I was raised with simple rules. One was Don't question authority and another was You can't beat the system. As a result, if you're a mile away and even thinking about saying the word "confrontation", I'm locking my doors and finding a closet to hide in. So it was confusing to arrive home to let the dogs out and discover my back yard had been....well, re-arranged.At first glance, I thought someone might've detonated a bomb.
The first thing I saw was a mountain of reddish, nasty looking dirt, several feet high. The underbrush and greenery that had once been the little dachshund's favorite hiding place and retreat was now a brush and debris pile, savagely cut down and piled in a corner. The hole - easily extending 12 or 15 feet down and equally as long was another 2 feet across with nothing to prevent a cat or dog or person from falling in. And then there was the 6 foot section of chicken wire, unattached and unsecured, where just that morning there'd been a 6 foot section of privacy fence separating my yard from my neighbor's. The entire yard was ridged and rutted with mud and overlaid with deeply embedded tire tracks. And, I realized as I peered into the yard behind me and the one next door, I'd gotten off easy - I at least had some semblance of yard left while all they had was uprooted trees and mammoth, gaping mud pits. I was trying to remember Loretta Lynn singing about strip mining and Mr. Peabody's Coal Train when the little dachshund trotted past me, ducked easily under the chicken wire and disappeared like a flash into the next yard, just one street away from a busy and nasty industrial thoroughfare. I moved like greased lightning, snatched both remaining dogs to safety and got in my car to drive around the block - it took ten minutes to track him down and once I'd gotten him back home, I got back in the car and tracked down the construction crew, laying into them like a homicidal fishwife. They stood, bewildered and mute, as I threatened to have their jobs, revoke their immigration status, make their wives widows.
I barely recognized the voice that was screaming. If anyone of you sets as much as one foot on my property except to put back my fence, I'll f**king blow you to kingdom f**king come! You just f**king try me!
In retrospect, I'm sure they thought I'd gone quite wildly mad. And that immigration thing, well, that had been low.
The next morning as the tell tale sound of heavy machinery cranked up, I went in search of the job foreman.
He explained to me that the city had contracted him to replace the sewer system for the entire block - a barrage of complaints about sewage backing up into the houses had finally forced the city to act and hadn't I gotten a letter about it. No, I assured him, I had not. He apologized several times, assured me he completely understood about the dogs and as he had the means to correct it, he would do so.
Today? I asked darkly.
Today, he assured me.
And he pulled off his muddy glove, gave me his name, and extended his hand. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, then extended mine and we shook on it.
Friends? he asked with a tentative smile.
As long as my dogs are safe, I agreed, still feeling cautious and remembering that actions always speak louder than words, Friends.
In less than a half hour, he'd erected and stabilized a wire mesh panel across the opening, weighted it down with shale and fastened it at both sides. It wasn't pretty but it was effective - the little dachshund's disappointment was evident on his next outing - he sat on his side and sulked for several minutes but then perked up when all approximately 350 pounds of neighboring dogs were let out and all came running for the newly secured fence. The largest skidded to a stop in the dirt before jumping up and testing it, but it held despite his weight and I breathed a sigh of relief. I'd been so obsessed with keeping my own dogs in that I hadn't considered keeping others out and it suddenly came to me that the little dachshund, in spite of his bravado and the small brown dog, snack sized at best, might easily have been turned into lunchmeat by the gang living behind me. It was hard to think above the chaos in progress at the fence line - seven dogs all defending their territory and each determined to have the last word so it seemed - and a chill went up my
spine thinking about all that might've gone wrong but didn't.
There is, on the seventh day,one brief and shining moment when unaware that the crew was still working, I arrive home and let the dogs out. There is an immediate uproar - frantic barking and a veritable chorus of panicky voices shouting or possibly cursing mostly in Spanish ( except for the one clear and very English Holy Shit! ) and by the time I get to the rear of the yard, two hard hats have scrambled for the safety of their bulldozers but the other three are trapped, clinging to and cowering behind the roll of fencing they were in the process of reattaching across the newest and deepest trench. The 6 pound Yorkie mix, the 10 pound little dachshund, and the 15 pound Schipperke have run all five 200 pound construction workers to ground. The two smallest ones are the loudest - barking furiously and running back and forth in the mud while the Schipperke circles cautiously in the distance, watching and waiting. I don't need to be bi-lingual to understand the exchanges between the two men on the bull dozers and the three ignominiously trapped behind the fencing. Derision and mockery are the same in any language.
The little ones won't hurt you, I tell the crew with a smug smile, But the black one bites and she doesn't like people she doesn't know so you might want to be careful there. The three stuck behind the fencing paled while the two on the bull dozers continued to jeer and taunt in Spanish. Maybe you can't beat the system, I thought to myself, making a mental note to look up the origin of Mexican standoff, but now and then you can give it a good kick in the ass.
Then the coal company came, with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
john prine
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