Over there Beyond The Fence

By Katrina Johnston

Sometimes Tricia’s sons played super heroes. Kayden, her youngest, pretended the sunglasses were night vision scanners imbued with infrared. Maybe Gavin too, although he was three years older and not overly imaginative or much wiser. Maybe he had tossed their mother’s glasses over the fence and into Gary Sitwell’s yard. Tricia hoped that wasn’t true.

Back inside the living room. She fished inside the crevices of the easy chair, dug inside her purse again. She patted jacket pockets. No glasses beneath the beds or in the bathroom. That left the backyard as a possibility. But she didn’t want to go out there.

The glasses might be a casualty. They could be lying on the porch, or on the paved courtyard where Gavin and Kayden frequently bashed around with plastic hockey sticks and bright orange pucks. Or by the sandbox?

Gary Sitwell, a retired army veteran, was probably out there beyond the fence, lurking, and he’d be surveying her territory as well as his, waiting to talk her ears to numbness.

Kayden and Gavin were off to academics. Kayden was a new recruit for all-day kindergarten and Gavin had marched proudly into grade three. The school bus departed half an hour ago. Tricia might be late for work. It was 8:55 am. Jenny Nickerson was coming over to provide after school supervision late that afternoon. The sunglasses were misplaced – Tricia told herself – that was all. Eventually they would reappear.

She went outside, determined to ignore Sitwell but to continue with her mission of reconnaissance. She decided she would cut off any attempt at conversation if the neighbour threatened verbal eruption. Yes, he was there, leaning against the blue horizon like a gloomy preacher; his head, shoulders and torso visible over the uppermost edging of the fence, a pair of pruning shears in his hand.

She poked around within the netting of the hockey goal, looked near the sandbox, but she did not find her sunglasses. The old curmudgeon watched. He was a retired American army colonel, an avid gardener who grew numerous roses and exotic ferns. Clematis leaves and dead blooms littered the ground below the place where Sitwell trimmed. Much of the detritus had fallen into Tricia’s yard.

Bitter old gasbag, Tricia thought. She knew that if he started talking – Sitwell would take forever to unwind. He wanted to grouse, to brag about the good old days wrought with his personal war-time glories during WWII. 

“Yep we went over,” he would say. “Over there. We fought and won our victories.” He had repeated the litany of this heroism during many previous back yard encounters. Even though she ignored Sitwell, he cleared his throat and coughed: “Those boys of yours…” he said. “Uh huh…. Your boys need disciplinary control.” He snipped and snapped his pruning shears. “In my day, we held honour for our elders.” 

Tricia turned around. “Good morning.”

“In my day….” the man continued. “We respected those who commanded and we showed reverence for maturity,” he said. 

Tricia wanted to melt. She wanted to point out that times were different today, but all she said was: “Well…I guess.” She forced her shoulders to relax. She considered that in the present year, technology had altered or ratcheted up the stakes of reality, and that made the kid raising far more challenging. “Doing the best I can,” she told Sitwell. “I am trying.”

Gavin and Kayden’s father had deserted when Kayden was still in diapers. Now, Kayden is five years old and Gavin is eight. Gavin remains the easier of her challenges. And Kayden? Although he’s younger and significantly shorter, Kayden instigates real mischief. When they’re together, both the boys take Tricia’s ingenuity to steer them into good manners. She walks the tightrope of a single parent.

She wants to allow both boys to be exuberant. She wants them to know freedom – to be self-aware, independent and confident, to holler if need be, to roam about without her becoming a nagging or interfering mother like the dreaded helicopter parent. “Boys need space for big movement and physical release,” she told Sitwell. He appeared to comprehend this statement and he nodded. “I don’t want to monitor them all the time,” Tricia said, “If I don’t have to.”

The boys usually invented their own escapades. They took over the grassy yard and the oblong courtyard which is an area of pavement ideal for riding bikes and slap-shot hockey.

As far as making any noisy commotions outside, Tricia initially encouraged both Gavin and Kayden to express loud voices out-of-doors. Better to yell outside than within four walls. This was copacetic until Sitwell moved in next door. Over the last few months, Tricia has found herself shushing the boys as they play outside as well as indoors. 

“Quiet,” she recalled saying. “You’re screaming way too loudly. Keep it down to a dull and respectable volume.” She cautioned them by using the trendy parenting phrases: “Use indoor voices. Calm down. Stop acting like baboons.” 

“But Mom….” “But Mom?”

“You heard me. Quit hollering.”

