NO CONTEST by Heather Herrman
A brother’s, a brother’s, a brother. That’s what I always say. Can’t change that. Not even Jerry can change that, although I suspect he might want to now, what with me and everything that happened with the court. Still, when I get a call from him asking to come see me now that I’m out, I’m glad, even if he is only doing it cause he feels guilty about not visiting me before. I tell him he’s my brother, I’d be glad to have him.
We grew up knowing how to respect women. That may not seem like much now, but back then it was. Back then if you slapped a girl on her ass and told her she was pretty, it was considered a compliment. Of course, she had to be a certain type of girl, but still. The point was we didn’t act like that, Jerry and me. We had a sister and a mother, and we never let anyone touch them either. More important, we had a dad, and he would have knocked us into the next country if we even thought of mistreating a woman. We always stuck by each other, our family – my sister Lily, my brother Jerry, and me. We’d fight sometimes, but our mom wouldn’t let that last for long. She’d make us give each other a hug and kiss right away, just to prove we really did love each other.
Lily’s pretty much gone now. We only see her at family reunions. She married a nice guy, I guess, an insurance salesman. They’ve got three kids, and the oldest girl is nearly as pretty as Lily was. Mom and Dad are dead, both from cancer. Mom was fifteen years younger than Dad when they married, and she was beautiful. She used to be a dancer, and when we were little she could kick her leg so high that it would touch the top of a doorframe.
Jerry’s coming up here tonight, driving in from Missouri. He’s got two girls, but I haven’t seen them in a few years. Jerry’s changed a lot from when we were younger. He used to be a railroader like me, lived here in Nebraska. But then he met his wife, and she convinced him to go back to school. Now he’s a phys ed teacher at a high school in Kansas. Coaches football sometimes too. Jerry always did like to be real tough. It’s different now though; people are paying him to act mean. The cut-off tees he wears are for respect, not because he’d worked so hard he pitted out the sleeves.
I sit outside on the trailer steps to wait for them and catch myself picking at the plastic grass that covers my porch steps. The green of it looks ugly against the darker color of the real grass in the yard, but peeling it away just leaves big rust-colored holes of cement. I wanted P.J. to be here, but there’s been some problems lately. Gloria hated me in the end, just enjoyed the railroader’s salary. And now she’s got that girl of hers to turn against me too. Still, I’m P.J.’s father so she can’t keep me away from him entirely.
That fence across the yard needs fixing soon. There’s getting to be a pretty big hole dug out from underneath it, and I don’t need anyone to tell me that that Doberman is the next thing through. The owner says he’s real gentle, but his barking sure doesn’t sound like it. Jerry’s new house wouldn’t have a hole in the fence. I went out there once a few years before the mess and it was nice. Big windows that looked out over a row of green yards behind it and a small fence that kept their collie locked in.
They get in around seven, and I don’t know if I should have dinner waiting for them or not. He’s never very good about calling. They pile out of a small, peach Toyota, and seeing Jerry getting out of it, stretching to stand up tall and straight, makes me laugh. When we were younger we both wanted Corvettes, and Jerry even made Dad loan him the money to buy a beat up Camaro. Dad didn’t have the money, but he found it for Jerry. The Camaro was only a couple years old, but it had been in a pretty bad wreck. It also had an L89 engine, but at the time we didn’t know what that meant. I helped Jerry get her working again though, and sometimes, when he was on a date and needed a chauffeur while he and his girl did their thing in the backseat, I even got to drive it.
“Sorry we’re late,” Jerry says. “Had trouble remembering which one was yours.” Which makes sense; all the trailers around here look pretty much alike. Still, he’s been here before.
Sarah, Jerry’s wife, looks good but tired. She’s wearing this real tight pair of jeans that highlight her ass. Her legs are kind of skinny, but her ass is great. Also, she has a nice smile. I noticed that the first time Jerry brought her home. I help them drag their bags inside, and immediately the girls hit the fridge.
