He asked Helen to watch for the truck. He was at the back pond when she called. He was checking the water levels. In winter he needed a trough heater to keep things moving, and they wouldn’t eat much until the weather turned. But in summer they gathered around when he came. They ate what he threw down, the floating protein pellets and sometimes peas and watermelon and soft butter lettuce. “Frank,” Helen said, “get on up here. You better hurry if you want to catch him.” He hoisted up his work pants and went out front. He pretended to check on the mail though it wasn’t even nine yet in the morning.
“Morning, Travis,” he said. He shaded his eyes and looked up at the sky. “Looks like another beauty. It feels like May already.”
Travis pulled his cooler and his toolbox out from the passenger side. “Don’t much matter to me,” he said. “Now that they got me working nights.”
“It’s no good those hours,” Frank agreed. “They mess with your rhythms.” He pointed to the boat. “That’s a nice one. I saw her yesterday before you covered her up.” He tried not to look at the black cigarette butts thrown across the dirt where the Fishers’ lawn used to be. When he wasn’t sleeping, Travis had one of those clove cigarettes in his hand, and Helen had to shut all the windows to keep out the spicy smell.
Travis was up on the steps. He was reaching for the door. “My cousin couldn’t keep it. He plays the slots too much up in Cripple Creek.”
Frank set his hand on the tarp that covered the boat. It was torn already and much too thin. A good hailstorm and it would be nothing but shreds. “Say, Travis,” he said. “I was wondering if you could move her a little. She’s over my property line.” He pointed to the spot.
“Janel,” Travis said. He pounded on the door. “I told you not to lock it. Get over here, you stupid bitch. Don’t make me find my keys.”
“It’s not more than a foot. And I can help you if you want. I’ll be around tonight.”
Travis turned around and looked at him. “What’s that you’re saying?”
“It’s just a foot or maybe two. But still.”
Travis came over to where Frank was standing. He crouched and looked up and down the property line, from the sidewalk to the twin backyard gates. Frank’s was freshly painted, and theirs was rotted through.
“You can tell from the tiger lilies coming up,” Frank said. “They’re on my side.”
Travis shook his head. “That’s my property.” He smiled a little, and his teeth were brown from the cigarettes.
“We planted them thirty years ago and every year they bloom.”
“I don’t care who planted them,” Travis said. He stood back up and looked at Frank, and his eyes were flat as aluminum.
Travis went back to his door. He reached for the knob. It was unlocked now, and his wife was watching from the window. When she saw Frank looking she let the curtain drop.
“It’s not right,” Frank said. “It’s like stealing is what it is.” The city would know. They had all the measurements in their books. He’d call them, and they’d come and see his house and how nice he kept it. It had a deck and a sprinkler system, and just last year he set pavers down by the vegetable garden. They’d see his house and all its improvements, and the line was clear where his property ended and theirs began. Even those lazy inspectors would have to agree. “You’re stealing from us and all we’ve ever been was nice.”
Travis didn’t answer. He just picked his cooler and toolbox back up and went inside his house.
They lived for twenty or thirty years or even longer. Always swimming, always moving down in that dark water. He gave them names like Molly and Julius, and he knew them from their markings. Every spring he flushed the pumps and cleaned out the rotten watercress and added salt to the water and baking soda. He set down new lilies and sweet flag and floating heart and hyacinth, and for a little while before the algae bloomed the water was clear like gin.
He was knee-deep already, and this year he could feel the dampness in his bones. The fish moved all around him. Bright as copper pennies. They swam between his legs and bumped against his arms and flashed in the sunlight before diving back down. He counted them, and they were all there. They were starting to move fast again because the pond was 52 degrees already and getting warmer every day. He dropped in lava rock and some oyster shell to harden up the water.
One of the Fishers’ cats hopped down from the fence. It came close to the pond. It watched him, and it wasn’t scared, not even when he hissed. He leaned down. He cupped his hands in the water and splashed it. The cat ran then. It hid behind the purple plum tree and waited for him to leave. “Get going,” he said. “Get back where you belong.”
