Up and down the rows, from the fence to the house, the Scotch Bonnet peppers are dying. The smell permeates the air, making Verdene’s eyes water. She makes her way across the yard with the shovel and picks up a stone to bang on the bars on Miss Gracie’s veranda. There’s no answer. Verdene bangs again, determined. Her tongue coils inside her mouth with an ammunition of choice words. She will tell Miss Gracie to bury the dog her damn self. That she has had it with cleaning up dead animals and bloodstains. She thinks she hears murmuring and steps toward it. Someone is working in the yard, on the other side of the house that leads to an open field of fountain grass. He’s crouched, peacefully uprooting weeds by a post.
“Excuse me,” Verdene says to the young man. He stops what he’s doing at the sound of her voice and turns his head. When he sees her, he straightens himself, squares his shoulders. The muscles of his face tighten, the blood seeming to drain from it when he recognizes her.
“What is it yuh want, miss?” he asks.
He hasn’t let go of the machete that he’s using to cut the weeds. Verdene is taken by the title miss. “Please, call me Verdene.”
The young man stands to his feet. “What yuh doing ovah here?” he asks.
Verdene licks her lips, realizing how dry they are. She knows that there is no way she can count on this young man to offer her a glass of water. She gets straight to the point. “I’m here for Miss Gracie. Is she here?”
“Why yuh want to know?”
“I want her to pick up the dead animal she left in my yard last night and clean up my walkway.”
“Miss Gracie is ah ole ’ooman. An’ from what ah hear, you kill those dogs yuhself.”
“Look here . . .” She pauses. “What’s your name?”
“Charles.”
“Look here, Charles, you don’t know me. You know nothing about me. So don’t you dare tell me what I do and don’t do in my own house. Now please call that old hag out here or else I will smash her windows with this shovel.” She lifts the shovel for effect, though she no longer feels strong enough to deliver on her threat.
“She’s not here.”
“When will she be back?”
He wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his free hand. “I don’t know. I’m jus’ here helping out ’round di yard.”
“Then I’ll wait. I need to get to the bottom of this.”
“Miss Gracie can’t even lift ah grocery bag, much less kill ah dog an’ put inna yuh yard. So gwaan ’bout yuh business.”
Verdene finally recognizes him as the young man she has seen escorting Miss Gracie to church. “Who are your people?” she asks, trying to place him. “I know Miss Gracie doesn’t have a son. And I’m certain that she isn’t deserving of a bodyguard. Why do you waste your time?”
“Why should it mattah to you?”
“It’s you, isn’t it? It’s you who is helping her with this childish prank!”
The young man wrinkles his face. There’s a youthful innocence there buried under the theatrical performance of disgust—the type toddlers display when they discern adults’ disapproval of them eating dirt or sniffing their poop. He’s just a boy, trying to be a man, she thinks. She has the sinking feeling that she has wrongly accused him. Something in his gentle manner gives this away. He’s not at all threatening with the machete in his hand. Suddenly she’s aware of the weight of the shovel hanging from her fingertips, her housedress soaked with perspiration, her wild hair. Surely she has given him more reason to fear her than vice versa. She watches him to see if he hesitates out of fear. A light sheen breaks out on his forehead. Verdene realizes that they have been standing in the blazing sun.
“Miss, ah t’ink yuh bettah leave Miss Gracie alone,” he says finally. “She can’t tek no trouble.”
“Can you help me, then?” Her voice is calm and reasonable, as though she didn’t just accuse him of putting a dead dog in her yard. “I need help cleaning my walkway and burying this dog.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Because it’s the only way I’ll leave. I want this mess out of my yard. I want to live in peace. I want to be treated like a human being. I want—” The tears she had shed earlier are rolling back heavy down to her chin, wetting her collar. The young man relaxes and stoops to lay down his machete. All the frustration Verdene has been holding back comes spewing out in this young man’s presence. She has never done this with Margot—not since the first incident—because she fears it might scare her away. And maybe it already has, since Margot hasn’t been to visit in weeks. Hasn’t even called. The young man raises his hand and rests it on Verdene’s shoulder—a gesture Verdene did not expect or even think she needed. But she does.
“All right,” he says.
Later, she waits up in the dark kitchen for Margot. She doesn’t turn the lights on. Maybe she can catch the perpetrators if they dare step foot inside her yard again. And besides, she likes the dark. It’s cooler, quieter, and more peaceful, the chirpings of crickets like a nocturnal lullaby. The red digits on the small digital clock on the counter, which Verdene sometimes uses as a timer when baking, is blinking 11 PM. It has been like this for the last four weeks. Waiting by the telephone. Pacing. Cooking to help take her mind off things. Setting the table, laying out meals she knows that only she will eat.
Verdene calls the hotel again.
“What you mean, she already left?” she asks the girl who answers. The girl sounds like she has a clothespin clipped on the bridge of her nose.
“Did you even check? The least you can do is check!”