Neighbors

by Thomas Berger

  "Golly," said Keese, "wouldn't you though?" He slapped the car with his sponge. "Do you know something, Harry?" He gestured at the house with his thumb. "It must have been one of them." He nodded as if in the possession of wisdom.

  "I don't suppose it makes much difference by now whose fault or purpose it was," Harry said. "But I really would like to get my car up and out as soon as possible today. I have an idea it might run, and I've got a lot of things to do."

  "Harry," said Keese, "I want you to regard my car, this car, as your own until your own is back in service, and I don't mean as is, but rather until it is restored to exactly the same condition it was in before it took the plunge. In fact—" Keese opened the driver's door and took the keys from the ignition. "Here." He gave them to Harry. "When we've got it cleaned, take it over to your driveway. I'll assume full responsibility for the recovery of your car. Nothing is more important than that."

  "All right, Earl," said Harry. "I'll accept the offer, and in return I'll run down to the village, get the ingredients, and make a big breakfast for us."

  "You and me?"

  "Who else?" asked Harry. "Who needs those women?" He energetically chamoised a patch of car that Keese had sponged. "I don't think we'd have had any trouble last night if it had been just between you and me."

  "I wonder." This was Keese's only response, and it was literal. Thus far he had preferred dealing with Harry to confronting Ramona, but he couldn't go so far as to make some absolute judgment that would apply to all possible conditions. And there was the basic truth that whatever he thought of her personality, he did find her sexually attractive—which is more than he could say of Harry.

  For some reason it seemed a good idea now to finish the job as soon as possible, and they did so in unison. Harry insisted on shaking hands when he put down the chamois.

  "We're quite a team, Earl," said he, pumping Keese's wrist. "I hope you like blueberry pancakes and little pig sausages." He opened the door and climbed into the driver's seat. He slammed the door, rolled down the window, poked his large fair head out, and added: "Because that's what you're getting."

  "With slatherings of pure creamery butter and real maple syrup?" asked Keese, quoting from the TV commercial of a fast-food chain.

  Harry frowned, as if he had been disparaged, closed the window (though the air was warm), and backed out the drive-way at a much slower speed than he had shown the night before.

  Keese watched his car disappear and then he went into the kitchen and consulted the clock. The time was 7:30! He was still not inured to this new losing of time. On the other hand, there had been a thrill a minute, by a certain interpretation.

  Once again he looked up Greavy's number and dialed it. There was no problem now: it was Perry who answered. Keese told him about the car in the swamp. He decided not to mention Perry's useless errand of the night before—whoever had called the man.

  Perry for his own part said nothing to suggest that he remembered the address. Indeed he said nothing whatever; he grunted and hung up. But he must have left the garage immediately thereafter, for no sooner had Keese passed his water in the ground-floor lavatory off the front hallway than through the little washroom window came the clanking sounds, and Keese went out the front door and saw Perry Greavy already unreeling a cable from a large spool on the cranelike structure of the wrecker.

  By the time Keese had reached the outdoors Perry had taken the large iron hook on the business end of the cable and gone through the broken guardrail and descended into the swamp.

  Keese became aware that the engine of the wrecker was running: to be sure, that was where the power would come from to work the winch and haul out the car. He looked into the cab and saw old Greavy. He would have stolen away had Greavy not seen him at the same instant.

  "How do?" respectfully said the old man, and even touched his cap-brim with a dirty finger.

  "Hi," said Keese.

  "Be O.K. if the sonbitch's long enough."

  "How's that?"

  "Cable," said Greavy, with a smile that displayed the gaps in his dingy teeth. "And that mutterfrick can snep off and whop back, and it wool take your head clean off, or even come up between your legs and lash your whacker off, I tell you, I seen it heppen, so you look out and go behind the truck when Perry's hooked her." He was certainly genial this morning; obviously he had no memory of the night before. Keese was happy he had not sought to retaliate against Greavy—though if he tensed his abdominal muscles he could still feel the old man's sucker punch.

  "I seen one take a greaser's foot off at the angle," Greavy went on chummily. "That was down in the warm country."

  "Is that right?"

  "Oh, I been all over," said Greavy, "and done everything, too. Everything but one. Know what that is?"

  "No," said Keese.

  "I never went down on a midget," Greavy cried, almost choking on his mirth.

  Keese joined him in laughter. Funny how once the night was over he was getting along very well with his recent enemies.

  Greavy looked at him with momentary interest, as if to repay him for enjoying the witticism. "Say," he asked, "you putting in another cesspool?"

  "No." Keese wondered whether this too was a joke.

  "Aren't you the gemman I saw last week over on Roose Road, putting in a new cesspool?" Greavy seemed serious enough.

  "No," said Keese. So that was why Greavy had been so friendly: he hadn't recognized him in the daylight.

  Greavy ignored the negation. "I want to talk about a seepage problem I got over to my place. I think there's shit in my water. You come around there Monday morning." At this point Perry's voice could be heard, shouting up from the hollow.

