Backyard

by Norman Draper

  “What on earth was that screaming about?”

  “Some kids saw me,” George whispered as if afraid anything spoken at a normal volume might he held against him as incriminating evidence. “They’re not the Fletcher kids; they’re kids from somewhere else. They saw me.”

  “In the actual act?”

  George nodded, then sighed.

  “No big deal,” scoffed Nan, suddenly, it seemed, reconciled to George’s free-spirited bathroom practices. “The Fletcher kids are at camp, I think. These are strangers. They will probably run home and not say anything at all. Or they might say they saw someone tee-teeing in the woods, and that will be that. They probably won’t even tell their parents.”

  They were sitting down at the table again, George having sworn without Nan’s prompting to always use indoor plumbing in the future, when they saw the police cruiser approach on Sumac, disappear behind the barrier of their house, then reappear and slow down just short of where the strip of woods met the road and the Fletchers’ driveway.

  “Uh-oh,” said George. “Maybe I should go inside and hide somewhere.”

  “You’re going to stay right here,” Nan said. “It’s probably nothing. They’re probably just cruising the neighborhood on routine patrol. You don’t know that they are stopping next door. But just in case we do receive a visit, you need to be out here to explain yourself. Otherwise, I’m left here to try to account for your absence.” The slow-moving cruiser was blocked by the woods now.

  “You could pretend it was someone you didn’t know,” pleaded George. “You could say your husband is out of town.”

  “Then they’ll just have those kids’ words for what happened, and they’ll be looking for a guy who exposed himself, and we’ll be holding neighborhood watch meetings, and everyone will know the perpetrator is someone who matches your description.... Oh, and you probably wouldn’t ever want to wear that T-shirt again.” George looked down despondently at his gray-and-green Muskies T-shirt, which had a caricature of a big, semi-human, muscle-bound fish wielding a giant bat. “It kind of stands out.”

  George let out a whimper.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  There was a disturbance in the woods. Leaves and saplings were shaking, and the crunching noise of dead leaves, small twigs, and other forest debris being stepped on signaled the presence of something big out there, and getting closer to their yard. Soon, two light-blue-uniform-clad Livia police officers, flanked by the two children and two distraught-looking adults, broke through into the yard.

  “Oh, shit!” George muttered.

  “Keep your ‘oh, shits’ to yourself, George,” said Nan, trying to smooth out the tremor in her voice. “It sounds bad . . . and you haven’t done anything wrong . . . have you?”

  “What?”

  “Shhhh!”

  “What?” George whispered this time. “What do you take me for? I was only out there relieving myself, and these two little kids popped up just as I was about to zip up. They’re not going to check my computer, are they?”

  “Your computer?”

  “Yes, they won’t be checking it, will they?”

  “What do you mean, George?” said Nan, suddenly alarmed. “What do you have on your computer? Kiddie porn?”

  “No! Certainly not! Swimsuit models . . . maybe a few lingerie models.”

  Nan shook her head.

  “George, they’re not going to be checking your computer and, even if they did, they don’t care about swimsuit models and lingerie models. What kind of lingerie?”

  As the approaching posse drew nearer, detouring around the arbor, George and Nan thought it best to rise and walk toward them, affecting surprise at seeing a couple of police officers emerging from their strip of woods.

  “Are you the neighbors here?” asked one of the officers, whom George and Nan noted were a man and a woman.

  “Well, yes,” Nan said, suppressing a chuckle. “We are neighbors.”

  “Well, you could have been someone else,” the male officer retorted severely. “You could have been visitors temporarily residing in a neighboring residence.”

  “That’s very true,” said George, who felt complete, unquestioning accord with whatever the police officers said was, given the circumstances, the best policy to follow at this point. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “Well,” continued the officer. “We have a report of a male about your age and wearing a similar T-shirt exposing himself in the woods to these young children. These are the children’s parents. Kids, is this the man?” The father stooped down and spoke quietly to the children.

