"Feuding neighbors discover a shocking secret over the Winter."

He's the kind of guy likes to hold hands, Jimmy. Saturday nights, Rose and me, we're eating dinner and there they are walking on the street out front, holding hands. Rose says she thinks he gets a lot of ear infections because he's always digging at his ears with his pinky finger. Me, I don't think about that at all. Pretty wife, though.

He could be my son. He's age appropriate, I mean. I bought this house at 32 years old. That was back in '68 and houses were cheaper then, even. So, a couple summers ago, I'm working out back and I hear this beep-beeping like a truck backing up and when the beeping stops, out of the cab hops Jimmy with a big grin across his face. Shit-eatin, if I can say that.

Rose tells me I ought to go welcome him to the neighborhood, so I invite him over for a beer and show him my workshop. Instead of a garage, I have a woodshop. Spend the winters making furniture in there now that I've got the space heaters. The look on his face when he seen it, though. Priceless, they say. Looked like he was trapped. Like a scared rabbit or something.



Robert? We got off to a rough start. Look, I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but he's old. Okay? I don't know exactly, but old enough to have fought in wars. That's plural. It's not that it's a problem or anything, but when we moved here, we're just looking for a nice neighborhood to raise the kid, so it could be worse. The last apartment we lived in might as well have been a college dorm with all the noise and everything. So, it's not that the age is a problem, but I know Heather was looking to meet some other younger couples and this neighborhood- well, it was like going from a college dorm to one of those old folks communities like you see in Florida. Just wasn't what we're expecting was all. To be honest, it didn't bother me all that much, though. I work in the city, sixty hours a week minimum, so coming home to block parties and baby showers, I could really care less.

The woodshop was something else, though. I know how it sounds, so don't take it the wrong way, but you know in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when they go in to the house and there's that room all full of animal bones? Like squirrel skulls and armadillo shells all over the place? That's the way it feels when you go in there. Humid and the air's thick with sawdust. And everywhere there's circular blades and router bits and all kinds of half-finished parts of chairs and tables. It's like furniture skeletons all over the place. Creepy, in a way.

I tried to be neighborly and humor the guy, but like I said, I work so much, when I get home I just want to grab some dinner and a spot on the couch. I don't get to see the wife and kid much as it is, so listening to this retired old fart talking about lathes and belt-sanders all night, I just didn't have much interest. Look, I'm sorry if I offended the guy, but I've got a 30-year mortgage. I want to enjoy the place a little bit, you know?



Parents anymore, they don't let the kids out to play in the summer. Afraid of every little thing. I'd see him out in the yard once a week or two, mowing the lawn or taking the dog for a walk, but that was it. Good hunting dog by the look of it, but I never saw so much as an air rifle in his hand. Point is, at my age, I got the bad knees and the arthritis and I'm out there taking care of the garden and thatching the front grass. I told Jimmy once about thatching the grass when he asked why mine was so green and his all yellow and he just looked at me like I'm speaking French.

I guess when you've got the fancy car and a job in the city, you gotta have a big TV and all that to go with it, but all I'm saying is kids need to get out and stretch their legs. Learn baseball with a bat in your hands, not on cable tv. When we was kids, the old folks in the neighborhood, they were the shut-ins. Now, things are switched up, I guess. Different generations.

That third-acre he's got and the one behind it, those were part of my land back then before the city divided it all up. Just a shame to see it like that after all this time. Back then, this whole area was forest and good hunting land. I've walked from here to where Kentucky Street is now and back more times than I can remember. Used to be good land. Now it's just dirt for all these air-conditioned boxes to set on.



Don't get me started with all that. The guy hasn't worked a full-time job for a decade, at least, right? So of course he's got all the time in the world to thatch his yard and prune the trees and everything. And I'm supposed to feel bad that I don't have this manicured lawn? Look, back when he bought his house, it cost what, thirty-thousand? Tops? Even with inflation and salaries back then, you could pay that up in ten years. I paid 210,000 dollars for this house. I'll be lucky to retire at 65. So, no, I don't feel bad about it. Things are different now.

