by Joan Boswell
“Mrs. Gwendolyn Shire?” he asked, glancing down at his notebook, the pages ruffled by the morning breeze. When he looked up again from under his hat’s wide brim, his dark brown eyes puzzled, Gwen saw he wasn’t only big, he was also good-looking.
“Can I help you?”
“It concerns your neighbour, Mr. Watson.”
Gwen paused a moment before speaking, in order to keep the venom from her voice. She didn’t want the OPP officer suspecting she wanted Watson dead. Just in case Watson already was.
“Mr. Watson?” she asked, not quite sure she’d achieved her objective.
It was B. Watson on his mailbox. She’d christened him Bart, a name she loathed. There’d been a horrific storm the night before he’d moved in. The wind stripping leaves from the trees and lashing rain against the house from every direction. “Bad omen,” she’d whispered to Nutmeg, her cat, cowering beneath the bed.
Gwen had tried to be neighbourly, especially since she was Watson’s only neighbour for miles around. She’d gone over three days after his arrival with a plate of butterscotch squares, her late husband’s favourite.
The door had yanked open at her light knock as though he’d been waiting for her. Watson wasn’t big. More thin and wiry. With his hair shaved close to his head so his balding wasn’t as evident. In his late forties perhaps, a decade or so younger than herself.
It was his face, though, that commanded her attention. The lines around his scowling mouth and the creases fanning from his narrowed, flinty eyes were deeply etched. As though all his life he’d been smelling something rotten.
“Hello,” she said cheerily enough. “I’m Gwen Shire. I live next door.” She aimed her finger at her board-and-batten house and the straggling lawn with its collection of trees, vegetable and flower gardens. Admittedly, her property was a bit ragged around the edges, but she preferred it that way—with weeds and wildflowers creeping in, bringing birds and butterflies with them.
Watson’s scowl deepened, and she felt the fool standing there with the plate of squares he made no move to take. Gwen tried a different tack, bending down, even though she wasn’t keen on dogs, to the miniature collie watching her from behind its masters legs. “What a lovely dog.” The dog leapt at her, snapping and snarling. She stumbled back, almost dropping the squares. And a smile flitted across her new neighbour’s lips, a twisted little smile Gwen didn’t care for.
“Listen carefully,” Watson instructed above the dog’s growling. “I bought this place to get away from people like you. I’m not interested in being friendly, in being neighbourly. Got it!” He was shouting by then. “So bugger off and leave me alone!” He’d slammed the door.
But not before he’d called her something ending in “itch”.
Gwen had turned on her heel, hurt, angry tears starting in her eyes, so missing the lovely family who’d previously occupied the house. She’d flipped the squares into the culvert. She’d almost thrown the plate after them but decided the waste would be ludicrous. She wouldn’t throw away a good plate because of him.
“Has something happened to Mr. Watson, Constable?” she asked, then glanced at the ID tag pinned to his shirt. “Constable Bradly?” She briefly wondered if his initials stood for Thomas William, two of her favourite names. “Is he in some sort of difficulty?” She restrained the impulse to express the wish she hoped Watson damn well was.
“The fact is, Mr. Watson has lodged several complaints against you.”
“What?” Her voice spiked. “What complaints could that, that...” She barely managed to shut her mouth against the epithets that leapt to mind. “...possibly have against me?” Her hands trembled in outrage.
“Perhaps we should go inside.” Constable Bradly took her elbow to steady and guide her, as if the trembling of her hands was a symptom of a debilitating disease. She would’ve enjoyed his touch and the wide expanse of black-shirted chest temporarily filling her field of vision—she wasn’t that old!—but her fury over Barty Watson spoiled that.
“Would you like something to drink, a coke or something?” she asked, once they were seated around her kitchen table, once she had her anger under control. It wasn’t the officer’s fault, and she didn’t wish to alienate him. “I could make coffee...”
He was polite enough to accept the coke, taking the can from the refrigerator, refusing the offer of a glass. “This is fine,” he said snapping the lid, shifting a coaster so he could set the can on top. The chair creaked a little under his weight, but not alarmingly so. Then he flopped his hat down on the table next to the coke and re-opened his notebook.
