Invisible Fences (8 page)

The bedrooms were on the shorter leg of the L-shaped house. The window of my old room looked out on an alley of grass and a line of trees that insulated us from the neighbors on that side. The footsteps, if they were footsteps, seemed to skirt the rim of the house in the direction of the back yard.  

I edged out of the room. On my way to the kitchen, turning on lights as I went, I stopped to open the only item I brought with me: a tiny plastic briefcase I’d dropped just inside the front door. I retrieved the main flashlight element from the LightDriver kit and headed to the back of the house. 

Sliding open the glass kitchen door, I stepped onto the raised deck. It wasn’t my father’s best job of woodworking: instead of removing the previous deck, he’d nailed fresh boards onto the old ones. The kitchen light cast my shadow in front of me; it stretched over the boards in an uneven accordion pattern. As I walked to the edge of the deck, a few of the boards seemed to roll beneath my feet.  

The night was quiet. From the raised vantage of the deck, I squinted over the yard. Five of my father’s prototype dog houses formed two rows in the back half of the property. They looked like monuments: grave markers for pets he’d never owned.  

The smell of sawdust overpowered the scent of grass and tree bark. I turned on the flashlight and aimed its beam. Dark triangles wavered in the grass behind each pointed roof; carved door-less openings swallowed the light, the small interiors deep in shadow. 

Five stairs led to the ground, and I made sure to grip the banister as I stepped down.  

I swept the flashlight over the lawn. One large poplar tree loomed over a tool shed on the left side. Both of the shed’s doors were open, with a riding lawn mower spanned across the entrance. Behind the mower, boxes of junk and newspaper were stacked too tightly in the shed to afford any hiding places for mischievous children.  

I aimed the beam of light at my feet. Just listened. 

Nothing. 

I lifted the light towards the house, brushing a faint glow from the garage end to the living room. I moved to the corner window. 

As I pressed my face near the glass, I recalled my mother’s voice:
I don’t want people looking in here.
The curtains were open, but a shoulder-high stack of boxes partly obscured my view beneath the raised shade. Storage bins and papers covered Mom’s couch. I moved my head and a ripple in the glass shifted the room, like a dry wind had swept over the abandoned papers. 

I opened my palm and slapped it flat against one square of the window. The sound echoed slightly. Was it the same sound I’d heard earlier when the frame of the house had settled—or when a young trespasser had tried to startle me? The noise seemed different out here. 

After I pulled my hand back from the window, I fogged breath over the glass. A wet outline of my hand appeared, fingerprints and palm lines clearly visible. Then the water evaporated around the edges, shrinking the handprint so it resembled that of a child.  

• • • 

The night’s chill air started to bother me. My jacket was still draped over one of the kitchen chairs. As I turned to go inside, the flashlight beam passed over the area beneath the back deck.  

The deck was supported at each corner by thick posts. Numerous scraps of wood filled the space beneath—probably shaved edges and misfit pieces from long-completed projects. Strips of cloth were stuffed into gaps, worn clothing saved as dust rags for some hypothetical cleaning spree. I stepped closer and kneeled to examine Dad’s handiwork. None of the scrap spilled over onto the yard—like a brick-layer, he had expertly packed in enough to fill available space, while still keeping most of the grass clear so he could steer his riding lawn mower over it.  

Maybe it wasn’t the strokes that killed Dad. He just ran out of places to put his stuff. 

That’s when I turned to look at the dog houses again. From my position lower to the ground, I could see the openings more clearly. It wasn’t the angle of shadow that kept me from looking into each house. All five of them were stuffed to the brim with scraps and junk.  

I moved to the back half of the yard, toward the two larger dog houses in the close row. More wood scraps and rags cluttered the first opening. I kicked at it with my shoe and none of the items shifted.  

Plastic grocery bags filled the house on the right. The bags were puffy like balloons, tied shut with bow knots. A few of the loops stuck out from the pile. I shifted the flashlight to my left hand, grabbed one of the loops and yanked a bag free. It slid out easily, and the remaining pile of bags kept its shape around the small, deep gap.  

