twice.

  A kid on a bicycle came out from the trees near the end of the block. It was a girl, one of the ugly redheads from 104. You’d think she’d be in school, since this was Friday. Ever since they’d made a big fuss over teachers’ rights, the brats did most of their learning from each other. And the lesson they learned best was how to mess on other people’s property.

  Herman tucked his hammer behind his back. The redhead pedaled up, then stopped. She wore a New York Jets jersey, and the only thing worse would have been Yankee pinstripes. The early settlers of Aldridge Falls should have barred the dirt roads and burned all the bridges, because outsiders had the run of the place now. Rich folks with their Florida tans and fast New England accents and property law attorneys.

  “Morning, Mr. Weeks,” the girl said. “What you doing with that stick?”

  “Fixing things,” he said, smiling and holding up the picket. Maybe it wasn’t too late to pass along the concept of respect.

  “A fence?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I like good fences.”

  “My daddy said fences are for greedy people.”

  “You should always listen to your father.” Herman kept smiling, his face like warm wax in the sun.

  The kid smiled back, confused, then pedaled on past. Herman walked to the hippie’s leaning fence post. It was cedar, a little more manageable than locust though it would rot a lot faster. He knelt and examined the base of the post.

  He’d repaired the same post twice already this week. Usually he fixed things right the first time, but once in a while you got hold of a stubborn piece of wood. He leaned the post until it was ninety degrees, then eyeballed the angle against the corner of the hippie’s house. Satisfied, he wedged the picket into the ground, driving it with the hammer until the dirt was packed.

  He reached for the top of the post to test it for sturdiness. He touched wood, and a sharp pain lanced along his finger. At first he figured he’d drawn a splinter, but the wound was clean. Herman bent for a closer look.

  A razor blade had been embedded in the cedar. Its silver edge glinted in the dawn.

  “Tarnation.” Herman muttered under his breath, sucking on his wounded finger. A closer study of the fence revealed several more razor blades in the crosspieces.

  Herman glanced at the houses along the street. This was a Community Watch neighborhood. He didn’t dare trespass on the hippie’s property. But he was within his rights to walk the perimeter of the yard. As a concerned citizen, mind you, checking up on things.

  At one corner of the fence, the ground was bare where animals cut through the forsythia. Herman saw a long fishhook wedged into a crack in the fence. Bits of cat fur and a tiny piece of shriveled flesh hung from the hook’s barb. The fur was light gray, the color of Widow Hampton’s cat.

  Herman hadn’t seen the cat in several days. It had a habit of spraying in Herman’s yard, stinking up the petunias. Cat had no sense of territory and could scamper over a fence like it wasn’t there. He grinned at the thought of the cat yowling in pain after getting snagged by the hook.

  Herman headed back to his house with new admiration for the hippie. You had to fight to protect what was yours. Hell, when you come right down to it, a hippie could be just like any normal person. All it took was a haircut and a Bible.

  The
red-headed girl rode up on her bike, stopped with a scruffing of brakes. “Sorry, mister.”

  Herman had been lost in thought. “Huh? Sorry for what?”

  She pointed up the street. “I ran into your fence.” She blushed beneath her freckles.

  Herman saw leaning pickets, a whole section of them, one snapped in half. He bit back a curse. His hand went to his back pocket for the hammer. His cut finger bumped into the handle, and the pain drove his anger away.

  “It’s okay, honey,” he said. He resisted the urge to pat her head, because he was afraid he might grab her hair and jerk her off the bicycle. A curtain lifted in nosy Mrs. Breedlove’s house. Community watch at its finest.

  He walked back to his house as the girl pedaled away, off to her next act of trespassing and destruction. Herman spent the rest of the morning repairing his own fence, then went in for lunch and his daily bout of Gospel radio. He took a nap in the afternoon, charging his batteries for the night’s mission.

