Curtains Read online

  “Reynolds. Peter Reynolds.”

  Herman was afraid that the hippie was going to stick his hand out in some jive shake or other, but he just stood there with that educated smile. Peter Reynolds had the home-field advantage, and he knew it. Herman had been caught where he didn’t belong. He looked over at the Pilkington house, where the mutt was gnawing through a plastic trash bag, scattering cellophane and rumpled paper towels.

  “I’d best be going,” Herman said.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Herman thought of the razor blades, and wondered for the first time if Peter Reynolds maybe had a knife in his pocket. “What?”

  The hippie pointed to the leaning fence post. “I don’t know about you, but my mom taught me to leave things just the way I found them.”

  Herman started to argue, then thought of the maybe-knife and swallowed hard. He eased the post perpendicular to the ground and stomped his foot to tamp the dirt tight. “Good night, now,” he said.

  “Watch your step,” the hippie, Peter Reynolds, said.

  “Sounds like good advice.” Herman didn’t look back until he was inside his own home. He closed the curtains and hid the Elvis decanter in the closet with the rest of Verna’s things.

  The next day, he called the Sheriff’s Office. The hippie wasn’t the only one who knew how to work the system. Herman had to sit on hold for a couple of minutes, but he finally reached Bud Millwood, a deputy who had made an unsuccessful run for sheriff a decade back. Herman had supported his campaign with cash and two signs in the yard, and though Millwood had lost the race, rural politics required his repaying of such a favor.

  “I need you to check something for me, Bud,” Herman said.

  “The city council trying to zone you again?”

  “No, nothing like that. We voted that bunch out five years ago. The ‘Z’ word is a one-way ticket to hell around these parts.”

  Millwood laughed. “You can set that in stone. A fellow’s got a right to do what he wants with his land.”

  “Sometimes. Maybe sometimes.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “I wondered if you could run a check on a fellow. Name of Peter Reynolds. He might not be from around here, but he ain’t Yankee, judging by his accent. Has Tennessee plates on his car.” Herman read off the license numbers he’d written on a scrap of paper.

  “He do something wrong?”

  “No, not yet. He just moved into the neighborhood, and you know how it is.”

  “A fellow likes to know who his neighbors are.”

  “Yep. So if you can dig anything up, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Well, normally I got to have a reason to run a check. But maybe if you think he was growing dope or something.”

  “He’s the type who might.”

  “Good enough for me. I’ll call you when I learn something. If there’s so much as a counterfeit aspirin on his record, I’ll drive out and pay a personal visit.”

  “No, I can handle him. Just let me know.”

  “Sure, Herman, whatever. If you smell something funny, though, give me a holler. The way they’re cutting into our DARE programs, it’s a wonder the whole blessed county ain’t going up in smoke.”

  Herman was midway through his oatmeal and eyeing a grapefruit half when Bud Millwood called back.

  “I ain’t for certain, but if your Peter Reynolds is the same as the one from Trade River, just over the state line, then you might want to lock your doors of a night,” the deputy said. “Got into a quarrel with his neighbor over there. Deputies got called out three times for a domestic dispute.”

  “I thought a domestic dispute was when a man was beating up his wife.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they thought this was, but turns out Mr. Peter James Reynolds was whopping up on a forty-year-old woman. He claimed she snuck out in the middle of the night and moved the surveying stake that marked the corner of his property. Eased it over a good three feet and then dug up the ground and planted gladiolas.”

  “He beat a woman for something like that?”

  “Might not be the worst of it. This woman up and disappeared one night. That was a few months after the complaints. A thing like that, you figure people need to talk it out for themselves, maybe take it to small claims court instead of declaring war.”

  “Do they think this Reynolds fellow done her in?”

  “At first. They had the bloodhounds out and shoveled up some of her yard, thinking he might have buried her there out of spite. They checked out his crawl space, took him in for questioning, but he said he didn’t know nothing, sat there as cool as a ladybug in a cucumber patch. Six months later, when no body turned up, the detectives over there let the case slide. Apparently the family was happy to see her go, sold the property and split up the money. Wasn’t long after that old Peter Reynolds put his own house up for sale.”

