The next summer was a dry one; subsequently, Terry McDermott didn’t have to worry about having another mowing accident--the yard was a burned-up brown by late June, which was okay because he didn’t have much free time as he and Ian were spending most of their time in Nauvoo being missionaries to the Faithful, anyway. Now with the pageant in full performance, they were rarely home. That suited him just fine.
He tried making amends with the Burg girls, even becoming a quasi-St. Louis baseball fan, but their animosity towards him grew worse, now having to hide the bruises and scratches from Ian or lie about what a klutz he had become. And the recurring nightmare, starting the night of the broken tie rod, went like this:
He was on the garden tractor, but it was set on a track over the river, the blades shearing off rivets as it climbed and fell and mowed and sparked. He remembered his skin itching because of the blue wool suit he was wearing, which was very hot, uncomfortable, and strange for summer.
The accident in the dream where he flipped over the mower was a replay of real-life, although the result was not. Instead of tumbling onto the mud, he was trapped underwater, fighting for air, the water-drenched wool dragging him down, panicking.
In his dream, he freed himself, and swam to a small bundle drifting away from shore. It was a baby in a diaper, but the face was his! The infant Terry told him “me think me wee wee” and giggled along with the other high-pitched squeals of laughter.
His night tremors were so strong that they woke his bedmate, then he had to pooh-pooh his thrashing and cold sweat and lie to Ian that he was just having a nightmare of giving a tour down Parley Street, naked.
2
July 4, 2018, wasn’t quite as hot as a firecracker in Dallas City, but at 93° it was close enough to wield such a ragged comparison. When Jack took his coffee out on the pool deck, letting his wife sleep, it was already a cloudless, sultry 82. It will be blistering later, after this morning fog burns off, he thought as he worked a word game, beads of sweat pattering on his iPad screen.
“Eso will be a buena dia en la piscina,” he said slowly, mentally piercing together his broken espanol like he pieced together hand signals for different letters, words and English phrases. He was remembering a lot of palabras (words) now it was just learning the tenses, and that was nearly as frustrating as not being able to enjoy the mourning doves cooing on the power line he was observing this morning while trying to form a decent word out of the game pieces X, two As, R, C, L, I.
Jack followed the wire eastward as he watched in amusement a gray squirrel tightrope-running across it, which led his eyes to the inevitable, the Cumberland backyard.
“What the hell. Is I-Hall out of business?” he muttered in disgust at the scrap and crap made from metal that was piling wider and higher than usual, the fog curling low making it look like the whole fucking mess was smoldering.
He knew from all the alley and foot traffic the past few weeks that Keith’s other business was booming, but still wondered in jest why an astute entrepreneur such as his vecino would let his other venture in capitalism go to hell. He shook his head and played the word NIX for a double word score. His CPU opponent played off the “X” with “EXCEL”. Not to worry, Jack drew a blank tile, and was formulating potential seven-letter words when he noticed movement out of his left peripheral vision, a direction he tried like hell to avoid this fine morning.
“What are they, four and still in diapers? Christ, Deb, buy your kids some clothes,” Jack said in a whisper (he hoped), rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses as Eddie and Emily toddled outside alone, running to a rusted, rickety swingset in the side yard. “Nice move, Bloomberg. Giving up some of your ‘gold’ (making air quotes) so the twins can have some ‘slightly used’ (more air quotes) playground equipment. Very thoughtful of you.”
He strung together the word “RASCALS,” hooking the “S” on CPU’s “EXCEL”. “That they are. That they are,” he said, fairly amused at the coincidence, watching the game counter’s long spin racking up a load of extra points while also half-watching the Cumberland twins descending the wobbly slide laughing, having fun.
Jack finished the game and his coffee and locked the pool gate behind him. The rascals have been known to wander into their yard as stray kittens might, so he always checked, double-checked, and triple-checked the padlock because he knew they might as well sign the Rainbow check over to Keith should Em and Eddie drown in their piscina, even if they were unsupervised. As a matter of fact, the first thing to buy with the money is a privacy fence around the entire place, Jack thought to himself as he returned inside to the cool of the igloo for the rest of the morning.