“You got any soda, Uncle Pete?” the littlest one, Katie, asks me. Whenever I visit them, I make sure to stock up their house with soda, lunch meats, junk like that. Sarah never lets them eat that stuff at home, so it’s a treat for them.
“Sure,” I tell her. “Go on and help yourself, and grab your dad and uncle a beer while you’re at it.”
A quiet comes over everybody, and for a minute I think it’s all going to be out on the table. Katie will ask why I had to go to jail, what being a child molester means, but then I remember the phone conversation I had with Jerry a few months back, about him being off the liquor again, and I realize that’s what’s causing the silence. “Think I’ll pass, Pete,” he finally says. “I’ll just take a Coke, Katie.” Sarah’s looking at him real hard, waiting to see if he’ll make the right decision, and I see her shoulders go soft when he answers.
“All right,” I tell him, shrug to show it’s no big deal. “How about you, Sarah, can I interest you in anything bubbly?” Sarah kind of giggles, and I notice again how pretty she is. She met Pete when we were all living here, and I always thought she kind of liked me.
“Oh,” she says, looks over at Jerry like she’s waiting for some kind of approval. He just stares back at her. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll take a cold one; it’s been a long drive.” I hand her one out of the fridge, wiping the wetness of it off on my t-shirt first. I’m glad not to be drinking alone, but it seems like it’d be hard if my wife was drinking something and I couldn’t. Still, it was Jerry’s decision, not hers.
We make spaghetti for supper, Sarah and me. She makes a salad to go with it. I’m sort of embarrassed about all my plastic cooking stuff, beat-up plates and forks with missing prongs, but it’s nice to have a woman in the kitchen. “You’re getting kind of chunky, Pete,” she tells me. But I notice her looking at my arms when she says it. I lift every day, even when I work the late shifts, and my arms are a lot more toned than Jerry’s. “You need to be healthier,” she says. “Quit smoking for one thing.” Sarah’s a dental hygienist, so she’s always harping on about stuff like this. Still, she doesn’t say no when I offer her the pre-dinner cigarette. “I shouldn’t,” she says. But she takes one, and we sit outside on the steps. There’s a nice breeze coming across the porch, and it smells of wheat fields and burnt oil from the train yard. I imagine that it reminds Sarah of the time before they moved, when we spent almost every night after work outside at The Den, drinking quarter draws for Happy Hour. Once Jerry and I even got arrested for starting a bar fight with a guy there who whistled at her. I wonder if she misses those times. I do.
Jerry’s inside with his oldest girl, Erin. Even when he was younger he didn’t smoke. Erin hasn’t said a word to me yet. She’s thirteen, so maybe they told her something. Maybe they even warned her, though I don’t like to think that about them. Still, I know mothers are pretty protective.
When we get back inside, the smoke from the cigarettes has drifted through the screen and the whole place smells like smoke. I don’t mind because usually I smoke inside, I’m just pretending good manners for Sarah’s sake. She doesn’t seem to notice the smell, but just in case I take the strawberry-scented can of aerosol from underneath the sink and give everything a good spray.
Dinner’s pretty good, though I can’t say much for Sarah’s spaghetti sauce. She’s like my ex-wife, Gloria, always having to mess with something simple. Couldn’t just use the sauce from the jar and had to make it worse by doing it herself. But at least she tried, and that’s more than I did with Gloria.
“So,” Jerry says to me. “I see that you’ve got a hole under your fence out there.” I didn’t think he would have seen that by now. I was planning on waiting until we were outside to talk about how to fix it together over a cold beer. But I guess there wouldn’t be any beers for him, and it felt a lot different than when we were younger and I was helping him tinker with the Camaro.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m thinking about trying to fix that tomorrow. Thought maybe you could give me a hand.” Jerry doesn’t say anything. “Of course, if you guys have got something else planned.”
Jerry wipes his mouth, puts his napkin down fast. I notice he’s getting some wrinkles along the sides of his nose. “No, no,” he says. “Whatever you want to do. We’re just here to see you.” His older girl Erin is looking at me like she wants to say something. She’s got these big blue eyes just like Jerry’s, and her mother’s soft mouth. I kind of smile at her to show that it’s okay for her to talk. She doesn’t smile back but puts her eyes to the table and mumbles something.