He put the new floss together and turned the pump back on, and once it got going he sat on the bench by the water’s edge. He listened to its low mechanical hum. The forsythia was blooming and the tulips had sprouted early, and his son would be here with him, if he’d lived. He’d be married by now, but he’d come back and help them every spring. He closed his eyes. On days like this he almost believed their boy was alive. That he hadn’t stopped kicking in his eighth month. That he’d been born at St. Francis Hospital and he’d grown up tall and the sun was shining now on both their heads. He set his hands together and spoke to his boy and called him by his name.
He tried the wife next, but she just held her arms across her chest. I’m sorry, Mr. Muller, was what she said. He’ll park it where he wants it. The wind blew her thin blond hair back from her face, and she looked old as a grandma though she couldn’t be more than thirty. She went inside when he started again. She pulled down the shades on every window that faced his house, and he knew it wasn’t any use. That’s when he went to the lumberyard and bought himself some posts.
He waited until Travis was at his shift, and then he dug the holes. He’d build the fence right through the boat if he could. He’d split that boat down the middle. But he did the next best thing. He set the first post right behind the trailer and the last one where his backyard fence began. That way everybody could see how the Fishers had crossed onto his land. He stretched a line between the posts and marked where the middle ones would be. It was hard to drive the hole digger into that winter dirt. It wouldn’t get soft again until May. He struggled and cursed, and Helen brought him coffee when he called. She came out and shook her head. “You’re making trouble again,” she said. “Building a halfway fence. People will think we ran out of money.” He waved her down and kept working, and his ribs were sore from opening the digger and pulling it back out.
The second night he put the middle posts in, burying them almost halfway into the ground. He packed them down with dirt instead of concrete and tamped them hard to keep them stable. He capped them when he was done so the rain wouldn’t rot them. This fence needed to last. He used mortise joints to set the rails. Helen came out near the end and helped him nail the pickets. “I’ve been meaning to put up a fence,” he told her. “It’s been on my list for years.”
She shook her head at that. “You’ve never talked about another fence before. You know it well as I do.” She brushed down his jacket when he was done. She washed off his work shoes, and for once she didn’t smile while she worked. Her face was puckered up tight.
Travis didn’t come home until eight the next morning. Frank stood with his coffee cup at the living room window and watched him park his truck, in the driveway this time and not across the lawn. Travis didn’t go straight inside. He went to his boat instead and looked at the finished fence. He tossed his cigarette butt down and ground it with his heel, and he reached inside his pocket for another. He looked at their window as if he could see through the curtains and into their house. As if he knew Frank was there watching him. Helen nudged him. He hadn’t noticed her when she came and stood beside him. “Now you’ve gone and done it,” she said. “I can see it in his face.”
He couldn’t sleep that night. He lay there instead and listened to her breathe. She was ninety pounds at most, but there was nothing frai
l about her. He turned his pillow around so it was cool against his skin. All her talk about Travis had gotten his heart racing. He could feel it sometimes. It fluttered like a bird against his ribs, and one day it would betray him. She’d be a widow then. She’d have to take care of the house herself.
He rolled to his side and pushed himself up. The bed springs creaked, but she didn’t stir, not even when he knocked against the nightstand on his way to the window. Her breathing was deep and steady, just a little quieter than a snore. He sat down in the reading chair where she liked to do her crosswords. It was the best spot in the house, that’s what she always said. She could see the pots of lavender from there and her sweet peas and climbing roses.
He stretched his legs out. A miller was flying in the room. It hovered in the amber glow of the nightlight. He tried to catch it. They made a mess, those moths. They fouled up his white walls. It flew upward and into the curtains, and he was reaching for it when he saw something outside. A hint of movement. A shadow beside his pond where there weren’t any trees. He leaned in closer and saw the orange glow of a cigarette. It moved in the dark like a firefly, and then it went out.
