The first woman who came out was on crutches. I was surprised when I saw her because I’d just read a note on her door saying that she wouldn’t be able to come see us if we knocked on the door. It said that she was in the house somewhere and that if we needed her we were to call her at the number she’d written down. She claimed that she was incapacitated. I didn’t like her handwriting and I didn’t like the paper she’d written it on. And I didn’t like the fact that she’d changed pens several times even thought it didn’t look like any of the pens ran out of ink. When I saw her coming around the corner on her crutches I immediately thought that she should have stayed inside. There was no possible reason for her to be out there since the work we were doing didn’t really have anything to do with her. She was the tenant and we’d been hired by her landlord. That was that as far as I was concerned and the boarders of responsibility were clear to me. But she came hobbling over anyway to begin her commentary which was extensive. Right off the bat she began telling us about her medical conditions and the limitations they placed upon her life. To me, it just looked like she was too fat. We were slaving away while she stood there on her crutches with steam coming out of her mouth as she talked. She complained about it being so cold in the morning and I wanted to say that it should be cold in the afternoon and warm in the middle of the night so that she would have less to talk about but I didn’t say it. Then she began telling us about how the neighbor’s yard was not graded properly and that that was the reason for all the water running down and ruining the side of the house she lived in. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t care why the water came down to her house because I already knew why the water was coming down to her house. I felt like she was standing there telling us everything that any non-dead human being would already know. But it wasn’t enough to know what every non-dead human being would know. Evidently, there was considerably more. There was the reason that the gutters were clogged, the reason that there were a lot of mosquitoes in the summer, the reason that she had books piled up against the windows (insulation), the reason she thought it was so exciting to have men digging outside of her house, the reason she didn’t like dogs, the reason birds flew, bugs crawled, salesmen talked, buildings stood, suns shined, etc… I just couldn’t stand having someone there blabbing on and on while I was working away because I wanted to talk back and tell her how stupid she was but knew I couldn’t breath properly while I was digging or carry on a conversation in a proper way. Every shovel full of dirt made me want to womp her on the head. How could she not tell that we weren’t interested in listening to her? Was she that starved for attention? Was that it? Why didn’t I feel sorry for her if that was the case? I certainly didn’t feel sorry for her because I don’t see how I could feel sorry for her if I wanted to whack her on the head with my shovel. Finally, for no real reason, she hobbled back to the front door of her house. She hadn’t been inside for more than a minute before the neighbors came outside. They were the Finklestiens and the first thing Mr. Finklestien said was, “Did you meet the neighbor? She’s unbearable!” I said that we had met the neighbor. Then Mrs Finklestien asked if we were ok with her dogs coming out. I didn’t see how we could refuse since we were in their yard as that was where we had to be in order to work on the side of the house we were working on. She let her dogs out. There were four of them and one of them was very old. The old one barked at us incessantly even though I don’t think it could see us and Mr. and Mrs. Finklestien cooed at him while he barked his ancient balls off. They thought it was cute that their old deaf dog was so excited about barking at us. They stood there laughing while we slaved away with shovels full of dirt and dogs barking at us. And then Mr. Finklestien said, “Do you know that she hired some Mormons to fix that before? She hired Mormons!” I didn’t know what the point was so I said, “Well there are some Mormon contractors over in the valley.” He laughed out loud and pulled out a pipe. “These weren’t contractors! These were Mormons from the church! They didn’t know what the hell they were doing!” He lit up and smoked his pipe for a minute while his wife put the dogs inside. “You know,” he said, “I couldn’t work today because the building I work in had its power go off.” I kept digging and thought to myself, “I’m surrounded. The Finklestiens on one side and that big mouthed lady on the other.” Finally, the old man went inside and when I walked out the gate to get something from my truck I noticed that his name was Harvey Finklestien. Harvey and Sally Finkelstien it said on the mailbox. My truck was parked by the drive way of the big talker and I was hoping that she wouldn’t be over there but when I came around the corner there she was standing over a pile of wood that was in her driveway. It was a pile of ratty looking wood that we’d torn off the side of her house and it was so shitty I wouldn’t have even taken it home to burn. There were also two young girls standing with her who were looking down at the pile of wood. The girls looked very homely and they were dressed in clothes that definitely looked like what girls would wear to church and so I figured they might be Mormons. The woman said, “Hey, Brick! Can I use your big strong man body for just one second to pull these two boards apart?” The girls tittered and I really thought that the woman was about the biggest