I looked around the room. Five of the folks there were from the brick apartment at the end of the street. There was the old couple, Gladys and Manny, that breakfasted at Marv’s Café every morning. She started using a walker about a year ago and he was bent, but they still got out every morning for their Number 2 special and coffee. Julie, that flighty woman who worked at Stellard’s Grocery, was standing frozen in the corner, her eyes darting around the room, until Sally went up to her, linked arms and brought her over to visit with Gladys and Manny. Bud and Ashley were making out in the corner. I saw an empty envelope (I know it was empty because I checked) with his address on it in the gutter one day. It was addressed to ‘Thom Winston’. Ashley’s name was underneath his, so I knew it was Bud’s name. I’ve never trusted the name ‘Thom’. It seems somehow deceptive to me. If a person wanted to stick in the ‘h’, he might as well add the last two letters and get a whole name out of it. But this. This I judge to be either pseudo sophistication or stupidity. You can be sure that the last follows the first no matter where and when it shows its silly head. I guess Bud never trusted it either.

All the while I was thinking this, Sally had spotted them. I watched her as she quickly fixed up two plates of snacks and two lemonades and brought it over to them. They had to unlatch then and act interested while she visited with them. Ashley actually looked engrossed in the conversation, but Bud looked peeved.

I went over and helped myself to the food. There was a huge bowl of popcorn, some Chex mix, little circles of bread with what looked like Ranch dressing and cucumbers on top, brownies, and oatmeal raisin cookies without the raisins. As I sized up that last plate, I shook my head in despair and loaded up. I’d have to come back for my lemonade once I got settled.

The Wang family from the house on the other side of Sniff’s jostled in just as I reached my chair. I had my place staked out just in time! There are a lot of them, and once they started finding places to sit, there was certain to be no place for anyone else.

Neighbors filed in and out for over two hours. They came mostly to check out Sally and her boy and, of course, because, other than the gatherings of loud music and beer cans, we never had parties on our street. It was a novelty, and no one wanted to be the only one to miss it.

Sweet Beat walked in around 8:45 or so. His name is Kevin, but no one in his right mind would ever dream of calling him that. Some days he seemed almost normal, but other days he seemed wound tight as a champagne cork. It was at his house that the loud music and beer cans had their parties. Maybe he thought he’d see what a party with people was like. I said as much in a jokey sort of way, and he popped a switchblade out at me before you could say ‘thou shalt not kill’. Sally hurried over and asked if she could admire it while he helped himself to the snacks. She held that thing in her hands and examined it like it was a lovely antique, but I saw her glance at her watch when she thought no one was looking. Sweet Beat came back over to collect his knife, but Sally kept it in her hand and patted the seat beside her on the couch (the Wangs had left by this time, so there was room for others again).

“Would you like me to hold this for you while you eat?” she asked, as though they were old friends and she was doing him a favor.

He grunted, and started in on his plate.

“I noticed you have a new bike,” she continued.

Sweet Beat looked at her sideways.

With his mouth full, he said, “Harley ”.

“Right. Harleys are the best, don’t you think so, Mr. Bingham?”

I looked at Sally like she was out of her mind because I was beginning to think she was.

“Mr. Bingham,” she persisted, “Harleys are by far the best, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I’d agree with anything you say, Ms. Cortland,” I answered truthfully.

to be continued . . .

I called over to Sniff’s house, “Seen anything of Sally Cortland, Sniff?”

“If there was anything to see of her, you woulda’ by now, ya been keepin’ watch nearly a week!” she hollered back.

You would’ve thought she meant to notify the neighborhood of my own private business and I set her straight right then and there.

“You just can’t stand to look in the mirror,” she answered; an answer which made no sense.

“I can look in the mirror same as you, you nosy old woman, an’ get a better picture back in the process.”

Well, she started to yell then, and that teenage boy from the other corner – the one that wears his pants halfway down as though he has his heart set on being a plumber – happened to walk by. His face sprouted a sarcastic smile, and I ran down my steps to the rocks that I keep handy in one corner against the house. He spied me out of the corner of his eye, though, and jogged away. He’d had a couple thrown at him before for one offense or another, so he’d learned his lesson. ‘Kids these days,’ I thought.

