Best of Neighbors

To the reader: This novella contains three chapters, thirty pages, totaling 15,000 words. It describes an interracial relationship, so if this is not your thing, perhaps your time would be better spent elsewhere.

*****

Chapter 1

I'm going to tell you how I happened to get the best family a guy ever had, and a somewhat older wife so sexy—and hot blooded—I still can't believe she'd marry an ordinary guy like me. But this didn't start out looking that way.

First, here's a little background, told exactly the way writing experts tell a beginner he should never start his story:

I was a bachelor back then, four years out of electrical engineering college, and working for a local manufacturing company. My biggest monthly bill was the mortgage on my starter-home I'd bought two years before. Even with that, my wages covered my routine and toy expenses very well. And on the social side, I was still trying to decide what I wanted in the long run for a family situation. I dated girls more as friends than as bed partners, although there were a few who did quite well in both categories. I suppose you might say I wasn't ready for marriage, but these girls were, so each gave up on me after a few months and moved on to guys more matrimonially inclined.

My home, the seventy-five year old, ex-farmhouse on the corner lot of a forty acre, ex-truck farm, included a separate, three-plus car garage. This provided a great place for puttering with my toys: an eight foot plywood outboard hydroplane I built during early college, a fast but aging twenty-one foot, fiberglass sailboat, an unspectacular and mostly used-up classic car, and the El Camino pickup I drove daily. I spent most of my at-home time in this shop, its roll-up doors open during good weather, possible for all who might care to see my woodworking projects and my mechanical stuff in progress.

Our neighborhood was pretty quiet, except during those few months while one knucklehead down the street three blocks owned a beat-up, Camaro. But he soon finished it off in a drunken wreck, so after that, everything returned to normal. The neighborhood kids rode their bicycles everywhere: the paved street, across everyone's driveways and yards (and sometimes through their flowers), with little concern for the proprieties of ownership and property lines. But none of us minded much.

Of course their bicycles suffered the effects of child ownership. Every week or so one of the kids came down the street pushing his crippled bicycle, asking if I'd fix it. Usually the repair was simple and quick, the derailleur speed-shifter mechanism being the most common culprit and easily corrected if you merely understood how it worked and how to get everything back on track. As a particular kid aged, I'd see him begin fixing his own bike, or he'd stop by and ask advice or to borrow a wrench so he could fix it himself—usually in my driveway. I enjoyed watching these kids grow up, learning self-sufficiency as they did so.

You might say I inherited a reputation of substitute daddy. Before long I discovered my clientele included kids from beyond our street, but what the heck. Lots of these kids had marginal fathers. If they had a father at all, he either worked all day then did little with the kids when he was home, or he was a weekend, divorce-custody father. Kids need more than that, and some of that duty fell onto me.

And these kids weren't all just boys.

One cool summer evening a tiny young girl herded her pink kiddie bicycle up to the open door of my shop. I'd often seen her playing on the lawn in front of the divorcee's half of the duplex across the street, so I knew where she belonged. Cute kid, always cheerful, and the kind you'd want if you were going to have kids.

"Mr. Simmons?" she called into the building.

"Yes?" I said, turning from the piece of wood I was converting to sawdust and shavings in my attempt to convert it into something useful.

"Will you fix my bicycle? Please?"

"Sure. What seems to be the problem?"

"It keeps falling over."

"Okay, wheel it in here and we'll have a look."

As she wheeled, right off I recognized her bicycle was not the problem, it was her. Even rolling alongside her while she held it up, it kept falling over.

I gave it a quick check anyway, and everything seemed fine. This kid just hadn't learned to ride yet, that was all. She was so young, I wondered if she was too young for this; but oh, well, I'd give it a try.

"Okay," I said, pushing her bike out the door and toward my driveway. "Now show me what happens."

She climbed onto the bike, steadied only partially by those cruel jokes the bicycle industry calls training wheels. Immediately she sought the bike's pedals, tried to pedal, and fell over. I barely caught her before she hit the driveway and got skinned up.

"Okay, I see the problem."

She looked up at me. That was worship on her face as she scrambled off the bike onto solid pavement.

"So? Let's talk about how bicycles work, shall we?"