And I grew up in a city, to be fair. This is the first house I've ever lived in. I didn't even have a lawn mower when we moved in. I bought one third-hand from a garage sale and it took me an hour to get it started the first couple of times. I offered him thirty bucks to cut it for me if it meant that much to him, but I think that pissed him off more than anything. What can you do?



Well, when we first heard about it, Rose and me was finishing up dinner and it came on the little tv in the living room. Said some girl from across the river went missing. They showed that picture of her on the news every night for the rest of the fall. I kept telling Rose it was morbid, putting her picture up like that. You see it all the time these days. Every day some kid's got himself kidnapped and everyone all over the place gets all worked up about it. Then one day you stop seeing that picture anymore and they've got a new one. No one ever says what happened to the last kid. They just find another grade-school picture of some poor, smiling, young thing and they move on.

I spent a lot of time indoors that fall cause of my fingers here. See how they don't straighten out all the way? I was working out in the shop and had my mind on something else I guess and then, zip. Just like that. Cut across here and that tendon just went right back up in to my wrist. This one here, doctors said I just nicked it, but the fingers don't straighten out all the way, like you can see. Had to give up the woodworking for the whole rest of that fall and in to the winter. So, I saw the picture of that little girl every night for weeks.

I've got a dining room set that still isn't finished.



Yeah, the fingers. I saw him a couple times that fall and every time I see him he tells me the whole story again. I could tell you the doctor's name that did the surgery. Did he tell you how it went back up in to his wrist? "Like a rabbit zipping back in to its hole," he told me that on at least three separate occasions. I felt bad for him, sure.

The first time I saw the girl, Heather told Eric to go get ready for his bath. She didn't want him seeing it on tv like that and asking questions. He's a sensitive kid, so stuff like that really gets him worked up. The whole state was looking for that little girl, so there wasn't much we could do to keep it from him. I guess it's sort of ironic how it all turned out. I remember seeing that picture on the news, though, and I didn't really think too much of it at the time. I try not to watch the news because it's always something. Kidnapping, rape, war, gas prices, hurricanes. It's just too depressing. I just stay away from it. Pretty ironic, I guess. Looking back at it now.

You see those Dateline shows where they catch the child molestors in the act and at first, you think, well maybe that will be some sort of deterrent, but they run that show every week, so I don't know how much good it does. It's more like entertainment than anything else. Just another cop show or tabloid journalism stuff. Dateline is locking up pedophiles, Extra is doing their top-ten celebrity nipple slips. It's all the same. I hate to say it, but they gotta sell ad space to Colgate and Pepsi or whatever. So, as long as the predators are after the kids online, Tylenol is going to keep selling aspirin.

About the only place to get real news anymore is ESPN. At least they stick to the facts. Scott Baker went twelve and eight with a 3.86 ERA last season. Try and get facts like that on channel 11. They can't even tell you who won the election.



I heard him yelling is why I went outside in the first place. It was cold as ever and he's out there yelling at nine in the morning like a crazy person. I thought he cut his foot off with a snowblower or something, but when I looked out the window, his driveway was still white, so I got my coveralls on and went out to see what all the fussin was about. When he said the dog run off, I chuckled a little and he didn't like that much, but I offered to help him look anyway. I hadn't got out much that winter cause of these fingers here, so I didn't mind stretching the legs a bit.

The dog, he says, isn't ever off a leash outside. Runs off, he says. I thought to say, "No shit," but we went off looking anyway.

He looked more lost than the dog until I showed him how to follow the tracks. We followed those tracks for about twenty minutes through the snow and the whole time he's hollering. I tried to tell him to keep quiet and listen instead, but damned if he was going to listen to anything I was gonna tell him. When he's not yelling for the dog he's going on and on about the dog. Saying how he never wanted the damn dog in the first place, but the wife and kid talked him in to it and how upset they're gonna be if he comes home without it. I try to tell him how a dog like that needs good training so they don't run off, but he wasn't hearing that neither.



