Nothing Better To Do - a novel in stories - Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

When he first noticed it, the blue car was behind the house next door. It had suddenly appeared there as if it was being hidden from the road. Harry wondered how they had managed to park it there. They would have had to remove a section of fence on the other side of the house, then replace it.

The car remained there for three days, during which Harry occasionally noticed a strange young man in the backyard. But for a thick black moustache, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Snake. On one occasion, he and Snake were in the yard together, using an old paint can for target practice with a crossbow. Silent and deadly, crossbows had always given Harry the shivers. The last thing he needed was for Snake to have access to one of those things.

On the morning of the fourth day, Harry looked out his bedroom window and was surprised to find that the blue car had been moved to the side of the house closest to his. He could see now that it was some sort of sporty model of Chevrolet, a few years old. It was parked nose in, next to the garage, as if to leave room for the other cars of the household to move in and out. It was almost in Harry's side yard.

The kids were in school and Jenny was at work. Harry was home alone. He hadn't been to his P. O. Box for a couple days and he needed some exercise, so he got his bike out of the garage and headed into town. The car was still there when he returned from the Post Office. As he coasted past the house, he could hear the sound of a woman, talking in a loud voice. He imagined an argument. He decided to keep an eye on things.

Later, when he looked out the window to check on it, he found that the car had been turned around and was now facing out as if for a fast getaway. A woman in a red coat with long brown hair was walking away from the car and into the backyard.

Harry made himself a ham sandwich and opened a can of beer to celebrate the acceptance of one of his stories by a small literary magazine. The phone rang. It was an old poet friend, calling from Oregon.

While he was on the phone, loud music started to emanate from the house next door. Harry bet himself that the next time he looked out the window the car and, perhaps, the woman would be gone. But when he hung up, the car was still there.

After talking writing with his friend, Harry felt that he wanted to write something, but it was too noisy to concentrate. He took his horn case down from the shelf in the bedroom closet and began to practice a Mozart rondo for the community band. He was just starting to go through the piece for the fourth time, when there was a loud knocking on the door. If that's the people next door come to complain about my practicing, Harry thought, someone's going to get hurt. He pulled aside the curtains on the picture window next to the front door and peeked out. It was the woman in the red coat. She pounded again and shouted. "Please open up, I need help!"

Harry opened the door and she rushed inside. He closed it behind her and looked her over. He hadn't really seen her before, not enough to take note of the blue of her eyes and the fullness of her lips, the firm body under her open coat. She must have been in her mid-twenties. He waited for her to gather her composure enough to speak. "Please, whatever you do, don't let him in." She was sobbing.

"I'll call 911."

"No, don't! It'll be alright in a few minutes. He'll calm down."

Just then, the music next door got louder.

"Are we talking about your husband?"

"Yes. He's on something right now. I don't want to involve the police."

"Did he see you come over here?"

"I'm not sure. He might have."

"Does your husband have a thick black moustache?"

"Yes."

"...and a crossbow?"

"Yeah, but he'd never use it against anyone."

Harry turned and went for the phone on one of the end tables. He dialed 911.

"911 operator. What's your emergency?"

"This is Harry Kresge, 25 Tecumseh Drive. There's a domestic dispute going on next door at 27. The wife just ran over here for protection. I believe her husband is armed and dangerous. Please send a car over here, right away."

"What kind of weapon does he have?"

"A crossbow."

"You're kidding..."

"No I'm not. And I've got reason to believe he's high on something."

"Okay, I'll send a car."

"I wish you hadn't done that," the woman in the red coat said. She had sat on the sofa.

Suddenly it dawned on Harry. "Are you related to that crazy Snake that lives over there?"

"He's my husband's brother - and crazy is right. Sometimes I think they're both loony. Correct that, they're both loony."

"We're new in the neighborhood. I've been trying to figure out what goes on over there. You wouldn't mind filling me in, would you?"

"I wouldn't know where to begin."

"How about with your mother-in-law?"