“What’s that?” I ask her.
“Don’t mumble, Erin,” Sarah tells her. “Open your mouth when you talk.”
Erin raises her head a little bit. “I said I wondered if P.J. would be able to come over sometime while we’re here.” She drops her head again quickly.
I feel a redness creeping into my face. Jerry doesn’t say a thing to stop her, and for a moment we all sit there, quiet. “Sure,” I tell her. “We’ll definitely get P.J. over here. In fact, I was thinking maybe he could come over and help your dad and me with the fence tomorrow.”
Katie cuts in. “That’s boring!” she says. “We don’t want to do that.”
“Don’t be rude, Katie,” Sarah tells her. “You don’t have to help your uncle if you don’t want to.”
“Well, and I bought P.J. and me a whiffle ball and bat last time he was here. Thought maybe we could head down to the duck pond and play some of that later.”
Katie looks happy with this, but Erin meets my eyes with hers, and I wonder how she can seem so old already. “I play softball now,” she says. “On a real team. I’m the third baseman.”
“That’s good,” I tell her. “Real good.” Everyone’s pretty much done with dinner, so Sarah’s taking plates over to the sink. “My friend George plays some softball; he’ll probably be coming over with P.J. tomorrow when he comes.” George is the social worker that has been assigned to “supervise” my visits with P.J.
Erin doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with those eyes. “You’ll like George,” I tell her. “He’s a real nice guy.”
When I go to bed that night, I’m on the couch. I let Sarah and Jerry stay in my room, on the waterbed. Sarah’s put down an air mattress for the girls, and I wonder if she and Jerry will be able to do anything with them in the room. Or maybe they don’t do anything at all anymore, I don’t know. I think about Gloria. About how we bought the bed together when we first got married. Her daughter, Angie, was just a baby then and slept in the crib next to us. She never seemed to mind the noises we made or the cigarettes we smoked afterwards. Angie was a real quiet baby. A good girl, and back then I could touch her sweet little skin without anybody ever thinking a bad thing about it.
I used to know every inch of Gloria’s head, the places where tiny grey hairs were sneaking in, the line around the crown where the hair dye had grown out. I wonder how people can fall out of love so fast, like there wasn’t ever anything between them. It’s chilly outside, so I get up to shut the window. The Doberman barks at the noise of it slamming shut, and I make sure to tell Jerry tomorrow to keep the kids out of the yard if we’re not there, just in case it gets loose.
George shows up around eleven the next morning and P.J.’s with him. George is wearing a collared shirt and khaki shorts, not the sort of thing to play ball in. “Hey, Pete,” he says to me and opens the screen door before I can get to it. “P.J.’s been really excited to see you.”
P.J. follows him in, wearing a Cornhusker sweatshirt that I bought for him last time he was over. He looks anything but excited. “Hey, Dad,” he says, and plunks himself on the couch. He’s getting pretty chubby for a fourteen-year-old, and I wonder if Gloria’s not making him exercise.
Jerry comes out from the bathroom and says hello to everyone. I introduce him to George, and they shake hands, like maybe they’ve known each other before and are friends. “Heard a lot about you,” George tells him, and Jerry smiles like he’s expected this. The girls tumble in from the bedroom, following Sarah. They’ve slept late and are still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Erin’s wearing sports shorts and a tank top. Already she’s got a small chest on her, but she’s not wearing a bra. I notice her looking at George, probably hoping he’ll notice this too. George is good looking and closer to her age, but I think she’s probably too young to be thinking things like this. But girls develop faster than boys, they’re always thinking about how to impress us.
Katie’s hair is a mess of dark curls, and she comes over to the couch right away to say hi to P.J. I doubt she actually remembers him; she was only a baby when they last saw each other. Still, she’s not shy, and she makes P.J. get up and come look at some new toy she’s got, one of those wooden glider planes from the gas station. P.J. pretends to be interested and is real gentle with her. He knows how to respect women, and I’m proud of him.