People started filtering over to Sally’s place around 6:30, so I started over, too.

I heard a voice from behind yell to me in a whisper, if you could call it that, “Bill Bingham, the party ain’t ‘til 7:00. What you doin’ goin’ over an’ disturbin’ that woman a whole half hour early?”

“Can’t you see all the folks already goin’ there?” I answered the Sniff.

I kept walking, and in another minute I could feel her monster steps behind me.

“What’re you doin’, Sniff? ‘The party ain’t ‘til 7:00,’” I mimicked her in a whiny voice and she thumped me over the head with something.

I looked behind me, and she was placing the hat she had whomped me with back on her head.

“What you wearin’ a hat fer?” I said in a disgusted tone.

Fanny threw back her shoulders and walked past me as though she was some kind of queen.

I caught up just as she reached the door and rang the bell. It didn’t work, so she poked her head through the door and yelled, “Sally, dear?”

Sally weaved her way to meet us through the nearly ten people already there.

Sniff leaned over and whispered to Sally, “Can you believe these people! What can I do to help?”

Sally squeezed her hand and said, “Dear Mrs. Smith. Whatever would we do without you? Would you be so kind as to keep an eye on that tray over there and refill it from the kitchen when it gets low?”

Sniff beamed, looked over at me condescendingly, and started over to ‘her’ tray which she watched like a hawk the rest of the evening.

to be continued . . .

THE PARTY

Sally was beginning to cause a bit of a problem for me. One morning I headed down to my basement. I mostly stayed out of it since I couldn’t abide the cobwebs. I had a few things stashed down there – mostly bits and pieces the previous owner had left behind.  There was a package of mousetraps, of course. Some Shell No Pest strips were down there along with a big hammer, a baseball cap, (I had brought up the bat that had stood next to it to keep under my bed for protection right after Pearl, my bloodhound, died), a few old paint cans, and a growing pile of shredded paper. I considered the latter and decided the mice might as well stay comfortable for awhile, so I left it alone. Besides, I could ask my daughter to clean it out when she came at Thanksgiving. She was always on the lookout for something to ease her guilt for not coming to visit me more often.  The paint cans were so old, they’d gotten lightweight. The other thing that was down there was a putty knife. I’d seen Sally had one around, so I picked it up. (Heart glad I was to find I had one!) I climbed back upstairs and settled on my porch.

See, I’d moved from the yard to my porch by now. I thought it best to leave some of the crab grass just in case I ran out of things to do. Like I said, Sally was causing a bit of a problem for me. If I stayed indoors, I wouldn’t know what was going on across the street. If I sat out on my porch it might start tongues flapping about comparisons I wasn’t willing to have made. I wasn’t on any account going to let a woman best me. If Sally was working up a sweat, I’d at least pretend to. I had started by sweeping twenty-five years worth of dirt through the porch cracks. It took a surprisingly little bit of time to do. If I had known that, I might’ve done it sooner. Then again, why do what would just need to be done again the next year? The wind mostly took care of the upkeep of that porch anyway. I swept over the same two feet for about half an hour, but my arms began to feel stiff, and Sally was so much in and out of her house, it was hard to keep track anyway. Still, I would have hated to miss anything, so I had to get creative. That’s why I had hunted for something to bring out with me to the porch. I sat with it in my hands for awhile, but then it occurred to me that I might raise suspicions, just sitting like that. So I figured I’d scrape with it like I’d seen Sally do. No one could fault that. After all, that little woman was beginning to make a name for herself. Every day folks would stop and check on the old Johnston house. She must have met everyone in a two-block radius in record time.

Friday was a very long day. The Johnston place was as quiet as the suburbs. At the moment I was scraping peeling paint with the putty knife. Fanny Sniff had been sitting on her porch most of the week, watching Sally and the boy. If that woman ever lifted a finger in her life it wasn’t enough for anyone to detect any movement. It was almost an embarrassment to live next to such an idle woman. However, there was one thing at which she excelled. It would be no exaggeration to put her in an Olympic contest of the greatest busybodies that ever lived. She would win the gold.

to be continued . . .