She nodded.

"Okay, now, watch this." I held the bike straight up, turned loose, and it quickly fell over. Simple laws of physics and gravity.

Her look said, so?

"It will always try to do that. With you on it, it will, too. That's what is happening to you now."

She nodded again.

"The trick is this: As you ride, you gotta keep steering the bicycle back under yourself so you stay balanced on top of it."

Her nod turned to puzzlement.

"Yeah, that's what's wrong. You probably haven't noticed, but all the time anyone is riding a bicycle, he keeps steering the front wheel so the bike stays under him instead of getting off-center and falling over. When someone gets real good at riding, their balance steering is so slight you might never notice it. But it's there, just the same. Make sense?"

Her look said it didn't.

"So, let's try this. First we'll take these damned things off. In a minute you'll wish you'd never seen them anyway, so let's get them out of your way right now." A moment with a wrench eliminated the training wheels' contribution to her problem.

"Okay, now we're ready.

"You sit on the bike seat, but don't put your feet on the pedals. I'll hold it up. I want you to concentrate on steering, not pedaling. I'll take care of keeping the bike moving and not falling over, you just steer. Every time the bike starts to tip, you steer towards the direction it's tipping, not the other way. Got it?"

She nodded, but it wasn't a very confident nod.

I grabbed the back of the seat and held a death grip on it while she clambered aboard, then steadied the bike until she got situated with her feet hanging down. Good; with that tiny bike, she almost reached the ground.

"Okay? Now let's try moving forward."

I pushed the bike slowly, coaching steer left or steer right as the bike's tilt decreed.

Slowly, the bike tried less and less to topple, until by the time we reached the street end of my driveway, all I was doing was pushing. I stopped.

"You got it," I said. "Now all you gotta do is learn to pedal and steer at the same time. That's the easy part."

She looked back at me with really? on her face.

"So get off that thing and push it back up there so we can start at the garage again, okay?"

Yes, she had it figured out. Even with her walking and pushing at the same time, everything worked much better than before.

"So? Ready? I'll hold the bike while you sit and put your feet on the pedals this time. I don't want you to pedal yet, just keep you feet on them and steer like before."

She did, while I held the bike up.

Her next passage down my driveway required almost no balance support from me.

The next trip, without pedaling yet, she balanced it all.

The following trip, she pedaled as well as balanced. Not bad at all.

The following evening she brought me a plate of peanut butter-chocolate chip cookies she said she baked. I can only guess how she found out that was my favorite kind.

***

Kids weren't my only clients. Whenever something in the neighborhood broke that needed more than the simplest tools, the project came to me.

One guy down the street raced jeeps. That meant at least one night each week during the season we welded his jeep back together so he could race the following weekend. Usually the work required wasn't much. He'd remove the broken parts if possible, I'd weld them up, then he'd reinstall them.

Another fellow's trailer for his sixteen foot aluminum fishing boat hadn't been much when new, and got no better as it aged. Again, it's problems were never severe. Although he was Black, I had no qualms about helping him because he was a decent guy and always did what he could himself before bringing the worn or broken remains to me.

But it did seem he was fishing much more that year than previous so he had more boat, motor and trailer problems that year. In fact, it seemed as if he left before sun-up every Saturday and returned home after dark each Sunday, and spent little time at home weekday evenings.

So when his son came to my shop one Saturday morning with bicycle problems, I knew his father wouldn't be home for another day. During that time David would be afoot unless I helped out.

Like most of the kids in the neighborhood, David was a good kid. When I first moved there, he'd come by my shop to visit and watch me play mechanic, sort through my trash bin for wood scraps, and if he found some, ask for them and to borrow a hammer and a few nails. Then he'd spend an hour or so driving those nails into the scraps, at first bending lots of nails, but getting better at it each day. I never did understand his fascination with driving nails, but maybe he planned on becoming a carpenter some day. Anyway, this was far better for him than watching TV.

Later on, sometimes he'd come over and ask if I had work, which I usually found for him, and while he was on the clock, he really worked—didn't goof off unless I stopped him so he got a breather while we chatted. Usually he wanted to buy some magazine or new gadget and always knew exactly how much cash he needed, right down to how to figure the sales tax. Maybe the fact he understood the realities of numbers explained why he got along so well with an engineer like me.

