I’m telling you if he fires up that goddamn French horn one more time so help me I am going to personally walk over there and stuff it up his ass. We’ll see what kind of noises he can make on it then, by God. Couldn’t be any worse.
Now Red, what other way could you do something like that that besides personally?
Don’t you give me none of your uppity lip. Save it for those second graders of yours. You know damned good and well what I mean. It wouldn’t be so bad if the kid had a lick of ability on the thing but Jesus H. Christ, what’s it been—three years—since Peterson bought him that thing and hell if it don’t still sound like a cat being fed through a wood chipper every time he touches it. Shit, give the boy a job as some kind of fire alarm or early warning system. At least then he’d be doing this neighborhood a favor instead of making people claw their hair out night after night.
Well, if that’s the way you feel, why don’t you go over there and say something to Mr. Peterson? He’s a reasonable enough fella from what I can tell.
The hell you say! Peterson wouldn’t know reasonable if it walked up behind him and bit him on the ass. Don’t forget, honey-bunch, that there’s the guy wouldn’t vote to expand the fire station on accounta’ he’s afraid we might spend a couple of bucks of tax money on something other than his precious library.
Well, Red, seems pretty clear the boy ain’t gonna’ stop playing on his own account. So you either got to get up and go over there and say something or call the cops on him if you think you got cause.
Only way the cops is coming around here is if it’s to take me away for murdering that no-talent kid. I mean will you listen to that—it just ain’t human.
And that’s pretty much the way it goes. Night after night Red and Erma sit in their living room, windows propped open against the heat of the Savannah evening (Red too cheap to use the a/c except in July and August and only then if it gets up above ninety five or so). Red sits in his twenty-something-year-old Lazy Boy chewing Redman, spitting into an old Mountain Dew can, and watching either CNN or the Braves game, depending on the score of the game and whether or not anything’s blown up or fallen down that day worth watching news about. Erma mostly just sits nearby on the couch perusing the Reader’s Digest from three or four months ago, laughing at the jokes the soldiers mail in, and responding laconically to whatever it is that’s got Red’s panties in a bunch that night, though odds are most nights lately it’ll be the fourteen-year-old Peterson boy and that pawn shop French horn his old man bought to backfill some vague vicarious need for a musically gifted child, being as how the old man never had a lick of talent himself, which don’t hardly explain why he supposes the boy will have any either, but then rational explanations never had much to do with anything Peterson ever did. And there ain’t no wife nor mother over in their rat hole of a house to keep that man and his only son on an even keel, so the old man just goes off and does any damn fool thing that occurs to him, and his principal talent seems to be coming up with ways of pissing off Red Argent, partly because Peterson’s got a knack for pissing people off in general and partly because Red’s right across the street with nothing but twenty-four feet of pot-holed asphalt and two widths of tree-root-heaved sidewalk separating the two houses. Well that and a couple of more-brown-than-green lawns, and there’s a whole story there too only it ain’t this one. Let’s just say that the year Peterson thought that maybe growing corn on his front lawn instead of grass might be a good way to save a couple of bucks…and you can pretty much fill in the blanks on how that went.
So Red and Erma sit and watch as Wolf Blitzer yaks away on CNN about the day’s casualties in some country Red can’t pronounce and doesn’t give a rat’s ass about being as how this war isn’t worth a tinker’s damn compared to the couple he served in, and these candy-ass soldiers today don’t know how good they have it and they ought to try traipsing around in some gook-filled hundred-and-five-degree jungle wearing nothing but shorts and a tee shirt and lugging an eighty-pound pack and lucky you if you don’t step in a hole filled with pungie sticks or get bitten by a snake and so forth and so on. And damned if just as Wolf cuts to footage from some reporter sitting on top of a tank someplace, from across the street there comes right on schedule the infernal bleat of young Peterson’s widely reviled French horn. Red utters an oath gripping the remote like it was a forty-five and the TV was a burglar and raises the volume so loud Erma gives him as close as she ever gets to an irritated look and a quick shake of the head before setting aside her Reader’s Digest, getting up and walking into the kitchen. But the screech of the horn cuts through anything Wolf has to say. Cuts through it like a new ax through old oak (Red figures his head is the oak).
