Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  "But it's a heavy car, Earl. Its weight was enough so that mere gravity got it going."

  "That may be, Harry, but it's no excuse. It didn't start off by itself. It was helped."

  Harry frowned. "No, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to admit to something I didn't do, Earl."

  Enid and Ramona were serenely, doggedly eating.

  "You certainly didn't do it, Harry," Keese said. "I did."

  Harry shook his head. "I think we've got our wires crossed in some way that I for one don't understand. Here's my point, as simply as I can make it: when I came back from the village I pulled your car up in my driveway. I thought I left it in gear. I definitely didn't set the parking brake. Now, when I come out, having made the spaghetti, the car isn't there. My first assumption was that it had been stolen. But when I come down the street I see the guardrail at the end of the road has been busted out and the bushes there are crushed. What happened was, your car rolled down the drive, hit that stone at the edge, which turned the wheels left, so it proceeded down the street, jumped the curb, went through the fence, and on into—what is it, a gully there?"

  Ramona whinnied with laughter and Enid said, chuckling: "The little comedies of everyday life."

  "I know I should have told you earlier," said Harry, "but why spoil our dinner together? The first of many such, I trust."

  Keese prayed to his barbarous gods that it not prove so. Now he was faced with the sticky matter of deciding whether it had indeed been an accident or Harry had destroyed the car in revenge for the destruction of his own. He would love to beat a confession out of the man, striking his huge body with a stout truncheon until, falling whimpering to his knees, Harry would implore him to hear a full account of his malefactions.

  However, what Keese said now was: "My gosh."

  Harry said: "I knew you'd take it like a man. Then we're still buddies?" He dropped his fork and put his hand across the table. Keese was constrained to take it. Harry's handshake had been flabby on their first meeting, but now it could have crushed metal. Keese pulled out of it as soon as he could, but he feared permanent disability. But one thing had been established: he was certain now that Harry knew about his own car, and how could he not have known? Keese was disgusted with himself for conceiving such ludicrous doubts about things that were self-evident.

  He had difficulty in retrieving his fork with his maimed hand. He had lost his appetite anyway. He drank more wine.

  Ramona turned to him and asked: "Isn't it time, Earl, for a little confessing of your own?"

  Ordinarily the fairest of men, Keese felt he was being manipulated by these loathsome people (to what end he could not have said, for he was alternately both victim and victimizer), and he decided now to be stubborn. He had a moral advantage over Harry at the moment, or at least the appearance of one. Why should he voluntarily give it up?

  "Confess?" he asked disingenuously. "To what? To living in my own house? To breathing air?"

  Ramona sneered. "Here Harry has been decent enough, honest enough, to admit that because of his negligence your car has been wrecked. And what do you have to say? Nothing."

  "Earl," said Enid, lowering her fork and still chewing, "you are really humiliating me. What you did was bad enough, but your silence is obscene."

  Keese was shocked by this assault from his wife—he had been conscious of her previous malice, but he assumed it was her way of being hospitable to their guests—but still he held his ground: if anything, more defiantly than before.

  "So you're ganging up on me, eh?" he said, drawing himself up in the fashion which conventionally suggested indignation. Keese performed this as a conscious parody, subtly to indicate his contempt for them and also for the gesture. He was not sure he succeeded with this overload of significance: at any rate, no one appeared to be bluffed by it.

  Harry scowled across the table: a blond curl had drooped onto his forehead. If he knew about it and let it stay he was excessively vain. But soon enough he swept it back with the flat of his hand, denying Keese the use of it against him. He was no mean opponent!

  "We're waiting," Harry said then. "Or do I have to pound it out of you?" He displayed a large fist.

  Keese did a thing by which he astonished himself. He rose quickly and went around the table to Harry's side. "Don't speak like that to me in my own house," he said quietly, but he seemed to hear a deafening ovation thereafter: this was utterly imaginary. Enid pretended to be embarrassed and turned her flushing face away. Ramona hissed venomously.

  Harry however was impressed. "I meant no offense, Earl. It's just the sort of thing a fellow says."

  "Why?" asked Keese, standing over him.

  "I don't know. It's ridiculous, really. I've made an ass of myself, I guess." Harry displayed a sickly grin.

  Keese however did not trust him; this knuckling under seemed more than a little bogus. "Well," he said, leaving, "too much could be made of it. Let's drop the subject."

  "You don't really think you'll get away with it, do you?" asked Ramona as he passed her. "Oh, you're the cool one, aren't you?"

  Enid said: "Earl, this is insufferable."

  How in the world had he got into this mess on a Friday evening when he had stayed at home? Much of Keese's trouble lay in his inability to accept the situation as a real one and not a masochist hallucination. But perhaps he was being too stubborn.

  "All right, you win," he told Ramona. "I confess." He looked at Harry. "About your car—"

  Ramona interrupted with a scream. "No, no!"

  "Please," said Keese, "you wanted me to admit committing my little crime, if such it was, and now that I start to do so you stop me."

  "You filthy pervert," cried Ramona.

