Front Yard (20 page)

“No.”

“What kind of new life is this if I can't buy six new pairs of shoes a year?”

“It's called the Year of Living Frugally, that's what it's called. Deal with it, Imelda Marcos. And, of course, the children take on college debt big-time. Why the hell couldn't they go to their state universities, like we did?”

“Ah, well, the Lord will provide. As always.”

“Sure, but do you really want to come face-to-face with utter destruction, the way we did last year, before the Almighty decides to come down off His cushy cloud and do something about it?”

Nan decided to ignore George's nagging pessimism, and to resume gazing appreciatively upon her new flowers.

Once Jim's sweep had come up negative, George and Nan ordered three cubic feet of nutrient-loaded soil, which George hauled up from the driveway and dumped into the stump hole. Nan filled the center of the site with pink and white cleome, careful to space them widely since the plants would get much bigger; midnight-purple violets; and yellow Dahlberg daisies, which would brighten and vary the color field, but which probably wouldn't bloom for several weeks, at least. For good measure, she had thrown in the perennials: a couple of peonies, lovely flowers that would last for years and years. And, of course, the volunteer spirea. Three of those.

Around the border, she had planted one of her favorites, alyssum, that hardy, drought-resistant wonder that thrived in direct, hot sun, and exploded into massive clumps of pinkie-sized blossoms. This was also where the Dusty Miller would get its second and final chance to shine.

“Hey, George, let's take a look at the hole they're making next door.”

On the preceding Friday, after George came home from work, he hoisted Nan up to look over the eight-foot slatted-wood privacy fence. There, she saw the backhoe chugging away right in front of her, its bucket shovel ripping up huge chunks of turf, then swiveling to deposit them on a growing mound that was already five feet high. Inside the cab was the operator, a man so intent on his work that he didn't even see her waving. She could see him smoking a cigarette, then flick the still-smoldering butt into the hole.

“That's one daggone big hole,” she said once George let her down. “And it's right next to the fence, then stretches a good twelve feet toward the center of the yard. What in heaven's name are they up to over there?”

“Whoa!” said Nan now as George boosted her up. He secretly wished she would shed a few pounds if this hoisting thing was going to become one of his regular duties. “The hole's a lot bigger and deeper. Hey, there's the operator.”

A man was leaning against the backhoe, munching on a sandwich half-wrapped in wax paper and drinking from a thermos. The man looked up at Nan, and smiled.

“Hey,” he said through a mouthful of sandwich.

“Hey,” said Nan. “Whatcha' workin' on here?” The man gulped down his bite of sandwich, then took a swig from the thermos and wiped his mouth with his shirtsleeve.

“Um, some sort of pond garden,” he said. “You know, a big Oriental-type thing with lots of landscaping and a pool full of exotic fish.”

Nan frowned.

“Why are you digging it right next to the fence?” she asked. “Wouldn't it be better to have it over toward the back of the yard? Putting it here, you won't be able to see it very well from the deck.”

The man shrugged. “Hey, lady, I just do what I'm told, and I was told to dig a big hole right here.”

“Who is it who told you to do that?”

The man finished his sandwich, tossed the wax paper on the ground, and screwed the cap back onto his thermos.

“The guy who bought the house,” he said, putting the thermos into a metal lunchbox and climbing back into the backhoe's cab. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta get back to work. Nice to meet you. Sorry about the noise.”

The backhoe started up with a whine, and soon, the big shovel was clawing away at the subsoil and another cigarette was dangling from the operator's lower lip.

“I don't get why whoever bought the house is making a garden right there next to the fence,” Nan said. “When you look at it, it's hidden around the corner of the house. There's a nice deck on the back of the house. I can tell by the part I can see jutting out. Gosh, I never knew that was there, but then it's not as if the Grunions ever invited us over. Anyway, you wouldn't be able to see this garden from the deck. Strange.”

“Not really. Maybe they want a hidden arbor. And what's to prevent them and their guests from taking a short walk to look at it?”