One day in late fall I realized I hadn't seen David or his father for quite some time. The cognition-forcing incident was my stopping at a nearby Quickie Mart for gas one evening and discovering David's mother cashiering inside. That was new; far as I remembered, she always worked at home. She had plenty there to keep her busy: David age ten now, and his two older sisters, probably fourteen and sixteen.

So I blundered in, and as I waited for my change from buying my weekly, snack-bag of potato chips, asked how David was, and remarked I hadn't seen him in a while. Well, David was fine, doing well in school as usual, and started pee-wee basketball this year. He should do well at that, I thought. He was growing like a weed and appeared well on his way to six foot in a couple years.

But when I asked about David's father, stone-dead silence met me across the counter. David's mother recovered after a moment and said with tears in her eyes, "Den drowned six months ago; fishing. Far as the Sheriff could figure out, he fell out of his boat and couldn't get back in. Middle of the lake, you know; cold and windy day; probably hypothermia. They found his boat anchored with his catch and everything else still in it. Found him miles away next day, face down, washed up on the shore, no life jacket."

"Oooh!" Well, what could I say she hadn't heard a hundred times before? So that was why she was here night-clerking for minimum wage.

"How are Clarissa and Janie getting along?" I said hoping to divert the conversation to something pleasant.

She recovered quickly. "Good. Freshman and Junior this year. Good grades, like David."

I nodded. At least not everything in Corabea Madison's life had hit the skids.

"Well, I gotta head for my meeting," I said, mostly to get out of this uncomfortable situation. "Say Hi to everybody, and specially David, please?"

"I will, and thanks. I know Denton liked you a lot. He always said you could fix anything."

Anything but the human condition, old age, and death, I always told myself. "Maybe if something breaks at your place, give me a call. I'll come see if I can fix it," I said.

And save you a plumber's bill for a dozen hours of minimum wage work down here— which I'm sure you can't afford.

***

I never got that call, but I got something better.

Not having kids of my own, I'd always avoided Halloween and all that, figuring parents of kids were obligated to provide Halloween for all the other neighborhood kids—but not me. So each year on Halloween evening I turned out all my house lights to discourage trick-or-treaters and took up temporary residence in my shop until all the pirates, ghosts, ghouls, witches— several of which looked like my first grade teacher—vampires, werewolves, and skeletons gave up and went home for the night. At least this way I didn't buy candy I didn't need and would end up eating at least some of, and overall, contributing to the neighborhood's sugar glut.

As I tipped my helmet up and laid down the welding stinger to chip slag before running my next bead, I looked at the open middle garage door to see David standing there wearing a minimal costume.

"Hi, David. Long time, no see."

He nodded. I could see his mother standing in the dark, back out toward the street, as was the customary way to protect your young Halloweeners in our neighborhood.

"Sorry, I don't usually do Halloween. But if you wait a minute I'll see what I have in the house."

"Oh, no, Mr. Simmons, I didn't come for that. I just want you to meet my Mom." This kid was proud of his mother; I could hear it in his voice.

With that I turned and walked toward the doorway. The Black woman, much more attractive tonight compared to my month-ago, uneasy, Quickie-Mart encounter, stepped from the shadow into the light.

"I've already met your mother, David, but I'm glad you made it official. How are you, Mrs. Madison? Better than last time, I hope."

She nodded and shook the hand I offered. Damn, she looked good, and I didn't have to think for a Black woman because by any standard she looked great. Medium dark like David; slightly darker than Clarissa and yet lighter than Jamie.

"Your mom tells me you started playing basketball this year, and you're still getting good grades.'

He nodded.

"Good. You got the brains, so keep at it.'

He looked at me, his grin a combination of pride in his mother and pride in himself. Just what a now fatherless boy needed.

"Thank you, Mr. Simmons," his mother said. "I appreciate you taking such an interest in David."

"You bet I'm taking an interest. If he gets to goofing off so much his grades slip, you bring him over here and I'll take an interest in him he won't forget!"

David grinned, so I knew I'd never have to.

