SUZANNE HEAGY

Living in the Great Pause

I. 
In the trees, birds erupt with caws and chirps. Elmon looks up from his laptop. The black-panther cat that stalks the neighborhood has captured a gray squirrel. The birds screech as the cat kneads the squirrel with its claws and licks on its neck beneath the silver maple’s new leaves. Elmon stands up on the screened porch where he is working from home, claps his hands and shouts, “Stop that! Get out of here, go on!”  
             Instantly, the black cat freezes. It drops the squirrel and leaps to its feet before streaking like an oil slick around the corner of the house.  
             The squirrel has been grievously injured, much to Elmon’s alarm. The poor gray mammal is bleeding and spasming, flipping like a canister caught on a conveyer belt.   
             Elmon hates it. There’s nowhere to go to, nowhere to hide. He lives alone and is working from his house for the indefinite future, on the screened back porch since the weather warmed up because inside starts to feel claustrophobic. The black cat is a known killer of mice and birds, leaving feathers, fur, and body parts wherever it’s been. All that license to roam and kill, the freedom of the food chain.  
             The squirrel is suffering, and it’s Elmon’s fault. He doesn’t own a firearm, so he trudges to the garage and gets the shovel. He doesn’t want to do it, but he has no choice but to put the squirrel out of its misery. Elmon screams involuntarily each time he strikes, “Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah!” until the animal lies dead. In death, the squirrel is a mash of fur and bone. He doesn’t want to touch it, so he buries it.  

II. 
He names his backyard the Airport Lounge. At night, Elmon drinks beers from an Igloo cooler while he reclines in the middle of the darkness on a lounge chair and counts planes overhead, tracking their flashing red and white lights in the starry Appalachian sky.  
             He can see the planes full of people, but no one on board can see him. Growing up, his parents took him to watch planes take off and land at North Central airport, a small facility with double runways on a flattened mountain top. When he got to high school, he took a girl up there. Miranda had a booty and a sense of humor that lit up her eyes and dazzled him. On their only date, he drove to the airport and parked on the utility road beyond the fence to share airplane magic with her.   
             It was just the two of them, and the planes taking off and landing, and the wooded hills sloping toward town.  
            He moved to hold her, to kiss her, and she cuddled up to his neck, his acned neck coated with sticky zit cream that smelled like varnish and acetone. He tensed and pulled back. “Not my neck. It’s got zit cream on it.” 
             Smooth, Elmon, such a smooth operator. She was as close as any woman ever came to being the love of his life.  

III. 
A notification pinged while he was working, and he checked his phone, a text from an unfamiliar number. The message said: 

             Hi Chad, this is Jane. I want my money. Text back when I can pick up the cash. 

             Wrong number. He set his phone down and went back to work looking for fly shit in pepper, what they called searching titles for mineral rights so oil and gas companies could allocate royalties on the gold in them thar’ hills.  
             Late April showers fell all day and into the night, with only one cloud break of sunshine. After a Lean Cuisine Salisbury Steak and four beers for dinner, he fell fast asleep watching TV in his recliner. Even notifications couldn’t wake him up. The next morning there were three messages. 

             1:04 am	Are you ignoring me, Chad? This is Jane. Text me nbak, asshle. 

             2:26 am	Listen, mofo, I know where u live. Its the cash or yer ass, Chad. 

             The last notification pinged at 6:25 am and might have been what woke him. 

             You won’t see me coming, mf. I not coming alone. Jane 

             Instantly awake, he messaged back: 

             Wrong number. Sorry. This is not Chad.  

             His phone pinged back: 

             I know it’s u, you peace of shit. 

             Grammar wasn’t Jane’s long suit. Who was this batshit crazy woman, and did she really know where he lived? How could she? She couldn’t. He blocked her number. The rain had moved on during the night. Orange sunlight crested the treetops and beamed a new day through the windows.  

IV. 
His habit was to skip inventory of the fridge and cupboard and repeat the few staples on his grocery delivery order, including the same seven Lean Cuisine dinners every week: Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Turkey Breast, Pepperoni Pizza, Baked Chicken, Salisbury Steak with Macaroni and Cheese, Glazed Turkey Medallions, and Swedish Meatballs. 
             The last Walmart InHome delivery driver left the grocery sacks in the only corner of the front porch where the security camera didn’t see them. By the time Elmon located them, his Lean Cuisines were thawing and soggy. What a dumb ass. On the next order, he typed in “Driver Instructions,” Leave groceries right in front of door! 