  “James, Priscilla, is this the man who pulled out his pee-pee and was watching you?” The little girl wiped a tear from her eye and nodded. The boy, who looked older, also nodded, but he was smiling mischievously and appeared to be on the verge of laughing.

  “He was pissing,” he said. The two parents frowned.

  “James, I’ve told you not to use that word,” the father scolded. “You say tinkle, or wee-wee, okay?”

  The policewoman stooped over toward the children and adopted an almost childlike tone that sounded as if she were making a joke out of the whole thing.

  “James, was the man wee-weeing when you saw him? This is very important now, was he tinkling? Or was he holding his . . . er . . . pee-pee, and looking happy?”

  Priscilla wiped another tear from her eye and began to smile. James began to giggle. The giggling was slow, and intermittent at first. Then, it erupted into full-blown laughter. Priscilla joined in. Soon, much to the consternation of their parents and the confusion of the police officers, James and Priscilla were almost doubled over in uncontrollable hysterics. Nan wondered if this family was British, having detected what she thought was the hint of a British accent in the man, and figuring that only in Great Britain would you find a girl called Priscilla. The kids were still laughing when another loud disturbance in the woods marked the appearance of Jeri and Tom Fletcher.

  “What’s going on here?” said Jeri, a brash young woman who took on the role of neighborhood organizer and community scold to the mayor and city council. Jeri was well known to Livia’s elected officials as the one who bombarded them with e-mails, letters, and phone calls at the slightest provocation or delay in a public service schedule of any sort, and who had once taken a bag full of goose poop and dumped it on the carpeting at a city council meeting.

  Nan sighed in relief. When Jeri arrived, and as long as she was on your side, you knew you were safe. She was like the cavalry galloping to the rescue. But was she on their side here?

  The mother of the two children stifled a sob, then stood up all ramrod straight, confirming in Nan’s mind that she was indeed British.

  “The children say this chap exposed himself to them in the woods.”

  “Chap?” said the male officer. “What’s a ‘chap’?”

  “That’s Brit talk for a guy,” said his companion.

  “What’s a ‘Brit’?”

  “What?” Jeri cried, after a brief pause to digest the news.

  “Yes,” chimed in the father. “Exposed himself while tinkling in the woods.”

  “Tinkling?”

  “Peeing,” sniffed the father. “Ur-i-nating.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Jeri said, as Tom, whose soft-spokenness was the perfect foil to Jeri’s chattering extroversion, nodded furiously in agreement. “A guy was pissing in the woods.... What’s the big deal?” The policeman folded his arms and looked sternly at the two children, who were still giggling.

  “Now, listen closely, kids, ’cause this is an important question: Was he already peeing when you saw him? Or did he start peeing . . . excuse me, tinkling . . . after he saw you?” The policewoman, who had pulled out a notebook and pencil and was busily scribbling away, pursed her lips. Jeri rolled her eyes. George’s shoulders were hunched in the posture of abject misery. Nan couldn’t help but wonder what exactly it was that the policewoman was writing in her notebook.


  “Uh . . .” said James, struggling mightily to suppress more giggles.

  “Uh . . . uh,” said Priscilla, looking at her brother, and exploding into intermittent, self-conscious snorts of laughter. “He was already there. We scared him.”

  “Yeah,” said James. “He wet himself.” More convulsions of laughter.

  “Officer,” piped up Jeri in her most stentorian damn-the-city-council voice. “I really don’t see what the problem is. There has been a misunderstanding here. George was peeing in the woods. He does that from time to time.” George’s look of consternation turned to one of puzzlement.

  “How do you know I . . . ?” Jeri held up an outstretched hand to stop him.

  “He’s private about it and it’s his property. This is not a pervert you’re looking at, but a man merely relieving himself in the privacy of his backyard. And look, there’s the proof.” Jeri pointed at George’s shorts, still blotched with a wet urine stain. George blushed, then sighed. “He was surprised in the act and wet himself.”

  “This could very well be the most humiliating experience I’ve ever had,” moaned George. “Can we bring this to a close, please?”

