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.
Lark Bunlush is standing with Boyd before a huge puddle, covered in a light film of yellow dust, at the foot of her driveway.
“What happened here?”
“Rain, Fred.”
“It seems to be growing.”
“Maybe there is a water main break?”
Boyd waves across the deluge.
“You think we can back the car across it?”
“Hi, Boyd.”
Lark walks across the slope of the front yard and picks up a small fallen oak branch.
“I think this is just water draining down from up the hill.”
“Okay Mom, try this end first.”
“Here goes, ‘Twig Test’.”
She sneezes. The pollen is thick in the air as she dips the spread of twigs on the end of the branch near Boyd’s feet.
“Looks about eight inches deep”
“Wait, try down at the other end.”
Lark drags the branch along the bottom and water rises on the wood.
“Oh! The twigs are all submerged!”
“How’s that for high-tech detection, Mom?”
Lark gives Boyd a high five.
Boyd lends a hand with the branch.
“It’s stuck, I think there’s a hole or something!”
A shadow crosses the shade-line between the reflected strip of bright gray sky and deep brown shadow of the hillside behind Lark’s home.
“Hi, Maynard.”
“Boyd, Mon confrere!”
Lark puts down her branch.
“Fred, this is Maynard Keyes. Maynard, our neighbor, Fred.”
He bends slightly and offers an elbow bump from his greater height, six foot seven, or more.
“Glad to meet you, neighbor.”
Keyes smiles with yellow teeth under his copious mustache.
“When did this happen?”
Lark stares at the puddle and sneezes again.
“Last night.”
“Boyd looks like you are busy.”
Boyd watches him walk away with a spring in his long stride and his arms swing at his sides like ungainly pendulums.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Boyd!”
“Yeah!”
“Are you coming?”
“Yeah.”
He walks back towards us.
“Say, Boyd, when do you think you will get across the pond?”
Lark pulls her branch out of the water and dumps it on the grassy slope among the Spring Beauties.
“Go ahead, Boyd.”
“Wait a minute. Mom, I think you can drive through this. Just stay to the left.”
“Me too.”
“So, go ahead!”
Keyes is examining the tide line at his feet where water laps the dry asphalt in waves from Lark’s dragging branch.
“The level has advanced two pebbles since I started my observations.”
“Yeah! Hear that Mom? Hurry up!”
Lark strides up the driveway to her Toyota Corolla with a big new dent in the right side door.
“She still hasn’t got the door fixed!”
Lark pulls on the driver’s side door.
“Won’t open.”
“You got it, Fred.”
She opens the left side door and slides across over the shifter to get behind the wheel.
“Fred, I’ll bet the battery is dead.”
“Think so Boyd?”
“Yeah, well, it is barely turning over.”
The engine starts.
“Okay Mom, keep coming but go left a little.”
Lark backs down the slope into the puddle and stalls.
Click, it turns over weakly with no ignition.
“You have a dead battery!”
“How am I supposed to get out?”
Lark has moved back to the left and opened the door.
“That water is almost spilling in here!”
“Just wade out.”
“I am not a heron!”
Keyes looks up with a twitch of his mustache.
“Have you got a plank somewhere?”
Lark leans out of the doorway.
“Look in the basement, Boyd, under the old boxes of campaign stuff.”
Boyd walks over to the front door, to go and look.
“How did you get to know Boyd?”
Keyes is watching the advancing tide line.
“I met him in a diner when I was driving through New Mexico, last year, and gave him a ride back East.”
“No one here knew where he was.”
“He didn’t tell me much.”
“He keeps a lot to himself.”
“Boyd is an interesting character.”
“Were you together long?”
“Oh, about two weeks on the road.”
“Did a little touring?”
“No, I also had friends to visit in New Mexico.”
“Sounds like a nice trip.”
“When we got back, he stayed at my place until last month when his mother tracked him down.”
“So, she found him!”
“Yeah, private detective.”
“I see.”
“He was gruntled at the thought though!”
“It was no joke to Lark.”
“I am sure. That relationship is complicated, you know.”
“Yes, they seem to be doing well at the moment.”
“Boyd tells me you have been acquainted for some time.”
“Acquainted, is about right.”
Keyes turns, stands slightly stooped, trying to keep eye contact with me, below.
“Have you met Albrecht?”
“Oh yes, many times.”
“What is your impression?”
“In my opinion, he is a bit of an extremist.”
“I gather he is a confirmed rightist and authoritarian.”
“Yes, I never could tell whether Boyd agreed.”
Keyes watches two doves, flap across the puddle muttering.
“Seems to me, Boyd was swept off his feet and followed someone he found he couldn’t agree with politically, even though love insisted otherwise.”
“He must feel safe confiding in you, Maynard.”
“Oh, up to a point. I am sure he won’t mind my telling you about it now.”
“Well, that’s good to know.”
“Ah, Mr. Keyes!”
He looks over to Lark, still marooned in her car, leaning out the side window.