Last week, as she watched them in the yard, Kayden, who is not a star athlete, scored a hockey goal against his brother. He shouted in celebration. “Hooray! Boorah! Eat my shorts!” Tricia cheered. She grinned and clapped from the sidelines. She’d been watching from the kitchen window. Kayden performed his happy dance. He brandished his hockey stick like a conquering pirate. He clunked the blade of the stick furiously on the ground, and  then he pounded it against Gavin’s. “I’m number one! I’m the greatest.”

Her elder son had sulked. But Gavin soon recovered. “I’ll get ya next time,” Gavin said. “Ya only got a lucky break away. And you’re a goober anyway. Weird. I really wasn’t actually ready.”

Tricia smiled from behind the steamed-up panes of glass. Boys were supposed to be: Boyseterous. 

Anyhow, Tricia had much more to worry about than her neighbour’s need for quiet or his rigid sensibilities. She planned meals, disregarded headaches, postponed laundry, bought groceries, orchestrated dental appointments, made beds and paid the bills. 

A few months ago, she took the job at Hartley’s Insurance where she records accounts payable. It’s almost full-time. She usually doesn’t get back home until 5:15, so Jenny Nickerson comes along to watch the boys after school.

Sitwell: aka The Grump or The Old Troll, lived alone and was narrow-minded, At least, that’s what Tricia had decided. Always on about his patriotic service or the need for quiet. He might be on the declining side of 70, a white haired curmudgeon with a droopy lower lip and a perpetual scowl. He didn’t like any disturbance whatsoever. He told her he wanted armistice. He wanted peace and order. He probably read nothing but the finest literature, worried about the state of the union and regional politics.

Today, as he dismounted from the low stool he’d employed to reach the rangy clematis vines, he said he had some stuff that belonged to the boys; that several items had been hurled over his fence. “Look,” he said, lobbing the items back: “Here’s four badminton birds.” (They’d entangled in the brambles of the old man’s roses).

Then he pitched a bedraggled stuffed toy frog with a gaping rip down the side. The thing thudded on Tricia’s side without its usual battery-powered, throaty croak. This was followed by a cracked frisbee, six balls of various circumferences, pine cones, horse chestnuts, several plastic hockey pucks, a pail, a sand-box shovel and a small tractor made of Duplo.

When the neighbour tossed the shovel over the fence, he said: “Try to keep this flotsam an jetsam out of my space. I don’t want this junk.”

***

The boys were getting too old for the sandbox, but they still employed it. They sculpted pirate caves and piled up castles whenever they dragged the garden hose over to the box to make the sand cohesive.

When Tricia clocked into work she found her sunglasses behind her desk. Her boss was fretting.“You’ve got to help me out today. I need you to stay on until 7:30.”

“But my kids…” Tricia said. “I don’t have anyone to watch them after 5:30.”

“It’s an emergency,” the boss said.

“I’ll phone and see if my sitter can stay on.”

When Tricia called, Jenny said no. “I’m taking my cousin to her dance recital,” Jenny explained. “Been planning it for months.”

“But I can’t get off work until much later.”

“Your neighbour could watch the boys until you get back. I’ve already asked him to and I told him I have to leave. He’s agreed to keep an ear out for the boys until you get home.”

“Old Grumpy Sitwell?”

“Yeah, Mr. Sitwell.”

“No…. No. Not him.”

“Well, he might be okay in a pinch. Besides…. Gavin is almost old enough and he’s responsible and able to be on his own for a few hours. He’s quite mature.”

“I suppose….”

“So it’s all arranged. I’ll stay until 5:30, but then I’ll go. You know, it will be okay. They can ask Mr. Sitwell if they get into any sort of pickle.”

“I suppose I’ll…”

Jenny disconnected abruptly. Tricia tried to call her again but there was no answer. 

***

After her extended shift, Tricia hurtled homeward. She let herself inside the front door, already hearing the raucous sounds of her kids being kids. When she went through the house and out the back, they were not in the environs of her yard. The yelling came from Sitwell’s. 

Tricia dragged the toy chest near the fence and climbed upon it. She could peek over the hedge from this blind and scope-out Sitwell’s yard.

Gavin and Kayden were there. They were knocking around with a collection of horse chestnuts. A huge pile near one corner. Gavin had a chestnut fastened onto a shoe lace, tied on or glued on, Tricia couldn’t tell for sure. Gavin was swinging like a crazed maniac. Sitwell was there too. Tricia couldn’t believe her eyes. 

Sitwell was playing. There was the old dude – enjoying some sort of game. Sitwell held a chestnut on a string. It was attached together like Gavin’s, but Sitwell was trying to hold steady. The man dangled it in front of Gavin with the weight of the chestnut hanging like a pendulum. Gavin was swinging his weaponry, attempting to clobber Sitwell’s.