I saw her first, I guess. We followed the tracks across the new highway they're building up behind the house and followed them down towards the creek. I barely saw her with the way Robert was yammering on about everything, but she was there by the side, just her arm and her face. The rest of her was all covered up by the snow and ice. It was just horrible. I kept seeing that picture of her on the news, smiling with a ribbon tying her hair up in to a ponytail and those white, square teeth. But here, she's got a blue-gray arm across her eyes and her lips all chapped and bloody. I'll never forget it. I guess that's an understatement.

I wake up every morning at three o'clock now. Most of the time, I get back to sleep, but I still see those chapped lips behind my eyelids. Except now it's all darker and kinda blurry. That day, it was so stark and clear. But now, when I wake up, it's hard to make out her skin from the snow. It's all just murky and dark, but I know it's her. I'll never forget the way she looked.



It was like a nightmare. The footprints went right up to her and I could tell the dog had found her before we did. The way the tracks circled around her, you could tell the dog had sniffed at her. A dog with good training would have stayed right there with her, but I'm guessing he found a squirrel or something and run off again.

I have to say I didn't recognize her right away. I saw that picture on the news every night, just like everyone else, but I still didn't recognize her. I've seen more than a few dead bodies during the war, but never a child. Never a little girl like that. I just had to think how I hoped that her parents never would have to see her like this.

The worst part was, you could tell from the state of her that she hadn't been there long. It was like she just went to sleep there the night before and never woke up. It's the worst part, I say, because they stopped showing her picture on the news over a month ago. I hate to think where she'd been before that.



I left my phone back at the house, so I couldn't call right away. I had to run back, so I left Robert there with her. I'm ashamed to say I was relieved when I turned around and started running back. I just wanted to be as far away from there as I could be and I didn't envy Robert for having to stay there with her alone.



It took some thirty minutes before the first car came. The red and blue lights were flashing on her face and her arm and everytime they flashed red, the blood on her lips disappeared. When they flashed blue, her skin looked right again, but the blood would come back. Every flash hid something and revealed something. If you could get them lights to flash red and blue at the same time, maybe she'd look okay. Maybe she'd look like that little girl on the tv again. Blood. Cold, blue skin. Blood. Cold, blue skin. Everytime I see a squad car on the side of the road now, my stomach drops and I get sick.

Jimmy comes out of the car with a couple police and leads them over the hill to where I'm standing with my hands on the back of my head and my fingers are getting stiff and cold.

That was the last I saw of her. That was the most I could bear to see her. I don't watch the news anymore. I know they'll be showing that picture again and much as I don't want to remember her that way she was in the snow, I just can't bear to look at it again.



After that, Heather and I talked about selling and moving on. It was just a horrible thing to have happen right there and for a long time neither of us could sit at the dinner table like a real family. Sometimes she'd start crying and put dishes in the washer before she'd even had a bite.

I'll see Robert out in the yard from time to time, thatching the grass or cutting limbs off the tree out front, but he spends most of his time inside or in his woodshop.

Last week he brought over a rocking horse for Eric. Beautiful piece of work. We didn't say much between us, but I thanked him for the horse and asked him how long it took to put it all together. He sort of just shrugged and said how he hoped Eric would like it. I told him he would.

Heather said we should put the horse in the basement to keep it safe. She thought how it'd be a terrible thing if Eric broke it playing too rough, but with all the work the guy put in to it, I thought it should be used.

We decided to stay, after all. It was mostly a financial thing, I guess, but if you really stop to think about it, these days there's not a lot of places you can go where stuff like this isn't happening right in your backyard, so to speak.



They're good people. Just young. The wife, she'll bring over a frozen lasagna a couple times a month and Jimmy collected the mail when Rose was sick this Spring. I think the house feels different for them now. I think it's not the same as when they moved in.

Every once in awhile, Rose will see them walking on a Saturday night and they're holding hands. For awhile, they'd walk with the little boy, Eric, holding hands between them. More these days he runs off a little bit ahead and they hang back, but Rose says their grip isn't as tight as it used to be. She says it's more like they don't want to hold too tight in case the boy gets in trouble and they have to run after.

I've seen a lot over the years, but something like that- well, it's just hard to talk it out of your head. I guess that's all I got to say.