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Yesterday a letter from Gina, his ex, had arrived. They divorced in 1981. She had been sick of the neighborhood and his lack of ambition. “Everyone else has moved on, but you’re not going anywhere,” she’d told him. “You’re stuck here like one of your plants.” She had gone to Seattle to ride the waves of the software boom and then the dot-com boom. Presently she worked freelance out of her ’20s bungalow on Bainbridge Island, her existence comfortably cushioned by investments and stock options. The one time he had visited her there, the thing that had struck him most was how white and affluent everyone was. He and Gina were still good friends. Since he was the only person on the planet who didn’t have e-mail, they wrote letters every month.

For the past few years, she had been trying to convince him to move. He was welcome to stay with her until he found a job and a place to live. Just down the street from her house was a folk club where he could play his flute. He had to admit that her offer was tempting. Gina would help him find a job in some pristine clinic where his patients would be programmers and engineers, where he would never have to look at another torn-up, bleeding homeless person. If he didn’t get out soon, he would end up like Alicia.

He arrived home from the hospital with a headache that made his garden shimmer like a hallucination. On the other side of the fence, something made of glass hit a hard surface and shattered. Then came muted grunting, the impact of a fist hitting something soft, and drawn-out weeping that didn’t even sound human. Neil ran to the fence to see the guy next door straddle the gutted motorbike and punch the ripped seat. He was shaking as hard as Neil was.

Everyone’s cracking up, he thought. There was no escape from it, no sanctuary from screaming and pain, even in his garden. Neil imagined that if someone saw his face, it would look like Alicia’s when she had lost it that day. A wave of dizziness forced him to sit down. He rubbed his temples, rehearsed what he would say to Gina when he called her that night: “As soon as I sell the house, I’m out of here.”

Something on the edge of the zucchini bed glinted in the sun. A Ziploc bag. Puzzled, he picked it up, then nearly dropped it. Inside was a gun. A note was tied to its handle, his name written in shaky ballpoint.

Neil,

You probably think I’m crazy for throwing this over your fence, but it’s a lot safer with you than with Hank. He didn’t have a license for this stupid thing, so either turn it in to the police or bury it. I already took the bullets out. Becky

Under her signature, she had written, Thank you. Those two words leapt out at him—she had written them with such urgency that she had nearly pressed the pen through the paper. Thank you. What was she thanking him for—that sack of vegetables he had left on her doorstep? Then it sank in; Becky had left the guy. That fragile young woman with the matchstick arms had taken off.

On a mild September afternoon, Neil sat on the back porch and listened to the children next door squeal as they jumped into piles of raked leaves. A Hmong family had moved in after Hank left. The other day, a postcard from Becky arrived. She said she was waitressing in Madison and saving to go back to college. She got away, he kept thinking. She had to go and she went. But he had decided to stay. He had told Gina that he was too settled to pull up roots anymore. “I guess I’m going to grow old here, right in this neighborhood.”

The garden rustled and whispered to him like an old friend. Looking at his birch tree, he thought of roots sinking into the earth, then watched its golden leaves reach into the intense blue of the autumn sky. The colors sang inside him as he began to play his flute.

THE GUY

BY PETE HAUTMAN

Linden Hills (Minneapolis)

Jane Day-Wellington said, “This thing is leaking.”

“What thing?”

“This drain thingie.” She pointed. “There’s water under the sink.”

Courtney Wellington fitted his Canterbury Park ball cap onto his head and shrugged. “So call the guy.”

“What guy?”

“The drain guy.”

Jane got down on her knees and looked carefully at the dripping pipe. “You can’t fix it?”

“Do I look like the drain guy?” He did not look like the drain guy. He looked like a genetically dilute, down-on-his-luck aristocrat in a baseball cap.

Jane said, “It’s just a little leak. If I call a plumber it’ll cost us a hundred bucks.”

“Old plumbing like that, it’ll probably cost more.”

“All the more reason to fix it ourselves . . . Where are you going?”

Courtney rolled his eyes and pointed at his lucky cap.

“You’re going to play poker? Again? I was hoping you could help me with the yard work.”