  Supper was liver mush and potatoes, plus some pole beans grown in the garden out back. Back when Verna was alive, they kept up with the canning, making preserves from the apples and sauce from the tomatoes. With Verna passed on to the Lord, Herman saw little need to stock up for the future. He grew most of what he needed and in the winter there were grocery stores. Gas was so high, thanks to them sand-nigger terrorists, he didn’t drive much anymore. And the radio said the Democrats had gutted Social Security again, so he tried to pinch a penny where he could. Mostly, he kept to the house, which is why he wanted the fences in good shape. When your world got smaller, the part that was yours took on new value.

  Night fell, and Herman left the lights on while he snuck around the house and into the vacant lot that ran beside the hippie’s house. The land had belonged to a dentist up on the hill, but when the dentist died, it fell into the hands of his sons, who were living somewhere contrary like Oregon or New Hampshire. The land had been a Christmas tree farm, and lately a hay meadow, but now it mostly just raised briars and bunnies.

  He fought off the thorns and ducked into the forsythia, crabapple, and jackvine that straddled the property line. After checking the crosspieces for sharp edges, he slipped through the fence and waited. Soon enough, the hippie’s door opened and the shaggy, post-pissing mongrel came out, the hippie right behind. Even with the moon out, the hippie wouldn’t be able to see Herman crouching in the thicket, but the dog started whining right away. The hippie made a beeline for the post that Herman had straightened that morning. The hippie put a hand on it and leaned it forward, careful to avoid the razor blade embedded in the wood.

  “There,” the hippie said to the whimpering mutt. “That ought to give the geezer something to fix tomorrow. Or else a heart attack.”

  The hippie jumped as if electrocuted when Herman flipped on the flashlight. The longhair froze in the orange cone of light, pupils the size of BBs. Probably on meth heroin or whatever dope his kind cooked up these days.

  “They look better if you do them square,” Herman said.

  The hippie squinted against the flashlight’s beam. “Who’s there?”

  “A concerned neighbor,” Herman said.

  “You the one with the picket fence, up at 101?”

  “None other.” Herman stood and flicked off the light. They stared at each other’s silhouettes under the quarter moon.

  “Why have you been messing with my fence?” The hippie folded his arms across his chest. The shaggy mutt stopped whimpering and crouched at its master’s feet.

  “Why you been making me?” Herman snapped his shoulders back Marine-style, even though it was dark and the hippie couldn’t get a cheap lesson in proper posture. This was his neighborhood. He had a right to take an interest.

  “I like to know my neighbors,” the hippie said. “The faster you peg the weirdoes, the faster you can take steps to protect yourself.”

  Herman’s jaw loosened. “You mean you done this on purpose? Like some kind of trap?”

  The hippie’s high-dollar teeth caught the scant moonlight as he smiled. “One of them. The other traps are scattered around the perimeter.”

  A light came on upstairs in the Hampton house. From his dark vantage point, Herman could see the top half of the widow as she slipped off her robe and stepped into the shower. His pulse jumped a gear and he felt a flush of shame. Spying like trash, that’s what he was doing. But she’d left her curtains open, so it was her fault.

  “Ain’t seen Miss Hampton’s cat around lately,” Herman said. “You wouldn’t know nothing about that, would you?”

  “You might find it at the foot of the dogwood,” the hippie said, nodding to the corner of his lot.

  “Dogwood?”

  “I thought that was fitting punishment,” the hippie said. “Get it? A cat and a dogwood?”

  The mutt’s ears perked up at the sound of its master’s laughter.

  “You buried her cat on your property?” Herman’s thumb twitched against the flashlight, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh with the hippie or addle the fool’s brains with a sideswipe.

  “Don’t worry, the dogwood’s bark is worse than its bite.”

  Herman eased backward a step, and the scrub vegetation that had minutes earlier afforded protection and cover now seemed like a prison wall, cutting off his escape. He thought about yelling, but his throat was tight and he was afraid he would sound like a sissy girl.

