grabbing his briefcase from the passenger seat and climbing out.
He knew he had.
But now the door stood gaping open. Again. For the past few days, the automatic opener had been malfunctioning, erratically closing when the door was half open, opening unexpectedly when the door seemed firmly closed.
He’d have to get the motor fixed. And the back part of the foundation, he reminded himself furiously. The door was just one more thing to do. Shit.
He slid into the front seat of the car, buckled himself in, and turned the key.
At least the car started smoothly. No troubles there.
He began rolling out of the garage and down the driveway, gaining speed on the slight incline from the house to the street.
And suddenly slammed on the brake, jerking to a halt and jamming his chest painfully against the webbing of his seatbelt. For an instant he could not breathe and his vision went black.
Something red and silver had winked into sight in his side-view mirror, abruptly emerging from behind the dense, head-high shrubs that filled a small triangle between the driveway, the front sidewalk, and the side fence- virtually the only landscaping on the property that didn’t look newly planted. Whatever it was had winked into sight, glimmered for an instant, and disappeared.
Behind the car!
Before he could even consciously register what he had seen, he knew-he knew — what it was.
Sams’ new toy…with Sams’ driving!
He had thrust the car into park, twisted the key in the ignition, released his seatbelt, and was halfway along the length of the car before his mind truly began functioning.
Those damned bushes. I knew they were too tall. I knew someone was going to get hurt some day. And now Sams!
Each beat of his heart clarified in his mind what he would see-what he must see…the small body lying crushed on the cracked concrete of the sidewalk, blood streaming from broken flesh to flow, dark and thick and cloying, into the crevices, into the earth beneath, sinking in deeper and deeper, to contaminate and corrupt…
As he reached the back fender and could see clearly behind the car-the empty sidewalk behind the car-he heard a long, high giggle from the passenger side, then saw Sams putting up the driveway and into the darkened garage. The boy executed a perfect circle with his tiny car, sliding with practiced ease into a spot next to the three parked bicycles.
As he climbed out, he lifted a small plastic bucket-his sand-castle bucket, Willard realized-now filled with half a dozen large, glossy oranges. He was grinning widely, proud of himself for helping.
“See, Daddy! I picked up dessert, too!”
4
Almost before dawn the next morning, Willard stalked into the front yard, dressed in an old, thread-bare Pendleton shirt and a thick nylon vest, and began savagely slashing at the stand of bushes with a pair of long- handled, wickedly sharp, tree loppers.
It had taken Catherine the better part of an hour to calm Willard down the night before, so shaken was he at the realization that he could so easily have run over his son. First he blamed himself, then he blamed the bushes, then he blamed the previous owners who had planted the damned things where they would block the view like that. Then he blamed himself again, for buying the damned house in the first place, with its roaches and its cracked foundation.
The only person he didn’t blame was Sams.
Dinner was a fiasco. Even though the kids intuited that something was wrong, that something had happened outside that Mom and Dad were studiously talking about only in hissed whispers, they were nonetheless upset when Catherine announced that, no, there wouldn’t be any super waffles for dinner tonight.
“But you promised…”
“Mommm!”
And so on until Willard thundered, “Quiet!” and startled the kids so badly that Sams, who had no idea at all what was going on, started to cry.
Finally, though, dinner was over, the kids were settled for the night, Catherine and Willard were lying in bed talking quietly.
“Tomorrow, they go.”
“Maybe we could call someone to take them out for us. You know, a professional gardner…”
“No. First thing in the morning. I’m not waiting another day.”
So first thing in the morning, Willard began. His face tensed in an expression somewhere between concentration and obsession, he began.
At first the job wasn’t so difficult. The plants were dense, woody, with leaves dusty green on one surface, a pale, rusty gold underneath. Even so, the newest growth was still tender, easy to cut.
As he worked his way down, however, the older shoots grew more thickly, intertwined so complexly that it was impossible to cut just one and pull it away from the rest. Again and again, he struggled to work the loppers through the woody heart of the shoots, until his shoulders and hands began to ache. His fingers throbbed from the strain, cramped when he took a moment for a break and loosened his grip on the handles.
Under his breath, without consciously realizing it, he began to curse, fluidly, angrily, letting words slip easily between his lips that he would normally never have even thought. Images flickered in and out of his mind, images of bloody bodies, and broken bones, and shattered skulls.
He slashed more violently at the plants.
In spite of the cool day, he began to sweat profusely. The thick flannel shirt hung along his back, sodden and sticky. Finally, he stripped out of his vest, removed the shirt and threw it on the ground behind him, slipped back into the vest, and, bare-armed, began again.
Hack. Slice. Wrench and pull.
And again.
“Dad, can I help?” Willard hadn’t heard Will, Jr., approach, hadn’t been aware that the sun was midway up in the cloudless sky and that he was panting and nearly shaking. He jumped in surprise…and anger at the interruption-even though a part of him welcomed a distraction from the directions his thoughts were carrying him.
“What?” He turned too quickly and for a moment felt dizzy. Then the disorientation passed. “What?”
“Can I help? I could…”
“No. I’m taking care of it. Thanks.”
“But…”
“No. You heard me. No. Go away, Will.”
Willard bent back to the task.
When Catherine came out some time later-he didn’t know how long it had been-to hand him a glass of water, he barely acknowledged her. He took a long swallow, then poured the rest of the cool water over his head.
“Willard, you’ll give yourself pneumonia if you don’t…”
“I’m all right. Let me alone to work.” Then hack. Slice. Wrench and pull.
It must have been mid-afternoon when he finally finished gutting the worst part of the bushes. He could almost see bare earth, and the bulk of the greenery lay thrown haphazardly behind him.
At ground level the stems were too thick for the loppers. Instead, he had to get on his hands and knees and, using a small arced pruning saw, sever each one individually a foot or so from the hard-pan soil.
His back ached. His hands ached. His arms were covered with tiny scratches from sharp twigs, with a fine film of sweat mixed with loose dirt, flecks of sawdust, and a light, pale dust that must have rubbed off the undersides of the leaves. He was hungry. But he couldn’t stop to eat. He had to get rid of these bushes.
They had nearly killed his son.
