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Horace dropped by on the Sunday after Easter just as Sig was putting the finishing touches on his new shed.
“Heard you hammering,” Horace said. “Hey, nice shed.”
“Thanks,” said Sig. He’d built the shed right up against the garage so he only had to build three walls, but he’d made it plenty high enough to stand up in and almost as long as the garage was. It had a slant roof to let the rain off and two rooms with a door between them inside, and Sig was pretty proud of the shingling he’d done on that roof. “Had to get it done now,” he said. “I’m gonna be busy
hauling when Joyce has her yard sale. Like to see the inside?”
“Sure,” said Horace. “You hung the door real nice.”
The door was just like the ones inside the house except for the enamel paint and the service-door type lock. Inside, Sig had put a nice neat row of hooks along the garage side and left plenty of space for firewood along the other side. He already had a pretty good stack of wood, and he’d hung up most of the tools.
“I keep wanting to do this myself,” said Horace. “We got just a one-car garage too. What’s in the back room?”
“Off-season equipment,” Sig said. “And the pet door. It’s right on the yard side.”
Horace blinked a couple of times. “Why’d you put in a pet door?” he said.
“So Larsson can get in out of the rain,” Sig said. Horace looked around and sure, enough, Larsson was right there watching.
Larsson was a medium-sized mix of maybe some Shepherd and likely a bunch of other things. He had black and white hair that was longish so Sig had tried saying he was a Border Collie. There hadn’t been many takers for that story. Sig said that didn’t matter because he didn’t have to mention a breed on the notes he left for Larsson. He’d said that to Horace in confidence and Horace never, ever told anybody about that because Sig was basically a nice guy.
Horace actually kind of liked Larsson. He was a little friendlier than he needed to be, but he didn’t bark a lot, and Horace had learned to dodge fast enough to escape a lot of the paw prints and most of the wet kisses. Larsson was eyeing Horace at the moment and he had the kind of doggy grin that always put Horace on his guard. “Wouldn’t you let him in out of the rain?” Horace said. “I mean, if he wouldn’t know when to come in himself?”
“Yoof?” said Larsson. His nose wrinkled up and he squinted his eyes.
“He’d know,” Sig said. “You’d be surprised how much he knows. I meant, If I didn’t notice it was raining.” Horace blinked at that too, but then he remembered that Sig was retired and maybe he slept when it was raining. He hoped that was it.
After they’d both admired the shed for a few more minutes, Horace said, “When’s that yard sale gonna be? Frieda will want to know.”
“Can’t be sure,” Sig said. “Joyce says she needs a lot more stuff first.”
Horace would have thought that anyone on the block would have wall-to-wall-stuff, but he didn’t want to say that so he just said, “Wanna see what I put up in the yard for Frieda?”
“Sure,” said Sig. He figured going to take a look was only fair.
Horace had put up two poles about twenty feet apart with a bar across the top of each one and several hooks on each bar. He’d strung a rope between each of the opposite pairs of hooks.
“What’s that for?” said Sig.
“Sheesh,” said Horace. “You remember clotheslines, don’t you?” He figured, Lord knew Sig was old enough.
“Well, yeah,” said Sig. “But nobody uses those anymore.”
“Just about everybody on the block is gonna use ‘em this summer,” Horace said. “We’re all going green.” He didn’t say Sig would have known this if he’d come to the neighborhood meeting two weeks ago. He thought Sig would figure that out.
“Oh,” said Sig. “I guess I’d better ask Joyce if she wants ‘em too.”
“Yeah,” said Horace.
The wash-hanging started that week and went on the next and as far as Horace or anybody else could tell, it all worked out fine. There were only a few days when anyone had to scramble to get the shirts in before it rained and only one day when it was cold enough to make the pillow cases stiff. Then there was another neighborhood meeting.
“You better come to this one,” Horace told Sig. “They’ll talk about how the green laundry is going.” Sig didn’t say anything.
“You really oughta put up clothes poles yourself,” Horace said. “Larsson seems to be pretty
interested in them even if Joyce isn’t He’s all over the block on wash days.” Sig just shrugged and said, “So? He’s a guard dog.” so Horace wasn’t really surprised when he didn’t show up.
Most of the neighbors did, and some of then definitely had comments. It started with Cora.
“I like the way the wind kind of smooths things out,” she said, “but Monday it blew away one of my aprons, and I’ve looked all over the block and I can’t find it again.”
“You too?” said Martha. “I lost a tea towel that way. On Tuesday.”
Turned out, most everybody had lost something, mostly small stuff, but Ellie was really put out because she’d lost a whole new house dress. “First time it was even in the wash,” she said.
At the next meeting it was the same thing. Horace asked Frieda if she’d been missing anything. “Let’s just say,” she said, “I’m not putting any more underwear on the line.” Horace grinned. “Yours or mine,” she said. He stopped grinning.
The next week it was the same again. The funny thing was, nobody had found anybody else’s stuff in their yards. “Oh, geez,” Kemp said, “that’s not the wind. Somebody’s taking stuff.” That seemed to sum it up.
“Who would steal damp laundry?” Ellie said.
Millie said, “Has anyone looked in at that thrift store? I mean the one a couple blocks from here. They take all kinds of stuff and some of it’s consignment, so….”
Well, looking in at the thrift store was the next neighborhood project. Everybody went—except Sig
and Joyce—and they went in ones and twos partly so as not to look suspicious and partly so that everybody could identify their own stuff privately. There was not a thing in that store that looked familiar except for a sport coat of Horace’s that he didn’t remember ever saying he’d give up and that he pretty much resented having to buy back. When he got home with it Frieda just sighed and was grateful he hadn’t spotted his Christmas tie in there too. She couldn’t say much to him because she’d found some bargains she couldn’t pass up.