I woke up to see Sally bent over, cleaning the last of the brushes. She must have sensed my gaze, because she looked up and smiled.

“Have a good nap?”

“I always need a nap after I hear Fanny Sniff’s voice,” I replied.

“Thanks for keeping us company, Mr. Bingham.”

She straightened and looked at the house.

“It’s a good week’s work,” she said.

“You been doin’ this for a week?”

“I guess there are so many things going on in this neighborhood, it’s easy to miss some of it,” Sally commented in an amused voice.

Indeed, the house did look as though it began to be cared for. The creamy yellow was pared with a gray-green trim. Looking back, I admit I didn’t appreciate her taste at the time, but even then I could see it was an improvement.

“Stoppin’ already?” I asked. I thought she should at least work the day out.

“It’s 7:00, Mr. Bingham,” Sally answered, “It seems the day got away from you.”

I watched as she pulled out her ponytail and let her hair fall as the door closed behind her.

I’d have to make myself a quick supper, if I wanted to get to the comics before daylight faded. Some days are just like that. They are so full, that there isn’t time to fit in everything. I blamed it on Fanny Sniff. If she hadn’t interrupted my morning, I might have not had to hurry like I was now. That darned woman!

 *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

The rest of the week I spent on my porch, watching Sally and the boy. No matter what time I got out there, they had beat me out. The woman had kept her weeds mowed since the day they’d moved in. I had noticed that right away.

I do like putterin’ in the yard. It lets me keep an eye on things. And one more thing. I hate crab grass. Now Creeping Charlie I like. It’s pretty. It perks up a yard a bit. Clover has a sweet smell. Plus you never know when you’ll get lucky with clover. Old sayings always have some truth to them, and you just never know where a four-leaf clover will take you. Dandelions are a fine little flower. I always said ‘If dandelions are good enough for a President of the United States, they’re good enough for me’. Crab grass is an entirely different matter, though. Some loud-mouthed kid not worth the gum on his shoe once made a comment about my yard fitting its owner and ever since, I’ve been death on the stuff.

It nearly met its final doom. I was outdoors so much – keeping an eye on things at the old Johnston place – that I swear I nearly dug it all up. I never worked so hard in my life.

The worst, of course, was when they went around to the back of their house. I ended up having to walk around the block and take a shortcut through their back alley to see anything at all. I heard Sally talking quietly to her son before I could see them. They were kneeling there not three feet from the alley. A box lid was crowded with little cups: some of them broken at the lip, some of them old plastic ones someone had thrown out, some of them Styrofoam ones in good shape bearing the logo of the donut shop three blocks down. I wondered if the owner was sweet on her. The cups held seedlings she must have planted a few months back.

She and the boy had measured out a little garden in the back and were planting the seedlings. I was sure she wouldn’t get anything from it, starting so late in the year. Still, she nursed those things in her hands as though they were her own babies.

I kicked a rock and scuffed my shoe so Sally would hear me. Someone had to tell her the garden wouldn’t do any good.

“Those ain’t gonna grow big enough by the time it frosts, ya know.”

She didn’t stop working at all. She just answered, “I know.”

“What?!” I couldn’t believe my ears.

That was it for me. I marched from there in such a huff that I had to rest by the time I got home.

She cut up some wilted hostas on the side of the house one day. I never sat so still in my life. The woman reminded me of a Samurai warrior, slashing those things the way she did. For one dreadful moment I thought she looked my way, but to my relief, she picked up her shovel and started planting what she’d just so viciously attacked. Funny thing is, they lived.

to be continued . . .

I went across the street to the old Johnston place.

After nosing around a bit, I found Sally in the back yard, up on a ladder. The boy was at the bottom, holding it steady.

“Whatcha doin’?” I asked.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Bingham,” she called down.

The boy eyed me with a fearful look, but held his ground.

“Don’t worry, boy,” I said, friendly like, “Your ma’s a friend o’ mine.”

I spit in the grass, and wiped the rest off my chin.