“So, P.J. tells me we’re gonna play some ball, huh?” George says. He’s got that permanent smile on his face, probably a requirement of the job, but nobody else seems to see through it.
“That’s right,” Sarah says. “But how about a quick lunch before we go? There’s some sandwich stuff in the fridge that I can throw together.”
We eat a fast meal of bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches. Sarah’s insisted on putting lettuce on everybody’s, which kind of destroys the taste. But George acts like they’re the best things he’s ever had, won’t shut up about them. Sarah takes it all in with a smile to beat his, makes him another one when he asks for it.
Jerry and I go outside with P.J. afterwards so I can show him the fence. Erin wants to come too, but Jerry tells her to stay inside. The sky’s clouding up, and everything matches the dull grey of the dirt around the hole. I explain the problem to P.J. “Figured we could probably dig some wire in around here,” I tell P.J. “Put some stones around the base so the dog’ll quit digging.” He barely looks interested, and I see him keep looking back at the house where George is standing in the doorway, watching us. I smile at George, trying to look like I mean it. Four more years of him coming everywhere with me, probably spending more time with P.J. than I’ll ever get to.
“Thought maybe you could help me and your uncle with this sometime tonight or tomorrow,” I tell P.J. He doesn’t say anything. “Well,” I say. “What do you think?”
“Yeah, probably,” he mumbles. “I’ll have to ask Mom about it first though. I think maybe she and Angie wanted to go to the movies tonight or something.” I had taken Angie to her first movie, a comedy about three men trying to raise a little girl. She had liked it when I’d said she looked like the little girl.
“Maybe tomorrow, then,” I say.
“It’ll be good for you,” Jerry tells him. “Get you outside before it gets too hot to do anything. You look like you’re an outdoor type of guy. Got some muscles on you.” Which isn’t true, P.J.’s as meaty as a girl. But he smiles at his uncle, then bends down to take a closer look at the hole.
“Yeah,” he says. “I could probably help you guys with this tomorrow.”
We head out to the duck pond around two, and Sarah stays behind to “tidy up.” The girls, P.J., Jerry, and I all take my Blazer. It’s a 1986 that I’ve had redone, given it a three-inch lift and some Baja lights. I have to help boost the girls into it. Katie’s impressed with the shiny interior, but Erin seems more interested in George than anything else. Jerry should be impressed with it, probably is, but doesn’t say anything. I let Erin pick the radio station though, and this keeps her attention for a while. She and P.J. argue over some band on the radio, and I’m happy that he’s talking to a pretty girl near his age, even if she is his cousin.
When we get there we set up bases using pieces from a cardboard box. There are some other people around, families mostly, but they don’t pay us any attention. Just act like it’s the most natural thing in the world for a middle-aged guy and his son to be out with some twenty-six-year-old man following them around everywhere. But of course they don’t know who he is. George is real quiet about it, kind of keeps to the shadows, but I can always feel him watching me, especially around Erin. The thing is, I can’t quite hate him. He’s a nice guy overall, and I wouldn’t be displeased if P.J. ended up something like him.
“I’m up first,” Katie yells, grabbing the bat from the ground and heading to home plate. P.J. pitches to her, softly at first, but she yells at him. “Pitch it harder,” she says. “Just because I’m a girl, I can still hit it.” And she does. She’s fiery, that one, and already I can see the fine lines of muscle in her legs and flexed upper arms. The strength of her hit surprises us all, but Erin makes a beeline for the ball and with no qualms throws her sister out to me at first. I pretend to drop it.
“Don’t,” Erin says coolly. “Don’t drop it, or she’ll never learn how to play right.” Feeling chastised, I pick the ball back up and tag Katie out.