  “Along about April?”

  “Yeah.”

  Herman wiped a gummy speck of oatmeal from his lip. “Probably ain’t the same Peter Reynolds. Even a cornshuck place like Tennessee probably got dozens by that name. And license plates have been known to get stolen.”

  “Funny, though. The detective I talked to remembered something Peter Reynolds repeated over and over while they questioned him.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Said, ‘She had no respect for another man’s property.’ Just like that. Said ‘had’ instead of ‘has,’ like he knew she was dead.”

  “Yeah. Funny, ain’t it? I appreciate it, Bud. Send along my blessings to your folks.”

  “Sure will. Take care, now.”

  Herman hung up the phone and looked out the window at the hippie’s house. All the hippies he’d ever heard of were into that peace and love business. Somehow that didn’t square with murdering your neighbor. But neither did razor blades in your fence posts. Or a cat nabbed on a fishhook and buried at the foot of a tree.

  Herman didn’t mess around with stalking the bushes that night. He went straight down Oakdale, into the hippie’s driveway, and up on the porch. He knocked hard enough for his knuckles to ache. The mutt started yapping behind the closed door.

  The door opened a crack. Peter Reynolds gave a smile as if Herman were delivering a bouquet of flowers. “I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Weeks. Please come in.”

  Herman’s anger took a left turn toward confusion. “Look here, I just come to talk about your fence.”

  “I know. We’re neighbors. We need to talk these things out or else we’ll end up enemies. You know what the Good Book says.”

  “You mean the Bible?” The mutt leaped forward and licked at Herman’s shoes. He looked down and saw dried oatmeal had formed white scabs on his trousers.

  “It says to love thy neighbor.”

  “It also says live and let live.”

  “I hate to disagree since we’re trying to be friends, but that’s not written anywhere in the Bible. There’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but not a thing about live and let live.” Peter Reynolds opened the door wider. “Please come in. The neighbors might be watching.”

  Herman took a long look behind him at the row of houses. They seemed too quiet, still, and dark. What if Peter Reynolds had been busy over the last day or two, and there were now a dozen mounds of raw earth at the foot of the backyard dogwood? Mrs. Breedlove’s legs tangled in the roots, the Pilkingtons with dirt in their lungs?

  He stepped inside, surprised at how bright and neat the room was. He’d expected it to be dank and furnished with heavy vinyl pieces, the way it had been when Ned and Eileen lived here. But the hippie must have watched a few home improvement shows. The carpet was plush and the color of gunsmoke, the window treatments were light gray, and the trim was painted in white semi-gloss, giving the room the sort of forced order you’d expect in an FBI office or a doctor’s waiting room. A computer sat on a bleached oak desk, and the rest of the furniture was arranged around it. Herman peeked into the kitchen and didn�
��t see a single dirty dish.

  “Have a seat,” Peter Reynolds said, motioning toward the couch. It looked like a regular-guy sort of couch, the kind where you could prop your feet on the arm rest and balance a bowl of chips on the back cushions, scratch your balls if you felt like it. Watch the Panthers whoop up on the 49ers. Except the hippie didn’t have a TV. All he had was the computer.

  Herman sat, uncomfortable, wondering if dried mud filled the cracks on the bottoms of his shoes.

  “You heard about Tennessee,” Peter Reynolds said.

  “Did you kill her?”

  “I’m surprised you’d ask something like that. I would have taken you for a man who minded his own business.”

  “Did you bury her like you did the cat?”

  “You should worry about your own problems instead of going around being suspicious of everybody.”

  “I don’t have no problems.”

  “That you’ll admit, anyway.”

  “No worries nothing.”