  Harry put both his hands out as if he were calming the waters. It was a pretentious gesture, and it was matched by his speech. "Now, now," he said, "let's not have an altercation."

  Keese was stunned by Ramona's choice of terms. He had had quite enough of this wretched pair. He would throw them out immediately, regardless of their threats, despite the strong possibility that in revenge they could make of the dead-end street a perfect hell.

  But before he could put his decision into effective words (he did not wish to dissipate its force by expressing it badly), Ramona turned to Harry.

  "He tried to rape me," said she.

  CHAPTER 4

  WHO could have predicted that in a time of true stress Harry would act responsibly?

  "Earl," he said in a judicial sort of voice, "you'll get your opportunity for self-defense. I'm aware that such accusations are flung about wholesale these days. Still, it's a serious charge. In wartime the old Army used to execute those convicted of the crime."

  Keese felt very grateful to Harry for this reassurance. For that matter he agreed with him that the crime was despicable. He had brooded about Elaine's being a victim, and he had sworn he would kill the perpetrator if he could find him. He had never worried about Enid in that regard: she didn't seem the type who could easily be brutalized, and it was a fact that fiends, like water, sought the line of least resistance.

  But of course Ramona was clearly demented. If Harry was at all reasonable, and he seemed so now, he must understand that his wife needed special care. No doubt he would be obliged by the requirements of familial loyalty to pretend to take her accusation seriously, but was it being sentimental to believe that he would soon dispose of it, clear Keese of all charges, and leave with a certain sheepishness? Keese had not liked Harry until this moment, no doubt because he had not understood him.

  Harry peered sharply at him. "I tell you for your own good, Earl, that you'd better wipe that smirk off your face: it will hurt your case, make you look like a cynic."

  Keese had been sure he wasn't smiling, let alone wearing a derisive expression. "Sorry," he said. "Must be the strain I'm under. It isn't pleasant to be accused of such a thing under one's roof, in front of one's wife. And there's as good a defense as any: what a place and time to pick, if I were thinking of
rape!"

  Harry put his finger out. "I doubt that you were thinking of it, Earl. You're not the premeditative type. You're the sort of fellow who would be overcome suddenly by a feeling of lust—I can see that. But whether you'd try to put your yearnings into action is what we're trying to determine here. Now I might say that Ramona, in my experience, is not a reckless person. In fact, call this prejudiced if you will, but she's the most levelheaded woman I've ever known."

  This could of course still be a necessary buttering-up, but Keese's feet had begun to grow ominously cold in his comfortable old house-shoes. His only hope was that Harry would be well versed in Ramona's hysterical transports. If he truly believed her to be of equable temperament and capable of good judgment, then Keese was under a threat. If it was her word against his, and if those words were considered of equal weight, his chances to get justice were poor—for the obvious reason: why would an altogether sane woman accuse an absolutely guiltless man of sexual assault?

  "With all respect," Keese nevertheless said to Ramona, "just why do you maintain that I tried to, that I attempted—" He was having the most damnable difficulty in mouthing the word: no doubt suppressed rage was the cause of this impediment.

  Harry slapped the tabletop with both hands and stood up, moving the chair back with his legs. He spoke in a voice that was sad, not angry.

  "Enid, I think you can see why we have to leave. This is not the time for a sermon, so just let me thank you for your hospitality. It could have made a great friendship, but then how many things go right in life?"

  Keese got up too. "I thought I was going to get the opportunity to defend myself!"

  "Don't you raise your voice at me, Earl," Harry said threateningly. "It's all I can do to hold myself in as it is."

  "Goddammit!" Keese was getting louder: it was his house. "I said I thought I was supposed to be able to defend myself."

  "You already said that. But I have decided against taking you to court. That kind of thing makes for permanent bad blood, and we may be neighbors for the rest of our lives."

  Keese shuddered. He believed he might be on the point of seizing the enormous chef's knife from the wall rack nearby and carving out Harry's guts.

  Instead he put his head back as far as it would go and shouted at the ceiling: "Get out of my house, you sons of bitches!" When he brought his eyes back down Harry was at the back door and Ramona was at her husband's heels.

  Crying more abuse, Keese hastened them on their way, literally chased them over the threshold and into the night. He returned to the kitchen, gasping. High blood pressure was routine for him in the best of times.

  Only now did Enid stop eating. "That was quite a performance," she said. "I can't remember seeing you like that before."

  "I have been known to lose my temper," Keese said, "but not usually in front of other people. But this was too much. Those two are a real menace. The thought of them living next door is unbearable. I say this seriously, Enid: we may have to move. Did you ever see anything like them?"

  "You were the strange one," said she. "They seemed to bring out the worst in you."

  This stung him. "Listen here: you supported them, you agreed with them, everything you said and did was on their side and not mine."

  "Earl, I was being hospitable. Did you not just now hear Harry thank me? I can't forsake my manners simply because you get yourself into some squabble."