  The policewoman smiled consolingly and snapped her notebook shut. It was then that Nan noticed the sergeant’s chevrons on her shoulders. So, she is the supervisor here! she reflected with some pride. She looked at the nameplates pinned onto their shirt breast pockets. The sergeant was Smead. The policeman was Sneed. Nan smiled, and had to work to hold back the little chuckle welling up inside of her.

  “Yessir,” the policewoman said. “I don’t think there’s any further need to draw this out. You don’t want to file a complaint I suppose, do you?” She looked at the children’s parents, who were now looking sheepish and every bit as disconsolate as George. They shook their heads.

  “Good,” the policewoman said. “So, what’s the relationship?”

  “Relationship?” said Jeri. “Oh, these are our cousins from England. Joel and Bernice Forrester, from Yorkshire.” Joel and Bernice nodded.

  “How do you do,” Joel said.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Bernice said softly.

  “They are staying with us. They don’t understand our American customs very well.”

  What American customs? thought George.

  “We won’t take up any more of your time, officers,” Joel said. With that, Smead and Sneed strode down the slope to the street and disappeared beyond the woods.

  “Awfully sorry to have bothered you,” Bernice said to George and Nan. “But one can’t be too careful, you know, and the children were acting positively shocked. This is our first visit to the States, and we’re a little squeamish, I suppose.”

  “No bother,” said George, forcing out a brittle chuckle. “Happens all the time, especially with foreigners.”

  “Not with the French, however,” Nan said. Bernice and Joel laughed unconvincingly. They had no idea what that meant, but assumed that it was a remark designed to bring a little levity to an uncomfortable situation. Following the Fletchers’ cue, they turned around to retrace their steps through the woods. George stared forlornly at his stained shorts, then marched silently with Nan back to the patio, where he collapsed into one of the chairs, staring blankly ahead.

  “Drink, my poor, persecuted dear?” said Nan, clasping his limp, clammy hand and stroking it.

  “Yes,” said George. “Straight up. On the rocks. No lime. Shhhh. Feeder! Don’t move!” Nan straightened up slowly, without any sudden motions, and turned her head to look at their big squirrel-proofed feeder. There, on the perch, pecking away at one of the feeding holes was the biggest yellow bird she had ever seen.

  “What is it?” she said sotto voce and out of the corner of her mouth as the bird paused in its feeding to jerk its big head up and fix its beady eyes directly on them. Its head, unlike the body, was dark, with a yellow stripe running across the brow, just above its eyes and beak. “Jeez, it’s almost staring at us. I’ve never seen that before. It looks like a freak goldfinch . . . or one that’s been pumping some serious iron.”

  “Evening grosbeak,” said George earnestly. “That’s what it is. I’d be willing to put money on it. I’ve never seen one of those before.”

  “We saw the rose-breasted grosbeak last month.”

  “Yeah, once, then it didn’t come back. We should probably get a positive ID on this guy.” The big yellow bird took one more peck at the seed portal, then took off with a prodigious whoosh of wings, catapulting itself directly overhead before disappearing on the other side of the roof.

  “Bird book,” said Nan, scampering across the patio and into the house to fetch the Peterson guide.

  “You’re right!” she said after checking the index and thumbing through the pages until she got to the picture of the big, dusky yellow bird that matched what they had just seen. “Positive ID.” She thrust the book at George, who studied the picture and the brief description of the bird, which also had black wings patched with white.

  “Sure is,” said George, with a big grin. “No question. That’s a positive ID. That just made my day!”

  Nan smiled mischievously.

  “Now that you’re in a cheerier mood, I’ve got a riddle for you, George: What’s the difference between a clump of crabgrass and an orgasm?”

  7

  Digging In

  Dr. Sproot sat brooding on her deck, her forefinger and index finger wrapped into a white-knuckle tightness around the handle of a mug that held her fifth refill of fully caffeinated, dark-roast coffee. It wasn’t easy to sit there and quietly fume after you’ve had six mugs’ worth of coffee. Dr. Sproot, however, had trained herself to simmer deeply and quietly when that was required. It was no matter that her nervous system was screaming at her to get up and dance or just park herself on the commode doing a couple Sudoku puzzles while her urinary tract cleaned itself out.

