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
