The Street That Watered at Six
I stood on their porch a second. They had two wicker chairs out there with the plastic still on the cushions.
The second Monday, I had company.
I heard her before I saw her. A screen door across the street, and then a slow scuffing, and there came Mrs. Lang down her front walk in a quilted pink housecoat and garden clogs, carrying a galvanized watering can with both hands.
It took her a while. I had time to finish my coffee.
She crossed the street without looking either way, which she has done since 1961, and she set herself up at the end of my line, by the curb, where the grass meets Carl’s. She tipped that can over the brownest patch and let it run.
“Ruth,” I said. “That’s my yard you’re watering.”
“I know whose yard it is.”
“You’ve got a yard.”
“Mine’s mostly clover. It doesn’t care.” She adjusted her glasses and looked straight at Carl’s front door. “I saw him, you know. A week ago Saturday. I was at my kitchen window with my oatmeal. I saw the whole business.”
“I figured somebody did.”
“I had my hand on the telephone. And then you came out with that broom, and you said thank you to him.” She shook her head. “Your father would have said that. I about fell in my oatmeal.”
“You don’t have to be out here.”
“David, I have been lying in my bed for two years listening for my wind chimes and remembering I took them down.” She tipped the can again. “I’m eighty-four. I’m up at four thirty anyway. I would like something to do.”
At 6:40 the garage door went up.
Carl backed the Cadillac out, and he saw the two of us, and his foot came off the gas.
Mrs. Lang lifted one hand off her watering can and waved it at him like she was greeting the Queen.
“Good morning, Mr. Jessup,” she called. Sweet as pie.
He rolled on by. I saw his eyes in the mirror.
“He looks tired,” Mrs. Lang said.
I did not ask anybody. I want to say that as plainly as I can, because Carl believed otherwise and maybe he still does.
Nobody on Meadowlark Lane got a phone call. There was no meeting. I never said the word sprinkler to one person on that street and neither did Nancy.
It was just that people are up early in the summer, and they look out their windows.
Wednesday it was Bob Henderson. Bob is seventy and drove a truck for Dillons until his shoulder went. He came down his driveway in a white undershirt and suspenders, dragging a hose, and he did not come to my yard. He stood at the edge of his own, next door on the other side, and watered his own petunias. But he stood where Carl could see him, and when the Cadillac came by, he raised two fingers off the hose.
Thursday Joyce Henderson was out there with him, in curlers, with a plate of something under foil.
“Banana bread,” she said, handing it over the hedge. “If we’re going to stand around like a bunch of fools at dawn, I’m not doing it hungry.”
Friday the Pruitts’ garage opened and out came Gary in Chiefs pajama pants and no shirt, which nobody had asked for, and Donna behind him with a hose reel on wheels.
Gary is the one who got the visit from the city about his boat. He pays sixty dollars a month now to keep it in a storage lot out by the fairgrounds. He stood at the end of his drive and watered a boxwood until it nearly floated.