  Keese watched Harry's car leave the swamp. This was a slow process, and the cable was frighteningly taut. He moved farther off when the car gained the summit, which it did somewhat on the bias before correcting itself—or rather, as Keese saw now, was straightened by Perry, who had ridden up inside, at the steering wheel, giving some guidance during the backwards climb.

  When the vehicle bumped down over the curb and at long last was again in its proper habitat, a paved road, Perry looked out of the window and asked Keese for the ignition key.

  "Oh," said Keese, "it isn't my car."

  Perry climbed out, went to the wrecker, and brought back a toolbox. He lifted the hood, did something underneath, and the engine started up without hesitation. He stopped it and closed the hood. He inspected the front of the car.

  He asked Keese: "Where's the man owns this?"

  "He'll be back." Keese walked to the nose of the car and looked at the grille: it was unmarked. "This looks O.K.," he said with relief. "The bumper must have taken all the punishment." He squatted and looked at the latter, seeing only some inconsequential scratches and blurs, which might well have been there before.

  "That there rail was all rotten," said Perry. He boldly scratched his crotch, taking great handfuls of coverall. He bore no resemblance whatever to the elder Greavy, being a burly fellow, with a bulging paunch. He lifted off the cap of orange plastic and wiped his brow with the wrist of his other arm. This put a slash of oily dirt across his forehead. Then he worked up some saliva into a foamy blob and spat it upon the asphalt.

  Keese interpreted this series of gestures as being Perry's nonverbal announcement to the effect that he did not now know what to do with the automobile.

  "It doesn't seem to need much work," he said to Perry. "Why not move it over to the curb and leave it? Then when Harry comes back, if he wants to have something done to it, he can bring it down to your place. But he probably won't, because it looks in good shape."

  Perry frowned. "We don't do body work. If you need that, you go to Sanford in Allenby. Now we'll tow you there, and you won't have to pay the basic charge again, just the mileage. But if we leave now, and then have to come back with the wrecker and tow it to Sanford's, why, that's another different trip altogether, and it's the basic charge again plus the mileage, so you lose qu
ite a bit right there." He spat again. "I always tell that to people so they won't call me a fucking crook later on."

  This would be all Keese's money, in accordance with his promise, and therefore he listened soberly. "Well," he said, "I don't see the need, and I don't think Harry will."

  Perry nodded, but continued to stand there. Keese said: "So if you'll move it over to the curb—"

  Perry nodded and spat again, but stayed in place. He seemed to have some difficulty in focusing his eyes. Finally he asked Keese: "Am I right? Are you the bastard who mouthed off to my dad last night?"

  So there it was. Keese thought for a moment, and then he said: "No."

  Perry chewed on his tongue. He brought a finger up slowly and rubbed it beneath his nostrils. At last he said, narrowing his intensely blue eyes: "You telling me the truth?"

  "No," said Keese.

  Perry looked down and scratched his foot on the road. "You going to apologize?"

  "No."

  "You're not?"

  "No."

  Perry leaned towards him and spoke in a confidential tone: "I'm going to kick your belly through your back."

  "No," said Keese.

  Perry winced and backed away. He began to lower his head, as though he were about to charge.

  At that moment old Greavy looked out of the cab of the wrecker and said: "Come on, Perry, if you got the job done. I got to take a dump."

  Perry nodded and hitched up his trousers. "You're a lucky man," he said to Keese.

  "No," Keese said.

  Perry went to the rear bumper of Harry's car and bent to disengage the hook-and-cable. Keese considered jumping him from behind, zapping Perry before he was aware, hurting him so badly that he would not think of revenge—because that was possible, but only to a real technician of mayhem, he suspected. Anything less and he would insure for himself a nightmarish future; anything more and he would kill the garageman.

  Chagrining though it might be, he would probably have to wipe the slate clean of the Greavys' crimes against him. He had never even figured out a way to avenge the old man's punch. With the son's threat the whole affair became too complicated to endure.

  Perry had the hook loose. He seemed to have forgotten Keese entirely. He cried to his father to switch on the power for the reeling up of the cable, but literally the shout was only a single sound, like a hoot. When this business was finished Perry got into the wrecker and drove it away.

  Keese walked up the path to his house and took a seat on the front step, where Ramona had perched at one point last night. The trees seemed to have doubled their greenery overnight, which is April's way. But spring was not Keese's favorite season. While he thought about this peculiarity of taste, his car swung into the road. Harry had returned. When he had parked the car in the driveway and got out, Keese hailed him.

  "Yes," said Harry, "I see it. Does it run?" He and Keese joined forces at the edge of the driveway and went down to Harry's car.

  Keese said: "It started right away when he tried it."

  Harry found an ignition key in some hideaway under the seat, put it in place, and started the car. "Well," he said out the window, "that's it." He got out and walked quickly around the front, saying: "Uh-huh, uh-huh."