“I guess,” Nan said. “But I tell you, George, there's something fishy going on over there.”

“Great. Can I put you down now, please?”

23

M
iss Price's blood boiled. Her enzymes roiled. Her nerve ends sparked and sputtered. Right here in the Livia
Lollygag
was the greatest lie and scandal ever perpetrated on Livia. The Scroggit brothers watched her with growing dread as they pretended to sip their Ovaltine.

Staring up at her from the front page of the
Lollygag
was the smiling face of Marvelle Olson. She was accepting a plaque from Livia Historical Society board president Kurt Scheinblum, honoring her as a direct descendent of the first known family to permanently inhabit what is now known as Livia.

Why, it was monstrous! It was calumny! It was Miss Price's family that was the first here. That was a fact. The problem was that it was a fact that could not be established by hard evidence. What she had was woefully circumstantial. There were some anecdotes about a couple and their children who lived on top of the rise overlooking the lake and mile upon mile of rolling prairie. There were a few stray papers that bore no official stamp. Unauthenticated letters and diaries. That was about it.

Marvelle had a stack of documents. Land claim, purchase agreements, records of births and christenings, receipts for crop sales. There could be little doubt about who would get the “Livia's First Family” honor.

“So sorry, Gwendolyn,” said Mr. Scheinblum on rejecting her claim. “But we have to go with hard evidence, not rumor and conjecture. Real, hard evidence is what we need. Barring that, we have to turn you down. I'm sorry. You've been an excellent director for us, and I know how hard you've worked on this. I hope you'll see fit to congratulate Marvelle at our little ceremony and presentation. Actually, as director of the society, it is your duty to be there and make the presentation.”

“I will do no such thing, you old twit!” Miss Price snapped. “This is all a lie! A big lie! And I will have nothing, not one thing, to do with it. So you can take your goddamn first-family plaque and shove it where the sun don't shine! D'ya hear me! And if it won't fit, I'm just the one who can carve you out a big enough hole to make it fit.”

Mr. Scheinblum fainted right there in the society museum. As luck would have it, he collapsed unobstructed onto the thickly carpeted floor, which soon revived him with its pungent odor of dander, dust, and any other detritus that had accumulated over thirty years of never having been washed or cleaned.

Miss Price's resignation as director of the Livia Historical Society was accepted unanimously by the board despite her never having submitted it. She held on to the keys, despite the board's repeated requests that she turn them in. She continued to report to work at the appointed times, and thanks to a clerical oversight, kept getting paid.

But now to be blindsided by this article and the photograph! There she was, that stupid, mummified old Marvelle Olson, playing the Norwegian card to the hilt, inflecting her speech with that idiotic, singsongy cadence that everyone from somewhere else and recent arrivals seemed to find so
authentic.
Well, her family wasn't the first one here by a long shot. It wasn't some bunch of Norwegians that beat her people to the punch.

“Goddamn it!” she shouted. Suddenly realizing that she was wearing a short skirt and sitting in a raised chair, she clamped her legs together and tugged at the hemline. She stared hard at Artis and Nimwell, scouring their faces for signs of any wanton thoughts and glances. Not those two. They were too busy looking stupid to have gotten sidetracked by any carnally motivated sightseeing. It looked like they were pouting, striving halfheartedly to play the part of indignant employees. That was a hard part for them to play, and they couldn't have been less convincing. Frankly, they could have given a hoot about whose family settled Livia first, or whether they were Norwegians, Zulus, or Martians.

Miss Price regarded the Scroggit brothers with barely disguised contempt. Mere boys these were she was sending out to do a man's work. And just look at them, sulkily dreaming away, imagining themselves making love to a musket, no doubt. Miss Price inspected her forearm. Catching a little flap of skin in the tweezer-like grip of her thumb and forefinger, she squeezed hard enough to make herself yelp in pain. Artis and Nimwell looked at each other, baffled.

“Okay, time for work,” Miss Price said. “What is the status of the excavation? Eh?”

