There's not much to obstruct your view. The town of Oakwood planted maples on the boulevards, between the sidewalk and the curb, to give every homeowner a tree - two, if you had a corner lot as we did - but they'd only put them in a year ago. You could wrap your hand around the trunk, thumb and index finger touching. Someday, long after Sarah and I - and probably our kids, too - are gone from the planet, they may throw a lot of shade, but for now, they're the kind of trees that create little work for neighborhood youngsters looking for raking money. And there are few cars parked on the street, except for the ones in front of Trixie's place, two doors down. She runs an accounting business from home and has clients dropping in. Many of the houses come with double, or even triple, garages, and no one's renting out their basement.
While I waited to see whether Sarah would remember to retrieve her keys, Earl, the guy who lives across from Trixie's, came around the corner in his pickup. He backed into his driveway, got out, opened the garage, and started unloading bags of potting soil from the back of the pickup. When he spotted me leaning against the Camry, I waved, and he nodded back, but not all that invitingly. It had been my intention to stroll over and shoot the breeze, but now I held back. Then Earl looked over his shoulder, I guess to see whether I was still watching him. When he saw that I was, I suddenly felt awkward. So I said, "Hey."
He nodded again, kind of shrugged, and when he didn't turn away, I crossed the street.
"Hey, Zack," he said. Earl wasn't big on conversation. You had to drag it out of him. His head, which he shaved, gleamed with sweat, and his T-shirt was damp. The end of a cigarette was stuck between his lips. Earl was never without a smoke.
I shrugged. "Hey. How's things?"
He waved his hand dismissively. "Keeping busy."
We were both quiet for a moment. I broke the silence with a question of startling brilliance.
"Back from the garden center again?"
Earl smiled. "Oh yeah. Never a day I'm not down there." He paused. "So how goes the writing?"
"Not a bad day." I think Earl had a hard time understanding how I can make a living sitting inside the house all day, not getting my hands dirty. I said, "Walked down to the corner, sent off my property taxes."
Earl looked off in the direction of the mailbox. "How's the house?"
I shook my head. "I've gone through three tubes of caulking on our bedroom window. I don't even bother to put the ladder away. Every time it rains, a little more water gets in."
"You complain?"
"I've phoned the developer. They say they're going to come, nothing happens. I'm gonna drop by the office; maybe appearing in person will make a difference. You hear that thing on the news?"
"What?"
"Guy comes into a variety store, shoots the owner right in the head, right in front of his wife."
"Jesus. Here?" He tossed his butt onto his driveway, reached through the front window of his truck to grab a pack up on the dash.
"No. Downtown. Sarah phoned from work, she'd sent a reporter and a photographer out to cover it, was telling me about it, then I heard it on the radio."
"Jesus," Earl said again. "I'd never live downtown." He stuck a new cigarette into his mouth, lit it, took a long drag, then blew the smoke out through his nose. Earl's history, as he'd explained it to me, involved living out on the East Coast, a bit of time out west. He was divorced, had no children, and seemed an unlikely candidate for the neighborhood, rattling around in a big, new house all by himself. But he'd told me he felt he needed to put some roots down somewhere, and a new subdivision, where a lot of people could use his talents as a landscaper, seemed as good a place as any to make a living. Paul had called on him several times for advice, although "pestered" might be a better word. Earl had been reluctant at first to let my son into his world, but finally, maybe just to get Paul off his back, he'd agreed to give him a few tips, and a couple of times on weekends I'd noticed Earl and Paul shirtless and sweating under a cloudless sky in the far corner of our yard, digging holes and planting small bushes.
"Well, we've been that route," I said. "Living downtown. It was a worry, especially with kids, you know? Teenagers? There's so much they can get into in the city."
"Not that they can't get into trouble out here," Earl said. "You know kids, they'll find trouble wherever they are. Who's that clown?"
Earl had been looking down the opposite side of the street, a couple of houses past Trixie's. It was a guy going door to door. Tall and thin, short gray hair, about fifty I figured, armed with a clipboard. He was too casually dressed, in jeans and hiking boots and a plaid shirt, to be anyone official.
"Beats me," I said. He had drawn a woman to the door, who listened, hanging her head out while she held the door open a foot, while he went through some spiel.
"I'm betting driveway resurfacing," Earl said. "Every other day, some asshole wants to resurface my driveway."
The woman was shaking her head no, and the man took it well, nodding politely. He was moving on to the next house when he saw me and Earl. "Hey," he said, waving.
"Or ducts," Earl said to me. "Maybe he want to clean your ducts."
"I don't have any ducks," I said. "I don't even have chickens."
"You guys got a moment?" the man said, only a couple of yards away now. We shrugged, sure.
"My name's Samuel Spender," he said. "I'm with the Willow Creek Preservation Society."
"Uh-huh," I said. I didn't give my name. Earl didn't give his either.
"I'm trying to collect names for a petition," Spender said. "To protect the creek."