Neighbors

By Mitchell Waldman

First there was Emma Carpenter, across the street. 93 and still living on her own. Until one morning, Anna noticed that she didn’t open her drapes, the sign she had made Emma agree to let us know that she was okay. Two days later she was gone.

And, a year later, there was Ruth Kzinski on the corner. Fit as a fiddle, we thought, always checking her garden every morning until the ambulance showed up one night. We later learned that she’d had a massive heart attack which she didn’t survive. Two neighbors gone just like that. Anna joked that we better going or we’d be next. I laughed then, half-heartily. But, luckily two young couples moved into Emma’s and Ruth’s house. They kept to themselves, and seemed nice enough.

But then there were the Mastertons.

The truth is I used to have patience. I used to have a sense of humor. I used to have hair. Not anymore. Not since these new neighbors moved in and hung his blue, red, and white Mueller for President flag on a pole next to his front door.

At first, we were welcoming of these new people after the luck we’d had with the other two new owners, me and Anna thinking, yeah, this is probably a good thing after our still living neighbors, Rob and Mitzi left. We were not missing their nightly fights, their alcoholic outbursts, or how when we stopped by to say hello one Sunday evening as they sat in lawn chairs in front of their house, the loud be pop music blasting through their kitchen window, they smiled at us, wordless and, apparently, clueless as to who we were even though we’d been neighbors for five years, the two of them lifting their large glasses of vodka and toasting us, saying “Good evening!” then laughing loudly as we walked away, leaving us shaking our own heads, wondering what the hell that was all about.

Yeah, a little change of neighbors might help the neighborhood, we thought.

But, with neighbors it’s always like shooting dice.

In that regard, let me tell ya, we’re not political people. We stay out of all that crap. We’re just normal working, everyday folks. Politics is for the upper classers who want to make it in the stock market, grow their investments, that kind of thing. Those politicos don’t do nothing for the regular guy, they don’t. They’re just rich, trying to make themselves and all their buddies richer. It’s all about the money. That’s it.

So why are these people next door – this guy’s definitely just a working man – he’s got a pickup truck with a couple long ladders on the back – why do they got the damned Mueller flag on their door, flying proudly? That Mueller guy’s a billionaire or something. I don’t get it.

So, like I said, politics is not my thing, and so a guy hangs a flag, fine. Rob and Mitzi used to fly a Jets flag on the pole outside their front door. Okay, no complaints there. And a Mueller flag, fine. If it were just that.

But there’s more.

They have these “parties,” every other week or so, right over our privacy fence, barbecues, pig roasts, whatever, chanting “Mueller, Mueller, Mueller,” hundreds of them it sounds like, pounding down beers out of the keg, served in red plastic cups – okay, okay, I did peek over the fence with a little stepladder when they had the last one, not that I’m one of those crazy nosy neighbors or nothing, but, yeah, I admit it, I was a little curious. (And would they think to invite us, their new neighbors? No. Have they even said hello, after we introduced ourselves with a fruit basket (Anna’s idea, not mine, really. Geez, whattaya think!)

There were a bunch of motorcycles parked on their front lawn that day. And yeah, muscles, headbands and tattoos, lots of them (on the ladder you can see things, okay?)

So, the noise that was part of it. But not all of it.

They used the N word. Like in “Kill the fuckin’ Niggers!” and the K word. “And the Kikes.” And the S word. “Annnnnd, the Spics!” And the chant “THEY WILL NOT REPLACE US!”

So, okay, I admit, I cringed a little then and slipped, fell off my little ladder. (Hit grass, hadn’t cut it in a while so the landing was soft.)

But what do you do in such a situation? I mean, what would you do? You can’t call the cops. It’s not a crime to be racist assholes, unfortunately. First Amendment and all that crap. But Kill them? Really? I mean I don’t know a lot of Jews, but I do work with a couple Latinos and Black guys, down at the factory. They’re good guys, just like everyone else, have taken a lot of shit, a lot more than my white ass down at work with the white boss and all (and throughout their lives, I know, I know).

So, this is the third or fourth of their parties, and I’m peeking over the fence, and this big leather-clad guy with a long scraggly beard and sunglasses sees me, points me out, and says, smiling, red solo cup in hand, shouting, “Looksee what we got here! A spy!”

And suddenly it gets quiet in that backyard and they’re all looking at me. I freeze like a freaking deer in the headlights…you know how they get, that cliché, it’s goddamned true. That deer (and me), frozen, waiting for the Oldsmobile, the Cadillac, the big rig (or gang of racists) to run me down. I was frozen for a second, then I hopped down, thinking, no that’s not me. I’m not gonna end up like that last deer I hit in my Chevy, laid out on the side of the road in the country and looked like fresh hamburger meat, unrecognizable. I was in fight or flight mode, as they say, and I was definitely in the latter mode, dropping the little ladder and heading back to the house, opening the sliding glass door and closing it quickly behind me, then drawing the curtains.

Anna was in the kitchen cooking something on the stove, and gave me with a big questioning look.

“Shhhhhh!” I said, putting my finger to my mouth.

