Outside the garage, Malina rests her arms on the top rail of the cedar fence surrounding her backyard. The fence offers plenty of privacy, and the gates on either side of the house are secured by a slide-bolt latch. Alternating yellow, white, pink, and red flowers line the yard’s outer limits. The plants are happier here in the backyard, taller than in the front, probably because of the shade thrown by the Petersons’ elm, one of the few left standing on the street. Its branches dip over her fence. No telling what kind of sickness that tree will dump in her yard. Feeling the seam on her right nylon is not quite straight, she yanks it into place, and seeing no one out and about because they’ve all been frightened indoors by news of Elizabeth’s death, she slips through the gate. She’ll start here. It’s definitely the spot those twins would first come upon were they to sneak into Malina’s backyard.
The sweet officer with the smooth blond hair hadn’t helped Malina. After the twin was safely home, Malina had followed Mr. Herze inside and from her front window she watched Julia and Grace argue on the street. When Mr. Herze called down the stairs that he would be bathing and taking a nap before supper, Malina shuffled through her papers until she found the number that the young blond officer gave to her. She telephoned the officer and told him someone had urinated on her flowers. She told him those twin girls living across the street were most probably the culprits. They run amok, trespass on private property, stay out past suppertime. They don’t even belong on this street. They have a perfectly good grandmother living somewhere east of Woodward. Consider what happened to poor Elizabeth Symanski. How much more tragedy could a neighborhood suffer? Could it bear the same happening to two young, innocent children? Couldn’t the officer see to it that those twins went home? But the officer, who wasn’t so sweet over the telephone where Malina couldn’t see his silky blond hair and thin red lips, told her kids would be kids and there wasn’t anything he could or would do.
Cupping the telephone’s mouthpiece to stifle the sound of her voice, Malina went so far as to beg. She wanted to make the officer understand that the gift of those flyers meant Mr. Herze’s interests had festered. And now she’s been told those girls might stay on, might stay on forever. She wanted the officer to understand this was always the way and Malina knew better than Mr. Herze what came next. There have been others for Mr. Herze, mostly women. But like the girl from Willingham, it can be difficult to tell. Could be a girl. Could be a woman. Such a thin line between the two. When it happens, Malina will see it in the twin’s eyes, whichever one Mr. Herze chooses. It will be an expression others might mistake for shock and then sadness and finally resignation. They’ll wonder why the girl’s eyes are suddenly hollowed out and darker than before. All the signs, Malina ignored them. The girls were supposed to go home in a few weeks. Every other year, they stayed only a few weeks. But Malina said nothing of Mr. Herze’s gift to the girls or all the other things she knew. Unless the twins cause you or your property damage, the sweet officer had said, there really is nothing I can or will do.
Because Arie is scared, because Arie is always scared, Izzy has to drag her down the stairs toward the front door. But Izzy is wrong. Arie isn’t scared, she’s worried. Aunt Julia doesn’t usually yell and throw food and say things like a cat is dead when probably it isn’t. Izzy keeps tugging, getting angrier with every stair. They tug back and forth, silently, making twisted-up angry faces at each other, all the way across the entry and out the door. It’s not fair Izzy always has to be the brave one and the strong one and the only one who will fight back. Arie tugs the other way because sometimes it’s best to stop and think and Grandma always says calmer heads prevail. Before Aunt Julia or Mr. Richardson, who both stand inside the kitchen, can notice the girls sneaking from the house, they have run outside, off the porch, and across the lawn.
On Izzy’s way back from Beersdorf’s, she said she tried to put out the stolen tuna, but when she couldn’t get it open, she threw it away and hung up some of the flyers Mr. Herze gave her. As he handed her the stack of flyers and a roll of gray tape, he said she had to keep them a secret, not tell anyone where she got them or he’d be in trouble. He made her promise not to go off on her own to do the searching, but she did. She also taped a bunch of flyers to poles and on the sides of houses and buildings. Now she wanted Arie to go with her so they could take them all down before Aunt Julia found them and Izzy got in trouble all over again.
When they reach the middle of Alder, they stop running and check behind them. No sign of Aunt Julia or Mr. Richardson. Every house on the block is locked up tight. Across the street, Mrs. Herze walks out of her garage and that’s a hammer in her hand. Arie tugs on Izzy’s shirt so she’ll see Mrs. Herze too. Standing between the garage and the side of her house, Mrs. Herze checks both ways like she’s crossing a street, but since there isn’t any traffic, she must be checking for who might catch her doing whatever it is she is doing. Now, instead of tugging back and forth, the girls link up hands and when Mrs. Herze opens the gate and disappears around the back of her house, they follow.
A wooden fence runs around Mrs. Herze’s backyard, but it’s easy enough for the twins to look through the slats and see what’s going on back there. No longer concerned with who might be watching, Mrs. Herze drops the hammer into the grass, tucks her skirt around her knees, and lowers herself to the ground. Picking up the hammer again, she lifts it overhead with both hands and brings it down in the center of a tower of pink blossoms. The petals spray up as the hammer hits the ground with a soft thud. She lifts the hammer again, takes another swing. This time, white petals and green leaves scatter and a sweet smell oozes from the crushed and broken stems. Reaching out as far as she can in both directions along the fence line, Mrs. Herze beats those flowers. For several minutes, she pounds left then right, like two little feet marching through her snapdragons. When she can reach no farther, even by bracing herself with one hand, she sits back and tosses the hammer to her side. It bounces off the gate, rattling the slide bolt.
“You’re going to blame that on us,” Izzy says, “aren’t you?”
Using her forearm, carefully like she’s afraid to touch her face with dirty fingers, Mrs. Herze wipes the hair from her eyes. Her chest pumps and sweat bubbles hang on her upper lip.
“You two have no business in my yard,” she says. “No business at all.”
Arie tucks her chin, sorry that she dragged Izzy over here because now they’re going to get in trouble, and Aunt Julia is going to know they snuck out of the house when they were supposed to be upstairs in their room.
“We think there might be a dead cat around here,” Izzy says, lifting her chin to make up for Arie’s drooping one. “Have you seen it?”
“Yes, that cat is dead and I did see it with my very own eyes. Dead as could be. Now you two can go away, back to that grandmother of yours, and stop running around this neighborhood in search of that godforsaken animal. You stop or you’ll end up just like Elizabeth Symanski.”
“You ruined these flowers and you’re going to blame us.” Izzy pokes Arie in the side so she’ll agree.
Mrs. Herze presses both palms flat on the ground, pushes herself off her knees, and brushes pink and white blossoms from her skirt.
“I’m doing no such thing,” Mrs. Herze says. “I imagine you two will have some explaining to do. I suspect your aunt will be ever so interested to see this mess. And I know she’ll believe me because you two have been nothing but trouble for that woman since you arrived.”