I Don’t Like to Complain by Russell Dupont

I don’t like to complain.

When you live in a neighborhood, side-by-side with other home owners, there’s a little give-and-take that has to go on. On one side of us there’s the Cummings. The Cummings are in their fifties and almost every Sunday they have a little family barbecue, their two sons and their families come over and the kids, they’re still kids, and they make a little noise but Fred Cummings is a good guy and I don’t mind the smoke from his grill because what he’s cooking usually smells good. By seven o’clock, they’re long gone.

Behind us are Al and Millie Cusack. They’re in their seventies and you never see them and the only time you ever hear them is when they pull into the driveway, probably coming back from the doctor’s or something or when Millie is out in the back yard calling for the cat. Their lights go out about eight.

Across the street is Florence who lives alone and goes off each day to work, comes home at night and putters in her garden for an hour or so. Every couple of weeks, she has the kid down the street come and mow. Beside her are the Herdeg brothers, Hank and Edgar.

So, nothing there to really complain about.

It’s Carl. Next door. On the other side from us. Carl Peckham is not a formidable figure. Although he is over six feet tall, he has the build of a fence post with a long-necked finial sitting atop. He has large, splayed feet, arms that reach nearly to his knees, and when he walks, he keeps his arms stiff at his side. He usually wears a New York Yankees’ cap and, for some strange reason, cut-off pants, not really shorts because the legs come down to mid-calf. You know, almost like those pants women used to wear, peddle-pushers they were called.

Anyway, Carl comes out this morning and gets in the truck and by truck I mean one of them Ford Super whatchamacallits that seats about six people and still has the big bed in back. Raptors, I think they call them. So, he gets into the truck and I say to Laura, “Great. Now what?” because when Carl goes out early on a Saturday morning, you can bet he’ll be back with a load of something that will result in all kinds of noise and stuff. And sure enough, he comes back with the whole rear of the truck loaded with planks and 2x4s and 4x4s and plywood. Then, he goes to the shed he has way down back in the yard; the one where he keeps all his power tools; his drills, his sanders, his circular saws, his table saw and who knows what else. And you’d think one shed would be enough but, since he bought the house seven years ago, he’s built two other sheds and this humongous structure, shaped something like a watch tower, on four pilings with a ladder to climb up into it. In addition, Carl has added on to his house more times than I can remember. The one thing I do remember is the noise that went on from dawn to early evening, not only on weekends but sometimes after he got home from work during the week. Laura joked that Carl never picked up a piece of wood that he didn’t want to hammer, sand or saw. I didn’t think it was very funny.

I should say that I am not against home improvement. Laura handles a lot of the outside work, the painting and gutter cleaning and she does a good job with flower gardens planted here and there. We had the roof done recently and replaced the siding out front.

Anyway, I was watching, like I have come to do, from behind the blinds in the bedroom, where I can get a good look at what’s going on. Of course, I would prefer that Carl not know I am there but there have been a couple of close calls when he or his wife Mary Beth suddenly turn and I have to duck out of the way. I’m pretty sure they’ve seen me once or twice from the dirty looks they usually give me.

What he’s getting out of the shed is his big table saw, the one on a frame and wheels, like a handcart, that he rolls up to where he usually does his cutting. He goes back to the shed and carries out one of them big circular saws that you pull down on to cut the wood. “What else could he be building?” I say and Laura says,

“Last week, he was taking all kinds of stuff out of the cellar. Maybe he’s building a room down there.”

I don’t know why he would do something like that but I would not be surprised if that was it. I have told Laura that someday we will come home and there will be a two story [at least] apartment house in his backyard for the girls. I would not put it past him. She thinks I am crazy to put so much time into peeking across the way and after Carl unloads the the wood and drags the plywood over the other side of the house where I cannot see, I go and sit down and turn on the tv.

I would be absurd to stand there all afternoon watching the antics of a crazy guy.

Maybe not crazy but really strange.