V.  
Standing on a stump in the backyard, Elmon leaned on the wooden privacy fence and watched the children at the daycare, which had been closed since the pandemic began. Usually what he heard while working on the screened porch were traffic sounds from the interstate two miles away, ebb and flow of tires meeting pavement, accompanied by closer, random sounds of lawn machinery, barking, garbage trucks beeping, birds and squirrels chirping, bugs buzzing and droning until the day he heard children’s voices: sharp shrieks, offkey singing, and shouts. He had to investigate. 
             The back of the daycare was a hundred yards away on the next hummock over, its entrance facing the street. Inside its large chain link cage, children, little ones and medium-sized, swarmed like a pack of white rats. They climbed on play equipment, ran in circles, jumped and cartwheeled around, so much motion masked and unmasked. Energy that couldn’t be contained or locked down like businesses, banks, and the courthouse. Proof that despite viral mutations and migrations, the future was alive and loud.  
             A mature dark-haired woman in a navy sweatshirt and jeans came to the fence and pointed at him. She wore a black mask and shook her finger.  
             He ducked and stepped off the stump. It probably looked creepy, watching the children. 

VI. 
A UPS notification pinged; his package had been delivered. He saved the lease he was working on and shut his laptop before checking the security camera app.  
             Next door, Roy smoked a cigarette about once an hour all day. He smoked while sitting in a lime green plastic chair next to a small homemade wooden table that held a large, red ceramic ashtray overflowing with butts. The butts grew like a volcano, which sent Elmon to Google. He discovered the fastest growing volcano rose in Mexico to over 300 feet in one week.   
             His neighbor’s habits were immortalized in digital footage captured by Elmon’s front porch security camera, an auto-tracking dome with a wide field of vision. If something woke him in the night, he checked the footage first. Once he captured a raccoon with glowing eyes, more often stray cats and Roy. He knew how Roy let the screen door fall shut, how he shuffled to the chair on automatic, reaching into his shirt pocket for cigarettes before settling slowly and heavily and lighting up. He was a thick man, not six feet tall, his dull baggy pants, t-shirts, and unbuttoned flannels floating over paunch and muscle. He scratched his head a lot, especially his ears, digging into one side and then the other, checking his fingertip, then flicking away or wiping on his pants what had been excavated. 
             The delivery was a copy of Playboy, January 1986, the Holiday Issue featuring Melanie Griffith. Elmon’s father had kept a copy hidden for decades in a drawer in his tool chest beneath a square of cardboard guarded by hammers. Melanie Griffith posed naked in a wild creek bed that resembled Booths Creek winding toward Monongah, light filtering through trees while she looked over her shoulder, and on one perfect, white, tulip bulb hip, the tattoo of a gold and green pear.  
             Elmon had to wait for Roy to finish smoking before he could lay hands on the magazine. He didn’t have a lot in common with his neighbor and preferred to avoid a conversation. 

VII. 
Sickly daffodils drooped in a patch next to the backyard fence, bulbs multiplied and in need of thinning. There were ten heirs for mineral rights on the Morgan-Pitney estate. When his cell rang, he glanced at it, an unfamiliar 304 number. He muted the call and returned to retrieving data to generate royalty percentages.  
             The caller left a message, then rang again right away.  
             Elmon didn’t answer unknown numbers, but he listened to the message. It pissed him off twice, once for the interruption, and twice because it was Jane calling from a different phone. 
             “Hey, Chad, this is Jane. Pick up, motherfucker. This is the final warning before your luck runs out. Call me back, lover boy.” 
             Her syrupy voice infuriated him so much, he fumbled with his phone and blocked her again with a vengeance. 
             In the meantime, notifications pinged. His Walmart grocery delivery had arrived. He looked at the security camera and discovered the delivery guy with a mask on his chin looking back, his features distorted like a funhouse mirror. When the guy backed up, his name tag revealed, “CHAD EVANS,” in black block letters. 
             A cop car pulled up and parked across the street from the house. Two officers got out. 
             Roy sat smoking on the porch next door, obviously getting an eyeful. 
             Chad, a puny guy, stared at the camera like a scarecrow short on straw. Elmon’s weekly dinners thawed in the sacks in front of the door.  
             Elmon couldn’t pretend not to be home. There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. He walked through the house, unbolted the front door, and stood inside the screen. He asked Chad, “Can I help you?” The cops were headed up the walk.  
             Chad swung a scrawny arm. “You gave special instructions. Is this enough in front of the door? I have to have confirmation.” 
             “Looks good from here, Chad. You didn’t happen to borrow my phone number, did you? Did you give Jane my address too?” 
             Chad’s facial expression gave him away; he looked shocked as a guilty mug shot. 
             The cops climbed the steps. The blonde cop with a mustache said, “Good afternoon. What’s going on here?” 
             “Hey, I have groceries to deliver,” Chad told them. “Excuse me, sirs.” He turned, and the cops let him go, watching him trot down the steps. 
             “That guy, I think that guy, stole my phone number and gave it to a woman named Jane who keeps calling and threatening me!” Elmon had minimal proof, but he was certain of it. 
             The cops looked at each other. The blonde one said, “Are you Elmon Redford? One of your neighbors made a complaint.” 
             “I am,” he said. “Excuse me, can I take my groceries in first and throw a few things in the freezer?”  
             “This is serious, Mr. Redford. We’ve had a complaint you’ve been spying on children at the Candyland Daycare behind your house. It’s making the caretakers uncomfortable.” 
             He forgot the Lean Cuisines and held up his right index finger, “Once. I looked over the fence one time. I heard a kid screaming bloody murder, okay? I was worried.” 
             The cops conferred with their eyes. “Okay,” said the blonde one. “Don’t do it again. The facility is installing more cameras.” 
             Elmon wanted to know if looking over your own fence was a crime, but he didn’t want to get smart with cops. 