Gwen leaned back in her chair, the palms of her hands pressed flat against the surface of the table. She’d tossed her straw hat into the kitchen sink and knew her greying hair now stood up every which way. Her nuisance of glasses she’d impatiently shoved, once again, to the bridge of her nose. “So what exactly are Mr. Watson’s complaints?”
“He says you’ve been trespassing.”
Gwen squeezed her eyes and mouth tightly shut. Yes, she supposed she was guilty of that heinous crime, occasionally treading three or five feet over the property line.
“He claims he sees you every morning dumping a wheelbarrow-load of cat scat onto his lawn.”
“What?” Gwen snapped her eyes open. “It’s not cat scat! It’s his dog’s business that I dump where it belongs. His dog’s over here constantly, dirtying my lawn, digging up my flower beds, chasing my cat!” She realized she was waving her hands. She took a deep breath and placed them back on the table. “I don’t know how many times I’ve asked him to control his dog. He said he’d moved to the country so his dog could have more freedom, and he’ll be damned if he’ll chain it up.”
If Gwen had secretly applauded her ability to keep her emotions restrained, she was truly in awe of Constable Bradly’s. “I see,” he said, lifting his brown eyes, completely devoid of expression, to hers. A better poker face Gwen couldn’t imagine. Then he bent his head again, turned to another place in his notebook and began writing, or at least gave the semblance of writing something on the blank page.
“I assume,” Gwen said, “that is not the full extent of Watson’s accusations.”
The constable reached for the coke, took a sip, then cleared his throat. “Well, no.”
If Gwen had been the sort of person who swore in front of police officers, she would have and in a very explicit fashion.
“Mr. Watson feels you’re responsible, in some way, for the grubs and caterpillars infesting his lawn and trees.” Constable Bradly didn’t raise his eyes this time, but kept them decidedly fixed on the page of his notebook. “He also claims you’ve been driving snakes onto his property.”
“What does he think I am?” Gwen demanded through gritted teeth.
Maybe Bart Watson thought she was a witch, maybe witch was the term he’d used when he’d slammed his door in her face. Was that possible? Was the man more than mean, was he crazy?
“Constable Bradly, this has been a bad year for lawn grubs and tent caterpillars. And if Mr. Watson would let nature take its course instead of saturating his property with herbicides and pesticides, he’d be better off. In addition to killing the insects he dislikes, he’s killing the good insects that prey on them, not to mention the beneficial birds he’s poisoning.” Should she tell the constable that Watson used his sprays indiscriminately, that the poisonous mist often settled on her vegetable gardens and bird baths? That she’d cautioned Watson on numerous occasions, but he’d persisted. That, the last time, as soon as she’d turned away from him, she’d heard the hiss of his sprayer and then been enveloped in a choking fog.
“As for snakes...” Gwen sighed. “This is a great area for snakes, lots of frogs for them to eat, lots of fissures in the granite rock where they den over winter. I’ve no control over where they wander, for heaven’s sake. And they’re mainly little garter snakes, absolutely harmless.”
Even though they were harmless, she’d seen how terrified of them W
atson was. Had witnessed his little two-step of avoidance—one she used herself to avoid treading on a snake—turn into a frantic, panicked dance that had ended with him stumbling to the safety of his front porch, his hand clutched to his chest. She’d hurried over—he was still her neighbour—and found him grey-faced and sweating, fumbling from his shirt pocket a small, bright-pink vial of liquid that he spritzed under his tongue. She’d retrieved the vial when it tumbled from his shaking hand and rolled beneath the porch steps. When her attempt to return it to him failed, she’d tucked the vial into the pocket of her cardigan in order to free her hands. “I’ll dial 911!” she’d told him, over the snarling of his dog, and tried to loosen the collar of his shirt.
He’d broken away from her, arms flailing. “Get off me! I don’t need your help.” The back of his hand had caught her across the mouth, the shock of the blow blinding her with white light. She’d staggered back, blood trickling from her cut lip. “See what happens when you get in the way!” he’d said, snarling like his dog.