Carl, you know about. But I think it is Mary Beth who is behind all this building stuff. Sometimes I hear her and Carl talking on their deck and she is all “I want this” and “That should go over there,” you know, bossing hubby guy around. Mary Beth is no lightweight, though. She’s not as tall as Carl but she has to be pulling 175 pounds, at least. Yeah, she’s all smiles and waves when you see her outside but there’s that look in her eyes. You know she’d step on you if you were down.

Even the kids. The younger one, Brianna, is ok. I mean, she’s kind of slack-jawed and always has a blank look on her face. You try to be a good neighbor and say “Hi,” and she just looks right at you like you’re not even there. The other one, Mikaela, you gotta watch out for. I’m looking out the blinds one day and she’s got her hand through the fence and she’s tryin’ to coax the Cusack’s cat, Spooky, over with a piece of grass she’s twirling. Spooky kind of sidles up, you know, looking to have his ears scratched or something, and all of a sudden Mikaela grabs his collar and tries to pull his head through the fence. I am about to open the window and yell but Spooky twists and turns and rakes his claws right across Mikaela’s wrist. She screams and Spooky is off, thinking, probably, “one down, eight to go.” Sorry. Pardon the joke. Don’t think that I found the whole incident funny.

Later, I am in the Safeway and hear from Mrs. Clougherty, who lives next to the Cusacks, that Mary Beth comes over all huffy and wants Spooky put down and threatens all kinds of stuff if the cat ever comes near her girls again.

The noise just goes on and on. It sounds like Carl is cutting the wood into pieces with a dull blade. He keeps the saw going and you hear the screech of a piece of wood being cut and then, he tosses them onto the stone patio one by one. If tonight is like most other nights when Carl finishes a project, all the small leftover pieces of wood will go into his fire pit and spread the smell of burning treated wood all over the neighborhood.

Saw … saw … saw … clunk, clunk, clunk and I start to get angry the way I always do and I get out of my chair and go into the bathroom. Behind me, Laura rustles the magazine she is reading and I hear her say, “Don’t.”

But my nerves are coming undone and I don’t know how much more I can take of the noise and just as I split the blinds with my fingers, the saw stops. Carl bends down and blows the sawdust off the table, turns and comes over toward the fence that separates our properties. When the Macaleers lived here — they owned the house before Carl and his wife — the trees that are the property line were good enough for the both of us. Sure, their dog would come over every so often but he was a good old mutt and just wanted a pat. When the Peckhams moved in, the very first weekend, Carl began all the sawing and in a couple of days had a fence up, even though they did not have a dog or even kids then.

He takes a tape measure off his belt and fiddles with it but I can’t tell just what he is measuring for. First, it seems to be the distance between the fence and one of the trees and then he runs out the whole tape and measures the distance of the section of fence between two of the trees. I don’t trust the son-of-a bitch and go out on the deck and sit down so that I am facing the fence and his yard. He’s back by the saw but I know that he knows I’m there. I’m sure of it, but he doesn’t even look up.

Mary Beth is on their deck in a lounge chair with a glass of something beside her and she is watching Carl but I can tell, just by the slight movement of her head, that she is glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

Carl, head down, fumbling with the tape again, comes back over to the fence. He does the measurements again.

“Whatcha doin’ Carl?” I say. “Problems?”

“Nope,” he says, “I’m all set, Bert,” and then goes back onto his deck, says something to Mary Beth and they both go into the house. At last, quiet.

“I don’t know what the hell they’re doing out there,” I tell Laura, “but maybe we’ll have a little piece and quiet for a while.”

The Sox are in the fourth inning and I grab a beer from the fridge and settle back in the recliner. Buchholz is pitching and the Sox are pretty much where they have been so far this season; in a hole.

I must have dozed off pretty quick because when I wake up, the bottle is still three quarters full and the game is in the seventh, Sox down 2-6. And the god-damn weed whacker is going full blast.

It’s not a weed whacker like I have, one of those electric Black & Decker things that goes “zip-zip” and you can hardly hear it.

You can already guess what Carl has.