VIII. 
The officers left, and it was down to him, Roy, and the six grocery sacks on the front porch. Uncomfortable encounters be damned. Elmon stepped out and waved at his neighbor. “Hi! Long time, no see.” 
             Roy sat like a boulder by the road. He gestured with his cigarette. “Hey, so? Having a party over there?” 
             Elmon picked up his groceries, three sacks in each hand. “Not hardly. You doing okay?” 
             “Good, good.” Roy puffed and exhaled a nuclear smoke cloud. “Tryin’ to stay healthy.” 
             Elmon wanted to escape inside and bolt the front door behind him. He’d had enough IRL interactions for the day. “Me too, guy. See ya later.”  
             An old red Camry shot down the street and pulled up to the curb. Out popped a skinny woman wearing a tank top with blonde cornrows down to her waist. She shouted, “Hey! Chad! Stop right there,” and pointed at Elmon. 
             For all that was sacred in surreal, locked-down life. “Look at me, please. I’m not Chad.” 
             “He said you have the money, dude, when he dropped off your stuff.” 
             The man in the passenger seat rolled down the window and stared. He had bare biceps and a red bandanna tied around his skinhead.  
             “He didn’t,” Elmon insisted. “Tell them, Roy, tell them I’m not Chad. Did you see the delivery guy give me anything?” 
             Roy smoked and thought. “That’s my neighbor. The dude only brought groceries.” 
             Grocery sacks of thawing dinners that Elmon clutched in each hand.  
             “Give us the groceries,” Jane demanded, motioning for Elmon to bring them. 
             “No,” Elmon said. “I have to eat this week.” 
             Muscle guy swung open the car door and got out. He was about Elmon’s size, but like sirloin compared to ground meat. 
             Elmon couldn’t take it anymore; he felt ready to explode. “Here,” he said, turning wild eyed, thrusting arms forward and stomping to the head of the stairs. “Come get the groceries if you want them. I’ve got Covid anyway. I tested positive yesterday. Who knows how sick I’ll get? Take a little virus with you. I hope your grandma dies.” 
             “Get him,” Jane shouted, but Muscle Guy shook his head. 
             “That’s serious shit. Some people get it bad, I seen the bodies on the news.” He got in the car and rolled up the window. 
             Jane smacked the Camry’s top. “I’ll be back,” she said. “Count on it. You got ten days, motherfucker.” 

IX. 
After Jane and her henchman drove away, it was down to him, Roy, and the six grocery sacks again. Roy stubbed out his cigarette, growing the volcano, put his hands on his knees, and stood. “You shoulda’ said you were infected, man. That shit is airborne too.” 
             “I don’t,” Elmon opened the screen door, “have Covid. I just wanted those people to leave.” 
             “Whatever,” Roy grumbled. “What I seen today, maybe we should end this acquaintance.” 
             It hurt to be misunderstood by Roy. Elmon shook the grocery sacks at his neighbor. “Boo! I’m the bogeyman!” Then he felt terrible. “Just kidding.” 
             “Not funny,” Roy said. 

SUZANNE HEAGY’S first novel Love Lets Us Down (All Nations Press) was released in November 2015 and recognized as a finalist in the 18th annual Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards. Her short stories have appeared most recently in The Anthology of Appalachian Literature, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and in Your Impossible Voice, Pleiades, and Dos Passos Review, among others. Suzanne has served as fiction editor of Kestrel, the art and literary journal at Fairmont State University, since 2008. She writes a monthly column for the women’s collective, Gloria Sirens, at https://thegloriasirens.com/.