  "Looks O.K., doesn't it?" Keese asked.

  Harry reached the right rear fender. "Oh-oh," said he.

  Keese went there and saw a rust-filled dent of two or three inches in length.

  Harry bent and touched it. "This is the major damage, right here. Of course, there's a good deal of grass-burn on the painted areas in front and some chrome-torture on the bumper and grille."

  Keese was sure that Harry had invented these terms, though he must admit they were professional-sounding, and if that had been all, he might have bantered with him on the subject. But he could not let the man get away with pinning responsibility on him for a dent that had obviously been on the car some time before its plunge into the swamp.

  "Come on," said he, "look at that rust. That dent was there long since."

  Harry stared earnestly (or with that air) into his eyes. "Earl," he said reproachfully, "you're not reneging?"

  "Of course I'm not," said Keese, "but I really think my obligation, in all fairness, would be to rectify anything that had been damaged by what I did last night. Now, I have looked the car over pretty carefully, and I don't think it needs much work—except maybe a good wash and waxing. Put a nice shine on her and she'll be good as new, eh, Harry? If you'd like I'll run her over to the car wash in Allenby soon as we have eaten breakfast."

  Harry grinned and shook his head. "Oh, you're something, Earl. Aren't you a prize! Sky's the limit, so long as you don't have to pick up the tab."

  Keese shook his own head. "Harry," he said.

  "Earl," said Harry. "I thought you were really trying to turn over a new leaf."

  "Why," Keese asked plaintively, "is it always me who's to blame?"

  "I might ask the same," said Harry. "You've been prejudiced against me since the first."

  "Because you're usually in the wrong!" cried Keese. "It's as simple as that."

  "Who wrecked the car?"

  Keese said: "Usually in the wrong. I didn't say 'always.'" He shook his head. "'Grass-burn' and 'chrome-torture.'"

  Harry raised both fists to the level of his chest and struck them together. "Earl, that car needs a paint job. There's no two ways about it. Now, if you want to renege, O.K., I won't sue you. I'll make it a matter of honor. I'm saying what's right."

  Keese's eyes were burning, and there was an odd sensation in the back of his neck. He recognized these as the results of his night of no sleep. Nor was he in possession of his old fighting spirit. Suddenly he submitted. "All right," he said, "I'll buy you a paint job. I'm not agreeing to your argument, but I'll pay for a complete repainting. Will that do it? Are we square?"

  "Absolutely," said Harry. "Earl, you're one hell of a guy!" He clapped Keese on the shoulder, and then he seized his hand and pumped it. "I'm proud to call you friend."

  "And neighbor," said Keese, vastly relieved. It was a small price to pay, to achieve this rapprochement. "Listen, after breakfast we'll go over and get an estimate from the body shop in Allenby. I'll follow you in my car. We'll leave yours there right now. Heck, you'll probably have it back in a couple of days."

  Harry put his head on the side and grimaced as if thinking this over. And then he said: "Why should you bother? Naw, I know of a cut-rate place in the city that's good enough." Keese must have frowned involuntarily, for Harry stared at him and added: "I'll get a receipt."

  Keese was embarrassed now. He said: "Oh, I—"

  "Of course," Harry said, "it's cash on delivery, so maybe you'd give me a check right now."

  Keese began to grin bitterly. He said only: "Uh-huh."

  Harry got the point. He put his hands in the air as if he were being held up, backed away, and said: "O.K., O.K., it was just a suggestion, Earl. Don't give me that look. I'm no confidence man. Forget about it. I'll pay it out of my own pocket and bring you the receipt."

  "This place you know, what do they get for a paint job?"

  Harry brought his bushy eyebrows together: there was something canine in his frown, especially with the black eye. "Depends on the make and model."

  He was lying, of course. Keese was exhausted now, but he had enough energy left to make Harry squirm a little. "What's the name of this place?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "The name of the auto-painting company?"

  "Oh," said Harry, "it's, uh, let me, uh—"

  Liar. Keese said maliciously: "You probably haven't noticed the name, just the location."

  "Yeah," said Harry, "that's it. You know how it goes."

  "Then where can it be located?"

  "Huh?"

  Keese asked harshly: "Where is it?"

  Harry ignored this question to give an answer that had been sought earlier. "I think I remember the name," said he. "It's just 'Auto Painters.'"

  "Oh, i
t is, is it?" said Keese. "Well, Harry, I'm getting pretty—"

  "I'm fairly certain the phone number is—Wait a minute, I'd better write it down." He ran to his car, opened the door on the passenger's side, and rummaged in the glove compartment. He found a pencil therein, and a yellow receipt or bill, which he turned over and on the reverse he scribbled something.

  When Keese was handed this slip of paper he said to Harry: "What would you do if I actually called this number?"

  "I'd ask them for an estimate on a paint job for the car."

  Keese had to admit that Harry's ingenuousness of voice and eye was impeccable, but he didn't trust him for a moment.