cornball in the world. “All right.” I said with an annoyed voice. When I got over to the boards I saw that the ones she wanted me to tear apart were the ones we’d used to test our nail guns on. There were about fifty nails holding the two boards together. I thought, “Well I’ll tear these two boards to pieces getting them apart and that’ll teach her.” I smashed into the boards and in about twenty seconds there was one sort of board with a ton of nails left in it and a pile of splinters which was the other board. The two girls clapped their hands and tittered some more and the lady said, “Thanks! That’s my Christmas present!” I just couldn’t imagine what she was going to do with the boards and splinters. I thought she might have been a pack rat but, honestly, I didn’t want to even look into her garage, although it was right in front of me, for fear of showing any interest in the lady’s life. I went back to my truck without lifting my head from its attitude of looking at the ground. I got back over to where we were digging and saw that Mr. Finklestien was back outside with his pipe. He saw me coming around the corner and and said, “You know, she whips those girls way back inside her house.” I sort of did a double take at the whole sky trying to absorb what he’d just said. I tried to keep walking toward my shovel and pretend that I didn’t really grasp what I’d just heard. But then he said, “She takes their clothes off, ties ‘em to a bed post, and whips them into a frenzy! Way back in the house!” I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was he implying that they were lesbian, Mormon, masochists? Did he just really hate his neighbor? I mean, I could see that she was a pain in the ass but was he just making up stories about her? Then he said, “You know, I saw her eat a bird once.” I kept digging and looked over at my business partner who was also digging diligently. Thank goodness for the shovels. If you were digging a hole you were busy and if you were busy you didn’t have to partake. I was dying to say, “So she ate a chicken?” knowing full well that that wasn’t what he was saying. He then just stood there smoking his pipe and I found myself wanting to ask about eating the bird but I couldn’t do it. After about two full minutes Mr. Finklestien said, “She shot a bird out of our birdbath with a BB gun, climbed over the fence, and shoved it into her mouth.” Then he banged his pipe on the birdbath and went back inside his house. I just couldn’t believe it! God all mighty! What kind of people were these? I had been shoveling so hard that I was panting so I leaned up against the house and rested for a minute. Once my breath had settled down, I started to hear some other panting. Then I heard these little screams and snapping sounds. I couldn’t believe it! I pressed my ear against the side of the house and listened carefully. It was incredible! It sounded like girls were being whipped inside the crazy lady’s house. “God damn!” I said. “She’s really whipping them!” My business partner didn’t even raise his head because he was one of those blue collar people who focused on one little thing at a time and nothing else. I looked over at the Finkelstien’s window and saw that Mr. Finklestien was looking out the window at me. He was clearly implying with his hand movements, which were pantomiming a whipping, that I was hearing his story come to life. What do you do in circumstances like that? Mr. Finklestien was apparently laughing at my discovery. He was laughing with such gusto that he would bend over and disappear from the window. One time he bent over and didn’t seem to come up. I didn’t even want to think about it. I started digging again and tried to think about the trench. I was wishing I could be like my business partner and ignore everything except for the trench. But I just couldn’t really do it. I dug for a couple minutes and then heard a window open a few feet away from me. It was a window on the crazy woman’s house. I concentrated on my digging and refused to look up. I heard the sound of a throat clearing and a cough but they were clearly of the sort that were meant to attract attention to an forthcoming speech. I dug down with more force as I bent over the shovel. Another half minute later I hear, “Brick! You’re going to kill yourself! Do you have any olive oil in your truck? I know you might not but you never know.” I just didn’t know what to think. Who carries olive oil around in their truck? She knows I don’t have olive oil in my truck and I know that she knows that I know. What does she want olive oil for? If she was whipping those girls then maybe she needs olive oil for something pornographic. But what the hell am I thinking? All the sudden she started laughing her ass off. She slapped the windowsill and then said, “So has Mr. Finklestien dropped dead on you yet today?” That made me look up at her but just as I did she shut the window. God! What a pair of neighbors! How could these people live next to each other? Were they both nuts? I was thinking that I was glad I didn’t live in the suburbs and that there was probably some connection to television, the quiet on the street, and the unusual behavior when Mrs. Finklestien came running out the door shouting that Harvey had dropped dead on the kitchen floor. She told us to come inside and help but I didn’t know what to do. According to the crazy lady this death was to be expected and since it had happened before, Mr. Finklestien, clearly, wasn’t dying. But Mrs Finklestien was in tears and appeared to be genuinely frightened out of her wits. My business partner didn’t even look up when I dropped my shovel and walked over to the Finklestien’s front door. Mrs Finklestien