Artis cleared his throat.

“We're proceeding as planned,” he said. “The hole is almost dug. In a couple of days we'll be able to push a big auger bit through to the other side of the fence and under the current depth of the stump hole. Once that's done, we can insert a probe that will be able to detect any metal within seven feet of it. If the treasure's there, the probe should be able to locate it. Then, once it's located, comes the tricky part.”

“What tricky part is that, Scroggit?”

“Digging the blasted thing out without the Fremonts being any the wiser for it. We haven't figured out that part yet.”

“Well, how about tunneling?”

“Yes,” Artis said. “We're looking for a retrieval tool we can poke through while we operate it from the excavation. The hole'll be plenty big enough so we can lie down there and maybe even camouflage ourselves with some kind of coverlet stretched over the hole. Then, we use the retrieval tool to grab or latch onto whatever it is we find, and pull it back through the augered tunnel hole. Trouble is, we haven't been able to find such a tool yet.”

“Retrieval tool? Who said anything about a retrieval tool? One of you is going to have to mole through to the other side and do the retrieval himself.”

“What!” cried Artis and Nimwell in unison.

“Dig a hole big enough so one of you—probably you, little Scroggit, since you're the runt of the litter—can crawl through and get the treasure from below.”

“Miss Price, you've got to be kidding!” Artis said, with Nimwell nodding furiously in assent. “We couldn't do that. For one thing, you'd need special tools. For another, you'd have to brace the ground above you to prevent cave-ins and keep from getting smothered. Besides, we're claustrophobic, aren't we, Nim?”

“Yes, yes, claustrophobic,” said Nimwell, shivering from a bout of pretend claustrophobia. Miss Price kicked out her foot and a pointy-toe flat whipped past Nimwell's head.

“Wimps! It's only, what, thirty-five or forty feet to the stump hole. You burrow your way across to the bottom of the hole, then you just lie down and use your hand tools to dig out the chest. Don't you dimwits recall me saying this could be a smaller chest than you think? Easy maybe to slip it back through the hole.”

“What if the Fremonts walk by and see us—I mean, see Nim? They're always mucking around back there. And Dave says they've been spying on us. They know about the hole.”

“Dave?”

“The backhoe operator. He said that Mrs. Fremont has been watching from over the top of the fence.”

“Well, God knows, why shouldn't she? Aren't you making a racket over there? Just make sure Mr. Backhoe sticks to the story. It's our property anyway. We can do what we want over there. Besides, I've put my own Plan A in action.”

Artis and Nimwell listened, unbelieving, as Miss Price told them of her deal with the noted archaeologist Dr. Ferdinand Lick.

“This is my trump card in case you two fail, which I accept as a distinct possibility.”

“Hold on here a minute,” Artis said. “What if this Dr. Lick gets there first? And even if we get there first, does this mean that he gets a cut? Just for the record, our understanding was we were only to share whatever we find with you, not some professor. Somebody here's going to get shafted in this treasure hunt, and somebody's not going to like it.”

“What do I care if someone doesn't like it? I could give a rat's ass whether our Dr. Lick gets screwed. He's got to get past the private property problem first, anyway, so I doubt that will happen. If you get there first, I'll just shrug my shoulders and pretend to know nothing about it. And if he gets there first, that's not my problem. I get a big share of the spoils anyway. You two get nothing.”

“What . . . what . . . ?”

“Spit it out, little Scroggit,” Miss Price barked.

“What if the Fremonts beat all of us to the treasure?”

Miss Price frowned, then drained her cup of Ovaltine.

“Well, then we're all pretty much up the creek without a paddle, aren't we?”

Nimwell raised his head just high enough over the fence to look into the Fremonts' backyard. The noise of the backhoe made it easy enough for him to climb the ladder without fear of being heard. At Artis's urging, he had donned a wig and sunglasses; no point taking any chances of being identified should he be seen. Peering just over the fence, he admired a bed of flowers that looked freshly planted. How lovely! he thought. I must compliment them once all this treasure business is finished.