Erma, he shouts turning his head back over the top of the Lazy Boy to face the kitchen. It’s been nearly twenty years since I had to outright kill a man and then it was taxes paying me to do it. But I’m telling you I’m getting close—damn close.
Well, if you’re going to go to jail for something so nuts why not just sneak over there some night and steal the thing, Erma says walking back into the living room with two glasses of ice tea dripping condensation from the warm sticky night air. I expect jail time for breaking and entering has to be less than for murder, now doesn’t it. She smiles in her annoying condescending way as Red takes the tea from her and grunts something he figures is close enough to appropriate.
That’s close to a sensible idea, he says. Only you and I both know Peterson would just go out again tomorrow and buy that idiot kid a violin or something even worse and we’d be right back where we started. They say violence never solved anything, but I’m telling you violence is the only way out of this. And you know damn good and well there ain’t a person on this street’d convict me for it.
That may be true, Red. But your jury ain’t likely to be made from only people on this street. That means you’d have to get up in court and explain in words what it’s like listening to that noise.
Piece of cake, Red says. Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, just imagine placing the pointy end of a railroad spike against the outside of your left ear and then pounding it in with a sledge hammer ‘til it comes out the other side of your head. I expect that’d paint the picture for them. I tell you instead of jail they’d give me a medal.
And Erma thinks to herself this is a mildly entertaining if disturbing conversation. And of course it’s all in good fun, long as you consider talking about murdering the neighbor’s son to be good fun.
Except here’s the thing. Red is sitting in the Lazy Boy with the volume still turned all the way up on the TV while the crippling bleats of the French horn still sneak undeterred through every nook and cranny of his hopefully still-solid psyche. Erma doesn’t know much about what he did back in those wars. Red doesn’t bring it up much except at these moments when she thinks/hopes he’s joking about doing something violent. And she thinks, but of course doesn’t ever say, that more than once the phone has rung in the middle of the day when he’s at work and she’s walked into the hallway and picked up the phone half expecting to hear some cop on the other end of the line and can she come down to the station on account of Red has gone a step or two too far this time. And all this is what’s going through her head as she sits with the Reader’s Digest on her lap and Red smiles in his hard-to-pin-down way while continuing to talk about the Peterson boy and the French horn and what a shit-for-brains the boy’s old man is.
And then the damndest thing happens. The noise just stops (the horn, not the TV). Which is weird because normally the boy practices, if you can call it that, for at least an hour every single night—an hour during which the more mobile of the street’s residents have taken to arranging to either be someplace else or maybe to be listening to music with headphones on.
After maybe thirty seconds of really loud television and no accompanying French horn, Erma waves her hand in Red’s direction telling him to turn down the infernal racket of the television being as how the excessive volume is no longer required, at least not for the moment. Red does her one better and hits the mute button and there descends over the house a quiet like an early spring morning. He is so taken by the sudden hush that he rises awkwardly from his Lazy Boy and walks out onto the front doorstep where he stands gazing across the street at the Peterson’s house half in awe of the quiet it can apparently produce and half daring the boy to start up again.
Red looks up and down his street. He hears only a light evening breeze soughing through the maples that line the street. He sees the sky going orange up toward the west end of the street as the day draws its curtain. Then he looks east and sees Wendy Sutter standing on her doorstep two doors to his left. He wonders if she was there already, perhaps just out enjoying the cool dry evening, or if she too has popped out in response to the cessation of the cacophony. It has been some time since anyone on the street has been out enjoying this time of evening. For it is the time that the Peterson boy has chosen to practice every evening and outside has been the last place anyone wanted to be for that. Red supposes Wendy has had somewhat less cause for annoyance being as how she is further down the block and not right across the goddamn street from the Petersons. But still he supposes that the racket travels a good distance and so almost certainly affects everyone within sight of Red’s house. Red does not know Wendy well, but he does know that she is slightly hard of hearing and for the first time it occurs to him that this might actually be a bit of a blessing, all things considered.