  “You’re old and alone and it’s slipping away. The last thing you have left to fight for is that patch of grass up there”-Peter Reynolds waved at the dark window in the direction of Herman’s house-“and a picket fence. And it’s getting harder to keep that fence standing straight, isn’t it? The winds keep coming, a little stronger every year, the snow leans on it, the neighborhood kids get a little bigger and bolder, and a fence starts looking like a dare instead of a warning. Yes, Mr. Weeks, I understand fences. I’m territorial myself.”

  The hippie’s gray eyes, which were the same color as the carpet, seemed far too old. “All I want is a place to spread out, a yard for my dog to dig in, a roof over my head, and no barbarians at the gate.”

  “Barbarians at the gate,” Herman repeated, as if he had the slightest idea what the hippie was going on about. He had a fleeting image of one of those old chariot movies, where the Romans were always punished because of nailing Jesus to the cross. You never saw John Wayne in a toga, that was for sure. Charlton Heston, maybe, but that was a different nut altogether.

  “I’m a loner like you,” Peter Reynolds went on, standing across the room even though his guest was sitting. “I take care of what’s mine. That’s why I was so upset when I saw you had fixed my leaning fence post. It was an insult, you see.”

  Herman could see that plain, now. At the time, he’d thought the hippie has bone lazy, without a stitch of pride. But the truth was the hippie was just like Herman, proud to the point of stubbornness. Ready to fight for home ground.

  “I didn’t mean nothing,” Herman said. “But from where I come from, you set your fences straight.”

  “I’m tired, Herman. I don’t mind burying a trespassing cat once in while.” The hippie gave Herman a look that said maybe cats weren’t all he’d buried. “But I don’t want to run anymore. Every time I think I’m settled in for good, that I’ve staked out a place to call my own, along comes some lousy neighbor to spoil it all.”

  Herman didn’t want to think that he was spoiling anything for Peter Reynolds. Because the hippie’s left eyelid was twitching just a little.

  “Well, I’m not running anymore. This time, I’m trying to recruit an ally. A good neighbor. A man who respects the property rights of others.”

  “I’ve always been a good neighbor,” Herman said.

  “You’ve got more to fight for than any of us do, since you’ve been here the longest.”

  “I’ll fight to protect what’s mine. I registered for the draft, though I had the bad luck to come of age between Korea and Vietnam.”

  “You don’t have to go overseas to find the enemy,” the hippie said, and those gray eyes had gone even darker, on toward charcoal. “The barbarians are right at the gate.”

  Herman’s stomach was in knots and his bowels gurgled, scoured raw by fiber. He didn’t like the distant anger in the hippie’s voice. That was a murderer speaking, someone who could deprive another human being of the ultimate in property rights, the right to possess a living and breathing body. He flinched when the hippie spun and stormed toward the computer.

  “It’s a technological age we live in, Herman,” Peter Reynolds said, tapping some keys. “All the public records are right here on the county Web site. Birth certificates, deaths, deeds, criminal charges, tax liens. And look here. Building applications.”

  Herman squinted, trying to see around the hippie’s back, that long pony tail nearly down to his rump. From behind, wearing a dress, he could have passed for a girl. Assuming he shaved his legs. But he heard women didn’t hardly do that anymore. Barbarians at the gates was right.

  “Next door,” the hippie said. “The Devereaux heirs have been busy.”

  “The dentist’s boys?”

  “Yes. They’ve sold the lot to an outfit out of Texas. Highland Builders LLC.”

  “Damn. I knew that was going to be developed sooner or later. Wonder who the new neighbor is going to be?”

  “Neighbors,” the hippie said. “Plural.”

  “Do what?”

  “Apartment complex. Six buildings. A hundred-and-fifty-two parking spaces. Legal occupancy of up to 122 unrelated persons.”

  Herman dug a finger into his ear, as if wax buildup prevented his brain from accepting the words he’d just heard. “No way. You can’t fit that many people on such a little scrap of ground.”

  “You must have missed the zoning hearings. This application says the property was zoned for multi-family back in the 1980s.”

  “Oh, that. We didn’t go to none of those. We stayed away as a protest against zoning.”

  “They zoned anyway.”