grabbed my hand and dragged me in the door and over to the kitchen window where I’d seen Mr. Finklestien laughing at me. He was down on the floor in a heap and he really did look kind of dead with his pipe lying next to him and some pipe tobacco spilled out by his foot. I was just leaning down to put my ear next to his nose when he coughed loudly and opened his eyes. “Thank God!” Said Mrs. Finklestien. I jumped back and stood up. Mr. Finklestien said, “God damn it! I was laughing so hard I had a mini stroke!” I felt like I just couldn’t really be standing in the Finklestien’s kitchen hearing what I was hearing and seeing what I was seeing. When I looked around the inside of the Finklestien’s house I saw what I could only describe as the most extensive collection of knick-knacks I’d ever seen. Every square inch of surface area was covered with little statues, candles, photo holders, ash trays, miniature christmas trees, bronze boots, just every useless thing you could imagine. It was the very thing that I couldn’t stand since I myself was a very minimalist person. “I see you’re admiring my collection.” Said Mrs. Finklestien. “I’ve belonged to the Reader’s Digest’s Collectors Club for 28 years.” I looked down at Mr. Finklestien and he nodded his head in agreement to what Mrs. Finklestien was saying. Mr. Finklestien didn’t look any worse for the wear so I turned to make for the door when Mrs. Finklestien grabbed my hand and said she wanted to show me something. She pulled me over to the refrigerator and opened the freezer. She took out a plastic container and put it on the counter, opened it, and took out a book. “This is my most important scrap book .” She said. “I keep it in here but the rest of them I keep in the freezer in the garage so the paper won’t go bad.” She opened the scrap book and flicked through a few pages. “There are two things in this scrap book that make it my most important. Here,” she said as she pointed to a piece of paper behind the plastic, “is my 25 year certificate for belonging to the Readers Digest Collection Club since its beginning.” Mr. Finklestien, who was now standing up, said, “A quarter century.” Then Mrs. Finklestien flipped the pages by so I could sort of see what was in the book. She said, “I actually scrap booked an entire magazine! The whole thing is in here!” Mr. Finklestien nodded his head approvingly as he leaned against the counter. I couldn’t stand it. “Why,” I asked, “didn’t you just keep the magazine if you wanted everything in it?” Mrs. Finklestien suddenly looked at me like I’d slapped her in the face and Mr. Finklestien grabbed me by the shoulder and started pushing me toward the door. “You can just go back to your hole Mr. if that’s the way you going to be!” I was surprise by his strength but didn’t mind being pushed out of their crazy house. But when I found myself outside the door I saw that the crazy woman was standing over by the trench we had been digging. She was looking down into it and animatedly talking to my business partner. I really didn’t want to go over to my shovel but I was clearly unwelcome on the Finklestien’s stoop so I shuffled over. The crazy woman saw me coming and beckoned for me to hurry up. “Get over here Brick!” She cupped her hands together forming a megaphone in front of her mouth, tilted her head to the sky and said, “We’ve got a problem Houston!” When I got over to the trench she pointed down at a pipe that seemed to come out of her house and head over towards the Finklestien’s house. “I’ve been suspecting this for awhile Brick. They’ve been pumping sewer gasses over to my house 24/7 trying to smoke me out so they could pump me full of lead.” I put my face in my hands and thought to myself that I just couldn’t take any more of these people when suddenly the Finklestiens opened fire on us. They had BB guns and they shouted, “You boys get out of the way! She’s the one we want! She’s been told about trespassing!” But the Finklestiens were probably as blind as their old dog or at the least terrible shots because I was being pelted with BBs which felt like bee stings. I ran over behind a bush and then saw a window open next to me. Two barrels stuck out and commenced shooting at the Finklestiens who would slap themselves and shake their fists when they were hit. I couldn’t take it anymore so I jumped over the fence and got in my truck. Right after I started the engine I realized that my truck was being peppered with BBs. Then the crazy woman was knocking on my window and shouting, “Take me with you Brick! I’ll even marry you if you want!” I leaned over and said, “Are you completely fucking insane!” She pressed her face to the window and said, “It’s the Finklestiens who are insane. You saw it with your own eyes!” I shook my head and said “No! You’re all insane!” And then I noticed that she wasn’t using her crutches anymore. “Where are your crutches? You are a giant fake!” Just then the Finklestiens got up to the fence and opened fire nearly point blank on the crazy lady. The two girls were leaning out the window trying to get a bead on the Finklestiens since there was now a bush between them. One of the girls fell out of the window and into the trench that we were digging. She was clearly naked. My business partner didn’t even look at her even though he was only about eight feet away. I just couldn’t believe it. What focus! What blue collar dedication to the task at hand! And he was completely right! None of this was our business at all! We had a job to do. I couldn’t help it though. I was just not a blue collar person try as I might to be one. In fact, the Finklestien–Crazy lady feud convinced me that I was an aristocrat. There was no way around it.
