“Not all of them, no,” Doreen said. “Some of them are good guys. And others, well, they don’t have the same ability to resist something that’s in front of them, even if it’s not offered.”
Marsha snorted at that again. “Well, I can see that you think you know what you’re talking about,” she said, “but you don’t. However, I won’t be missing Rosie’s presence on this planet Earth anytime soon.” And, with that, she stormed off.
Confused and yet curious, Doreen meandered back home again. She noted an alleyway at the back of Marsha’s house too. She went around the back and studied it, wondering if Marsha was close by too. Or could Doreen walk up and look into Marsha’s backyard without being seen?
Doreen walked down the alleyway quietly. She could see Marsha going into the kitchen from the back area and slamming the door shut behind her. Even as Doreen watched, blinds dropped down to stop anybody from looking in. Good enough. That meant that at least then Doreen didn’t have to worry about Marsha staring at her.
She walked past, looking around at the neighbors. One old guy was lugging something out to the garbage. She walked over to help him. “You need a hand with that?”
“Sure,” he said, huffing a little bit. “The doctors don’t want me lifting much over my head, and I’ve already dragged this sucker down here.” It looked to be old and part of a sectional couch.
“Where did you want to put it?” she asked curiously. He pointed to the trailer there beside him. She grabbed an end and tried to drag it. “Wow. It’s heavy,” she said. She tried again and managed to get it moved a little bit, and he pushed and she pulled, and they got it over to the ramp to aid them. She hopped onto the trailer, and slowly they managed to get it loaded up.
“That was quite a job,” she said, squatting and staring at the broken couch.
“And I thank you for your help,” he said. “It would have just sat here until I could get somebody to load it for me. And, once the rain comes, it would have turned into a nasty, moldy, and heavier mess than ever.” He reached out a hand. “My name is Trumper.”
She smiled at that. “Is that a nickname?”
“Sure is,” he said. “I was part of a drum cadet band, and I used to roll out the call all the time, so they called me Trumper.”
She didn’t quite follow, but she laughed. “Hey, I like it,” she said. She hopped down off the trailer. “Have you lived out here all your life?”
“I must look like I’m old and half-buried in this place already, huh?”
She grinned. “Nope. I’ve met a lot of people who have had homes for all their lives here and had never moved.”
“Moved here back in the ’60s. Found my home, and I stuck here. Been married and widowed twice,” he said with a sad sigh. “I wore them out,” he announced. “Eight kids between them, and they couldn’t handle it. They gave up the ghost.” But he had a big grin on his face.
“So have you started on number three now?” she asked. “Surely you’re good for another four kids.”
He guffawed loudly and slapped his thigh. “Aren’t you a fun one,” he said. “No, my heart died with the last one and just can’t go through that kind of loss anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a smile. “I do hear you about the losses.” She motioned at Marsha’s house beside him and said, “I understand she lost her husband too.”
“Yep, sure did,” he said. “And what a fight that was.”
She looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “You heard them fighting?”
“Yep,” he said. “That’s a funny one. He had an affair with another man. It was the darndest thing. You should have heard Marsha rip into him.”
At that, Doreen’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”
He laughed. “Not what you’d think, would you? That guy was huge, six foot tall. And all I could hear was her screaming at him for having sex with a man.” He chuckled and shook his head. “The world ain’t what it used to be.”
“I wonder who it was,” she said.
“Not sure,” he said. “They stormed around. Last I heard, he packed up some bags and got in his vehicle, then drove off. She never had him back again.”
“No,” Doreen said with a nod. “Not sure I’d want my husband back after that either.”
“You got to marry the right kind of guy,” he said. He looked over at her and grinned. “Are you still available?”
“Well, I’m back available again, if you want to put it that way,” she said with a beaming smile. “But I’ll be choosing my second partner a whole lot more carefully than I did the first.”
“Sometimes life is like that,” he said. “I chose well both times. But I lost the first one in childbirth and that was really, really tough. What I didn’t realize was how hard it was raising four kids alone. I married very quickly after that, but I’m lucky because she was a lovely lady too.” He headed back toward his property, and, at his gate, he turned and smiled and said, “Thank you again.”
“Not a problem,” she said. “I was looking into poor Marsha’s kiwi contest stuff when I decided to come down for a walk.”
“Oh, she’s got some kiwis growing in her backyard,” he said. “Of course she cheats.”
Doreen froze, looked at him, and said, “In what way?”
“Well, she has this portable greenhouse that she covers the plants with as soon as it gets anywhere close to being cool and leaves them in the ground. She also said she has some special nutrients, but I don’t know what that means. So, even though she says she doesn’t greenhouse them over the summer, she does.”
“Right,” Doreen said with a nod. “That makes a simple kind of sense.”
“Very simple when you think about it,” he