We play for about an hour. P.J. can’t hit anything, and I’m embarrassed by this. Erin keeps striking him out, and she doesn’t seem ashamed at all. But Jerry’s patient with him, keeps telling him how to adjust his swing, step closer to the batter’s box. And P.J. allows his uncle’s hand to wrap around his own, guide the neon orange bat across the plate. In the end, P.J. gets a hit. It’s only a dribble, but George and Jerry yell like it’s the greatest hit they’ve ever seen this side of the game.
After we’ve all gotten tired of whiffle ball, George takes the kids with him over to the pond to feed the ducks with some stale bread he’s brought with him. Jerry and I are left to watch, uncomfortable in each other’s silence. I don’t want him to bring it up, but he does. He puts his hand on my shoulder first, like we’re about to have a real man-to-man. Tries to look me in the eyes, but I don’t fall for it. “I know you didn’t do it,” he says. “I know Gloria’s had it out for you since the divorce.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I say, and step away from his hand. I resent his words, firm and fatherly, as if it will take him saying it out loud to make it true. “Besides,” I say, “it’s not her I worry about, it’s Angie. I don’t want that girl getting in trouble down the line.” I look away and towards the pond. The ducks are fighting each other trying to get at the bread, creating a sort of whirlwind in the water.
“You were a good dad to her,” Jerry says. I don’t need him to tell me this. “You know,” he continues. “She always reminded me a bit of Lily.” I snort. Only he would force this connection, make her accusations hurt more than they already did.
“She was really pretty, just like Lily.” He won’t let it go.
When we were younger we’d both used a peephole Jerry had carved to watch Lily and her friends undress. But he was right. Lily had been beautiful, like one of those dolls in a magazine.
“And every time I came over,” Jerry went on, “she was playing some sort of dress up. Remember when Sarah and I came over and she and Gloria put on that play for us? What were they pretending to be, Snow White or something?” He must know that I don’t want to remember any of this. And I don’t tell him that it was Beauty and the Beast.
Once Jerry had caught me alone at the peephole looking at Lily when she didn’t have any friends over. I wasn’t really thinking about her as her, just as some other girl or I could never have gotten excited like I did. Jerry must have done the same thing a lot of times, but probably, if he remembered it at all now, he would only remember me doing it.
It was the no contest plea that killed me. But that’s what my lawyer told me to do, so I did it. I could never quite get it out of Gloria what, exactly, Angie had told her I did. Or if she told her anything. Maybe this was all Gloria’s doing. She got jealous easily, even if I just bought Angie some new school clothes. The official story was that I was touching her inappropriately. That I had been doing it for a few years. Since she was twelve. I told everybody I’d take a lie detector test to prove it wasn’t true, but nobody cared. Or at least nobody offered to let me do it.
I wanted to plead not guilty at first, but my lawyer said that wasn’t a good idea. Said that there was no way a female judge was even going to listen to someone like me with priors for assault and battery versus the word of a fifteen-year-old girl and her mom who was a police secretary. I told him her mom was also a lying coke addict, but he said there was no way to prove this. I wasn’t sure of it myself. And I had to think about Angie. If I said I wasn’t guilty that would mean that she was. That she was lying. I never touched that girl. I never would. But I wanted to save her. Keep her from looking like a fool.
My lawyer told me all it meant for me to plead no contest was that I’d serve a couple of months and never have to admit to anything. I only found out the part about supervised visits with P.J. right before the trial. I could’ve changed my plea then, but I didn’t. I wanted to do right by Angie.
I took P.J. aside and told him that it wasn’t true, though. That I didn’t do anything. He knew it anyway. My lawyer said that in the eyes of the court I’d be guilt-free. And I believed him. But it isn’t true. No contest means guilty to everybody else but the person who says it. Katie is racing around the duck pond, throwing whole chunks of bread in the water, laughing in delight when she happens to hit one of the ducks on the head. Erin and P.J. are walking behind, heads bowed and quietly talking. Erin keeps looking ahead towards George, but he never looks back at her. Just turns around sometimes to find me. Check my position; mark me with his eyes, so that I can’t move.