Helen shouted when she saw the fish. She yelled for him to hurry. The pond was soapy. He saw the bubbles and the foam and then their pale bellies floating upward in the water. He pulled them out one by one. They were ten years old, some of them, and they might have lived another twenty. They might have outlived him and Helen both. Helen was weeping. He hadn’t seen her cry in years, and now the tears were rolling down both her cheeks. What a waste, she was saying. What a shame.
He gathered them up and burned them in the fire pit. He sat in his chair and watched the smoke wind upward and it should have been a cloudy day. There should have been a storm coming with thunderclaps and lightning, but the sky was as blue as ever and the first tulips were starting to bloom. When the fire had burned itself out, he went around the garden and gathered all the butts Travis had dropped on their lawn.
The officer wore a gold wedding band, but he looked as young as the high school kids who loitered in the malls. Maybe it was the freckles or his spiky hair. He sat at their kitchen table, and Helen refilled his coffee cup before it was half empty. He took down all the information, writing it in neat block letters.
“Could you tell who it was,” the young officer asked. His name tag said Dunn, but he asked them to call him Marcus. “Could you see his face?”
“I didn’t need to see his face,” Frank said. “My neighbor he smokes those sweet spice cigarettes.” He took out the Ziploc bag with the butts from his garden and set it on the table. “He was home last night. He works four days on and three off.”
“I haven’t seen ones like that before.” Officer Dunn reached for the baggie. He took a reluctant sniff.
“He drops those black butts all over his yard, and now he’s coming here. Three o’clock in the morning and I see his cigarette burning in my yard.”
Dunn wrote it all down and looked at the ashes where the fish were burned and the soap foam on the water. The lilies had turned yellow already. Their leaves drooped in the water, and the spotted frogs were gone, Frank noticed this just now. The garden was too quiet without them. Dunn crouched to see where the butts had been dropped. He walked the perimeter of the garden and opened up the gardening shed and the back gate. He poked around the bushes, too, and in the flower pots.
Then he went next door and rang the Fishers’ bell. When nobody answered, he opened up the screen and knocked on the wooden door. Nobody came, and no curtains moved. They were home, Frank knew this. They were right inside their house, and they didn’t open the door for an officer of the law. Dunn walked back to his cruiser. He waited there for a while and took down some more notes. The radio on his belt was crackling. Frank came and stood with him.
“They’re home,” Frank said. “I know it for a fact.” Travis’s truck was there in the driveway, and he probably wasn’t even sleeping yet.
“I’ll come back,” Dunn said. “I’ll come tomorrow and see if I can find him.” He reached for the handle to the cruiser door. He looked at the fence Frank had built and how it ended at the boat. “I’m sorry about your fish.” He seemed sincere the way he said it.
“Every year I drained that pond. I kept it clean for them.”
Dunn nodded. “People can be jealous. They see something nice and it rankles.” He climbed inside and shut the door. He knocked against the glass before he pulled away. He opened his window halfway down. “It might take some time, but we’ll settle this. Keep your distance in the meanwhile.” He cocked his head. “I’d hate to see things spiral.” He pulled away, waving his hand from the open window, but he didn’t return Frank’s calls, and he didn’t come back, not the next day or the day after that.
Frank saw the cigarette again just before the Fourth of July. He saw it from their bedroom window. He went down the hall and through the kitchen without turning on the lights. He grabbed his wooden walking stick because he didn’t have his revolver anymore. Helen wanted no handguns in the house. She didn’t mind his air gun, but it was down in the basement, packed up in its case. He carried the walking stick in both his hands and went out the back door. The motion lights above the deck came on as he passed. They lit up the yard and the vegetable beds. He could see all the way back to the trees where the cigarette had been.
“Get back here.” He ran toward the fence. “I see you. I see just where you are.” He yelled loud as he could. The lights were coming on in the houses behind him and the ones next door. The young couple in the Shrever house stepped onto their porch. Helen was coming out now, too. Her hair in those big curlers, and she hadn’t even stopped to put her slippers on.
“Come back,” he shouted, and he swung his stick around. “You can’t hide from me.” He was short of breath. He gasped and couldn’t find any air.