***

Two weeks before Thanksgiving I found David on my porch one evening with a note from his mother:

Dear Mr. Simmons:

Please join my family and me for Thanksgiving Dinner at our house. We normally eat at 2:00, but that's negotiable if you prefer earlier or later.

Sincerely,

Corabea Madison and Family.

I let my hand and the note slip down while I thought it over. This was far too much repayment for what little I'd done for David. But I had nothing going that day and would probably just putter in my shop all morning anyway, then drive over and eat alone at one of the area's buffets around mid afternoon. Having company sure would be nice.

"Tell your mother I'd be delighted, but only if I can contribute something ... like the turkey. If that's okay, ask her how big I should get. I don't have a clue how much turkey to buy and for how many people. And if it's to be frozen, ask her what day I should bring it by, okay? Or if she prefers fresh, I'll get that instead. Now go. Oh, and yes ..., two o'clock is fine."

I wouldn't have believed he could run home and return that quickly, and without being winded. Must have been his basketball training. So just that simple, I had an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner.

After the way she and David fawned over me when I delivered the somewhat larger than prescribed, frozen turkey three days before the big day, I didn't want to arrive for Thanksgiving dinner too early. A guy can only take so much gratitude when he knows he's just ordinary, and what he's done is only ordinary-decent, too.

I may have been a little slow on the uptake, but it seemed normal that they seated their guest—yes, I was the only one—at one end of the six-place table, with Mrs. Madison at the opposite end, closest to the kitchen. But there was something afoot, and it was more than the gigglie chatter of two silly teenage girls who obviously thought the family's male guest was something to get excited about. The comment Mrs. Madison directed their way about acting like silly little girls had no effect.

One daughter sat on either table corner next to me and both made pests of themselves, making certain I lacked nothing to make my dinner complete and making sure I knew which dish each had made or helped make. David scowled at his sisters the whole time. I didn't; I thought it bordered on funny, and besides, it didn't hurt my ego one bit.

Mrs. Madison, on the other hand—except when chiding her silly daughters—held forth with perfect decorum, although she did all the serving and everything that went with that. I swear she looked even better than Halloween night. Medium-to-dark milk chocolate complection, coal black hair in tiny braids, sufficiently refined features that could have made her a Hollywood model, and a medium-tall figure any woman would be proud of. Yes, she'd missed her calling.

I kept feeling a stupid grin creep onto my face most of that afternoon. CoraBea's modest smile had a lot to do with it, not to mention those straight-on, looks in the eyes she gave me every so often.

David walked me home, which I found slightly odd until once out of sight of their house, he looked down like a man and said, "Mr. Simmons? You like my mom, don't you?"

I nodded. How do you tell a ten year old neighbor kid you've had more than one racy dream that included his mother? Duhh?

Best I came up with was to nod and say, "I think you're lucky."

"She likes you, too. She said so after you left from bringing the turkey."

"Good."

We walked along in silence until we passed the door to my shop.

"Hey, you want to come in for a while? I got the new Popular Mechanics you could read—borrow if you want. Also got a Hot Rod that's only two weeks old."

"Thanks, Mr. Simmons, but I should go home. Mom's ..."

"What, David?"

"She gets awful lonesome sometimes, you know?"

I imagined she did. Her husband hadn't been gone that long, and I knew David got lonesome every once in a while, too.

"She wouldn't get so lonesome if you took her to a movie or something ... or one of my basketball games."

Ah hah! So Thanksgiving dinner had been a recruiting interview! Well, I didn't mind, but was this solely David's idea? His sisters'—they sure had flirted enough—Mrs. Madison's, or a combination of all four?

I got a hint of the answer the following evening when David's sisters showed up on my doorstep with several plates of Thanksgiving leftovers. Well, they called them leftovers, but really, they were complete repeat meals. I had to shoo them back home; I'm sure had I not, they'd have come in, set the table for me, served me, flirted with me the whole time, then cleaned up after dinner and stuck around longer than I'd have been comfortable with. As I shoved them out the door, my thanks included I can microwave the remains tomorrow. You won't need to come over. This could easily get out of hand; they might be two and four years under age, but they certainly weren't two to four years bad looking!