The respite is short-lived. Probably just a bathroom break or phone call or who knows what. Just as Red raises a hand to acknowledge Wendy the racket begins anew, made all the louder and more caustic by being outside and there being no competing sounds. Before the third note has sounded Wendy has abandoned the evening and turned and walked back inside. Red does the same. Turns and steps back inside the house. Closes the front door which does little to diminish the resurgent horrific outpouring. He walks back into the kitchen where Erma is making coffee and stirring something or other in a large silver pot on the stove. There is a bubbling sound coming from the pot like water ready for pasta. It is yet another sound overpowered by the horn.
It ain’t right, Erma, Red intones. It ain’t just us. It’s Wendy Sutter and Christ knows how many others have had their lives shattered by that nonsense. I’m going over there. It’s the only thing to do.
You could just call the police, you know. File a complaint. Say they’re disturbing the peace. They’d send police over. Say something to them. That’d be enough wouldn’t it?
It’s a coward’s way out, Erma. Besides he’d know who made the call. He’d know. I’ll just go and talk to him. Make him understand. What can he say? That the damn boy’s musical education is more important than the peace of mind of everybody on this street? That he’s got a right to destroy everybody’s supper? What’s he going to say?
Well I expect you’ll find that out directly, Erma replies. You do what you gotta do. Only you be civil. No matter how things go we’ve still got to live opposite them folks. No sense making things miserable. Just you try being reasonable.
Red stands in the hallway collecting himself, tucking in his shirt, and generally steeling himself for the encounter. He and Erma have spent their share of time interacting with the others on their street but have never had much doing with Peterson and his boy, mainly on account of Peterson’s not having a wife which makes them the only “irregular” family on the block. As far as Red knows ain’t no one on the street ever had all that much to do with Peterson. And that might, Red thinks, have something or other to do with why Peterson doesn’t appear to appreciate the difficulty he’s causing with the French horn. Maybe he really is a reasonable fella and he only needs someone to talk to him, explain it man to man.
Still when all is said and done (and more than a little paradoxically given his extensive military background and his bluster and all) Red is not an especially confrontational individual and that’s how this feels—confrontational. Red steps back out onto his porch, draws the door closed behind him, glances at Erma peering out from behind their living room curtain. Futilely he attempts to gesture her back with a vigorous hand motion, runs through various introductory comments in his mind as he descends the steps, traverses his lawn, and slowly crosses the street.
Good evening, Glen. Mind if I ask you why you waste your money buying musical instruments for that son of yours?
Mr. Peterson, good to see you again. I just stopped by to find out if you are aware that you are pissing off your entire neighborhood on pretty much a nightly basis.
Glen. Hi. Good evening. I just came by to offer you a hundred bucks for that French horn of yours right now. No questions asked. And I’ll throw in a second hundred if you promise never to buy another one ever again. Or any other instrument for that matter.
Of course it’s hard working through the various alternatives, being as how with every step across the street the din from the horn grows louder.
Glen, we’ve been talking along the street here and we’ve decided to take up a collection to buy some soundproof paneling for your son’s bedroom. Shoot we’ll even install it for you. How would that be?
Civil, Erma had said. We have to live with these people. Erma has always been something of a busybody. She spends her share of each day, especially when Red’s at work, peering out through the curtains. She’s lived in the neighborhood long enough to know everyone within five houses in all directions except of course for Mr. Peterson, who she’s never really had any reason to get to know what with him being by himself with the boy. She went over once when they first moved in maybe six years ago but she can’t remember having gone back since. And she certainly can’t remember being invited over for anything. She supposes Mr. Peterson’s not really the inviting kind. And she’s never really talked about him with any of the other women on the block though Lord knows they’ve talked about damn near every other thing on the street and a few streets over besides. She’s always up for new material though, so it is with more than passing interest that she continues peering out across the street watching as Red climbs Peterson’s steps, pauses briefly, and reaches for the doorbell.
