Chapter 12
Binkie, however, was in court, where she seemed to spend more time than she did in her office, so I had to leave an urgent message for her to call me.
Even exercising the patience of Job, I had to wait until suppertime before hearing from her. “Binkie,” I said, “Hazel Marie tells me that those Homes for Teens people are already remodeling the Cochran house. What is going on? Have they responded to your letter?”
“I’ve not heard from them, Miss Julia,” she said. “But nothing has changed. They cannot use that house for their stated purpose, so maybe they’re updating it to put it on the market again.”
A great feeling of relief swept over me at that possibility. “Wouldn’t that be grand? Ask around, Binkie, and see who might be handling the sale. I might be interested.”
“Oh, I don’t think you want to get into the rental business—too many headaches.”
“Why, Binkie, I’m already in the rental business up to my neck. What’s another house or two?”
“Well, but residential rentals are a whole ’nother ball game from commercial rentals. I wouldn’t recommend it for you, but, of course, do as you like.”
Thinking to myself, I certainly will, I urged her to pursue the status of the Cochran house and let me know.
So with that anxiety hanging overhead, I set myself to medicating Ronnie, wondering all the while why in the world I hadn’t left well enough alone. Just by trying to alleviate a suffering animal, I had bound myself to an every-four-hour schedule that would play havoc with my time, to say nothing of my sleep.
I had called Helen with an update on Ronnie’s condition that afternoon, hoping that she might tell me to bring him home so she could administer his medicine through the night. She didn’t. Instead she had eagerly accepted my halfhearted offer to care for him during his medical crisis.
I can’t say I blamed her, except she was the one who’d made the arrangement to care for Thurlow—for which she was being well paid—and as far as I was concerned, caring for Thurlow included caring not only for his house but also for his dog.
When Lloyd came in from school, he was delighted to find that we had a houseguest. Wanting to encourage him in the care and feeding of animals, I let him administer the second application of eardrops around six o’clock. Ronnie tried to respond to the boy—there is a natural affinity between boys and dogs, you know—but his efforts availed him little. He—Ronnie, that is—soon lay back down as lethargic as ever. I waited the four hours for the third application before going to bed.
When Lloyd and I retired for the night, we left Ronnie, full from a rice-and-ground-beef casserole, and properly walked afterward, apparently quite pleased with his temporary room and board. As I turned out the downstairs lights, Ronnie was lying peacefully in the corner of the kitchen, and after Lloyd had petted him for a while, we’d gone upstairs, where I set the clock for the ungodly hour of two a.m.
Even though I was dreading the trek downstairs in a cold house in the middle of the night, Ronnie had foreseen the problem. When the alarm went off at two, I swung my feet out of bed and landed on Ronnie, who’d transferred himself to my bedside. I didn’t know if he’d craved company—mine in particular—or whether he would’ve preferred Lloyd’s. It was an unanswerable question under the circumstances for Lloyd’s door had been closed and mine had not.
Whichever it was, it was a settled fact that Ronnie had grown accustomed to the application of eardrops. When that dog saw me reach for the bottles, he lay right down on his side and held his head still while his eyes rolled up in expectation. And when I massaged the medicine into his ears, a low, luxuriating moan issued from his throat—much as happened with me when Sam gave me a back rub.
When the alarm went off at six for the next application, I decided that I might as well stay up—especially because Ronnie started sniffing around my bedroom as if searching for a spot. I took him downstairs and outside for a walk around the yard—nearly freezing in the process and hoping no early morning runners would notice my bathrobe. That’s the one big problem with having a dog in the house—they have to be let outside on a regular basis. Or, as in Ronnie’s case, put on a leash and taken outside because my yard wasn’t fenced.
Still, there is something quite touching about having a dog make every step you make and rest his head on your feet when you seat yourself. And I must say that with Ronnie in the house at night—even with Lloyd there—there was a double dose of comfort. No burglar would dare try our doors with that huge animal on guard—his size alone would deter the most determined invader.
And it occurred to me then that if Thurlow could be persuaded to let him go, Ronnie would be a sizable deterrent in Hazel Marie’s house if, despite Binkie’s assurances to the contrary, a horde of potential mischief makers moved in next door.
“Miss Julia!”
“What! What is it?” I nearly dropped the phone at the sound of Hazel Marie’s distress call. It was midmorning that Saturday, and Ronnie and I were resting in between eardrop applications.
“J.D. got in early this morning. I couldn’t believe it, because I wasn’t expecting him till later today. But here he came and I wasn’t ready for him.”
“Well, Hazel Marie, he is your husband. What do you need to do to be ready for him?”
“I mean about that house next door. I wanted to plan out how to tell him—you know, to kind of ease into it, so he wouldn’t fly off the handle. But I ended up just telling him straight out as soon as he got in the door, and now you won’t believe what he’s doing.”
Knowing Mr. J. D. Pickens, PI, as I did, I probably would. He had a mind and a will of his own, both of which I had come up against on a few occasions. Recalling some of those, I was almost afraid to ask.
“What’s he doing, Hazel Marie?”
“He’s building, like, a . . . a fence or something. That’s what he says he’s doing, except from what he just had delivered and stacked in our driveway, I think it’s going to be a wall. He’s even got a surveyor out here—and on a Saturday morning, too—to make sure of the line. Miss Julia, he’s got a load of concrete blocks for the posts and a stack of boards almost as high as the garage sitting out there, and he’s got two men mixing cement. I don’t know where we’re going to park, or what the neighbors are going to say, but he’s like a crazy man.”
“Can’t you talk some sense into him? We just need to give Binkie a little more time—”
“He says he’s taking no chances on those little hellions messing with our girls, and, Miss Julia, it’s going to be six feet high or even higher, he’s not sure yet. And, you won’t believe this, but he’s planning to build another fence on Jan Osborne’s side—he’s already talked to her—so the Cochran house will be fenced in on both sides, and he’s talked Mr. Pickerell into letting him extend it across the back. The Cochran house will be practically enclosed, and you know it doesn’t have much of a yard in the first place.”
“Well, as long as he makes sure he’s not building on the Cochran lot, there’s not much they can do about it. And maybe a fence will make them understand how unwelcome they are in the neighborhood. I wouldn’t worry about it, Hazel Marie, you have the nicest yard on the block and a fence can only improve on it.”
“A nice rail fence would be one thing,” she said in resignation, “or even a picket fence, but what he’s planning is more like the Great Wall of China. Of course, I should be thankful that’s all he’s doing, because his first thought was to build a shooting range out there.”
I had a wild urge to laugh, but I refrained. “Just plant a nice row of shrubs or trees, or both, on your side, Hazel Marie, and maybe a flowering vine to cover it. Or what about planting some pyracantha and espaliering it on the fence or the wall or whatever it is. That would be lovely.”
“J.D. says he’s planting kudzu, and you know that stuff will cover anything, including cars. We may wake up one morning and find our house buried in it.”
“Oh, Hazel Marie, surely not. But think of this, it could be trained to cover the Cochran house.” I was teasing, of course, but it was a fact that kudzu had to be carefully watched. It had a way of growing stealthily and getting away from you.
But better a crop of kudzu than what I had feared would be Mr. Pickens’s reaction to his possible new neighbors—and that was that he would sell Sam’s old house and move his family, including Lloyd, to no-telling-where. As far as I was concerned, he could build whatever he wanted—including a concrete wall with barbed wire on top—as long as they stayed right where they were.