“The coast seems to be quite clear, sir.”
“Good. But take no chances with the gates.”
“I have the control box with me, sir. I can operate from here. I will keep a sharp lookout.”
“Be seeing you,” said Crawford.
Max picked up the remote control box and waited for his returning master.
The car came over the hill and streaked down Seymour Drive, made its right-hand turn on Dawn, roared toward the gates.
When it was no more than a dozen feet away, Max pushed the button that unlocked the gates. The heavy bumper slammed into them and pushed them open. The buffers that ran along each side of the car held them aside as the machine rushed through. When the car had cleared them, heavy springs snapped them shut and they were locked again.
Max slung the control-box strap over his shoulder and went along the rooftop catwalk to the ladder leading to the ground.
Mr. Crawford had put away the car and was closing the garage door as Max came around the corner of the house.
“It does seem quiet,” said Mr. Crawford. “Much quieter, it would seem to me, than usual.”
“I don’t like it, sir. There is something brewing.”
“Not very likely,” said Mr. Crawford. “Not on the eve of Truce Day.”
“I wouldn’t put nothing past them dirty Punks,” said Max.
“I quite agree,” said Mr. Crawford, “but they’ll be coming here tomorrow for their day of fun. We must treat them well for, after all, they’re neighbors and it is a custom. I would hate to have you carried beyond the bounds of propriety by overzealousness.”
“You know well and good,” protested Max, “I would never do a thing. I am a fighter, sir, but I fight fair and honorable.”
Mr. Crawford said, “I was thinking of the little gambit you had cooked up last year.”
“It would not have hurt them, sir. Leastwise, not permanently. They might never have suspected. Just a drop or two of it in the fruit punch was all we would have needed. It wouldn’t have taken effect until hours after they had left. Slow-acting stuff, it was.”
“Even so,” said Mr. Crawford sternly, “I am glad I found out in time. And I don’t want a repeat performance, possibly more subtle, to be tried this year. I hope you understand me.”
“Oh, certainly, sir,” said Max. “You can rely upon it, sir.”
“Well, good night, then. I’ll see you in the morning.”
It was all damn foolishness, thought Max—this business of a Day of Truce. It was an old holdover from the early days when some do-gooder had figured maybe there would be some benefit if the stronghold people and the Punks could meet under happy circumstance and spend a holiday together.
It worked, of course, but only for the day. For twenty-four hours there were no raids, no flaming arrows, no bombs across the fence. But at one second after midnight, the feud took up again, as bitter and relentless as if had ever been.
It had been going on for years. Max had no illusions about how it all would end. Some day Crawford stronghold would fall, as had all the others in Oak Manor. But until that day, he pledged himself to do everything he could. He would never lower his guard nor relax his vigilance. Up to the very end he would make them smart for every move they made.
He watched as Mr. Crawford opened the front door and went across the splash of light that flowed out from the hall. Then the door shut and the house stood there, big and bleak and black, without a sliver of light showing anywhere. No light ever showed from the Crawford house. Well before the fall of night he always threw the lever on the big control board to slam steel shutters closed against all the windows in the place. Lighted windows made too good a nighttime target.
Now the raids always came at night. There had been a time when some had been made in daylight, but that was too chancy now. Year by year, the defenses had been built up to a point where an attack in daylight was plain foolhardiness.
Max turned and went down the driveway to the gates. He drew on rubber gloves and with a small flashlight examined the locking mechanism. It was locked. It had never failed, but there might come a time it would. He never failed to check it once the gates had closed.
He stood beside the gates and listened. Everything was quiet, although he imagined he could hear the faint singing of the electric current running through the fence. But that, he knew, was impossible, for the current was silent.
He reached out with a gloved hand and stroked the fence. Eight feet high, he told himself, with a foot of barbed wire along the top of it, and every inch of it alive with the surging current.
And inside of it, a standby, auxiliary fence into which current could be introduced if the forward fence should fail.
A clicking sound came padding down the driveway and Max turned from the gate.
“How you, boy,” he said.
It was too dark for him to see the dog, but he could hear it snuffling and snorting with pleasure at his recognition.
It came bumbling out of the darkness and pushed against his legs. He squatted down and put his arms about it. It kissed him sloppily.
“Where are the others, boy?” he asked, and it wriggled in its pleasure.
Great dogs, he thought. They loved the people in the stronghold almost to adoration, but had an utter hatred for every other person. They had been trained to have.
The rest of the pack, he knew, was aprowl about the yard, alert to every sound, keyed to every presence. No one could approach the fence without their knowing it. Any stranger who got across the fence they would rip to bits.
He stripped off the rubber gloves and put them in his pocket.
“Come on, boy,” he said.
He turned off the driveway and proceeded across the yard—cautiously, for it was uneven footing. There was no inch of it that lay upon the level. It was cleverly designed so that any thrown grenade or Molotov cocktail would roll into a deep and narrow bomb trap.
There had been a time, he recalled, when there had been a lot of these things coming over the fence. There were fewer now, for it was a waste of effort. There had been a time, as well, when there had been flaming arrows, but these had tapered off since the house had been fireproofed.