There is a cessation in the cry of the French horn as Red drops his hand from the doorbell. A moment later a short paunchy man opens the inner door and Erma can only just make out his form behind the screen through which he appears to talk with Red for a minute or so before opening that too. Red follows Peterson inside and both doors are closed behind them. God, Erma thinks, how she would love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation. But she will just have to rely on Red’s account when he comes home. So far the sound of the horn has not started up again. It is all Erma can do not to step out onto the porch and stand there waiting with her arms crossed. She supposes though that Wendy will still be out there and the last thing she wants to appear is over-anxious or nosy or gossipy. She is, of course, all of these things and astute enough to know it, only she does not want to appear to be so. She will have to settle on waiting for Red and keeping her vigil at the living room curtain.
But after continuing to peer out through the curtains for another five minutes and seeing nothing but Peterson’s closed front door Erma decides there’s no telling how long two men can stay at it once they get to talking, particularly if they ain’t talked about nothing in pretty much forever, which is certainly the case here. Unlike Erma, Red doesn’t do a lot of discussing with the folks on the street other than the usual banal pleasantries one exchanges when cutting the grass or picking up the Sunday paper. He may, Erma supposes, take a shine to jawing with Peterson about not just the thing with his son and the French horn, but any manner of other things that men talk about, not many of which Erma is conversant in or even knowledgeable about other than maybe cars and sports and what-not. And who knows? Maybe Peterson was in the military too, in which case she may as well go ahead and hold off getting supper started because there’s no telling how long things could drag on if that turns out to be the case.
Except here he is now back in through the front door and only fifteen minutes later. And damned if he hasn’t got on his face the closest thing to a grin Erma’s seen in maybe six months. Red’s not much the smiling sort, but there it is bigger’n life, at least by his admittedly lean standards.
He steps right past her and to the refrigerator which he opens and takes out a can of Miller and taps the top a couple of times before he pops the top with a crunching sound. He takes a huge swig of the beer, nearly half the can, facing away from Erma, and then closes the fridge door, but still kind of peeking back over his shoulder while she just stands there and he keeps drinking and peering on account of he knows that it’s just driving her crazy, Erma being Erma and all.
Oh for the love of God, Red. What happened over there? Only Red just quietly finishes off the Miller, crunches up the can and throws it into the trash bucket under the sink.
Listen there, Erma. Do you hear it? Red suddenly poses sort of mock dramatically and gazes up at the kitchen ceiling as though it were the second coming. Ain’t it a blessed thing? Do you hear it?
Hear what, Red? I don’t hear nothing. What did you say to that man?
That’s right, my little muffin. Nothing is exactly what you hear. And it’s what you will continue to hear, with any luck, for the rest of whatever life the good Lord has in store for us. Nothing. Red smiles in an unfamiliar self-congratulatory way, let’s out a low belch and steps into the living room where he stands by the front door which is still open. He looks through the screen door and over toward the Petersons.
Red, did you hurt that man? Did you threaten him in some way?
Shame on you for even thinking such a thing, woman. I simply employed the awesome power of reason, and as you yourself only moments ago observed, Peterson is indeed a reasonable man. Or at least he gives every appearance of being one. Let’s just say we have arrived at an understanding and leave it at that.
But how, Red? What’d you say? Folks is gonna ask me how you did it. What’ll I tell them Red?
Well, the way I see it you got a couple of choices. My preferred one would be to tell them that it ain’t none of their damn business, only I don’t expect that’ll get them to back off much. So here’s what I’d recommend. Tell them Red Argent took the matter square in hand and the result was a favorable outcome for all concerned.
But Red, that ain’t no kind of answer. That’ll just leave everybody guessing what happened.
Course you do have one other alternative, which is to walk over there and ask Peterson yourself. Hell, it’d do you good to get to know the man anyways, him being a neighbor and all. In any event that’s pretty near all I got to say about the matter. It’s over and done with and I am going to sit here for the remainder of the evening and enjoy our newfound peace and quiet.
Which is precisely what Red does. He lays back in his Lazy Boy and closes his eyes. Doesn’t even bother to turn the TV back on. Just lays there as Erma walks from the kitchen out to the front door and stands looking out through the screen noticing, for the first time that Peterson is standing at his screen doing exactly the same, that is looking back over at her. And at that moment Erma realizes that after twenty six years there might yet be a thing or two she doesn’t know about Red Argent.