  “I have some blueberry bushes along the rear of the property,” the hippie said. “Do you think it’s fair that the brats can just come on over anytime they please and stuff their faces? I pay my taxes and I send my mortgage payment to the bank on time. I’ve got rights.”

  “That why you planted the razors?”

  “Yeah. Of course, they can come down the driveway, but I figure that’s not sneaky enough for them. You know how kids are, they like to think they’re outsmarting the grown-ups.”

  “Snagged any of them yet?”

  “Just the cat. But it only takes once and I don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  “What about their parents? What if they call the cops, or Social Services?”

  “I’ll just say the blades came with the property. How was I to know the previous owner was insane?”

  “Now you just hold on a second,” Herman said. “That house belonged to Ned Loggerfeld, and not once did he let a post sag. He cleaned his gutters twice a year and snow never had a chance to melt in his driveway so long as he owned a shovel.”

  “I heard he died of a heart attack,” the hippie said. “In the cold, your arteries narrow. Shoveling snow is about the worst thing you can do if your heart is bad.”

  Herman recalled the February day when Ned had flopped on his back near the mailbox, arms spread like he was making a snow angel. Turned out he was making a real angel. Herman had dialed 9-1-1 while Mrs. Breedlove performed some pervert-looking maneuvers she said was CPR. If old Ned could have seen the woman sucking and blowing on his mouth, he might have come back down from heaven for a chance to smooch back.

  “Okay,” Herman said. “Looks like a standoff. I got no gripe with a fellow doing what he wants on his own property, as long as he keeps up appearances.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty good at keeping up appearances, Mr. Weeks.” The hippie grinned like he was in an organic produce market and the tofu was half price.

  “How’d you know my name?”

  “Deeds Office down at the courthouse. Like I said, I like to get to know the neighbors. Before I buy.”

  “Don’t blame you none,” Herman said. He wished the ugly redheaded family had left on their porch lights like they usually did. The moon wasn’t bright enough to dull the shine in the hippie’s eyes.

  “You’re a registered Republican.”

  “So? What are you?”

  “Libertarian.”

  “That mean you don’t eat eggs or cheese?”

  “Only in a free market economy,” the hippie said. “I also know you bought your t
wo acres back in 1956. You were probably married once, judging from the Elvis decanter on the sewing machine in your living room. While you might have been an Elvis fan, I doubt you idolize him enough to collect. And being a product of the Eisenhower administration, you never saw fit to have your wife listed as co-owner of the property.”

  “You been peeking in my windows?”

  “No. Not on purpose. You can see it when you drive by. Your house sits a little below the road and Elvis is right there between the curtains. You ought to look at your surroundings with new eyes now and then. You might be surprised at what you see.”

  Herman wished he had the hammer. He would fix the hippie, and then fix that damned fence post. Then he’d do what he should have done right after Verna’s passing, take the Elvis decanter out back and pound it into dust. But he couldn’t help himself, his head turned and he scanned the neighborhood, from 101 to 108 and back again.

  All of the houses had gone through several families in his time. Widow Hampton’s kids, who used to stub around in diapers, were now grown and gone, he didn’t know the names of the couple in 107 or if they were even married, half of the houses now had vinyl siding, and, when you got right down to it, even with all the care and tending, his own house looked a little shabby and shopworn under the street lights. Like him, it had seen its best days, and an invisible earth digger was waiting in the wings to claim both of them.

  “This is a nice neighborhood,” Herman said. “Why, look at the pride Mrs. Breedlove takes in her flowers.”

  “Appearances are important, but they can also be deceiving. Order on the outside can often hide disorder inside.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Herman said. “Maybe your fence ain’t none of my business.”

  The hippie’s dog skirted under the fence and pushed its nose to the ground, following the curb down to 103, where the Pilkingtons had left the trash out.

  “Doggie bags,” the hippie said. “They’ll learn sooner or later.”

  “Reckon so,” Herman said. “What’s your name?”