The Hedges

Noah didn't know when it happened exactly, but it had happened. He had become a cranky old man, closed and rigidly fixed in his ways. Despite the fact that in his youth he had resolved never to grow up, never to become like the grown ups who lived in his world when he was growing up. The messages penned in his high school yearbook said, “Don't ever change, Noah” and “Peter Pan forever!” So that became his life-long goal. Teaching junior high school helped keep him younger longer than his non-teacher contemporaries who worked at IBM and made millions on Wall Street, though many of the people he met and both his ex-wives said he was just immature. That didn't matter to Noah, who actually managed to be Peter Pan, well into his forties.
And then inevitably, somewhere around fifty his resolve never to grow up dissolved. His hair thinned and what remained turned gray. His 20/20 eyesight slipped to 20/60 and below. His knees clicked when he walked and his back hurt. It made him cranky and he realized he had become like those old people who complained whenever he played stickball on his Brooklyn street and later sped his vintage Mercury with the noisy mufflers down the block. At fifty-fifth, mid bitter divorce proceedings of their very long and unhappy marriage, his ex-wife, the second one, cursed him. “You are a miserable bastard and you should end up like your grandfather, another miserable bastard who died alone – on New Year's Eve!”
After the divorce that took most of his money, all of his pride and broke his spirit, Noah was alone. Lil had taken everything including the two kids, sold the little house he couldn't afford to buy from her and moved in with her divorce attorney who had been sleeping with her long before the divorce was final. His kids from this second failure never called, and they even stopped using his last name, taking the attorney's. “Because,” Lil explained, “it will open doors for them, give them opportunities and access to better schools,” for which Noah had to pay half the tuition. The kids from his first marriage, now grown and living separate lives in other places with their families, called occasionally, but usually when he wasn't home. So they left messages on his answering machine.
In retirement Noah did indeed become a recluse. He had few friends. Those that weren't dead moved to warmer climates. He had no prostate, social life or sex. He opted to stay indoors when it was too hot or too cold, and when he did venture out of doors it was usually to fight with his neighbors playing music he didn't like, always too loud and too long. He peered through his curtained windows monitoring passers by, keeping track of the cars parked on the street and paying close attention to the dog walkers to see if they were scooping poop. He removed his front doorbell and never opened his door to sign political petitions or order Girl Scout cookies. And he always kept his house dark to discourage Trick-or-Treaters. Whenever the neighbor kids on their bicycles used his driveway for a turn around, Noah rolled out the garden hose, even in the winter, and washed down his driveway. Noah had become old man Lotito, Mr. Hell all the kids called him, a tight and nasty man who sat in a wicker rocker on his Brooklyn porch, moving off it only to gather the Spaldeens that landed in his front garden during stickball games. Mean old Mr. Hell kept all of the balls, except for the ones he cut in half with the pocket knife he carried and threw back into the street, ending the marathon games, or delayed them, until someone came up with another ball.
Noah hadn't confiscated any Spaldeens, but that was only because the kids in his development didn't play stickball. They didn't play any ball, except maybe basketball, at the curb with an expensive portable metal pole and basket that his neighbor Ed rolled out close to Noah's driveway in the morning where his kids and their loud friends bounced their balls all day and bunched up in the street. That made it difficult for Noah to pull in and out of his garage, a thing he seemed to need to do with great regularity whenever the kids were there. At night neighbor Ed rolled everything back into his garage and started the whole process the following days. One night he forget to roll it back and the pole and hoop remained in place, rooted to the street like a hulking, ten foot sentinel.
Noah didn't complain. Instead he waited until after the waning days of summer and the onset of fall, he waited for when the days were too short or too cold to play and when the novelty of basketball had worn off and the neighbor kids had turned their attentions elsewhere. That was when he set his alarm clock and acted – in the dead of night. Had anyone seen him at 3:15 in the morning, they might have thought, dressed all in black, he was a moving shadow, or a lost Ninja. Had they waited they might have mistaken him for a solitary figure raising the flag on Iwo Jima, because that was how he looked holding the pole and hoop on his shoulder. But instead of raising it, Noah pushed it down with a shattering crash that bent the hoop and shattered the backboard, and he was back inside his house before the noise had dissipated.
In the morning when the damaged beyond repair apparatus was discovered, Noah was standing there close by his neighbor's side, hands on hips, shaking his head.
“Mighta been some vandals,” Ed said. “Teenagers being destructive. Or maybe a drunk driver. Probably one of Miss Scarlet's boyfriends making his get away in the dead of night.” He nodded toward the house across the street where the recent divorcee seemed intent on making up for the lost time when she was married with a line of “gentlemen callers.” The men, strangers, came and went through her place like she had installed a revolving door. “You hear anything last night?” he asked Noah.