I sat down in the grass a while and watched her work. The day was nearing noon and the sun was piercingly bright.  Her shirt was starting to show sweat. Even from where I was, I could see a trickle make its way from her temple to her jaw.

An hour went by. I wondered why she chose this hot day to paint, and I asked her.

Sally gave a short laugh, though she sounded a little out of breath.

“It’s hard to predict a cool summer day,” she smiled, and winked at her son.

“Especially in the city,” she murmured under her breath.

By now she had the top half painted, and no longer needed the ladder. The boy took up another brush, and they worked together to finish the back of the house.

I began to feel restless. She looked so tired and hot.

“Never liked the color yellow,” I commented.

“Mr. Bingham,” she replied, “would you go inside and grab two pops for us, please?”

I hesitated.

“Grab one for yourself, too,” she added.

Never one to waste time, I walked through her back door. It was warmer inside the house than it was outside. I nearly suffocated looking around. I’d been in there just once before, two owners back. Something was different now, though. The whole of the rooms I investigated had been newly painted, the floors had been polished, and the woodwork stained. The rooms were furnished simply, certainly, but still felt very complete. I almost wished I could sit down, but there was still the upstairs to see.

I hurried up and looked in three bedrooms. They showed the same attention to cleanliness and neatness that the downstairs did. One room held a small desk, a wooden chair, a stuffed chair with a braided rug in front of it, and two large bookcases full of books. The other two obviously belonged to the boy and his mother. On a small table by the bed in each room were two pictures of two different men. One was quite handsome and looked as though the outdoors was his friend. I couldn’t tell much about the other one.

I went down to the kitchen again and poked my head into the refrigerator. It felt so good that I stood there for awhile to cool down. I pulled out three of those generic brand sodas and took them outside.

The boy came over to me and took two of them. He handed the first to his mother, and then opened one for himself.

I love the sound a soda can makes when it’s opened. The snap is so definite, so deliberate, so . . . so . . . confident. That’s it. It makes me feel confident when I open a soda can. I took a long swig. The biting coolness made its way straight to my gut.

I lay down in the grass, looked at the sky with barely a cloud crossing its expanse, closed my eyes and fell asleep. I snoozed off and on through the day, monitoring their progress as well as I could.

to be continued . . .

THE INVITATION

Fanny Smith. The name makes me grimace and the woman who wears it makes me groan. She moved in next to me twenty years ago. Her voice makes me feel as though I’m at sea: sick and hearing a foghorn. Its blaring never changes in pitch nor in volume.  By the time its over, I’m in need of at least an hour’s nap to calm my nerves.

Here she was. Standing on the walk in front of my house, calling to me in that voice. I pretended not to hear her.

“I said, Bill, there’s going to be a par-ty,” she drew the word out as though it was in a foreign language, “a par-ty next Friday.”

I coughed up a good one and looked at her.

“Oh. Didn’t see ya standin’ there, Sniff,” I said.

I’d always called her ‘Fanny Sniff’; it just came to me out of the blue, first time I met her. She hated my calling her that almost as much as she hated me. It, of course, brought me great pleasure.

She threw back her shoulders and smoothed the front of her dress. I never could bear a woman who wore a dress with flat shoes. Her shoes looked like she’d bought them at a men’s shop, except they didn’t look as feminine.

“I told her you shouldn’t be invited,” she said with that perpetual sound of authority she always had. She would’ve sounded like that even telling a joke. If she ever told one. Which she never did.

“Who, Sniff? Make it snappy – you’re wastin’ my time.”

That woman always made me impatient. Looking at her made me impatient. It made me want to swear, which I did obligatorily, just to show her.

Fanny began walking away. I chased her down the street. She turned on me so suddenly, I nearly fell over.

“Get away from me, you old coot! I’ll tell you, but only because I told her I would. Sally Cortland is having a party next Friday. Seven o’clock. Now get away from me before I lay ya flat.”

This last statement was no idle threat. The woman was, after all, a good six feet at least.

to be continued . . .

“My name’s Sally. Sally Cortland.”

I shook her hand.

“You are . . .?” she asked.

“Right. I’m Bill Bingham.”

“You must be retired?” she asked.