She pushes the curtain of her thick gray hair, with its black streak, out from in front of her eyes.
“My COVID hair!”
Maynard’s yellow grin widens into a smile.
“There is a lot of it around, Lark.”
“Did you just drive over from DC?”
“Yeah, I am parked back there, in front of the wrong house.”
Keyes points down the street where the road turns sharply.
“Yes, has Boyd told you where he wants to live?”
“No, I think he is pondering.”
Lark is still fighting her hair.
“He is in a muddle. Hasn’t told me either.”
“Well, he seems to be okay with our group.”
Lark’s ring-tones interrupt.
“Where do you live, Maynard?”
“Up near the Cathedral, in DC.”
“Oh, Cleveland Park?”
“Yes, big place, about a dozen good size rooms.”
“Is that your family home?”
Maynard laughs and scratches the back of his neck.
“I would say so, but it isn’t Mom and Dad. It is more like a floating arrangement among various partners.”
Lark is off the phone and leaning out of her car window again.
“Say, Maynard! Boyd told me he is going on stage.”
“He might! One of my friends is planning a production on Zoom. So, it is not really a stage show. He has been working with her quite a lot.”
Boyd carries a dusty plank out of the front door. He tries to put the far end
into the open car but it is too far out and too heavy, and the end falls into the water.
“Try floating it over.”
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“Like launching a boat. Put it in the water and push in over here.”
The plank sinks after getting a push, instead of moving across the surface.
“Why isn’t it floating?”
“Boyd, I am not going to walk the plank!”
“Yeah, okay. It wasn’t my idea, you know.”
“It is too short anyway!”
The plank comes to the surface but is not moving toward the car.
“Bad idea Maynard!”
“Don’t blame him, Boyd.”
“Stop telling me what to do!’
Keyes gestures down the road.
“I don’t want to get dragged into this plank debate, Fred. Going to bring my car over.”
He strolls off, pendulums swinging slowly in time to his long stride.
Keyes, waves to Boyd without shouting back, or turning around and carries on.
“Okay, Mom. Have you got any galoshes?”
The plank has drifted further from the car.
“Look under the stairs.”
Boyd comes back with a pair of red galoshes.
“Okay Mom, can you catch?”
“Sure, throw them over.”
Lark catches the first but the second flies past her and hits the steering wheel.
“I didn’t say, throw them at me!”
“I didn’t throw them at you.”
A huge pink station wagon comes slowly around the corner. Yellow-green oak pollen collects where the chrome trim attaches to the paintwork. It sticks to the glass.
Keyes parks, among the weeds on the verge opposite the house with wipers working on the pollen.
“What is that?”
Lark has the Toyota’s door open and is standing with her arm over the top of the door.
Boyd waves to his friend.
“That is Maynard’s a 1960 Buick Le Sabre Estate Wagon.”
“They didn’t make any car that color!”
“No, he got it painted down in Richmond.”
“Okay, where did he find a disgusting monstrosity like that?”
“Out in New Mexico.”
“No way! Not in pink!”
“I just told you, he got it painted. Besides, old cars don’t rust in the desert.”
“He must be out of his tiny mind!”
“It didn’t work so, he shipped it back.”
“What a gas-guzzling waste of time!”
A tow truck from The Lighthouse Gas Station stops by the puddle and Farouk shouts across to Lark.
“Looks like you need a boat, Lark?”
“Farouk! The battery died.”
He walks around the back of the truck and brings an old tire around to the front and fastens it to the bumper.
“Okay Lark, I’ll push you out of the water.”
“But I need you to tow me to the gas station.”
“Right, but I can’t hitch the car underwater.”
“Oh! right! So, what are you going to do?”
“Push your car up out of the water then back up and hitch.”
Farouk maneuvers his truck getting his front bumper with tire affixed against the rear bumper of the car.
“Are you in neutral Lark?”
“Yeah, that’s N, right?”
“That’s it. Is the hand break off?”
She takes the break off and the car settles against the tire.
“Keep the wheel straight, okay?”
Farouk climbs into the truck and gently pushes the car back up the slope.
“Put it in Park, with the break on.”
Lark yanks the hand break back and moves across to get out of her battered Toyota.
“Guess, I don’t need these.”
She hands Boyd her red Galoshes.
“The water is too deep anyway.”
He throws them down and walks around the puddle, over to Keyes.
“Boyd, it is time to absquatulate. Are you ready?”
He gets in the car before Keyes, saying nothing.
Lark stares over the water.
“What the hell do you think you are doing, Boyd?”
Keyes waves to all.
“He will be in touch.”
“Like hell, he will!”
He gets in the driver’s side.
Farouk hitches the Toyota to his truck and eases it down to the street.
“Boyd, I can’t believe you are just leaving!”
Boyd does not respond. Keyes starts the V8 and engages 235 hp of pink throttle.
“You want a ride, Lark?”
She ignores Farouk.
The gray curtain has closed across her face again and the tip of her nose points towards the departing car.
“You little shit!