  He went to the sink to throw cold water on his face. But first he said: "Squabble? They accused me of rape. Me, for God's sake, Earl Keese." It did not seem absurd to him to identify himself formally. "Even yet I can't believe it." He opened the tap and took the splash of cool water on his hands. "And why didn't you defend me? You were here all the while. How could I have raped anybody?" He threw water into his eyes. "Court. He was apparently thinking of having me arrested and tried! No matter that they wouldn't be able to prove it. My name could never be cleared. Sex charges are always believed. You can destroy anybody by that means, if you are ruthless enough to lie with a straight face."

  Enid rose and took her plate to the sink. "Hadn't you better do something about the car?"

  God, he had forgotten about that altogether—and the matter of their car as well.

  The kitchen telephone hung on the wall. In the directory he looked up the number of the local garage. He had inserted his finger into the first of the appropriate orifices in the dial when the back door burst open and Harry & Ramona entered, howling and hooting like savages at a blood-ritual. Finally he was able to identify their commotion as being good-humored, at least in intention. The abominable noise was their laughter.

  "I think we had you going, Earl," cried Harry.

  "I'm sure we did," said Ramona. "Now admit it!"

  "You did," said Enid, "you really did. I can certify that. He admitted losing all control."

  Keese was furious with that one word. "I did not say 'all'!"

  But it was Enid' way never to admit correction. She smiled all the wider. "Never," she said, "have I seen him more devastated."

  Keese produced a stage-laugh. "O.K., have your fun at my expense. I'm not ashamed of reacting strongly to that accusation."

  "You made a complete ass of yourself," said Harry. "Don't try to retrieve anything from that hopeless performance, Earl."

  "I've already admitted being taken in," Keese said. "What more do you want? I'm simply saying that I don't really regret it. Better to err on the positive side than on the negative."

  "Just a minute." Harry apparently wished to pursue some moral but was stopped by Ramona.

  "Now don't get dreary, Harry. The joke worked. That's what matters, not why it worked." She giggled desperately.

  "The thing about your car was my idea," said Harry, claiming his former seat at the table, and Ramona took her own. "Obviously it was pretty lame. I'm not very good at these hoaxes." He pointed. "She's the genius."

  "Yes," said Keese, sitting down. "But I must make a genuine confession, I'm afraid: by accident I really did send your car down into the hollow and no doubt into the creek, though it's too dark to see out there now."

  "I'm disappointed in you, Earl. You're just trying to top my story," said Harry. Interested in the proceedings, Enid had come towards the table on his side. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, Harry put his arm around her waist. This action brought her hip against his shoulder. Bone-to-bone contact could hardly be objected to, but Keese was unsettled by the insouciance of—well, really all three of them, for Enid seemed perfectly comfortable and Ramona was smiling lazily at the pair. Actually they made an appropriate-looking couple, large as they both were: a brother and an older sister from some big-boned family.

  Keese felt as though he were defending his right to damage Harry's property, whereas at the outset all he had wanted to do was come clean. "I'm not joking," he said. "What you told me you did to my car, in your hoax, I actually did to your car a bit earlier."

  "How about it, Enid," said Harry, pulling her robust middle body against him and inclining his large blond head against her left breast. "Do you think this little hubby of yours is capable of that sort of thing?"

  Enid smiled down upon his curls. "Don't let him dupe you, Harry."

  "There you are," said Harry. Abruptly he let Enid go and refilled his glass from the wine jug. "Well, we've provided the dinner and the first act of the entertainment, Earl. Isn't it time you did something?"

  Keese had not forgotten that he had given Harry thirty-two dollars, which seemed adequate compensation for these services. The destruction of the car was quite another thing: he must, before any more foolishness occurred, get Harry to accept the fact.

  He rose, saying: "I'm going to prove it to you." In a cabinet over the refrigerator he found an electric lantern. "Come on, we'll take a look." Impatiently he punched the lantern's switch. The beam was invisible from his end in the lighted kitchen, but Ramona winced and looked away as if he had got her in the eyes with that one precise focus which would be
effective.

  Harry got up, groaning. "I never knew you'd take it this far, but I'll call your bluff!" He saluted the table. "To the ladies, God bless 'em." Then he slapped Keese on the rump and sauntered to the door.

  It occurred to Keese that Harry might be drunk. Or had he been thrown into such high spirits merely by the rape-hoax? There were such persons, whose taste in comedy required someone's embarrassment. For them a joke was not a thing-in-itself but must have a butt to complete it.

  With his light he led Harry through the side yard and to the brink of the hollow, at a point where the descent was not so steep as that which the car had gone down in its headlong rush. In fact, there was an old path there, probably made by bygone boys, and current lads came there now and again after fording the creek from the other bank, which was at the edge of the village proper, only a hundred yards from Keese's house to a bird, but a mile and a half by car. Keese did not forbid the use of this shortcut, because it was not often used, but neither did he see such youthful trespassers with pleasure, for years ago he had one night caught three boys watching fourteen-year-old Elaine take off her first brassiere behind her unshaded bedroom window.