The husband must not have seen his wife go to Harry's house, because he never did come to the door. It was a solid ten minutes before the police cruiser arrived. During that time, the woman eagerly gave Harry the low-down on her mother-in-law, with whom she and her husband had just moved in, because the house they were renting had been damaged in the tornado.

The woman was deaf from birth. Snake's father had met her in Germany while serving there in the Army. She could lip-read German, and since he spoke German, they had been able to communicate. They married and he brought her back to the U.S. like any other soldier who married overseas, only with that one additional problem. She went to school and learned American Sign Language, which enabled her to get a job at the local newspaper in her husband's hometown. The newspaper preferred to hire deaf-mute workers to work near the printing presses, because the machinery was so noisy. Workers who weren't bothered by the noise and who could communicate with each other in sign language had a definite advantage.

While working at The Serena Daily Banner, Snake's mother met other deaf people. Over the years she formed a circle of friends who were closely bound together by their uniqueness. She and her husband had four children, Snake being the youngest. Eventually, she grew apart from her husband, who had little in common with her friends. Then she had an affair with one of her co-workers. When her husband found out, he ran off to Cincinnati, leaving her to hold down a job and raise the four children by herself.

As often happens in such situations, the older children raised the younger ones. The oldest was a daughter, who eventually married and moved out. Next was a son, who did the same, married to the woman in the red coat, who was imparting all this information. Audrey was her name. Currently, Snake, age 16 and a sister who was two years older than he, were the only ones left. Snake had essentially been unsupervised for the past two years.

The mother had taken a number of different lovers and the children never knew when she was going to sleep at home or, if she did, with whom she would be sleeping in their own house. Although Cincinnati was only an hour away, the children had little contact with their father. In recent years, Snake had gone to stay with him for two weeks during the summer. Sometimes, the two weeks would be foreshortened by his misbehavior, and the father would put him on the bus and send him back home.

"Where did he get the name, Snake?" Harry asked.

"The family name is Adderholdt. The kids in school picked up on the adder part of it in the fourth grade from some pirate story they were reading. After that no one ever called him by his real name."

"What is his real name?"

"Wolfgang."

With that, Harry spotted a black and gold police cruiser pulling up in front of his house. The door opened and a tall gangly officer in a uniform, which resembled that of a State Trooper stepped out, then reached back into the car and retrieved his trooper-style hat and placed it on his head. As he started for Harry's front door, Harry opened it and greeted him.

"Come on in, officer. This is Audrey Adderholdt, the victim. I'm Harry Kresge, the next door neighbor who called 911."

When Harry spoke his name, the officer's face contorted as if in painful recognition. When he spoke, he spoke only to the woman. "Howdy Ma'am. I'm officer Paige."

Now it was Harry's turn to search his recollection for the familiar sounding name. Then it came to him. Wasn't he the one who had arrested the so-called child molester from Toledo, the one who had given Jenny the speeding ticket? Oy... So he really was back on patrol. Harry wondered if his letter to the editor, although unpublished, had had anything to do with it. From the look on Paige's face when he heard Harry's name, he guessed that it had. Small town... The editor of the paper, no doubt, bowls or fishes, or drinks beer with the Chief of Police.

Harry looked out the window. The noise had stopped and the blue car was gone. "I think he took off."

Audrey managed to convince Officer Paige that the situation was over and that no further action would be necessary. There had been no mention of her husband being high on anything, so Paige was satisfied and left, but not before giving Harry an evil stare that sent chills down his spine. In that instant, there had been an understanding between the two men. They would meet again, and when they did, there would be no witnesses.

Harry watched the cruiser pull away from the curb. "Listen, if you're scared, you're welcome to stay awhile."

"Thanks, but it's over for today. I've been through this with him before. I'll go back over there now. He won't be back until late tonight. My mother-in-law will be home by then."

"Okay, but if you ever need help, just knock."

"Thanks, you're so sweet." She leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was out the door.

Harry watched her cross the lawn and go back into the house next door. He slumped onto the couch and let out a deep sigh. As he waited for his heart to stop pounding, he thought he detected something stirring inside his shorts.