When I untied the bag, I found several packages of sugar-free caramels. The candies seemed hard to the touch, and had no doubt gone stale. I pointed the flashlight in the hole I’d created in the pile and moved the light around, catching the glimmer of more loops of blue and white plastic, stenciled fragments of Wal-Mart and Winn Dixie logos. A faint chemical smell drifted from the gap. Probably, as with the refrigerator, things got worse as you went further back. To test my theory, I reached into the hole. 

And something bit me.  

I pulled back, brushing against another plastic bag, and the entire pile collapsed and tightened over my arm. Sharp edges clawed me through the shirt sleeve, and I felt more stings on my hand, palm, and fingers. Was it a bee’s nest? My wrist was caught beneath one of the plastic loops, and the strap wouldn’t break—it almost seemed to be pulling my arm in deeper. I panicked and tugged, but each movement brought more painful scratches to my hand and arm. Finally I wrenched my arm free, and several of the bags followed after it and tumbled onto the ground. 

Pinpricks and drops of blood covered my hand, and several scratches began to bleed through from under my sleeve. I shone the flashlight on one of the fallen bags. Tiny metallic eyes glimmered back at me and stretched into metallic lines when I moved the flashlight. 

Bags full of straight pins? 

No. Hypodermics. 

For Dad’s insulin shots.  

The chemical scent I’d noticed earlier now filled the air, a mix of rubbing alcohol and dried blood. Metal tips protruded from various places in the fallen bags. An entire syringe had fallen from the top of one bag, its needle an angry, gleaming stinger. 

Dad was supposed to break off the tips and dispose of used needles in a red “hazardous waste” bin. Instead he’d tossed them into plastic grocery bags then jammed them into this toxic pile.  

Why? He hadn’t built these dog houses until after Mom died. Dad must have been more upset by her death than any of us realized. His inability to throw away useless things struck me then as a strange kind of tribute to Mom. Possibly he had also contracted her germ phobia: he’d moved the needles as far away from the house as he could, while still keeping them on his property.  

Germs. God knows how long these needles had festered out here—long enough to rust and grow new bacteria. I might as well have injected poison into my arm. 

The pain started to throb. My fear of needles surged up from my childhood, and I dreaded the idea that metal points may have broken off under my skin. I kicked at one of the bags in anger, then hurried back inside to rinse off the wounds. 

• • • 

I went straight to the kitchen faucet, turned on the water and pushed my hand into the stream. Initially the water ran light pink under my hand, but it soon ran clear. As the water grew slowly warmer, I pulled up my sleeve and moved my forearm back and forth under the stream, turning my wrist slowly with each pass. The temperature grew uncomfortable so I adjusted the faucet, but I wanted to keep the water as hot as I could endure—intending to scald away any possible infection.  

After a healthy blush covered my hand and forearm, I turned off the water and examined the wounds. They didn’t look as serious as I’d feared—small dots on the hand, a few tiny scratches near my wrist and one longer one atop my arm. To my relief, all the bleeding had stopped. And no sign, thank God, of broken needles beneath my skin.  

I was angry at myself for getting in such a panic. And for doing something so stupid as to reach blindly into a darkened heap of trash. Then I was angry at Dad for placing those needles there to begin with—as if he’d deliberately set a trap for me. What was he thinking? 

Finally my anger shifted to those hypothetical thrill-seeking trespassers. If they hadn’t drawn me out of the house, I never would have hunted and poked through the back yard after dark. Of course, I hadn’t found any kids out there, and probably imagined the whole thing to begin with—which brought my anger full circle, back to me. 

Then a squeal of tires sounded from the road in front of the house, followed by a scrape of metal and a loud thump. 

In that instant, I revised my theory of late-night pranksters. Instead of young children, I thought of teenagers, piled in a car and hooting at my parents’ house as they drove by, maybe throwing a bottle or a beer can toward my car at the bottom of the driveway. I grabbed the flashlight (still switched on where I’d set it beside the sink), rushed to the front hall and pushed out the door. I jumped over the porch steps and hit the ground running. Night air brushed at my injured hand, cooling the faint burn as I raced over the lawn toward the road.  