“He has a gun, you know,” Gwen told the constable, not quite sure why she volunteered this information.
“A gun?”
“Well, a rifle. I’ve seen him sitting with it on his back deck.” Gwen wondered if Watson had purchased the rifle as a defense against snakes. The idea might have amused her if she hadn’t seen old Barty searching his lawn through the sights of his gun.
“Has he threatened you with it?” Constable Bradly asked, flipping back to the section in his notebook where he’d been writing.
“No,” she answered with a laugh, a nervous little laugh, it seemed to her. Watson wouldn’t threaten her with a gun, would he? She’d not been sure if he’d been targeting her cat, that day, tracking her as she strayed across one corner of his backyard. “Nutmeg!” she’d shrieked in alarm, startling both her cat and Watson—she’d thought. Watson had looked over the end of the gun, as though surprised Nutmeg was there. But, then again, what of his warped little grin?
“It isn’t illegal for him to own a rifle. Supposedly it’s registered.” Constable Bradly took another small sip of coke. What emotion was he concealing with his coke this time, Gwen wondered. “He said he needed the rifle to control the vermin overrunning his property. No thanks to you, he said. Disease-ridden, probably rabid, a threat to himself and his dog—”
She laughed outright. “Isabel and her little ones? Josie? Josie’s fawn?” What was wrong with Watson, anyway? She hadn’t thought people like him actually existed, except as cartoon characters, stereotypical villains in some animated TV series.
“I assume these are the raccoons you feed. The deer.”
“I feed the raccoons because it was something my husband did. And there’s no creature quite as vicious as a deer, is there? Especially when compared to that wimpy, backbiting mutt of his. Besides, it isn’t illegal, either, for me to feed the wildlife.” She was sure she wasn’t imagining Constable Bradly’s crimped mouth and dancing eyes, even though he wasn’t looking directly at her. “Well, it isn’t,” she said in a justified tone.
The constable shook his head, his scant grin—if there’d been one—gone. “What about building a privacy fence between your property and Mr. Watson’s? That might be a solution.”
“Do you know how much a project like that would cost?” she asked, incredulous. “I’d have to fence the whole ten acres to keep his dog out, and it would keep out the wildlife as well.”
Constable Bradly flipped his notebook closed and released a breath.
“I feel you need to know something, Mrs. Shire.” He hunkered forward, leaned his weight on his forearms resting on the table. “I’ve dealt with Mr. Watson before. And I honestly don’t know what it is with this guy. Badgers his neighbours until... Quite frankly, I was relieved when he left my jurisdiction.” Constable Bradly uttered a little grunt. “Then I’m reassigned, and who do I run into first thing.” He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “The kicker is, he has an influential friend.”
“A friend?” Well, she supposed it was possible. Even the worst person in the world had to have some friends. What sort of friend did Watson have, though, she wondered. Was that where Watson went, dog in tow, every other Wednesday? To his friend’s?
“One who’s capable, it seems, of pulling important strings. So I’m obliged to keep Mr. Watson out of as much trouble as I can and to deal with his complaints.” He ducked his head and glanced out her kitchen window. “He’s sure to note my cruiser in your driveway.”
Constable Bradly hitched his chair back with one hand and rose to his feet. “You might consider that fence. One long enough to separate the two yards, at least.” He stood for a moment, his hat in his hands, staring at a point somewhere above her head. “And, Mrs. Shire...” He looked down with those dark brown eyes. “You might want to mark, quite distinctly, the boundary of your property, all along the length of it. You might want to do this as soon as possible. Mr. Watson mentioned something about hiring a bulldozer, about harvesting trees and clearing the brush on his acreage.”
Gwen’s own eyes flashed wide. “But birds nest there, the deer sleep in a sheltered grove, the wildflowers... Why would he do such a thing?”
“He considers it the ultimate solution. Eliminate the habitat, eliminate the vermin, as he calls it. And hardwood trees bring good money. You wouldn’t want that bulldozer ‘accidentally straying’ onto your land.”