The next joint project was a search of the neighborhood. That meant squinting at all the flower beds—which was embarrassing to some people—and drafting kids to search under hedges. The kids didn’t seem to mind once they had an agreement that they could keep anything that hadn’t come off a wash-line. They turned up three softballs, a football, maybe a dozen ball caps with slogans their
parents would allow, a cap pistol, a trash-bag’s worth of dog toys, and altogether too many once-edible things that the adult searchers had to get into the garbage really fast in spite of half believing that snack cakes last forever. Everything got analyzed and counted except for the gum balls. Anyone with tough garden gloves had to take care of those, and no one else was terribly curious about what happened to them. Nobody found a single item of wash-line laundry. At first, Cora thought she had found a towel, but it turned out to be just a yard sign that said, “Recall Scott Walker.” Right under it was another one that said, “We stand with Scott Walker.” Cora didn’t think anybody would own up to either of them so she just stuffed them into the trash.
The green project went on all summer and all summer things were disappearing off the lines without ever turning up anywhere else. After a while most people took to putting good stuff into their dryers, or on lines in the basement, and hanging up stuff they wanted to get rid of. It made for some good excuses for clothes shopping, but that got expensive so nobody thought it was the perfect system.
The neighborhood meetings got to being mostly people listing the stuff that had gone missing. Sig and Joyce still weren’t showing up but Sig had told Horace that after finishing the shed he didn’t have energy to put up a clothesline so they wouldn’t have had anything to mention anyway. Joyce’s yard sale, somehow never came off.
Cora and Frieda both told Martha that maybe she should have Martha’s cat, Jack, prowl the yards to keep off the robbers, but Martha said she hated to admit it but she was watching Jack to make sure he wasn’t getting out and pulling a joke himself. The real reason was that she’d asked Jack whether he had anything to do with the situation, and he’d said, “No,” and she believed him.
“And--I don’t like to talk behind anyone’s tail,” Jack said, “but the animals you want to watch out for are not cats.”
“Squirrels?” said Martha.
“They’re not smart enough to carry off clothes,” Jack said. He didn’t say, “Duh,” but his tone did.
Martha couldn’t get anything more out of Jack, but she did ask around if anyone else thought the problem would be non-cat animals.
“I hear there are coyotes in the city sometimes,” Frieda said.
“Wouldn’t we hear them howling at night?” said Cora.
“This stuff is happening during the day,” Ellie said. “And you’d notice a coyote in your yard during the day. This has to be some animal you wouldn’t think twice about.”
“Like a dog?” said Martha. She thought that if it was a dog that would be why Jack dropped her the hint. She thought some more. “It would have to be a dog that doesn’t have a leash,” she said. Everyone figured at least that was a start on an ID.
It was getting close to Halloween and between the cooling off and the expense, everybody had given up completely on hanging clothes. Also, it was getting to be high time to get the equipment ready for the usual winter disasters. Horace suddenly realized that he hadn’t seen Sig around for a while. “Wonder if he needs any help rearranging that shed,” he thought. He went over to Sig and Joyce’s house. Sig was just coming out of his shed when Horace got there. He looked a bit nervous.
“Need any help switching your stuff front to back?” Horace said.
“Ah, no,” Sig said. “I swapped the lawnmower and the snow thrower and shovels and I figured anything else I’d better just leave there.” He was mumbling a little. “Huh?” said Horace. “What else?”
“Oh,” Sig said. Larsson was looking out of the pet door. Sig gave a little wave in his direction. “Larsson has some of his stuff there, and ….”
Horace just stared for a minute. then he blinked. Then he figured he was having an idea. It was one he didn’t like very much, so he didn’t stick around after that. He went and got Frieda and told her about his idea and then the two of them went over to Martha’s. She was in the yard rolling up her clothesline.
“Oh, my word,” Martha said. “Just a minute.” She disappeared into the house.
“What do you bet she’s asking Jack about it?” Frieda said.
“Does that cat really talk?” Horace said.
“Well, Martha thinks so,” Frieda said. “And I like her too much to call her on it.”
“Oh,” said Horace. Then Martha came back. “Maybe we should talk to Sig,” she said.
That evening was the neighborhood meeting and Horace told everybody why they should talk to Sig. There was some eye-rolling, but they all went over together.
“Sig,” Horace said. “Have you checked the back room of your shed lately?”
“Ah, yeah,” Sig said.
“Anything wrong there?”
“Not really. Just, ah, something I have to figure out what to do about.”
“Could you show us?” said Horace. A lot of people had moved up close to Sig’s door so it wasn’t really a question.
“OK,” said Sig. “But I really didn’t know about it until now, OK?”
In the back room of the shed was the biggest collection of laundry anyone had ever seen outside of a hospital. It was actually really neat, with shirts, towels, pants and sheets all folded and sorted into different piles, but not a bit of it belonged to Sig and Joyce.
“There’s my new house dress,” said Ellie.
“And my tea towel,” said Martha.
“Geez, maybe he is a Border Collie,” thought Horace.
“It isn’t really his fault,” Sig said. “He knew about the yard sale Joyce wanted and he always wants to help out and….”
“Guess it isn’t Joyce’s fault either,” said Cora. “Oh, gee, there’s my apron.”
Well, the yard sale finally came off but nothing in it had a price on it. Sig moved the piles to Joyce’s picnic table for people to look through and claim their stuff. Some of the stuff went into a separate stack on the back porch for people to check out anonymously.
Sig had a long talk with Larsson and was pretty sure he understood. Just in case, Sig taped a reminder note to the kitchen wall right above Larsson’s water bowl. But after two more summers most folks’ underwear is still going in the dryer.
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