  She knew that by carefully cultivating resentment and allowing it to grow you allowed its misbegotten suckers to fill every fiber of your being. All that nurturing would eventually boil over into action, which she was beginning to suspect might be required here.

  Dr. Sproot was fully capable of action. For all her botanical erudition and middle-class patina of prim respectability, she harbored violent tendencies rattling the cages to be let out. They wanted her to rape and pillage like a floraphobe Hun. How many times had she had to resist the urge to torch her yuccas or snip off a rose and deposit it in the freezer? But there was another Dr. Sproot buried under the layers of viral pride, intolerance, and mischievous pettiness. It was the sweeter, gentler Dr. Sproot. That Dr. Sproot hadn’t been seen much lately or, quite frankly, much at all. It was the persona that subconsciously fueled the floral wizard in her. It made her want to love and pamper her little floral darlings and nurture them to greatness with gentle coaxings and an unwaveringly sunny disposition. Without that secret Mother Teresa thumping around in her otherwise blackened soul, Dr. Sproot would more likely have become a demolition derby driver or the operator of a trash-compacting machine.

  Dr. Sproot reconciled her conflicted nature by taking a rigidly unemotional, learned, and professional approach to her gardens. That approach allowed her to infuse her gardening ethic with a ruthless efficiency. Underperformers she rooted out and cheerfully burned at the slightest hint of decline no matter how long they had served her. Her demands for perfection resulted in a considerable outlay for sharp gardening tools, fertilizers, lighter fluid, and dozens of new plants a year to replace those that didn’t meet her exacting standards.

  The result of all this was a yardful of very nice gardens that were in a constant state of restless transition. There were always holes in the ground. Topsoil was relentlessly churned up and augmented with bags of more topsoil. New plants, their clumped roots covered in burlap, littered the yard, waiting to be fit together in the existing arrangements like missing puzzle pieces.

  What was that? Movement! Unseen, but plodding, steadily c
adenced, and portending damage or destruction. Dr. Sproot ignored her bladder’s insistent call to action, and got up from her chair stealthily so as not to alert whatever flower-devouring beast might be approaching. She reached for the BB gun propped against the house she kept handy to ward off garden pests and screeching crows. Hurrying back on tiptoes to the deck railing, she raised the gun, and took careful aim at the corner of the house. What came into view was no garden-defiling beast, but Marta Poppendauber. On seeing Dr. Sproot poised for action, Marta threw up her hands, inadvertently flinging her handbag onto the grass.

  “Don’t shoot, Dr. Sproot!” she said. “Don’t shoot. I’m a friend.” Dr. Sproot lowered her rifle and sneered.

  “Marta, haven’t I told you before to come through the front door and not through the gate in the fence? Huh? Why, I could have put out one of your eyes. You can put your hands down now, Marta.”

  Marta lowered her hands slowly. Keeping a wary eye on Dr. Sproot, who still had her BB gun at waist height, pointed right at her, she retrieved her purse. Luckily for her, it hadn’t landed in a nearby stand of yuccas.

  “C’mon up. I’ll be back in a second. Gotta go to the bathroom.”

  Marta climbed up the steps to the deck and sat down in one of Dr. Sproot’s stiff-backed, wood-slatted Adirondack chairs.

  Marta didn’t really want to be here, but what choice did she have? Though she had gotten some guilty pleasure out of watching Dr. Sproot go berserk over a little bit of hot tea, the notion of a Dr. Sproot–initiated lawsuit and all its ramifications terrified her. The damage that her reputation would suffer was more frightening. Dr. Sproot could ruin her. Why, one word from Dr. Sproot, and every wholesale buying club in the state would shut her out. The gardening clubs she hoped to join someday would blackball her. It would also damage any chance she had of winning the Burdick’s Best Yard Contest. Marta wondered ruefully if her gardens were good enough to stand a chance anyway. Alas, probably not. Dr. Sproot was right: they were an anarchic mess, pure chaos. She sighed.