3
The sun was at its vertex, its glimmering light waves crashing straight down, by the time the Mayhews made it out to the 12,500 gallons of chlorinated agua, even though the water was tepid, tea-bag ready, it seemed to Julia. No matter, they floated and played pool badminton (with no net, points were debatable), and sunbathed (as bacon would in a frying pan) for a couple hours before they retreated back inside for lunch and a nap until the big ball of gas in the sky was on its downside.
Standing at the countertop making sandwiches, Julia compared her tan to the color of a smores-destined marshmallow. “And we’ve only been out for two hours. Be as dark as our Maya amigas by August,” she said, her back towards Jack, so talking to the curtains. (Friends and family members who still relate to the deaf as if they could still hear—pet peeve #3).
“Too hot outside for my taste,” Jack said, unintentionally changing the subject because he didn’t know there was a subject. “And I can’t afford to get skin cancer--epidermis is the only thing holding my skinny old bones together.” He could see from her profile that she enjoyed his joke. “And too floral.”
Julia turned around and signed, what do you mean?
“During the few wafts of breeze the air could muster, I thought I caught a lingering scent that was kind of foul smelling, not exactly pleasant. Did you smell anything funny, Ju, or is it just another case of my enhanced four senses.”
Yeah, a little. Not too bad. Figured it was our compost barrel heating up, making dirt, she signed.
“Oh yeah. A perfect day for making soil, that’s for sure, but I think we better move it a little further away from the deck. It stinks. Anyway it should be an burner of an afternoon. Can’t wait to spend it with you, Ju, cuz I love ya madly,” he winked and was happy.
She either signed, I love you or had the outside speakers blasting head-banging music and was giving him the rockers’ “devil horn” hand signal---hard to tell; either way, Ju seemed muy feliz.
4
Waking up after a half-hour nap, Jack hoped, only half in jest, that now that he was rested, he could power on and stay awake until fireworks time. Hell, a few years ago Fatboy was only half way done with his deejay shift by 9:00. Then the drive home and staying up half the night. Now nine was bedtime. He smiled, stretched and put his swimsuit back on that had dried fast outside. Now at 3 o’clock, it was prime-time as far as summer heat goes, the sun at full pulsation.
The blasts that welcomed them outside like a Tyson one-two were both tactile and olfactory. The heat and humidity and the stench were so prevailing that the sensory overload nearly drove Julia back indoors. Too hot, she signed and pinched her nose, her face scrunched with unpleasantness.
“Muy caliente, for sure,” Jack said, already working up a sweat just hauling the beach bag, glasses of tea, and electronics out to the pool. He hot-footed it across the deck and unfolded the table umbrella for some much-wanted shade and sniffed around. “That ain’t compost, Ju. Holy shit, something stinks,” he said for the neighborhood to hear.
Julia placed her hands in front of her, one up, one down, then flipped each other, the sign for dead.
“You might be right. Or it could be an exploding sewer pipe like the septic deal with the music teacher back when I first moved to town 25 years ago. That occurred on July 4th, as I remember,” Jack replied, dipping his toe in the water.
“El agua est caliente. Maybe I’ll just sit in the shade and swim later,” he said, grabbing his beverage and adjusting the pole to shade them both. “A quarter century? Can’t believe I’ve been in town that long. Feels like me and Dallas City are both slowly being used up. Used to be a nice little town with nice people, but now it seems populated mostly by meth-heads and sanctimonious Trump-brand Christians, and brick buildings on Oak that are falling in on themselves. Care for a warm-water badminton game?”
She shook her head no and pointed over to the meth house next door and rolled her eyes. Debbie, disheveled, was at the back door calling for the kids.
“Well look who’s up,” Jack said, falsely surprised, “and wondering where the twins are, as usual.” He could see her getting a whiff of the pungent air and watched her face turn sour, as if she had just added a squeeze of lime to her drug cooked with battery acid, drain cleaner, lantern fuel, and antifreeze. She returned inside, then came back out with Keith, who looked just as partied-out as she did.
