Good Neighbors(64)

“Bet you could use a change of scenery.”

Peter nodded.

Dark had settled over Maple Street. You could see movement through the open, lit-up windows of half the houses. There weren’t any night sounds, though. No crickets or cicadas or hooting birds. It made their own voices carry that much farther.

“I wanted to tell you about my therapy mirrors,” Peter whispered.

“Yeah?”

“When I use them, I don’t hurt,” Peter whispered. “I mean, it’s agony if I don’t do my hour or two. Every day. But it’s getting better. Every year, it’s a little better.”

“Sure.”

Peter held Arlo’s eyes. “People around here don’t know about my mirrors. They don’t come over. They think we’re weird. We stayed too long. I’m grown. Not a little kid. We don’t fit in. But Rhea Schroeder’s nosy. She got my mom to give her a tour. You see what I mean?”

“She’s nosy,” Arlo said. “She’s a lotta things.”

“But I wasn’t home yesterday. I was at the VA for my checkup. So were my parents. When we got back, we saw FJ Schroeder and Adam Harrison running out from around our backyard. The Harrison kid was crying.”

“Yeah?”

“And when I got inside, all my mirrors were broken.”

Arlo felt his scalp tighten, because yeah, now he did see the point of this conversation.

“Maybe I’m crazy,” Peter said, looking around, still whispering. “I have a hard time, knowing what’s real and what’s not.”

“You seem to be doing okay.”

“But somebody wrote a word across the shards. I didn’t tell my parents. They don’t need this. The word? It was snitch.”

“Shit. I’m sorry you got mixed up in this,” Arlo said.

Peter kept talking, not hearing Arlo at all. “I used to have to clean latrines once in a blue moon—that’s just the deal, it wasn’t a punishment. I was a good soldier. I got a Purple Heart and I deserved it. But I had to clean latrines. You see?”

Arlo waited, still crouched, his thighs burning. Peter kept looking with intensity, like Arlo should have guessed by now.

“The word. Snitch. I’d know. It was written in shit.”

Arlo lost his balance and fell back.

“But maybe I’m crazy. Because people don’t do that on Maple Street. It’s not like Iraq.”

“You’re not crazy,” Arlo said.

Peter sighed out with great relief. “They threw bricks at your house and one of them hit your wife.”

“They threw them.”

“They did it because they blame you for the Schroeder girl falling into the sinkhole. They think she was running away from you because you’d raped her, even though I saw you come home that night. I saw Shelly come out that morning. It never happened. It wasn’t possible. If she was running from anyone, it was her mother. But the neighbors believed her story and they think you raped all the kids on the block, don’t they?”

“Aw, God. I guess they do think that.”

“And then they broke into my house because I defended you. They broke my mirrors and smeared their shit. That’s what happened.”

“Yes,” Arlo said. Even with his hindbrain clawing with old desire, Peter made the junk seem like a nonoption. Like suicide. “You’re not crazy, Peter. You’re sharp. But you’re on too much junk.”

Peter winced. It was the first thing Arlo said that the kid had actually heard. Then he smiled, and it was clear to Arlo that he still wasn’t sure this conversation was happening. Wasn’t sure of anything. “Yeah. I know.” Then he lifted the case from his lap. “So here. Take it.”

Ass on ground, Arlo took the case. Something heavy. “I don’t like these,” he said once he looked inside.

“It’s loaded,” Peter said. “Only use it if you have to. Because they really are. After you.”

Arlo closed the case. Peter didn’t say good-bye. He wheeled around and rolled fast for his parents, who were waiting in front of the service van to load up his chair.

It was eight at night. Still as an echo chamber.

Arlo stood to follow. To hand it back. But something prevented him. Mostly, it was awkwardness—did Peter’s aged parents really need to worry about all this? Didn’t Arlo owe the kid something, if only his silence?

The safety of his children, who were back inside that house, prevented him. The neighbors prevented him, too. Because he noticed, then, that all of them were watching. The Pontis and Hestias and Singhs-Kaurs. The Harrisons and Walshes, too. Rhea Schroeder was standing in the middle of her dark dining room, under the misapprehension that he would not see her if she stood very, very still.

What stopped him was snitch, smeared in shit.





Friday, July 30


Arlo would have carried Gertie over the threshold of 116 Maple Street, but the kids were buzzing around, so nervous and excited to have her back home that he was afraid they’d get underfoot and topple him. So he wrapped his arm around her and they walked in together, arm in arm.

Her temporary bed was the ground-floor couch. She’d been ordered by the doctor to stay in it, feet propped, until her next checkup, when they could be sure the swelling was gone. No stairs. It was still morning and the mercury would take hours to reach its summit. Right now, it was ninety-six degrees.