Not that I’d be able to fight a whole group of teenagers. The LightDriver had the heft of 2 “D”-cell batteries, but its cheap plastic casing would fall apart if I tried to use it as a club. Still, a rush of adrenalin drove me toward the curb, hunting for any property damage, ready to shake my fist at retreating taillights, yell threats at the vandals’ car once the occupants were too far away to hear. 

I stopped short of the concrete curb, at the end of the driveway. The road stretched empty in each direction, curving to the right at a distant “Slow” sign that drivers usually ignored. I could see a few neighboring houses, their porch lights dark. In the driveway, my Taurus wagon looked untouched, and there wasn’t any damage to the mailbox (a popular target for teenage vandals).  

But a rotten, musty smell hovered in the air.  

The smell seemed to rise from the eight Hefty bags I’d lined up for tomorrow’s trash pickup. The green bags looked shiny and black in the dark, their only color from the yellow plastic ties locked around each closed top. I stepped down from the curb, and saw that one of the bags, third from the end next to the mailbox, was torn open in the side. Garbage and sludge had spilled part-way into the street. 

Jesus. Just what I needed.  

It was one of the kitchen bags. I saw the white corner of the vegetable bin from the refrigerator, the rancid carrot slop no doubt supplying the strongest of the odors. Zip-lock bags of other rotten food had sluiced onto the sidewalk. I had the morbid thought that these bags looked the size of kidneys or other internal organs, sliced from a person’s side with a deep, jagged knife. 

And it did look like the larger bag had been cut with a knife. Heavy duty bags won’t tear easily, which is the reason they print warnings on the package: “Danger of Suffocation. These garbage bags are not toys. Keep them away from children and pets.” A foot-long gash appeared in the side of bag, evenly parallel to the ground. The cut was too precise to have resulted from an accidental shifting of the bag’s contents.  

Well if it had been teenagers, they surely weren’t happy with what they found. There’s no incentive to slash open other plastic treasure bags after the first one spills out such foul-smelling garbage. The theory provided a good explanation for the squeal of tires I’d heard from inside. The teenagers drove away in a hurry: a peel out. 

Leaving me to clean up the mess. It wouldn’t be easy moving this stuff around, especially with a scratched up right hand and fears of new infection. I set the flashlight in the gutter portion of the curb, then lifted a Zip-lock bag by its corner with the fingertips of my left hand. 

I was still freaked out after the nest of syringes, so I didn’t want to reach too far into the open gap of the Hefty bag. Instead, I lowered each small bag into the torn gash, then poked gently with a finger to force it inside. The bags had an awful, sloshy consistency. It felt like I was poking at someone’s stomach. 

Once I’d finished, I briefly considered the idea of dragging all the bags back toward the house to prevent further mischief, then decided it was too much effort. Easier to simply get some packing tape from inside and return to patch the hole.  

I bent down and retrieved the flashlight. 

That’s when I noticed the wedge-shaped chip where the street met the concrete gutter. 

“Not too close, now, Nathan.” 

Cracks in the asphalt, and a missing chunk like someone had taken a bite out of the road. A niche to link with the interlocking tip of a child’s tennis shoe. 

An exact match to a visual aid from my past, the obstacle that tripped an unwary boy to his death in Dad’s version of “The Big Street.”  

That image was burned so clearly into my childhood memory, and I’d swear this was the same shape. It wasn’t a mark that would occur naturally, like a pothole that cracks and expands with the change in season. It formed more of a smooth, clean break—as if my father had cut it with some secret tool he’d kept all these years. Did he make this sign out of habit, as a territorial marking for any dangerous crossings near his home? Or through foresight, to have everything in place for future tellings of the story, ready to warn and delight the grandchildren he never had? Maybe he’d hidden this scary image in hopes I’d discover it, a kind of final farewell. He knew I loved his stories when I was little, and he’d never fully accepted that I’d grown up.