Now, where was that stump hole? Why, it was nowhere. No stump hole! Was he imagining things? He took off his sunglasses and squinted. No doubt about it, the stump hole was gone. But where was it? Then, it dawned on him. That new flower bed. The Fremonts had filled up the stump hole and planted flowers over it. How could they! Why, that wrecked everything! A part of Nimwell fought against this sense of indignation. It told him to think on the bright side: He now wouldn't have to go crawling through some wormhole, digging away on his hands and knees, and risking arrest for trespassing while his brother scampered off.

The fence suddenly shook. Thinking that the backhoe operator had accidentally swiveled its shovel into the fence, he turned to see that the shovel was nowhere nearby. When he turned back he found himself face-to-face with Nan Fremont. Both of them screamed. Nimwell tumbled back down the ladder, and rolled into the hole, bruising his shoulder and badly twisting an ankle in the process. He tried to get up, but couldn't. He noticed that the backhoe had been turned off, and saw the dark form of his brother looming over him. But what was that awful hissing sound? And that smell! Like rotten eggs! All of a sudden, hands were reaching for him and the backhoe operator was screaming.

“We hit a gas line! Everyone out! Everyone out! It's gonna blow! Gas line break! Gas line break!”

Unable to move Nimwell without further injuring him and risking their own lives as well, the backhoe operator and Artis decided it was better to at least save themselves. They took off, sprinting, toward Payne Avenue.

Nimwell groaned in pain. There was a rumble underneath him, followed by a shaking. Then, he felt like he was getting swallowed up by the earth and vomited out again. He vaulted skyward and somewhat laterally. Giggling uncontrollably, he passed in what seemed like a slow-motion transit over the Fremonts' backyard and house, Sumac Street, and, just barely as his descent began, the tops of the trees that bordered Bluegill Pond. He landed in the lake itself with a sickening
thwack,
deposited flat on his rear end in three feet of water. His landing had been further blunted by a two-foot-long catfish and a foot of soft, mucky lake bottom beneath it. Nimwell lost consciousness on impact. When he regained it, he saw a bunch of yelling, funny beings dressed in red helmets and garish yellow coats running toward him. With his ability to think rationally severely impaired, his head throbbing, and his rear end hurting like crazy, Nimwell began to prepare himself for the worst.

Uh-oh, firefighters, he thought groggily. I must have died and gone to hell. But at least they're trying to put out the fire with this big lake here.

Hearing the warning shouts from next door, George and Nan had untangled themselves from the heap created by Nan's fall. They quickly calculated that all the children and Shirelle were away from home. Then, they ran toward the slope leading to Sumac Street, and threw themselves on the ground halfway down the slope. Seconds later came the explosion. It seemed to rip the sky apart, and shook the earth beneath them. George and Nan continued to hug the ground until they heard the emergency vehicle sirens and saw the fire trucks go by on Sumac, then turn onto Payne.

“Safe to look now?” wondered Nan.

“I think so,” said George. “There doesn't seem to be any fire. As soon as you feel a blast of hot air, though, hightail it toward the lake.” But there was no hot air blast. Unknown to George and Nan, and the rest of the neighborhood, an automatic shutoff valve had staunched the flow of gas to the leak within seconds. There would be no fireball. No one would have to be evacuated.

But there would certainly need to be a cleanup. As George and Nan got up and walked slowly toward the scene of the explosion, they noticed branches down, their trellises ripped in two, with the top halves flopped over and dangling by slender slivers of wood. The climbing roses and clematis had been torn to shreds. There was broken glass everywhere from the house's shattered windows. Two of their bird feeders had disappeared. A third one had been hurled onto the top of the gutter. Ten yards of the fence separating their yard from the Grunions' no longer existed. Its planks were strewn everywhere. One was even lodged in the crown of a white pine back in the woods. Then, suddenly, it wasn't; knocked loose by a gust of wind, it fell from its perch to another resting place, wedged between the branches of a mulberry tree.