This day was just full of surprises.
The afternoon quickly wound down as people who'd put in a token appearance and performed their neighborly duty excused themselves and headed home. This wasn't a party, after all, no one was having fun at this extremely awkward gathering, and Barry could see the relief on people's faces as they expressed their condolences to Liz one last time and escaped out the door, claiming prior commitments and suddenly urgent household chores.
When Mike and Frank left, leaving their wives behind, Barry decided he might as well do the same. Maureen gave him her approval and walked with him to the front door. They'd driven to the Dysons’ house--to Liz's house--directly from the cemetery, but Barry felt like walking home, and he told Maureen to drive the car back when she was through.
She accompanied him out to the porch, closing the door carefully behind her. "What do you think?" she asked, her eyes meeting his. "Do you think it was an accident?"
He was surprised that she was even asking the question. "Probably," he admitted.
She nodded, but there was not the certainty in her face he would have expected, and he wondered if she'd heard something or seen something that made her suspect this was not the case.
He didn't ask her, though, didn't want to know, not right now at least, and he said good-bye, gave her a quick peck on the lips, and headed up the gravel driveway.
The air was hot and unmoving, not leavened by even the hint of a breeze, and the only sounds on this still afternoon were the scratchy scuttling of lizards in the underbrush abutting the road, the chirrups of unseen cicadas, and the occasional far-off rumbling of truck engines as Corban pickups headed on or off the highway.
Bonita Vista seemed like a ghost town, as though all of the people had suddenly disappeared, and while in one of his stories that would have seemed creepy, Barry found the absence of audible neighbors almost welcoming.
He felt better being outside, walking, even in this heat. Ray's house had been so close to the man, so filled with his memory, that it had been difficult to think, to sort things through. It was easier out here, alone under the wide blue sky, to remember the good things about his friend, to celebrate his life rather than mourn his passing.
Ahead, Barry saw the entrance to his own driveway and the brown shingle roof of his house above the line of trees. As he drew closer and more of the house became visible, he saw something else, something that made his jaw muscles clench and the blood pump faster through his veins.
A pink piece of paper attached to the screen door.
The association had been here.
He was filled with a rage entirely disproportionate to the offense, a rage he knew to be misplaced anger at his friend's death, but he felt it nonetheless, and he strode furiously up the driveway and up the porch steps. Those bastards had been here, snooping around, while he'd been at Ray's funeral, while he and his wife and their neighbors had been consoling the old man's widow. Did they have no shame? Did they have no respect?
He ripped the paper from the screen and read it.
The association was fining them fifty dollars because the string Maureen had used to tie up her drooping chrysanthemums was white instead of green. All lines or cords used by a homeowner to tie plants to stakes were required to be green in order to blend in with the foliage and not distract from the lot's natural state.
He felt the muscles of his face harden into a painful grimace, and he squeezed shut his eyes. "Fuckers!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Fuckers!"
Taking a deep harsh breath, tears stinging his eyes, he crumpled up the paper, balled it in his fist, and walked angrily into the house.
July.
The monsoons came just as Ray had promised they would. With the turn of the calendar page, afternoon skies were suddenly filled with massive thunderheads, and short summer storms brought the nearly unbearable heat of midday down to a level that made for cool and pleasant evenings. From the deck, Barry could watch the buildup of the storms, see the coalescing clouds, watch the rain as it came up from the south and moved like a light white curtain over the canyon lands and through the hilly forest toward Corban and Bonita Vista. It was beautiful, and he wished he were writer enough to capture that ephemeral splendor, but his forte was the grotesque, not the sublime, and translating such a magnificent sight into words was beyond his abilities.
He sat with Maureen, drinking iced tea, staring out at the landscape.
There were scattered showers to the south, squares of gray and white that touched the earth and looked like ghostly extensions of the more solid clouds above. Occasional spikes of lightning and the rumble of accompanying thunder belied the tranquillity of the scene but were nevertheless equally majestic, and at one point Barry saw three jagged bolts of lightning hit the ground at once.
From the road came the sound of a muffler less engine, and Barry peeked over to see who it was. A second later, a pickup packed with sand came speeding up the road, the vehicle's driver obviously attempting to get a running start on the steepest part of the hill. Despite the driver's intentions, the grade proved too tough, and the truck stalled out just above their house. The pickup was blocked from view by a pine tree, but Barry heard the engine attempting to turn over, and after one false start, the vehicle slid back down the hill into view, braking to a hard stop directly in front of their driveway. He looked over at Maureen.
"Don't you even think about it," she said.
"The guy obviously needs help. And this isn't California," he pointed out. "It's not part of some scam. He's not going to shoot us and rob us."
"Never can tell."
He shook his head and was about to go downstairs and ask the man if he needed any assistance, when another pickup pulled up behind the first and stopped.
"Saved by the bell," Maureen said.
The man who emerged from the second truck was tall and heavy, wearing too-new jeans, a fancy western shirt, and the sort of shiny oversized belt buckle that had been fodder for urban comedians for decades. A
shock of white hair over a ruddy bulldog face gave the man an air of impatient arrogance, and while Barry had automatically assumed that the man had stopped to help, he knew even before the cowboy opened his mouth that that was not the case.
"You got a permit?"
The driver who stuck his head out of the window to answer was dark and spoke in a thick Mexican accent. "Yes, sir. Of course, of course. I
have my green card."
"I don't mean a permit to work in this country. I figure you got that.
I'm talking about a work permit for Bonita Vista. Does your boss have a permit to do work in our neighborhood?"
Sound carried up here, but if there was an answer, Barry couldn't hear it.
You see, you gotta get the permission of the homeowners' association before you can do any work in Bonita Vista. Any work. I don't care what the man hirin ' you said, that's the way it is, comprende?
There was derision in the Spanish word, derision and an aggressive hostility. Barry could hear it all the way up on the deck, and it was clear that the driver sensed it as well. His response was low and cowed, subservient. He immediately tried to start the truck again, and although the first two efforts were unsuccessful, on the third the engine caught and held.
The white-haired man thunked his hand on the door of the pickup. "Now you turn this baby around. And you tell your boss what I told you, you hear? No permit from the association, no work in Bonita Vista. Got it?"
Again, if there was an answer Barry didn't hear it, but the pickup did not try to continue up the road and instead backed around the other truck and headed down the hill in reverse, the loud engine fading into the distance.