Chapter 5 Hedges, Walls, and Fogs
With a happy swagger, Dignity returned to Grace House from the copying store. He had discovered that the cost of simply-bound copies was quite low compared to that of the vanity press publishers. A few thousand dollars would get things started. True, the result would not look like a ‘real book’—more like a graduate student’s bound dissertation—but with the attractive cover Reason had designed on her computer, he was sure the copies would be sellable.
He bounded up the steep front steps and paused with an odd, out-of-place feeling. His elbows were brushing newly planted cedar trees on each side of the walk. Slack mouthed, he passed through and turned around. A solid line of cedars had now been planted at the top of the slope, cutting off the view of the street. He stared stupidly for some time while from somewhere behind the house a power saw whined. Then he followed the sound, walking the narrow sidewalk around the house, through a gate, and so into the backyard.
The rear garden was littered with new lumber, sawhorses, and tools, with sawdust over all. Part of the old brick wall was now surmounted by a wooden addition that nearly doubled its height, cutting off the view of Mr. Wag’s place next door. In the midst was Miss Obscurity who, having finished cutting a plank, was just pushing up her plastic goggles and blowing the sawdust from the wood’s fine-grained surface. Approaching her, Dignity almost tripped over a strange machine, about two feet high and roughly cubic, its red paint peeling and cracking.
He met her eyes. “What’s all this?” he demanded with a sweeping gesture.
“A security wall, Mr. Dignity.” She added the cut plank to a pile and picked up another. “It’s standard with the service.”
“Is it going all around the wall like this? Yes? And what if we don’t want to be cut off from the world?”
She tilted her head sideways and seemed to smirk. “This is what needs to be done.”
“For what? What are you expecting, an Indian attack? And what about all those trees in front?”
She laid the plank across the sawhorses. “You’re lucky we’ve had mild weather and the ground hasn’t frozen, or I couldn’t have planted them.”
He brushed this aside. “I can’t see the street at all now, and I can just barely see the ground floors of the houses across the street.”
“Not for long. Cedars grow fast.”
“And what do you mean by that? What are you up to here?”
With a shrug she produced her Embassy ID card. “Mrs. Reason has already seen it,” she said.
“I know, I know.” He handed it back. “But what’s the point? Shouldn’t you be putting up burglar alarms or checking locks or something?”
“No need, it’s a safe neighborhood.” She lifted the power saw, lined it up on the plank, and pulled her goggles down.
“Well, if it’s a safe neighborhood, then what—”
She clenched the trigger and he was drowned out by the saw’s scream.
“—what do we need security for?”
Dignity marched in through the back porch door, intent on getting some explanation from the first person he would meet. On the small, enclosed porch he stumbled over something heavy. It was the security light that usually was mounted on the back wall of the house in order to light the backyard at night. Plainly, Obscurity had taken it down. He bit off a near curse and slammed into the house.
Honesty was in the room beyond, watering some plants. His former wife (in name only) stood at a child’s height and was as plain faced as she was sharp tongued and witted. Only a miracle had brought her through the previous year’s occupation of the house by the Heavenites. She had been literally resurrected, her name changed from Doubt to Honesty, and her place in the household assured. Honesty was not a good listener nor the understanding type, but Dignity began on her anyway as the only pair of ears available.
“Does the Embassy know they’ve sent us a nut case?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Will you move? I’m trying to reach the night blooming cereus.”
He moved like a skyscraper displaced by a fireplug.
“Well, I never expected anything like this from old Grace. She’s boarding it up like a fort in back, have you seen it?”
“I’ve seen it,” Honesty said calmly.
“And have you gotten her to explain why she’s doing it? She was very rude to me.”
“Maybe she likes it shady.”
“Maybe she’s incompetent! I don’t think she knows the first thing about security. Besides, she says we don’t need it, that the neighborhood’s safe.”
“Everyone knows the neighborhood’s safe,” was Honesty’s comment.
“Then why was she sent here?”
Something exploded in the back yard, and they both started.
“What’s she done now?” said Honesty, finally alarmed. “Did she blow up the power saw?”
They ran out of the house to find Obscurity kneeling by the machine with the peeling red paint. She held the rope pull handle of its gas engine, which she had yanked. Nothing had been blown up, but behind the machine a fan-shaped area of lawn was scorched black and sooty. A burning stench was in the air.
Obscurity looked up expressionlessly through her goggles. “Sorry. I got it second hand, no instructions.”
Dignity looked back and forth from Obscurity to the machine. “What is it?”
“It’s a fog machine. Something I’ve never tried before.” She stood up and brushed a little ash from her gray jacket sleeve.
“She’ll burn the house down with it,” Honesty said.
Dignity raised a hand to indicate he wanted a full stop. “I just ask two things, no three. First I want that fire bomb out of here: I don’t want it anywhere near my property. Second I want you to tell me what in the wildest imagination we could want with it. And—and—”
Obscurity was smiling at him, lovely as ever even in her work gloves, goggles, and thick uniform jacket.
“And number three, Diggy,” Honesty prompted.
“Yes, and also I want some kind of explanation from the Embassy. Obscurity, you go report back to them. Tell them what you’ve been doing and get straightened out.”
A long pause followed. Obscurity did not look at all chastened. Her eyes began to stray back to the fog machine. She picked up a rag.
“Well, will you do that?”
“No.”
“No? You really don’t care, do you? You don’t care what I think of you?”
She turned back to him. “You obviously don’t care what I think of you.”
It took Dignity a few seconds to understand this. “What you think of me? Of course, I don’t care what you think of me.”
“Exactly.”
He shook his head. What a strange idea. “That’s it then. I’m on the phone to the Embassy, and you—” he pointed at her little nose “—are going to be accountable. In fact, you’re probably going to be yanked right out of here.”
He went into the house with Honesty following.
Obscurity watched until the door closed, and then went back to the fog machine.
“Um, worse than usual,” she said to herself as she examined the screws holding on its cover. “Usually it’s at least a week before they try to throw me out.”