It struck me funny and I snorted. It was a good snort as snorts go, but she looked startled. It reminded me of someone.

Suddenly I exclaimed, “You’re that boy’s mother!”

She cocked her head and I continued, “The boy. The boy ‘twas here pulling the bark off my tree. He’s about yeah high,” I measured with my hand, “and freckly.”

“I’m sorry if he upset you, Mr. Bingham.”

I started laughing again – so hard I had to get up and spit.

“Honey, if you call anyone ‘mister’ around here, everyone will think he’s a drug dealer.”

Somehow I sensed I’d offended her. Then I figured it out.

“Oh. Right. You asked if I was retired. See, it struck me funny, ‘cuz I been on some type o’ public assistance er ‘nother since I were a pup.”

She remained silent.

“Bad back,” I explained, rubbing it.

“You said the man was a . . .,” she paused, as if searching for a phrase, “good-for-nothing scoundrel?”

I nodded knowingly.

“Don’t ferget. He was rich,” I added. After all, some things bear repeating.

She got up, shook my hand, and left.

The sun was nearing the horizon now. Its brightness colored the street in gold and orange. Sally, now at her own house, bent to deadhead some potted petunias, turned and waved at me, and slipped inside.

I sat on my sagging porch, chewed on a cookie, and let my memory have its way. It began to sprinkle. I went inside and watched out my window as the rain first pelted my newspaper and then spit into the wind; which blew it, page by page, down the street.

to be continued . . .

image: rain-all-wallpapers.net_.jpg

I quickly brushed it from my face, hoping it had been a small fly with few guts.

“Hello,” she said brightly. A smile cupped her face.

I cleared my throat in a friendly manner.

“I thought you might like some cookies.”

She climbed the steps and handed me a plate of oatmeal raisin cookies without the raisins.

“My favorite,” I said doubtfully, taking the plate and turning a cookie over to look for at least one raisin. There were none to be found.

She looked around the porch and nervously rubbed one hand with the other.

“Have a chair?” I responded.

She pulled a rusty metal rocker from a few feet away. The scraping sound pleased my old ears, like a snare drum in a rock band. She sat down, facing the street.

“We moved to the Johnston house two months ago,” she pointed to the one that had been for sale for so long. “We’ve been so busy getting settled, we haven’t had time to meet everyone.”

I lifted my head in acknowledgement.

Then, thinking how I might be neighborly, I said, “This whole area used ta belong ta a rich good-for-nothing.”

I took her silence for interest, and continued, “Oh yeah. Near scoundrel he was.  Courtney Tice. Never lifted a hand in his life. Had everything handed ta him on a silver platter. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as they say.”

“Where, exactly was his house?” she asked.

Her eyes roamed the street in front of us.

“All over.  It was a mansion. I seen it in some hist’ry pictures some fella with glasses and a button-down sweater showed me. Long time ago now.”

The woman looked at me curiously.

“I don’t know who he were. Just walkin’ up and down Plato Street. Talkin’ ta people.”

She squinted her eyes.

“Oh.  You mean . . .?” I gave my chin a good scratching.

I reached my bony hand out and made a broad sweep.

“I’d say, if mem’ry serves, it stretched from that brick apartment over there to the corner past your house. The rest was gardens and grounds.”

The woman sat looking at the space for a time. The sun lit her hair in a way that made me wish I was young, but her hands were callused. She wore a pair of jeans and a sleeveless denim shirt. The rubber around her shoes was pulling away.

Suddenly she stuck out her hand.

to be continued . . .

I was pulling some stubborn crab grass from around my own crumbling steps when I was called away by the insistent ringing of the phone (it was my daughter from the next county wondering if I would join them for their annual 4^th of July barbecue – I answered with my usual agreeable “No”).

By the time I had returned to my task, a boy I judged to be about 10 stood, slowly, but with great delight, peeling strips of bark from a birch clump on the boulevard in front of my house.

“Hey!” I yelled, startling both the young chap and myself. My voice has always been gruff. Even as a youth it stood out like thistles next to new grass. Age had given it as low a note as time had supplied an edge.

“You can’t do that!  It’s agin’ the law!” I scolded, and was, for a minute, reminded of my old bloodhound who’d been dead 5 years last month.