Two days passed before Gwen trusted her ankle enough to get her into and out of the city. By then she had a million errands to run, including the most important. The purchase of dozens of “no trespassing”, “trespassers will be prosecuted” and “private property” signs. Well past dusk, she returned home to Nutmeg’s complaints of being kept indoors all day. “Tomorrow, Nutmeg. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to go out.”
It was also well past the time she normally set out food for Isabel and her young. Gwen poured nuggets of dog chow into the two dishes on her back deck and replenished the water bowl before she unloaded the car. An hour later she collapsed in bed, her ankle throbbing.
The following morning, when Gwen found the food on the deck untouched, she assumed the raccoons had come at their usual time, discovered the dishes empty and returned to wherever they nested. Besides, she had other worries on her mind. As soon as she’d eaten breakfast, she dumped the collection of signs she’d purchased, along with the wood mallet, into the wheelbarrow. She then pushed the wheelbarrow up the slope behind the house, headed toward the surveyed line that separated her property from Watson’s.
Birdsong filled the air, a chipmunk pucked at her in warning, a squirrel nattered from the branches of a tree. She wove the wheelbarrow through the tall grass, the daisies, buttercups and Indian paintbrush. “Why would anyone what to destroy this?” she angrily demanded.
She set the wheel of the barrow in one of the trails the deer had established in trekking across her property, and this made the going easier. A metre short of her property line she encountered the body of a raccoon
Gwen dropped to her knees beside it. “Isabel?” She recognized the distinctive reddish-brown fur touched with silver, the scar across the nose.
The raccoon’s masked face was frozen in a snarl, as if she’d died neither quickly nor painlessly. Had she been coming to me for help, Gwen wondered. It had happened once before, to her husband, a raccoon entangled in fishing line. “Oh, Isabel.” Then she saw the bloody bullet hole. “Watson!” Had he lain in wait for Isabel, Gwen wondered, along that portion of the trail that cut through his property. He would know the time of day the raccoons normally appeared on her back step.
Gwen pushed herself clumsily to her feet, remembering. “Tad Guys? Tac! Where are you? Are you all right?” She was sobbing now. She backtracked the game trail until it disappeared into a dense thicket of brush. “Guys?” she wailed. If Bart Watson had murdered the little ones, too, so help him... But what could she do, what recourse did she have?
If only she were a witch,
she thought. She’d rot Watson’s body with pestilence. She’d parch his throat with insatiable thirst. She would summon wind and rain and hail. She would call down lightning and destroy Watson’s house, Watson along with it.
In an act of desperation, she spread her arms wide in appeal. “Can’t you do something?” She wasn’t sure whom or what she was invoking. A cosmic force? Nature personified? “He’s evil. You’ve seen what he’s done, what he’s doing! He has no care for you, for yours. Can’t you intervene?” Gwen desperately wanted an answer, an omen. More than anything, a sign.
When the young raccoons didn’t arrive at her back door that night or the next, for Gwen it was her omen. An omen that good would not triumph over evil. Gwen hadn’t had a drink in a long time; that night she had two.
Isabel, Gwen buried. She posted her private property signs and searched again, without success, for some evidence of Isabel’s litter. She kept constant watch through her kitchen window for a flatbed truck hauling a bulldozer, and she despaired.
The menace of the bulldozer so distracted her, she almost missed seeing him that morning in her driveway. She shielded her eyes against the sun’s glare with one hand. “Charlie?” She pushed open her kitchen door. “It isn’t that time of year, is it?”
Gwen went back inside and fumbled a dog-eared journal from the junk drawer of her cupboards. She found the page and the date. No, it wasn’t that time of year. “Charlie, you’re weeks early, what’s wrong with you?” For the past three years, Charlie had been very particular about the date on which he made his annual appearance. Was everything in the world now out of balance? She checked through the window again. There was no doubt. Charlie. On a Wednesday, too, when he normally favoured a weekend, for whatever reason.