Helen led him back inside. She took the stick from him and set it down, and she heated up some milk for him and sweetened it with honey.
“It’s no good what you’re doing. You’re going to get yourself hurt,” she said. “We need to think this through.” She brought him his cup and sat with him at the table. She talked about townhouses again, all those nice ones they were building off Powers and Academy. The master sergeant was up there. He grew his tomatoes on the balcony now. He had one of those hydroponic systems, and it was nicer than a garden. Not even two inches of snow, and the management boys were out there shoveling.
He pretended to listen to what she said. He waited for her to finish. “Go back to bed,” he said. “I’ll be along in a bit.” He should have been grateful she was there with him. She was better than he deserved, but he felt only anger at her curlers and her tired eyes and how she’d pestered him years ago to sell his old revolver. He waited until she was asleep before he climbed beside her.
Every Tuesday morning Helen took her military ID and went to Walgreens for the discount. She’d be gone an hour or maybe two if she met someone there she knew. He brought the air gun out as soon as she’d left. He set the stock against his hip and broke the barrel open. He had a Beeman gun, and it was quiet when it shot. He took a handful of pellets from the tin. He dropped all but one into his shirt pocket. He set a single pellet in and pulled the barrel back until it locked.
There was nobody in the yard next door. Travis was probably sleeping, and his wife was somewhere inside. He carried the rifle through his back door, past the deck and the empty pond. He didn’t look down at the water. He went to the gardening shed near the back fence. He’d built it for Helen almost twenty years before, and it was time to paint the door again and the window boxes. He walked back and forth behind the shed until he found the best spot.
He shouldered the rifle and pointed it toward the Fishers’ maple tree. The crows were up high in the branches. He looked through the scope. He wasn’t more than thirty yards away, and he could see all their feathers and how they shone blue. The gun made only a soft sound when he fired. Only a whoosh and
a bird fell from the branch. It fell with one wing open and whirled downward to the grass. The other crows were riled. They cawed and flapped their wings and flew upward all at once. More birds came from other trees and circled the maple. He reached for another pellet. He crouched behind Helen’s shed and waited for them to settle down. He’d get a half dozen more if he was patient. Let the cats eat the birds he killed. Let them stay out of his yard for once and choke on the bones. He thought these things and regretted them, and for the first time since the war his hands trembled when he held his gun.
The bail bondsman put his house up for sale from one day to the next. His back was still in a brace from the disc surgery, but he pounded in the sign himself. He waved at Frank when he was done and shrugged a little. It was the only other house left on the block that still had a lawn and flower beds. “It’s time,” he shouted from across the street. “We’re moving out to Calhan. We’ve got some acres there.”
Frank waved back and went inside with his paper. He sat in the living room which they never used because the TV was in the kitchen. He looked around at the things they’d collected. Helen’s showcase with her figurines and her watercolors. She liked to paint roses and hydrangeas in round vases, and she’d taken classes over the years at the community college. The first few were horrible and not even he could muster up a compliment and make it sound sincere, but she’d gotten better now and the flowers looked almost real. He stretched his legs out on the ottoman. He’d put up paneling in ’73 and laid down wall-to-wall shag, and he took it all out again ten years later and refinished the oak floors. He hung lamps where she wanted them and painted the walls, and he’d made an entryway by framing out a wall and hanging it with paisley paper. It was their paradise, this house.
He opened the newspaper across his lap. Just last night somebody took a gun into the Radisson and shot the desk clerk dead. Gangs were coming in from Chicago and from Los Angeles, the police chief was saying. They were shooting each other even in the daytime. It made him tired to read the stories. The city was changing, and he wanted to lie down. He wanted things to stay the way they were. Every month another house sold, and the new people who came didn’t water their gardens or sit in front on their lawn chairs. They parked snow mobiles and broken trucks in the middle of their yards, and their children had no manners. Always running and shouting even at ten o’clock at night. They ran outside when it rained and splashed barefoot in the storm gutters, and they were going to cut themselves one day. They were going to get infected.
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