He reached the side yard and stopped for a moment, listening, with the dog standing quietly at his side. A slight wind had come up and the trees were rustling. He lifted his head and stared at the delicate darkness of them, outlined against the lighter sky.
Beautiful things, he thought. It was a pity there were not more of them. Once this area had been named Oak Manor for the stately trees that grew here. There, just ahead of him, was the last of them—a rugged old patriarch with its massive crown blotting out the early stars.
He looked at it with awe and appreciation—and with apprehension, too. It was a menace. It was old and brittle and it should be taken down, for it leaned toward the fence and some day a windstorm might topple it across the wire. He should have mentioned it long ago to Mr. Crawford, but he knew the owner held this tree in a sentimental regard that matched his own. Perhaps it could be made safe by guywires to hold it against the wind, or at least to turn its fall away from the fence should it be broken or uprooted. Although it seemed a sacrilege to anchor it with guywires, an insult to an ancient monarch.
He moved on slowly, threading through the bomb traps, with the dog close at his heels, until he reached the patio and here he stopped beside the sun dial. He ran his hand across its rough stone surface and wondered why Mr. Crawford should set such a store by it. Perhaps because it was a link to the olden days before the Punks and raids. It was an old piece that had been brought from a monastery garden somewhere in France. That in itself, of course, would make it valuable. But perhaps Mr. Crawford saw in it another value, far beyond the fact that it was hundreds of years old and had come across the water.
Perhaps it had grown to symbolize for him the day now p
ast when any man might have a sun dial in his garden, when he might have trees and grass without fighting for them, when he might take conscious pride in the unfenced and unmolested land that lay about his house.
Bit by bit, through the running years, those rights had been eroded.
II
First it had been the little things—the casual, thoughtless trampling of the shrubbery by the playing small fry, the killing of the evergreens by the rampaging packs of happy dogs that ran with the playing small fry. For each boy, the parents said, must have himself a dog.
The people in the first place had moved from the jam-packed cities to live in what they fondly called the country, so that they could keep a dog or two and where their children would have fresh air and sunlight and room in which to run.
But too often this country was, in reality, no more than another city, with its houses cheek by jowl—each set on acre or half-acre lots, but still existing cheek by jowl.
Of course, a place to run. The children had. But no more than a place to run. There was nothing more to do. Run was all they could do—up and down the streets, back and forth across the lawns, up and down the driveways, leaving havoc in their trail. And in time the toddlers grew up and in their teen-age years they still could only run. There was no place for them to go, nothing they might do. Their mothers foregathered every morning at the coffee klatches and their fathers sat each evening in the backyards drinking beer. The family car could not be used because gasoline cost money and the mortgages were heavy and the taxes terrible and the other costs were high.
So to find an outlet for their energies, to work off their unrealized resentments against having nothing they could do, these older fry started out, for pure excitement only, on adventures in vandalism. There was a cutting of the backyard clotheslines, a chopping into bits of watering hoses left out overnight, a breaking and ripping up of the patios, ringing of the doorbells, smashing of the windows, streaking of the siding with a cake of soap, splashing with red paint.
Resentments had been manufactured to justify this vandalism and now the resentments were given food to grow upon. Irate owners erected fences to keep out the children and the dogs, and this at once became an insult and a challenge.
And that first simple fence, Max told himself, had been the forerunner of the eight-foot barrier of electricity which formed the first line of defense in the Crawford stronghold. Likewise, those small-time soap-cake vandals, shrieking their delight at messing up a neighbor’s house, had been the ancestors of the Punks.
He left the patio and went down the stretch of backyard, past the goldfish-and-lily pond and the tinkling of the fountain, past the clump of weeping willows, and so out to the fence.
“Psst!” said a voice just across the fence.
“That you, Billy?”
“It’s me,” said Billy Warner.
“All right. Tell me what you have.”
“Tomorrow is Truce Day and we’ll be visiting …”
“I know all that,” said Max.
“They’re bringing in a time bomb.”
“They can’t do that,” said Max, disgusted. “The cops will frisk them at the gates. They would spot it on them.”
“It’ll be all broken down. Each one will have a piece. Stony Stafford hands out the parts tonight. He has a crew that has been practicing for weeks to put a bomb together fast—even in the dark, if need be.”
“Yeah,” said Max, “I guess they could do it that way. And once they get it put together?”
“The sun dial,” Billy said. “Underneath the sun dial.”
“Well, thanks,” said Max. “I am glad to know. It would break the boss’ heart should something happen to the sun dial.”
“I figure,” Billy said, “this might be worth a twenty.”
“Yes,” Max agreed. “Yes, I guess it would.”
“If they ever knew I told, they’d take me out and kill me.”
“They won’t ever know,” said Max. “I won’t ever tell them.”
He pulled his wallet from his pocket, turned on the flash and found a pair of tens.
He folded the bills together, lengthwise, twice. Then he shoved them through an opening in the fence.
