Rivendell
How the Neighbor Earned His Nickname
Rebecca RuleWhen strangers bought the Colonial on Hosshead Hill, those who live down below--which is pretty much the whole town since Hosshead represents the height of land--especially those who live at the foot of the hill in the area called the Hoof, referred to him as the Neighbor and to her as Mrs. Neighbor, even though they had different names on the mailbox, so maybe they weren't married at all. Live and let live, that's the attitude in Woodford, pretty much, particularly in the Hoof. Why that is, I couldn't tell you--except maybe living in the lowlands humbles a person. Or maybe it's how the Hoof always seems to get the worst of whatever comes along. Like mud season. Mud season lasts longer and the mud's deeper in the Hoof. Gracious Alstead, retired English teacher, says it's more "viscous." I don't know about that, but step wrong and you'll sink. How far depends on your weight and how long you stand dumbfounded; it's not quicksand but it's damned inconvenient.
About the time the mud dries up, the black flies come out. Black flies aren't any bigger or thirstier in the Hoof, but there's more of them. I know. I've counted. Between Mother's and Father's Day, nobody goes outside without a net, unless they're making a dash for it. And the old ones, the slow ones, the spleeny ones with no blood to spare, they wear nets even then.
As soon as the black flies die down, the mosquitoes get going. Hosstail Marsh breeds particularly large, mean ones. Voracious. (That's a Gracious word for "hungry.") It is a scientific fact. A professor spent two summers collecting in specimens in baggies to come to that startling conclusion.
On the other hand, though our climate favors bugs, it is not particularly kind to the rest of us. Something to do with the shape of the valley and the iron content of the soil draws weather--twisters, microbursts, thunderstorms. The Old Westgate house burned three times from lightning strikes. You'd think they'd take the hint and relocate, but they just keep rebuilding on the char.
Course we dread winter. If the weather man says "Cold snap, ten below," it'll be twenty below here at noon after the sun has kicked in. If downtown Woodford gets two feet of snow, we'll get thirty-four inches.
Between slogging through the mud; fighting off the bugs; waiting out lightning storms in the car; plucking tree limbs out of the roof; pumping deluge out of the cellar; and tunneling out the kitchen door to the snow bank to try and locate the mailbox with an ice-pick, the inhabitants of the Hoof are too busy surviving to worry about other people's business--like how the Neighbor and Mrs. Neighbor pay their bills since neither of them goes out to work. A lot of people live together without benefit of marriage, and nobody gets too worked up about it except the Reverend Mr. Claus Titbaum, and it don't take much to get him worked up, believe me.
On the other hand, over to Vermont everybody's getting married. And there's quite a few Vermont Titbaums none-too-happy about that.
On the other hand, some of us were none-too-happy when the Neighbors posted their land about ten minutes after they moved in: NO TRESPASSING. NO HUNTING. NO FISHING. NO TRAPPING. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PICKING A BERRY. On the other hand, the Neighbor was none-too-happy about what happened to his chickens. It wasn't malicious or intentional; it was, however, inevitable.
I don't know what he thought he was doing when he erected that flimsy wire pen--three feet high, no top, and not even dug down in the ground. An owl could have swooped in and picked off those little peckers one at a time for a midnight snack. A fisher cat could have climbed in easy. A fox would jump in, jump out with a mouthful of poultry before that poultry could even blink. Same with a coyote, only a bigger mouthful. A skunk, on the other hand, would be inclined to tunnel under and start in on the eggs; whereas as a weasel would go straight for the heads. And it wouldn't take a coon more than a minute to finger open that paperclip latch and saunter in through the gate.
But in the end, it didn't turn out to be any of the above that did in the Neighbor's doomed chickens. Unfortunately for Randy Hickey, it was his dog, Mutt.
At first Randy denied Mutt's involvement vigorously. Mutt was home all night of the night in question, sleeping under the porch. An old dog, arthritic, a great waddling scruff of a barrel-chested St. Bernard Newfoundland cross with a smidge of Bassett in the legs, Mutt hardly ever left the yard.
"Look at him," Randy Hickey said to Chief Harold and Officer Fred when they showed up at his double-wide investigating. "Does that look like a dog who'd ford the brook in high water, run a mile uphill through the woods, and massacre a dozen chickens in the dead of night?"
Mutt lay splayed like a rug on the kitchenette floor. He was under house arrest, pending. "What have you got to say for yourself, Mutt?" Officer Fred asked. Mutt raised his head, regarded the investigating officers with hopeful, cataract-blue eyes, and thumped his big old tail.
"Mutt was seen," the Chief said somberly. "He was seen at the scene of the crime."
"Mutt was said to have been seen," Randy Hickey said. "But that don't mean he was seen. How could the Neighbor see a black dog in the dark on a moonless night?"
"Flashlight?" the Chief suggested.
Officer Fred bent low and raised Mutt's chin so they could look each other in the eye. "Did you go on a rampage?"
Mutt rolled over for a belly rub.
He and Randy maintained innocence right up until Chief Harold shined a light under the porch and Officer Fred raked out a pile of feathers, feet, bits and pieces of carcass which, reassembled, did look something like a dead chicken or two.
"It'll cost you five hundred dollars, Randy," Chief Harold said. "You pay for the Neighbor's chickens, and Mutt can walk away from this incident with impunity."
"Impunity my ass. Where am I going to get five hundred dollars? What the hell kind of chickens were they?"
"Exotic," Chief Harold said.
"Silkies," Officer Fred said. "And Frizzles."
To prepare for his meeting with the Neighbor to discuss the situation, Randy practiced looking sad and sorry in the shaving mirror as he scraped away stubble. He wasn't sad and sorry. He was POed. It wasn't Mutt's fault the Neighbor didn't know enough to build a decent pen. It's in a dog's nature to eat a chicken if the opportunity flaunts itself, just as it's in a man's nature to resent having to pay five hundred dollars for another man's Silkies and Frizzles. Silkies and Frizzles my ass, Randy thought, probably garden variety pullets.
Continued...
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