The boy looked at me with fear in his eyes, but his posture remained unchanged and his brows scrunched together in a wide “V”.

Soon he replied, “Why?”

“Cuz it’s, it’s . . . agin’ the law, that’s why!” I spat back, irritated with his, by now, expression of disbelief.

He took hold of the bark again.

“No intelligent person would make a law about a tree,” he said quietly. It appeared he had decided I was belligerent and crazy, both.

I proved him wrong at once by running over and bodily shoving him into the street. He fell, and I could see one hand was skinned; tiny pricks of blood began at once to trickle to his wrist. I turned back to my house, and by the time I’d reached my steps he was gone.

“Stupid crab grass,” I muttered.

Not many days later I was sitting on my porch, reading the paper. I had read the obituaries – first, as always – and was now engrossed in the comics. It was evening, but the sun tenaciously held its place these waxing days of summer. I swatted in the air at a fly, which promptly landed on my nose. I have a respectable nose. No small speed bump this, but rather long and straight and glad-to-be-noticed. Impatiently, I let the paper fall to my lap and swatted with one grand smack. Unfortunately, I caught sight of a woman standing at the bottom of my steps just as the fly, now as flat as flypaper and sticking to its chosen landing spot, met its demise. I’ve always been a good aim. This was one of the rare times I regretted it.

to be continued . . .

THE INHERITANCE

A lone street lamp shone its dim yellow light over the pocked and crumbling pavement beneath it. The lamp, green from years of neglect, stood sturdy and dignified nevertheless; its scrollwork base and lantern top the result of the insistence of a tenacious city council member long since forgotten. Its light spread over the area like a thin blanket, not quite reaching the ends of the old street.

A socialite famous for a gluttony of grand parties, an unquenchable thirst for written works of philosophy, and a limited understanding of himself had once owned all of the land through which the street now traveled and some of the adjoining property, as well.  He was the son of a railroad baron, had observed his father’s business from bottom to top, had never been invited to take over the business and had never asked to. In all of his life, the son, Courtney Clive Tice (Clive after his grandfather on his mother’s side), had never known want. He had never had to care for himself in all of the ways mankind finds it necessary to survive, he had never had to sweat, nor to make his own money. It was all there for him from the time he was born until his last breath.

It was this last breath, this last uttered thought, that had made his land even more marketable to those who had the means to buy some of it. So it was sold in large parcels, then later resold in smaller pieces, then divided into lots that were smaller still.  The passage of time, the decline of societal standards, and general neglect had finally led to the street’s current condition. Most passersby made a wide detour around it, but those who had the nerve to pass by that now decaying part of the city still recalled its first owner’s words: “What was good could have been better.” Those were not his only words, but since they were the last sentence of his final musings, they were what the people recalled.

A sarcastic city planner had later named the street ‘Plato Street’, thinking to himself that its owner, his head full of useless philosophy, had thought in vain the property could be improved. Indeed, its current conditions proved the planner right. Ramshackle houses dotted the small, crude lawns, and those who now lived on Plato Street wished Courtney Clive Tice had told the truth. But it was obvious to all who passed by and especially to those who lived there that he had not.

One house, by now nearly bare of paint, though the chips that remained told of an original Hershey’s chocolate brown, stood on the exact spot where Courtney Clive Tice had once slept – and where he had died. The plat reached to where the edge of his smoking room had been. A hard-packed dirt path led from the boulevard in front of it to the street beyond.

A “For Sale” sign had stood in front of the house some fourteen months, taken down several weeks here and there to fool passers-by that it had been sold and really was worth something. Up it would pop again, though, in a renewed effort to bring something – anything – from property whose owner had since died in a nursing home. Then one day it was taken down for good.

It is this house – and the people in it – that taught me about the man Courtney Clive Tice could have become or maybe had become unawares to those who were closest to him.

They moved in without fanfare and I expected they were the kind that lived quietly and unobtrusively, for that is how they lived. At first.

to be continued . . .

Photo: 800px-Light_In_The_Dark_2886931703-wikimedia-commons.jpg Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License