“Prepare to surrender to me dude,” Gavin shouted. He whipped his conker mightily at Sitwell’s.

Kayden jumped and whirled and whooped in front of them. He picked up a handful of loose chestnuts from the enormous stockpile and tossed them high into the air. Tricia thought Kayden might be trying to juggle, but he started chucking the nuts with ferocity, whizzing them sideways like he would throw a flat stone at the ocean – skipping each and every stone. “Bombs blasting off, ”Kayden said. “To the trenches. Take that you scuzzy idiot, you old Fritz. ” 

Fritz?

Kayden began to hurl the chestnuts at the fence, pitching faster and harder. Shots bounced off the wooden slats at the far side, producing echoes that sounded like gunfire. Then Kayden whipped them by the fistful. “Automatic rifle.”

“That’s the spirit, ya loyal soldiers, ya got it now,” Sitwell hollered. “Defeat your enemy. No mercy. This is war. And war is….. And war is….  Battle on!”

“I’ll get you now,” Gavin said. He swung his chestnut weapon on a string. “Do ya surrender?”

“This is the way we conquered ’em, way back in the good old times. Conkers. It’s a game but it’s serious. See…. ya swat mine – if ya can manage it that is. If ya break mine, ya conquer me. Keep it coming at me boy! Until ya defeat your enemy.” 

Gavin bunched up his puny fist and he swung again by using all the strength he could put behind it.

“Acchh. A limp offering, a poor barrage,” Sitwell said, and he easily side-stepped Gavin’s conker. “Can you manage better? I expect your best bombardment. C’mon!”

Kayden was a blur. He plucked the biggest chestnut that Tricia had ever seen, a freakishly giant one. He flung it with the speed and trajectory of a bullet. The missile hit Sitwell point-blank in the chest. 

Tricia gasped. She assumed the old guy would probably be very badly winded. Maybe it was worse? His body had immediately jack-knifed forward; his head and shoulders collapsing over his knees. She could see his spine was quaking. He must be in agony. It flashed through her mind that Sitwell was not going to be forgiving. He’d be snarling like a wounded beast. Except he wasn’t making any sound at all.

She almost tumbled from her perch. For a half second she thought about vaulting the fence. She’d have to go. She’d have to offer first aid and hearty apologies. Sitwell would be livid.

Gavin and Kayden froze. They stared at Sitwell.

“You’ve killed him,” Gavin said to Kayden. “Ya shot him in the heart.” 

“Nah…. He’s only stunned, Kayden said. “I didn’t mean… No way. He’d fall. Right. He’d fall over sideways – if he was a goner…. Like, he’d fall over, like…. If he died?”

Tricia bolted. She tore around her property and into Sitwell’s. 

Maybe the old guy had suffered a cardiac episode? Her sons the cause? She arrived in time to see the man as he unfolded himself slowly like a candy wrapper. He stood straight up, laughing. He was roaring with hilarity. His eyes were bright. Tricia realized he looked decades younger.

Boys will be boys.

Gavin fingered the end of his conker. “The enemy is going to advance steadily again,” he said. “Once he recovers for a while. My brother is a sniper.” 

“Bullseye,” Sitwell said to Kayden. “And that’s very well done kid – you’ve got some chutzpah and some great strategy. A good aim. That was a fine and well-placed mark.”

Before Sitwell could continue, Tricia decided it was a time and place, and she must interject: “Who’d like a dish of raspberry cheesecake ice cream?”

“Hey mom! Can we have it outside?” Kayden asked.

“Why not – Gavin said. But then Gavin thought about this for a few seconds. He came over to his mother and looked her in the eye. “I know, Mom, we shouldn’t make so much noise.” 

“Well, I guess we could make some noises if we move our battle onward,” Sitwell explained. War is….hell. I mean war is just not a whisper or a song.”

“Yeah, man, I mean, I guess….” Kayden said. Yeah we could celebrate our victory, toot some horns. Is that okay Mom? We’ve been having such a wonderful war you see. I think we’re winning it. I mean, I think we’ve won haven’t we – Mr. Fritz.”

Tricia clamped her teeth together. 

Her neighbour’s smile had reappeared like a gentle mystery, like it was not forever lost, but only misplaced for a while. Lost for a while and found again.

Katrina Johnston is featured at several online publications. Occasionally she breaks into print. The winner of the CBC-Canada Writes True Winter Tale and a recent Pushcart nominee, Katrina continues writing short and imaginative fiction. She lives in beautiful Victoria, BC, Canada.