“No,” Noah said rubbing his chin in thought, “not a sound.”
The basketball set was never replaced.
Encouraged by his success, Noah expanded his involvement in neighborhood affairs, focusing attention on the doggie duty detail after he stepped on a fresh turd in the grass strip along the front of his house. At a restaurant supply warehouse he bought industrial sized containers of powered cayenne and course ground black pepper and sprinkled them liberally in the grass. Next he drew a number of skull and crossbones on stiff cardboard that he attached to the plastic “Warning” stakes he'd collected after the landscapers sprayed chemicals on his lawn. He stuck them at intervals in his grass along the curb. It worked so well dog walkers avoided his house completely.
When he saw a woman with a yappy Chihuahua leave a deposit across the street, the dog not the woman, he burst through his front door to confront her. “Pick that up, lady!” he shouted. “Even if your little shit of a dog leaves little shits, you still have to pick them up. It's the law. And I know where you live!” Neither the woman or the dog ever returned.
When his around-the-corner neighbor got a Doberman puppy that barked incessantly day and night, Noah filed complaints with the Code Enforcement Bureau, documenting days, dates and times. And when nothing was done through official channels to address the problem, he called 9-1-1 from his pay as you go cell phone.
“Sir,” the emergency operator asked, “don't you think the police have more important matters to deal with than barking dogs. And don't you have better things to do with your time?”
And when the barking got longer and louder as the dog got bigger, Noah took matters into his own hands. He left anonymous block printed notes on the man's door. Nothing. He bought a dog whistle and blew it whenever the Doberman barked. No results. Until finally he ordered online a Coast Guard approved, compressed-air-powered boat horn that he blasted through his open window in long or short bursts to match the dog's barking. The effects were instantaneous. The Doberman's barks turned into frightened howls and then pitiful yelps before they stopped completely. The trembling dog shook uncontrollably whenever Noah ventured to the back fence and looked in, and peed and pooped if he heard a loud noise. A few times in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep and the development was quiet, Noah stole to the back of his yard and hunched behind the stockade fence among the cicadas. Then he aimed the horn at the back of his neighbor's darkened house and sent a few quick blasts, in the hopes they would generate those same spasms in the owner.
Necessity forced Noah to turn his attention to the lovely Hanna Scarlet who lived directly across the street and was apparently attempting to set a new world record for sex with felons, addicts and motorcycle riders. Noah had no moral qualms about the woman's activities. In fact he was not above stealing a glimpse of her boobs if she walked past her lighted window or sunbathed naked in her yard, even if he had to use binoculars. His issues were with some of her choices in suitors. Some got into drunken brawls. Some revved their Harleys in the middle of the night. And others were barely house broken, leaving a mess of empty beer bottles, cigarette butts and crumpled packs of Marlboros and Kools at the curb. And once Noah even slipped on an unwrapped condom in the middle of his sidewalk. Although they might be practicing safe sex, many of Hanna Scarlet's men were careless with their parking habits. More than once when Noah came out to inspect the boundaries of his little kingdom he discovered that someone had left an unfamiliar car overlapping his driveway and blocking access to his garage.
He solved that problem with a single well written letter addressed to his neighbor. It wasn't a personal letter from from him, but a very official piece of business complete with the seal, letter head and logo from the New York State Department of Health. Noah had downloaded them from the Internet and copied and pasted and printed each on the letter and envelope. Then, for an authentic postmark, Noah sent his sealed letter with postage affixed in a manila envelope to a friend who lived up in Albany with instructions for him to “just drop it off at a post office.”
“Dear Mrs. Scarlet,” it began. Noah used her married title. “The Federal Privacy Acts of 1974 and 1986 prevent the New York State Department of Health from identifying any individual or individuals involved, but you may have been exposed to one or more sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and may be at serious health risk. STDs ranging from Chlamydia to HIV/AIDS are spread by irresponsible, intimate sexual contact with one or more infected partners. The Department makes no moral judgment about your sexual conduct. It is bound by New York State Health laws to require you visit your primary care physician or local health clinic immediately for a thorough examination, a complete battery of tests and treatment if that is necessary. You are also required by those laws and bound by conscience to notify every person with whom you have had sexual contact within the past three years. You must advise them in turn to contact each of their sexual partners, so all may seek diagnosis and any treatment that is warranted. Until you have been properly treated, it is absolutely essential that you refrain from all sexual activities with other people and yourself. Sincerely, Lillith C. Page.” Noah used his ex-wife's new married name. “First Assistant to the Commissioner, New York State Department of Health.”