Then, seconds later, came the knock on the door BANG BANG BANG!

I looked at Anna again with the finger still on my lips.

BANG BANG BANG! Again. And behind the knock was that guy with the scraggly looking beard, peeking through the little round window at the top of the front door.

“What’s going on?” Anna asks in a whisper.

I shake my head, don’t move, the deer frozen, again. We can’t really pretend we’re not home because we are home, and…he saw me over the fence. Maybe if we don’t answer he’ll go away.

No such luck.

BANG BANG BANG!

And then in a slurring voice “Open up the door you motherfuckin’ fag spy!”

I’m shaking a little as the banging continues. “Open that motherfuckin’ door, you pussy!”

So, I’m shaking, I admit it, and Anna’s behind me, not knowing what to do, reaching for the phone.

So, what am I gonna do? Let this guy (this psycho, drunk, crazy guy) call me a pussy and just cower behind the door shaking like a little…pussy?

Anna’s got the phone in her hand now and she seems to be talking to someone on the other end, as she grabs for me, but I pull forward, unlock the door and open it.

There’s the bearded, big gutted guy in his leather vest with swastika tattoo on his arm, standing there with his red Solo cup, sloshing beer on my porch, yeah, sloshing it, and I take a breath and say, “Can I help you?” (What the fuck, yes, that’s actually what I said – I know, what a … pussy.)

“You there motherfucker spy ass pussy. There you are!” A smile crept onto his face as he pointed at me with his free hand, moving closer. A bunch of his buddies were behind him on the lawn watching him, some shouting him on, but one calling out “Hey, Luke, give the pissant a break, he’s meaningless, a nuthin’. Don’t worry about him. We got bigger fish to fry.”

Well, I’m not sure I liked being called a “nuthin’,” but given the circumstances. . . .

He moves closer to me, this Luke dude who stands about a foot taller than me, pokes his index finger right in my solar plexus and says, “You a spy for Taupin or what?”

I stand there, trying to withhold the shaking, saying “Taupin, what, no, don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just…”

“We saw you little man, peering over the fence like a fuckin’ spy. We ain’t stupid!” More beer sloshing, but this time on my sneakers.

“And what’s that?” he says, finally, seeing Anna behind me on the phone. “I fuckin’ knew it! She a spy, too? What’re ya, calling Taupin headquarters to get some faggot government guy to come out here and shoot us? Let me tell you, we got you outmanned twenty to one, you don’t got a chance in hell!”

He steps closer. I step back. He puts his size thirteen foot in our doorway so I can’t close the door. He slams his cup down on my floor, beer spraying everywhere, while his gang follows him, three of four of them, some shouting encouragement. The big bearded guy towering over me in the doorway just stands there, his eyes bulging wide, a smile sinister slowly unfolding on his face, and I hold my breath, my heart nearly stopping as reaches for me. But then one of his compadres leaps forward, grabs him by the shoulders, stopping his forward movement, saying “Chill Luke, chill!” but “Luke,” with biceps bulging, shakes him off and the guy falls on the wood floor. Luke, himself goes down next, slipping in the puddle of his yellow beer, and the two of them start to wrestle, while Anna screams behind me, and I don’t know what to do. The three other guys just outside the door are standing there watching their friends tussle on the floor, rolling in the spilled beer, one of the guys laughing, another shaking his head.

Anna and me are still, afraid to move, watching the carnage, hearing the moans and thrashes as these two trespassers tussle on our wood floor, pounding each other in their bellies, arms, and heads, the door wide open for their audience (and all the neighborhood to see). That’s when, thank God, the cop cars show up with their red and blue lights flashing—two of them—pull up, brakes squealing, and the rest of the gruesome gang, seeing them, take off, one blue uniformed officer chasing after them, and another two coming into the house, standing there for a moment just watching these two grotesquely overgrown men wrestling on our wood floor, hurling insults at one another, arms flailing, until one of the cops yells “Knock it the hell off! And the guys stop wrestling, look up, and turn into two big kids who’ve been caught, looking up, smiling sheepishly at the officers and one, Luke’s friend, says “Sorry, Officer, my friend here just got a little carried away about….”

“Shut the hell up,” one officer says, a hand on his hip, the other on the revolver on his belt. “Did I ask you to talk?”

And the other officer, a big dark-haired guy with a little mustache, slickly takes a pair of cuffs off his belt and slips them on Luke’s wrists, before shakily helping him stand up. Then the second officer cuffs the other guy and stands him up, and the officers march the two of them out.

It’s only then that one of the officers, the shorter one, looks over his shoulder at Anna and me, and says, “You guys all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re fine.” I give a little laugh. It’s inappropriate, I guess, but what I do when I’m nervous. Then we watch them bring the guys out to their squad car, and close the door.

I look back at Anna. Now she’s shaking. I put my arms around her, feel her body shivering.

“Are you okay?”

She puts her head against my shoulder, sniffles and says, “So, you think it’s time for us to move?”

I rub her back, lightly, and mutter “Goddamned neighbors.”