required to be green in order to blend in with the foliage and not distract from the lot's natural state.
He felt the muscles of his face harden into a painful grimace, and he squeezed shut his eyes. 'Fuckers!' he yelled at the top of his lungs.
'Fuckers!'
Taking a deep harsh breath, tears stinging his eyes, he crumpled up the paper, balled it in his fist, and walked angrily into the house.
July.
The monsoons came just as Ray had promised they would. With the turn of the calendar page, afternoon skies were suddenly filled with massive thunderheads, and short summer storms brought the nearly unbearable heat of midday down to a level that made for cool and pleasant evenings. From the deck, Barry could watch the buildup of the storms, see the coalescing clouds, watch the rain as it came up from the south and moved like a light white curtain over the canyon lands and through the hilly forest toward Corban and Bonita Vista. It was beautiful, and he wished he were writer enough to capture that ephemeral splendor, but his forte was the grotesque, not the sublime, and translating such a magnificent sight into words was beyond his abilities.
He sat with Maureen, drinking iced tea, staring out at the landscape.
There were scattered showers to the south, squares of gray and white that touched the earth and looked like ghostly extensions of the more solid clouds above. Occasional spikes of lightning and the rumble of accompanying thunder belied the tranquillity of the scene but were nevertheless equally majestic, and at one point Barry saw three jagged bolts of lightning hit the ground at once.
From the road came the sound of a muffler less engine, and Barry peeked over to see who it was. A second later, a pickup packed with sand came speeding up the road, the vehicle's driver obviously attempting to get a running start on the steepest part of the hill. Despite the driver's intentions, the grade proved too tough, and the truck stalled out just above their house. The pickup was blocked from view by a pine tree, but Barry heard the engine attempting to turn over, and after one false start, the vehicle slid back down the hill into view, braking to a hard stop directly in front of their driveway. He looked over at Maureen.
'Don't you even think about it,' she said.
'The guy obviously needs help. And this isn't California,' he pointed out. 'It's not part of some scam. He's not going to shoot us and rob us.'
'Never can tell.'
He shook his head and was about to go downstairs and ask the man if he needed any assistance, when another pickup pulled up behind the first and stopped.
'Saved by the bell,' Maureen said.
The man who emerged from the second truck was tall and heavy, wearing too-new jeans, a fancy western shirt, and the sort of shiny oversized belt buckle that had been fodder for urban comedians for decades. A
shock of white hair over a ruddy bulldog face gave the man an air of impatient arrogance, and while Barry had automatically assumed that the man had stopped to help, he knew even before the cowboy opened his mouth that that was not the case.
'You got a permit?'
The driver who stuck his head out of the window to answer was dark and spoke in a thick Mexican accent. 'Yes, sir. Of course, of course. I
have my green card.'
'I don't mean a permit to work in this country. I figure you got that.
I'm talking about a work permit for Bonita Vista. Does your boss have a permit to do work in our neighborhood?'
Sound carried up here, but if there was an answer, Barry couldn't hear it.
You see, you gotta get the permission of the homeowners' association before you can do any work in Bonita Vista. Any work. I don't care what the man hirin ' you said, that's the way it is, comprende?
There was derision in the Spanish word, derision and an aggressive hostility. Barry could hear it all the way up on the deck, and it was clear that the driver sensed it as well. His response was low and cowed, subservient. He immediately tried to start the truck again, and although the first two efforts were unsuccessful, on the third the engine caught and held.
The white-haired man thunked his hand on the door of the pickup. 'Now you turn this baby around. And you tell your boss what I told you, you hear? No permit from the association, no work in Bonita Vista. Got it?'
Again, if there was an answer Barry didn't hear it, but the pickup did not try to continue up the road and instead backed around the other truck and headed down the hill in reverse, the loud engine fading into the distance.
The white-haired man returned to his own vehicle. He looked up at Barry as he walked, scowling, as if aware that his conversation had been overheard, and Barry quickly looked away, moving out of the man's line of sight, nervous for some reason, not wanting to acknowledge that he'd been listening.
The man got in his pickup and drove away.
'Did you hear that?' Barry asked Maureen.
She sipped her iced tea, nodded. 'There are racist assholes everywhere.'
That was not what Barry had gotten from the exchange, although it was undoubtedly true.
He had the distinct impression that any worker, regardless of his ethnicity, would have been questioned. It was not a race thing ... it was an association thing. He looked out once again at the approaching storm, but the pettiness of the people on the ground had drained the majesty from the sky, and he was no longer able to enjoy the view the way he had before.
They sat there the rest of the afternoon, as the rain approached and overtook them, whip crack thunder that sounded simultaneously with the flash of paparazzi lightning shaking the house and raiding the windows as though they were in an earthquake. They bore the brunt of the storm for a good half hour before it finally broke, and Maureen went back inside to start dinner.
Barry remained on the deck as dusk approached, ignoring the book he'd brought out to read, simply staring at the scenery. The sunset was dazzling. A section of the butte that stood like a sentinel at the far-off end of the forest where it segued into desert canyon was illuminated by a swath of light that lent the tan rock a brilliant fiery orange hue. The remnants of the afternoon's monsoon clouds dispersing across the western sky were transformed into what looked like puffy strings of cotton candy by the gradations of pink generated by the setting sun.
It was impressive, it was awe-inspiring.
But as hard as he tried to enjoy the view, he could not stop thinking about the cowboy and the Mexican worker and the homeowners'
association.
The next day was the fourth.
The Fourth of July had never been one of their big holidays, and although they slept in, waking up over an hour later than usual, they made no special plans to celebrate. Maureen allowed him to barbecue fat-free hot dogs for dinner in a modified concession to tradition, but the remainder of their plans consisted of doing yard work during the day and watching TV at night.
The day passed uneventfully, and they stopped working when the rains came, Maureen grabbing the rake, clippers, and broom, with Barry taking the shovel and the half-filled Hefty bag, both of them running for the shelter of the lower deck. The storm quit in time for him to barbecue, and they ate in front of the television, watching the two Flint movies back-to-back on AMC. Afterward, they showered together, made love, and went to sleep early.
They were startled awake by a loud boom that sounded like a bomb going off in the air above the house but that Barry recognized instantly as the sound of fireworks.
Despite the recent rains, it had been an exceptionally dry spring, and the national forest sign at the edge of town still had Smokey the Bear pointing to a red flag, warning of high fire danger. Barry's first thought was to wonder who was stupid enough to set off fireworks under such conditions. He got out of bed, slipped on a robe, and walked over to the sliding glass door. He pulled aside the curtain and watched a fat raccoon scramble off the lower deck and down an adjacent tree.
