NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Out for an evening stroll, I find Steve Strether walking Lambert outside Diddlie’s on their post meridiem promenade. He is at the top of Oval Street before it begins the steep descent past the Trips’ towards Wicket Street. Lambert is leading from the middle of the road where the camber is highest. Lambert suddenly doubles back to sniff the roadside. A light in the eaves illuminates the ivy covered brick pillar supporting Diddlie’s mailbox and house number. A breeze agitates the ivy leaves and the hickory above. Their shadows move on the road as if something in the road bed has come to life. Lambert trots over to the base of the mail box, sniffs around for a moment, then sits down and stares at Diddlie’s house.
Steve waits for Lambert to find what ever drew him away from the mail box pillar. A faint rhythmical female vocalization grows slowly in volume and intensity above the sound of Lambert brushing through the ivy. It seems to be coming from the dark opening of a bedroom window on the Oval Street side of Diddlie’s. Steve is looking at me when I look up from Lambert towards him. He has the leash in his left hand and he is waving his outstretched right arm in time with the voice like a symphony conductor. He brings up the hand which holds the leash as if to indicate a crescendo. This pulls on Lambert, and he growls in protest resisting the pull at his neck. There is no crescendo, but the beat is gradually speeding up with rising pitch and Steve skillfully stays in time, as if he were leading. Then after a whimpering sigh, the voice trails off to be joined by a male sigh followed by silence from the black rectangle on Diddlie’s wall. Lambert loses interest and tugs on the flexible leash like a fish drawing out more line as it fights in the water. Lambert pushes through the dark sea of ivy leaves towards the Trips’ perimeter where there is a grass verge before the first driveway. The sound of a door slamming from inside Diddlie’s, provokes Lambert to bark in response. He barks only once and then stands still in the ivy growling quietly with his short white tail straight out and his ears moving in tiny adjustments. Steve locks the leash and tries to pull back. He doesn’t want Lambert to set off Jake’s security lights and blast the newly eroticized mystery of the evening with a blinding alert. We both thought Diddlie lived alone. There is no vehicle but Diddlie’s in the car port.
Steve describes Lambert chasing something out of Diddlie’s ivy once before, setting off the lights, and Lambert’s most earsplitting bark, as his prey crossed Jake’s grass verge. Lambert flushes something from the ivy this time too. Steve is too late getting him out. Bright lights flood the Trips’ perimeter with blinding intensity. Minutes later, when our eyes have adjusted to the extraordinary new visibility, an SUV turns the corner of Wicket and goes up Oval. Steve tries to hurry Lambert away from the scene, down hill and around the corner towards home. The SUV stops, the driver’s window slides down and a serious official sounding voice asks if we have seen anything unusual on the hill. Steve explains the events of his recent descent past the Trips’ without mentioning the operatic performance he conducted with such mastery further up. Thank you sir, said the voice as a female radio voice emanates from high in the interior with bleeps and crackle. “It’s a ‘39’, Peggy” says the driver. His window goes up and the engine revs quietly pulling the left rear wheel close enough to the roadside ditch to cause further subsidence of the asphalt. Lambert cautiously goes down to investigate. Steve explains he and Lambert are a code thirty-nine. He had heard it before. That report to Urban Safety Solutions data center is recorded on a log with many other coded entries, showing all their responses to events at the Trips’. Lambert stays in the ditch, his nose to the streambed with Steve walking along the side of the road above. He keeps the leash pulled in taught along the stretch of Wicket Street that marks the end of the Trips’ corner lot so as not to cause another ‘39’. “Wish I was thirty-nine”, quips Steve.