We stop for some video games and carry-out pizza on the way home and get back around dark. Sarah’s got the house so clean it shines, but I feel uncomfortable in it. Still, I tell her how nice it looks. “Real pretty,” I say, and she smiles. Probably Jerry doesn’t compliment her on the housework at home, just expects her to do it. George and P.J. get up to leave right after dinner. “Can I expect you here tomorrow, P.J.?” I ask him. “You going to help your uncle and I with the fence?”
P.J. looks towards George for a confirmation. It’s my day to have him, but he doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to. “Sure thing,” George says. “I’ll have him here by nine.” They leave, but not before Erin’s got George to promise to play ball with her again tomorrow. She’s changed into her pajamas already, and I’d bet anything it’s just so George can get a look.
I’m up early the next morning, put some coffee and bacon on and wait for the smell to wake the others. Sarah’s the first one up, and I enjoy her company, even if she does complain about the meal. “It’s so unhealthy,” she says. We sit outside on the steps and watch the sun come up. The neighborhood’s quiet, so the Doberman must not be outside yet. And for just a moment, while we’re sitting there watching the sky, the sun works itself to the level of the ground and shoots through the hole. Pushes on past like a pressed orange, dripping bits of light all over Sarah and me. She puts her hand on my leg, and we just sit there like that, caught in the sticky light. For the first time in a long time, I feel close to happy.
When we go back in, a little after seven, everyone else is already up. Sarah and the girls make plans to go shopping, and Jerry and I agree to stay behind to wait for P.J. They leave around nine, Erin making us promise to keep George and P.J. here until she gets back. “Sure thing,” I tell her, but I don’t mean it.
By nine-thirty I start to get worried. Not worried that something has happened to P.J., but worried that he’s not going to show. He’s done this before, just not come over, and though I know it’s his right, I don’t think it’s something I deserve. Jerry’s trying to be kind, I can tell. He doesn’t say a word about anything until ten o’clock, even runs down the street to the hardware store to pick up the supplies. But finally he speaks. “I don’t know, Pete,” he says. “I’m not sure that P.J.’s coming. Maybe you should give him a call.” But the last thing I want to do is call over to that house, risk speaking to someone there other than P.J.
“Let’s just drive by and see what’s going on,” I say. “If he’s there then you can run in and get him, and we can drive him over here ourselves.” I climb into the Blazer and Jerry reluctantly follows.
“What about George?” Jerry asks. He looks out the window as he says this, runs his hand through the hair like he’s saying something real casual, maybe talking about the weather.
“We can call George to come over after P.J. gets here,” I say. “You’ll be in the car, so it’s not like I’m going to molest him or anything.” I’m saying it to hurt him, and it does.
Jerry’s face goes red. “Jesus, Pete. That’s not what I meant,” he says. “I mean, I just don’t want you. . . . ”
“It’s alright,” I tell him. “You didn’t mean it.” I start the engine. “Gloria’s place is about ten minutes away, so we’ll just drive by.”
We drive in silence for the first few minutes. “I was going to buy him a car next year,” I tell Jerry. “Maybe one of those new Thunderbirds that just came out.”
Jerry doesn’t say anything. Probably upset he can’t afford one for his kids, but that’s what happens when you take a teaching job and get married. We’re about a block away from Gloria’s, so I slow the car down. “But if he can’t respect me, learn to be places when he’s supposed to, then he’s not getting a car.” Jerry at least nods this time to show that he’s listening.
As we pull closer, I don’t see any cars outside. Which isn’t that big of a surprise; a lot of the times Gloria parks the ’98 Mustang I bought her in the garage. Other times she’ll just leave P.J. and Angie alone there, not worrying about what they’re doing. Once, before the court case, I came over to find Angie and a boyfriend of hers half-naked and stoned on the couch.
I start to wonder if maybe I was judging P.J. too quickly. If something was actually wrong with him, he was sick, or there’d been an emergency. “Shit,” I say under my breath.