“Careful, there,” he cautioned. “Do not touch the wire.”
Beyond the fence he could see the faint, white outline of the other’s face. And a moment later, the hand that reached out carefully and grabbed the corner of the folded bills.
Max did not let loose of the money immediately. They stood, each of them, with their grip upon the bills.
“Billy,” said Max, solemnly, “you would never kid me, would you? You would never sell me out. You would never feed me erroneous information.”
“You know me, Max,” said Billy. “I’ve played square with you. I’d never do a thing like that.”
Max let go of the money and let the other have it.
“I am glad to hear you say that, Billy. Keep on playing square. For the day you don’t, I’ll come out of here and hunt you down and cut your throat myself.”
But the informer did not answer. He was already moving off, out into the deeper darkness.
Max stood quietly, listening. The wind still blew in the leaves and the fountain kept on splashing, like gladsome silver bells.
“Hi, boy,” Max said softly, but there was no snuffling answer. The dog had left him, was prowling with the others up and down the yard.
Max turned about and went up the yard toward the front again, completing his circuit of the house. As he rounded the corner of the garage, a police car was slowing to a halt before the gates.
He started down the drive, moving ponderously and deliberately.
“That you, Charley?” he called softly.
“Yes, Max,” said Charley Pollard. “Is everything all right?”
“Right as rain,” said Max.
He approached the gates and saw the bulky loom of the officer on the other side.
“Just dropping by,” said Pollard. “The area is quiet tonight. We’ll be coming by one of these days to inspect the place. It looks to me you’re loaded.”
“Not a thing illegal,” Max declared. “All of it’s defensive. That is still the rule.”
“Yes, that is the rule,” said Pollard, “but it seems to me that there are times you become a mite too enthusiastic. A full load in the fence, no doubt.”
“Why, certainly,” said Max. “Would you have it otherwise?”
“A kid grabs hold of it and he could be electrocuted, at full strength.”
“Would you rather I had it set just to tickle them?”
“You’re playing too rough, Max.”
“I doubt it rather much,” said Max. “I watched from here, five years ago, when they stormed Thompson stronghold. Did you happen to see that?”
“I wasn’t here five years ago. My beat was Farview Acres.”
“They took it apart,” Max told him. “Stone by stone, brick by brick, timber by timber. They left nothing standing. They left nothing whole. They cut down all the trees and chopped them up. They uprooted all the shrubs. They hoed out all the flower beds. They made a desert of it. They reduced it to their level. And I’m not about to let it happen here, not if I can help it. A man has got the right to grow a tree and a patch of grass. If he wants a flower bed, he has a right to have a flower bed. You may not think so, but he’s even got the right to keep other people out.”
“Yes,” said the officer, “all you say is true. But these are kids you are dealing with. There must be allowances. And this is a neighborhood. You folks and the others like you wouldn’t have this trouble if you only tried to be a little neighborly.”
“We don’t dare be neighborly,” said Max. “Not in a place like this. In Oak Manor, and in all the other manors and all the other acres and the other whatever-you-may-call-thems, ne
ighborliness means that you let people overrun you. Neighborliness means you give up your right to live your life the way you want to live it. This kind of neighborliness is rooted way back in those days when the kids made a path across your lawn as a shortcut to the school bus and you couldn’t say a thing for fear that they would sass you back and so create a scene. It started when your neighbor borrowed your lawn mower and forgot to bring it back and when you went to get it you found that he had broken it. But he pretended that he hadn’t and, for the sake of neighborliness, you didn’t have the guts to tell him that he had and to demand that he pay the bill for the repairing of it.”
“Well, maybe so,” said Pollard, “but it’s gotten out of hand. It has been carried too far. You folks have got too high and mighty.”
“There’s a simple answer to everything,” Max told him stoutly. “Get the Punks to lay off us and we’ll take down the fence and all the other stuff.”
Pollard shook his head. “It has gone too far,” he said. “There is nothing anyone can do.”
He started to go back to the car, then turned back.
“I forgot,” he said. “Tomorrow is your Truce Day. Myself and a couple of the other men will be here early in the morning.”
Max didn’t answer. He stood in the driveway and watched the car pull off down the street. Then he went up the driveway and around the house to the back door.
Nora had a place laid at the table for him and he sat down heavily, glad to be off his feet. By this time of the evening he was always tired. Not as young, he thought, as he once had been.
“You’re late tonight,” said the cook, bringing him the food. “Is everything all right?”
“I guess so. Everything is quiet. But we may have trouble tomorrow. They’re bringing in a bomb.”
“A bomb!” cried Nora. “What will you do about it? Call in the police, perhaps.”
Max shook his head. “No, I can’t do that. The police aren’t on our side. They’d take the attitude we’d egged on the Punks until they had no choice but to bring in the bomb. We are on our own. And, besides, I must protect the lad who told me. If I didn’t, the Punks would know and he’d be worthless to me then. He’d never get to know another thing. But knowing they are bringing something in, I can watch for it.”
Grotto of the Dancing Deer: And Other Stories Page 26