  “Tarnation.”

  “A foreign developer like that has absolutely no respect for the neighbors. Oakdale would be changed forever. For the worse.”

  “I’ll say. How we going to keep all them people off our property?

  “You know what they say. A good fence is the first line of defense.”

  Herman wasn’t sure he liked the gleam in the hippie’s eyes. Those were Osama’s eyes, the look of a man who would just as soon bury you as nail up a “No Trespassing” sign. He thought of the fence post with its embedded razor, the barbed hook big enough to snag a cat. He wondered what sort of contraption the hippie could cook up to deal with a major invasion.

  “I’ll bet they’ll put up crooked fence posts,” Herman said.

  “No doubt. A Texas developer wouldn’t know the first thing about building in the mountains.”

  “And those apartments will have kids.”

  “Lots of kids,” the hippie agreed.

  “Squalling, squabbling little yard monkeys who will wear a path in your grass deep enough to bury a mule.”

  “Or bury a person.”

  Herman looked at the window, at the dark, empty field. Fireflies blinked above the ragged vegetation. A crabapple tree swayed in the wind. Headlights cut twin yellow arcs across the small plot of land as a pizza delivery car cut into the neighborhood. Herman tried to picture the security lights, the view-wrecking walls, the cars crowded around the buildings. Four stories of noise and strangers. Bad neighbors.

  The best way to stop bad neighbors was with good fences.

  Fences like the hippie made.

  “Want to see my shop?” Peter Reynolds said.

  “You bet.”

  Herman was sure it was full of sharp, shiny things and heavy, black hammers. He got up from the couch, feeling younger than he had in years. His heart, which usually beat in a tired and uneven rhythm, now burned with pride and a sense of duty. There was work to be done and fences to be mended. Herman, as old as he was, figured he could still learn a thing or two about handling property disputes. They could beat this problem together.

  After all, what else were neighbors for?

  Bud Millwood pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, something he’d probably seen in a detective movie somewhere. Herman let the door stand open, and though the October air was brisk, he didn’t invite the deputy i
n. Herman had nothing to hide, but a man’s home was private property and Bud was here as an officer of the law, not as a friend. Plus, his breakfast was getting cold, and nothing went down rougher than cold oatmeal.

  “Find anything on that Reynolds fellow?” Herman asked.

  “No. It’s been two months. We figure he knew the Tennessee law was closing in, so he cut out, started a new identity, maybe drifted to Canada or Mexico.”

  “That kind, they don’t understand the value of setting down roots. They think they can just barge in any old where and call it ‘home,’ with no respect for what went on before.”

  “Maybe so,” Bud said. “But he left a lot of his tools and clothes and furniture. Like he got up and drove off in the middle of the night.”

  “How else do shiftless hippies know how to do it?” Herman looked past Bud to 107 Oakdale. A metal “For Sale” sign was stuck in the grass, its hinged metal face swinging in the faint breeze. Bud had explained the property wasn’t a crime scene anymore because there was no evidence of any crime. A new neighbor would be moving in soon, now that the bank had taken it over. There was no way such prime real estate would stay on the market for long, what with the mountains becoming such a desirable destination and all, like the Chamber of Commerce said.

  “Hard to believe he killed a poor old woman over a property stob,” Bud said.

  “Well, that’s Tennessee for you. And hippies.”

  “The M.E. over there said she bled to death real slow. She might even have still been alive when he poured the cement over her.”

  Cement. Herman looked over at the Devereaux property, the site of the new apartment complex. Those Texas developers hadn’t wasted any time, they’d moved in the backhoes and bulldozers and already a cement mixer was maneuvering to pour the oversize footers, beeping as it backed up, its gray sluice chute extended.

  “So, you sure you didn’t see nothing?” Bud’s mouth was tucked in tight at the corners, but Herman stared straight into his own reflection doubled back in Bud’s sunglasses.

  “I’m a big fan of this Community Watch program, but even neighbors can’t keep track of every little thing that goes on. Crosses the line into nosiness.”