One day as I was strolling down Pig Turd Alley a dog ran by me, maybe a chihuahua. It was headed toward the woods that flanked the dead end of the street where I would turn and begin walking back toward town.
Not long after that—maybe four or five minutes later—a woman walking very fast, obviously out of breath, also passed by me, most likely in pursuit of the dog. I heard a whistle and, thinking it was the woman now far ahead of me trying to get the attention of the runaway dog, I ignored it. When I heard the whistle again, it was beside me.
I looked up to see Cricket Hawkshead leaning out of a second floor window of his house, shirt sleeves rolled up, a cigarette burning between the fingers on his right hand. His hair was wet and combed back on his head. I waved. “Go help that old witch catch her dog,” he called down to me.
“Why don’t you go help her?” I asked.
“Because I hate that bitch,” he said. “And anyways, I can’t leave right now. Waiting for a call on the house phone.”
“House phone? Do you really have a house phone?”
“I just kept paying the bill after mam died, and now I guess I just…Hey, listen! You hear about Melanie?”
“Melanie who?” I asked, but I didn’t care.
It was hot, the sun was beating down on Pig Turd Alley. I was sweating. I wanted to turn around and head back to town, but I stood there shading my eyes while Hawkshead launched into his story about a girl we both used to know, Melanie Bridgeman. My shading-hand dropped when he got to the part about how she was found naked inside an abandoned fridge on Rush’s Hill with her fingers cut off and her teeth yanked out of her head.
My stomach floated, dropped, filled my bowels with ice. I felt faint. I stepped back. “Holy fucking shit,” I said.
“Do you kiss you mother with that mouth?”
I turned around. It was my late mother’s friend Leonora Mosconi. “Excuse me,” I said. “Sorry.”
It was the lady who’d been chasing her dog, the animal now on a leash and trotting beside her with his head held high, proud that he’d made his owner prove her loyalty by traipsing across town to find him.
When she realized who I was, she excused herself, as well, in deference to my dead mother. “May Walter. I’d’ve never recognized you.”
“Get outta here, Pinkie Mosconi!” Hawkshead yelled. “Why can’t you ever mind your own business?”
She kept herself planted beside me, yanking on the leash to stop the dog’s trotting. “If it’s not my business, why don’t you carry it off the street and into your filthy house, Cricket? God rest your poor mother’s soul, if she could just see what you’ve done to her yard. Jesus wept.”
“It’s my yard, now, and it’s not your business, either.”
I smiled. “I’m sorry,” I said to her, not sure if I was still apologizing for my profanity or for Hawkshead’s being an asshole.
She motioned toward Hawkshead with her chin. “You ought to stay away from that jackass. He’ll cause you nothing but trouble. Ask my pregnant daughter in prison for five years then dead of breast cancer at 35,” she said, nodding in agreement with her own statement before looking up at the window. “You’ll get yours one day, don’t worry. You. Will. Get. Yours.”
Hawkshead laughed, yelling, “Fuck off, Pinkie!” while flicking his lit cigarette toward the street. “If I see that little asshole rat-dog down here again I’ll shoot that sonuvabitch and shove it into your paperbox.”
She made a big production of spitting in the direction of Cricket, and started walking again without saying anything else to him or to me.
Before I could ask anything else about Melanie Bridgeman, Hawkshead got his call. He left the window with a wave while I tried to decide if I wanted to walk to the end of Pig Turd Alley or turn around right then and see what I could find online about the incident we hadn’t finished discussing.
By the time I got home I’d decided I couldn’t handle looking up anything about Melanie Bridgeman at that moment. I almost wished Hawkshead hadn’t told me. I lay down to take a nap while thunder rumbled so loudly and with such force that the windows of the house rattled. I fell asleep as dime-sized raindrops started striking the windows.