Below the house and off to the right of the lane was another house. The one at the crest was traditional — white, Colonial blue shutters on the windows, broad porch overlooking the lawn. The other was more Frank Lloyd Wright — one story, of native stone, with patio and floor-to-ceiling doors.
“The big house is mine. I had the smaller one built for Randy as a wedding gift, but he won’t live there. Too close to me, he says. Even his mother couldn’t talk him into it.”
Zeigler’s voice was puzzled. It would never occur to him that anyone would interpret generosity and concern as interference.
“I’ll rent it to you, Denbow,” he said.
Small-town bred and hating apartments, Denbow felt like a child looking at something in a store window beyond his reach.
He chuckled. “That’s nice of you, but I couldn’t afford it. A one bedroom apartment is my limit.”
Zeigler put the car in gear. “I want you to meet my wife.”
His first wife had been a small, delicate woman, thin and gracious and gray as a mourning dove. Zeigler underwent a transformation the moment he entered the house, humble and grateful and infinitely gentle, his devotion apparent in the softness of his voice and the way he spoke to her.
Because the loose folds of skin weren’t that obvious yet and because thoughts of death had no reason to enter Denbow’s mind, it wasn’t until he and Zeigler were sitting on the porch overlooking the lawn and sipping coffee that he realized she was thin because she was wasting away and the young woman he’d assumed was a maid was really a nurse.
He glanced at Zeigler. In no way, at any time, had the man indicated the slightest trace of concern or worry. To him everything would be fine if you simply refused to give up. But even Zeigler couldn’t defeat death. When he lost what was obviously the most important thing in the world to him, it would take time for him to recover.
“Peaceful, isn’t it?” asked Zeigler. “Had some of my best ideas here.”
“Renting me that house wasn’t one of them,” said Den-bow dryly.
“What’s your apartment costing you now?”
“None of your business.”
Zeigler chuckled. “I figure about six hundred. Okay. I know your ex’s lawyer took you to the cleaners, so that’s what you pay me.”
“You can get twice that or more. What the hell makes you think I need your charity?”
“What charity?” Zeigler swept a hand over the scene. “I bought this twenty years ago because I wanted to control who lived near me. The only reason I had the house built was Randy. Never thought he wouldn’t want it. Now I’m stuck with it. It’s a crime to let it sit vacant, but I’m certainly not going to sell it and I’ll be damned if I’ll rent it to just anyone. I’ve talked to a lot of people about you, Den-bow. You’re a quiet man. You go your own way and mind your own business. You know who you are and you’re good at what you do, and if someone doesn’t like you, that’s their problem. If you move into that house, you won’t be up here annoying me, there won’t be any wild parties, and there won’t be any weird people wandering around.”
He sliced the scene with a vertical palm and moved it to his left. “You take care of everything on that side of the lane. Pay the utilities, mow the lawn in summer, shovel the snow in winter, and leave me alone.”
The houses were islands set in a sea of green and surrounded by a barrier reef of trees. No slamming of doors or loud voices in the middle of the night, no hum of traffic during the day.
Denbow kept his face impassive so that Zeigler couldn’t see how much he wanted to say yes, but living two hundred feet from a man who thought he was always right, who always knew what was best for you — and worse still, never hesitated to say so — might make any price too high.
“Leaving you alone is no problem. No offense, Zeigler, but the question is — will you leave me alone? It’s hard for you to stay out of people’s lives. Randy knew that.”
“Aw, hell, you think I don’t? But only when I think I can help. You’re as hard-headed as I am, Denbow. No one can tell you anything. Nothing I can do for you. Even if I could, you’d tell me to go to hell.”
He held out a hand. “Not annoying each other is part of the deal. Okay?”
Denbow put the mower in gear. Nothing he could do for him. Except rent him the house at a ridiculous figure because he knew Denbow would appreciate living there.
The following spring, the first Mrs. Ziegler had been admitted to the hospital for extended treatment, but she’d died suddenly and unexpectedly.
Zeigler had suffered the first defeat he could never turn into eventual victory.
The employees attended the funeral en masse and returned to the plant to fill orders well into the night so that no time was lost. They wouldn’t have done that for the much younger second wife, their collective judgment better than Zeigler’s since it wasn’t distorted by love, lust, desire, or whatever else had motivated him to marry a woman thirty years his junior during a vacation in Mexico six months later.
“He couldn’t seem to handle Mother’s death,” said Randy. “I thought a change of scene would help. The last thing I expected him to do was take up with some bimbo from San Francisco, much less marry her.”
If Randy didn’t realize Zeigler’s marriage was a gesture, proof that he hadn’t really lost the battle, Denbow didn’t intend to educate him.
“Tequila, a Mexican moon, and a low-cut gown have addled the brains of many a good man,” he said. “He’ll get over it.”
“I know that,” said Randy icily. “The question is — how much will it cost him? That’s what worries me.”
No one expected the price to be Zeigler himself.
Denbow swerved around a granite outcrop too big to remove. Everyone is entitled to one mistake. She’d been Zeigler’s. Hair that really wasn’t blonde, clothes that were a little too tight and showed a little too much thigh and a little too much cleavage — as adept at playing a man as a concert pianist at playing a Steinway.
Zeigler had seen only an exciting woman who listened to his wisdom with wide eyes.
She was gone ten months later. What she took with her, other than Zeigler’s heart and soul, Randy didn’t say.
What Denbow didn’t understand was Zeigler’s continued depression. The man was too much of a fighter. Even floored twice, Zeigler should have picked himself up and staggered around the ring, looking for his opponent, not stretched out on the canvas looking up with unseeing eyes.
He stopped the mower alongside the lane where it curved away near the top of the slope. One more pass and he was through.
On the other side of the rutted gravel, Zeigler’s two-thirds of the hillside lawn was a rippling green blanket almost six inches tall.
Zeigler had been a lawn freak. He could have hired someone, but he himself mowed, sprayed, fertilized, and wandered over it in the evening with a spray bottle of weed killer zapping anything bold enough to take root.
“I like to grow things, Den-bow, but I don’t have time for flowers or vegetables, and riding the mower gives me time to think. When I look over it, I’m a proud man. A fine lawn isn’t in Mother Nature’s scheme. If you have one, you’ve fought her to a standstill. And I did it all alone. Not like the business. The people who work for me, and people like you, all have a part. But this lawn—” He gestured. “Don’t you think you ought to do something with your section?”
“Leave my wildflowers and weeds alone, Zeigler. Mother Nature’s been losing too often lately. She deserves a break.”
Zeigler’s once-velvet green carpet was showing the signs of neglect. He hadn’t set foot on it since his Mexico-acquired blonde had left him twisting in the wind, and Randy had turned down Denbow’s offer to mow it whenever he did his.