I’m really starting to panic now, and when we get right up to the driveway I’m about ready to pull in and knock down the door if I need to, but just as I’m getting out of the car, Jerry grabs my arm. “Over there,” he says, pointing. In the far back corner of the yard, I see Jerry and another kid. They’re hunched over a pile of rocks and some dirt, and I see they’ve got remotes in their hands. Two miniature cars are fighting each other for space as the boys control them over the rocks. I don’t say a word, just speed up and drive on by. Well, that was the only car he was ever going to drive unless he bought his own. I was done.
Jerry’s smiling. “Looked like fun,” he says. “Makes me think about that racetrack Dad bought us for Christmas that year. You always did beat me at it.”
But I’m not listening. P.J. could easily have come over today. He chose not to, and now I was going to let him know that choices had repercussions. “He’s not getting a car now,” I say out loud.
“What?” Jerry seems taken aback, acts like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
“I said, I’m not buying him a car now. He can damn well buy his own if playing with some toy is more important than helping his family.”
“Well now, Pete,” Jerry says. “Maybe you’re being a little hard on him. He’s just a kid.”
“I never acted like that when I was a kid,” I say.
We drive the rest of the way home without talking, Jerry every once in a while clearing his throat like he’s going to say something. Finally, he gets it out. “What about college?” he asks. “Maybe instead of a car you could be saving up some money for him to go to college.”
Which is just what Jerry would think.
“Sarah and I have got some funds set aside for Erin and Katie,” he continues. “I just think it might be a good idea for P.J. to have something to help him out.”
I turn the Blazer onto my street, admiring the tightness of the wheel. “Jesus, Jerry,” I say. “If that boy can’t handle a car, there’s no way he’s going to be ready for college.”
We pull into the driveway, and right away I can tell something is up. Sarah’s running around screaming, and my neighbor’s talking over the fence to her, trying to calm her down. Erin’s huddled on the porch steps, holding her arm to her chest. Jerry sprints from the car. “Sarah,” he yells at her, grabs her around the shoulders, and she falls into him. “What happened?” he asks. Which seems a pretty stupid thing to wonder, considering all the evidence.
I walk over to Erin, sit down beside her. “You all right?” I ask. She sniffles once, and holds out her arm. On the underside is a shallow gash. Two tiny, sad drops of blood leak out. “He bit me,” she says. Though to me it looks more like a scrape from the fence than teeth marks.
Jerry’s up at the gate now, pushing his face into that of my neighbor’s. I don’t pay much attention to what they’re saying, just help Sarah get Erin into the car. But when I go to take Erin’s arm, Sarah pushes my hand away, like maybe I’m the one who bit her.
Katie’s already crawled inside the car, apparently expecting they’re going to have to go somewhere to fix all of this. As they tear off down the drive and towards the hospital, I’m left alone to face my neighbor. I avoid eye contact until I’m almost inside, but then he calls after me. “She was poking him,” he says. And I think there are tears in his eyes, but I turn around before I can make sure.
They call that night to say they’re leaving from the hospital, and I wonder when they had time to pack up their stuff. Jerry makes it clear that he plans on suing the guy, getting his dog put to sleep even though it turns out Erin didn’t get anything more than a band-aid from the hospital. Not a single stitch. I tell him I hope everything’s okay, and that it was sure nice to see him again, tell Sarah and the kids bye for me.
When I get off the phone, I grab my tools and head for the fence. I figure now’s as good a time as any to fix it, even if I have to do it by myself. I assume the dog’s not outside, since I don’t hear barking, but when I bend over and peak through the hole, his eyes glow through the dark to meet mine.
My neighbor’s got him chained to a steel pole that’s stuck deep into the ground. The chain is solid, and it leads to a metal collar around the dog’s neck. The dog doesn’t move an inch, just sits there staring, thick muscles soft and quiet. Even if I don’t fix the hole, that dog is never getting anywhere near this fence again. I think about forgetting it, just leaving the fence how it is. But there’s nothing else for me to do. So I unload my tools and start worrying at the hole, patching it up with the wire I’ve brought outside.
Heather Herrman’s work has appeared in The South Carolina Review, The Snake Nation Review, and Devine Caroline.