The damn thing is as long as he is. You have to have a belt over your shoulder to be able to hold it and swing it around without spraining your wrist. It has a gas tank on one end and a motor big enough to run a go-cart. I look out again and it’s Mary Beth. She has changed into a long-sleeve sweatshirt, sweat pants and has on a pair of shin guards like catchers wear, along with safety googles and leather gloves. When she revs the damn thing up — and she does, over and over — birds scatter from the trees and blue smoke billows out like from a car that needs a new engine. Up and down she goes, revving it again and again, all along the property line and then along the side of their driveway where there is no fence and it’s so loud that I can’t hear myself think. I could run out and say something or just stand there and stare, but I figure, the hell with it. What good would it do? Still, I’ve had it. I’ve reached the end of my rope, like they say, and that’s what gets me to where I am right now.

Which is crouched in the shadows by my deck.

I can’t tell you how or when I first got the idea; but once it was stuck in my brain, there was no getting rid of it and I never told Laura. I told Laura and she’d have me committed, I bet. These things bother her but they don’t get to her like they get to me.

It’s two in the morning and I’m kneeling here because a half hour ago some asshole peeled down the street with his horn blaring while I’m laying in bed trying to get back to sleep and this idea that got into my head just won’t let me rest. I decide, this is the night. So, I slip out of bed, not wanting to wake Laura, and sneak into the spare room and grab some clothes out of the closet.

And now I’m here. I don’t want to move and take the chance of anyone still up seeing me, even though I am dressed all in black. If I keep real still, I can check things out, listen and watch for any movement.

You gotta be asking yourself, “Is this guy nuts?” But if I were nuts, would I be this careful? I mean, this has been going through my mind, like I said, for a while and I guess all that time a plan has been taking shape without me knowing it.

It takes me time to crawl over to the side of the house and then through the Peckhams’ side gate and I hold my breathe, hoping there’s no squeaks or anything. From there, I make it to the side of their deck and through the lattice surrounding it, I can see the side of the first shed. Now’s the tough part, getting around the deck to the shed, because there’s not much cover and I’m carrying the gas can which is sloshing around loud enough, I think, that you can hear it down the street. I scramble from the front of the deck to over between the shed and the tower and I breathe a little easier because no one can see me here, except if someone in the house on this side of the Peckhams’ decides to come out the back door for a smoke or something.

First, I soak the sides of the shed and the tower and the ground between them. I was going to break one of the small windows and pour gas inside, but I figured, the noise . . . .  anyway, I know Carl has his mower, the snow blower, the gas generator, weed whacker, leaf-blower, chain-saw and other noisemakers in this shed, along with a couple of gas cans. Now, comes the tricky part, with the gas and the matches. I’m not dumb enough that I want to set myself on fire.

There was this one program on the retro channel, somewhere in the 200s on the clicker, MacGyver. He’s a detective and . . . well, to make a long story short, the guy who sets the fire in the story, a real nut-case, takes a cigarette, lights it and sticks it into a pack of matches. When the cigarette burns down, it lights the pack of matches and so forth. So that’s what I do.

I buy a pack of cigarettes at this place down the street, Up in Smoke, but I have to ask for a pack of matches. Myself, I don’t smoke. My father did and I watched him, rest his soul, cough blood all the way to Death’s Door, as they say.

It wasn’t that long, but it felt like I was there an hour before I light that cigarette and then crawl on my belly all the way out of the yard and back to the shadows of my deck; then up the stairs and into the kitchen when I remember I left the gas can behind. What the Hell, I figure, the can will just add, and I laugh at my own joke, fuel to the fire. I don’t turn on the light; just, in the dark, pour myself a scotch and a second one. Then, in the bathroom, take off all the clothes and jam them down into the hamper, get back into my pajamas, brush my teeth and tip-toe upstairs.

“What are you doing?” Laura’s voice is sleepy and a little raspy.

“Just getting a drink. It’s nice and quiet. Go back to sleep.”

That’s what I want to do, too.

Russell Dupont

Image by top pey from Pixabay – hands holding wood onto the whzzing blade of a table saw.