By the end of the month traffic on his street had thinned and Noah had full access to his garage.
With matters on his own street under control, Noah began to expand the boundaries of his jurisdiction. In good weather he roamed the neighborhood mentally noting the addresses of barking dogs, cars parked over night the wrong way on streets or in driveways obstructing passage on sidewalks and under-aged teenagers without helmets driving unregistered, un-insured, noisy ATVs through Stop signs on public streets. On rainy days he filed the necessary Code Enforcement Bureau forms to correct these breaches of the peace. His rounds became a routine, a mission, a three mile walking tour that got him off the couch, into the fresh air and trimmed some of the adipose tissue that had accumulated around his waist. For Noah it was a win-win!
But it was the privet hedge bordering a corner house just a block from his that next got Noah's attention. Neglected since the previous fall and unattended all sumer, the hedges had become an overgrown tangle of branches, maple saplings, weeds and tendrils of a wild rose vine that proliferated and infringed on the sidewalk. It forced Noah and any other citizen pedestrian to move off the sidewalk and into the street or risk losing an eye.
Noah noted the street and number. When he returned home he decided to address the issue head on and cut out the middle man and save time. From his desk drawer Noah selected one of the Code Enforcement Bureau forms from the stack he kept there. He photocopied the front of the page where details of the matter to be investigated were provided. He did not copy the back of the form that asked for the name, address and telephone number of the complainant. He wasn't going to waste time with a formal complaint that might take months to address the issue of overgrown hedges, if it were ever addressed. Noah filled it out carefully, checked the box for “Obstructed walk” and printed in careful, nondescript block letters in the space provided: “OVERGROWN HEDGES.” Then he rubber-stamped the word “COPY” in red ink on the bottom of the form to lend it an air of authenticity, as well as to obscure the small print that said “Continued on back.” He reproduced the Code Enforcement Bureau logo which he printed in the corner of an official looking business envelope and addressed it to “Property Owners” at number 38. Later that day he dropped it into the mail box at the Post Office.
The following Saturday afternoon while Noah was on his self-appointed rounds, he noted with great pleasure that the overgrown hedges were no more. Someone had hacked them down to size and trimmed them into a low three foot high wall. The top of the hedge was as straight as if it had been done with a level. The sidewalk was unobstructed. Noah smiled to himself and turned the corner. That was when he noted that the quiet block was clogged with cars and the front yard of the newly manicured home was filled with running kids and somber adults.
Noah approached a group of several men in jackets and ties standing together off the stone walk smoking cigarettes in the shade of a large maple. “What's going on?” he asked one of them.
“Are you a friend of Bill's?"
When Noah heard the question he thought he might have stumbled on an AA meeting that allowed kids. “I live up the block,” he said, “in the green house.” He indicated vaguely with his head.
“Then come on in and pay your respects,” the man said. “There's food on the table and drinks in the kitchen. Soda, beer wine.” He flipped his lit cigarette expertly to the curb with a flick of his fingers. It arced in the air like a missile and made sparks when it landed in the street. The man held the door open for Noah. “Fran is in the living room with the women and her boys. All of them are still pretty much in shock.”
“What happened?” Noah asked.
“Bill died,” the man said. “The funeral was this morning. And he was buried in St. Charles.”
“Died? How'd it happen? Accident?” Noah asked stepping into the crowded house.
Family and friends filled the little rooms. The dining room table was laid out with food, covered dishes and desserts. People made way for him to enter. Seated on a worn recliner Noah saw the tearful widow consoled by the women, surrounded by her children, three of them from ten to teenagers. She barely acknowledged him when he entered, but he nodded to the others with a fixed expression of grief on his face. The widow was youngish, in her forties, though a little overweight. Still, Noah thought, even given the circumstances, she was almost pretty and could be better with make up. The youngest boy was leaning on his mother. The other two were behind her pounding on one another.
“Heart attack,” the man said. “Happened just like that.” He snapped his yellowed fingers. “One minute Bill was alive and the next he was dead. Right there on the lawn, right after he'd spent the whole hot, humid day trimming his hedges. He fell down right in front of the Fran and the boys. She called the EMTs, but they were too late. Surprised you didn't hear it in your house.”
Noah let out an audible moan. It turned the heads of everyone who had heard it. He must have been a good friend, they whispered, so deeply affected by the death.
“It isn't right,” Noah said. “It isn't fair.”
The man patted him on his shoulder.
And Noah knew that he would have to make it right, even if it meant he'd have to sell his little house, even if it meant marrying Fran and raising Bill's three boys as his own.

© 2012 Joseph E. Scalia