Jack was sick of these losers-next-door and the losers in town whose acidic political and cultural stances were the same as they were when they pulled the handle for Nixon, the well I heards, and the whole weird small-town vibe. “No warm-water badminton game, so I’m going inside,” he fake-pouted to his wife. “Much cooler inside and no loco vecinos.” He swept two fingers on each hand in a rainbow motion, asking Julia if she was ready, too.
5
At least Deputy Putnam made it through the parade this time before having to answer a Fourth of July disturbance call, although the chances were good that he’d miss the pyrotechnics later on. He was retiring in three days, so this would be his last disrupted holiday; appropriately, but not surprisingly, that call would come from the Cumberland house on Cottonwood Street. Now, just around 5:30, he was knocking on the Mayhew door.
“Afternoon Julia, howya doin’?” he asked, solemnly. “Sorry to disturb you. May we come in?” He was standing on the porch with three other officers.
“Sure.” She could tell that he had been crying, he and the others all appeared wan and ruffled when they entered. “What’s up?”
“Are you still running your outdoor video cameras?” he asked in a voice that she strained to hear.
“Yes. Why?”
Julia, always the teckie, had the Mayhew property under surveillance 24/7 since outdoor cameras became available and affordable, with cameras trained on the front, back and side yards. They proved to be needed security features as Dallas City was becoming more crime-ridden each year--Jack said he saw more crazy shit here during the past two years in this little burg than he had in LA in ten. Dallas City seemed to be a microcosm of a country where its citizens are encouraged by the President of the United States to ridicule, disparage, and disrespect anybody different than their holy themselves.
That’s why Putnam was here--Julia had provided the Sheriff Department’s with some late night-footage of a druggie’s armed showdown with cops on 2nd Street a couple month before. The perp, a loco vecino meth-head on the other end of the block, was identified from her video, arrested and charged for firing his pistol aimed towards the police. Now, the deputy hoped Julia could assist them once again.
Putnam’s voice quivered, as he tried to explain the situation. “There’s been a terrible...accident over at the Cumberland residence...do any of your cameras have their yard in frame?”
“Yes, of course, with all the stuff going on over there, you bet. Our pool camera covers the area past the alley and their mess out back and garage. Was kind of waiting to capture it going up in a fiery explosion, ala “Breaking Bad”. She got no reaction.
“Were they in operation earlier this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Can we see the footage?”
“Sure.”
The video from the pool cam showed movement at 8:04 this morning--it was Jack walking outside with his coffee and iPad, making his way up to the deck. Nothing more but the back of his head until 8:27 when Eddie and Emily emerged in diapers and ran over to the swing set. At 8:39, it showed Jack re-entering the house and the twins playing on the slide. At 8:43, they changed to the swings, at 8:53, they raced over to their dad’s junk pile.
At the 8:55 mark, the video showed Eddie climbing into a rusted-out clothes drier, Emily staying outside, trying to make it spin, laughing as she shut the door down on him.
9:02: Eddie freed, imagines a long piece of tin as a sword, and chases his sister with it, seeking revenge.
Julia sat among the cops as she was starting to get a clue; Jack stood behind them, silently watching and feeling queasier as each frame rolled by.
9:07: Eddie and Em jumping on an old bed springs trampoline a customer discarded in the weeds that once was Betz’ yard he mowed.
9:15: Sliding down a sheet of corrugated tin that they propped up against an upside-down water heater whose bottom had rusted out, except that now the bottom was on top, the cylinder standing almost vertically.
9:18: The twins take an interest in the water heater itself. They were close enough to the camera that their lips could be seen moving, but far enough away not to have their little voices captured on tape.
“Play it back, Julia. I think I can speech-read what they’re saying.” Jack said, as he peered close to the screen. After a few rewinds, he was sad to admit that he caught the gist of it:
“Hey, Emmie, you wanna go on a rocket ride”?
“Okay.”
“Climb up here and slide down inside and I’ll follow cuz I’m the pilot.” The rest of the video was still until Jack and Julia came outside at noon.
120Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwdIAvWeCMC
