Where There's a Will

Flaherty Fence of Beverly was the worst fencing company in New England. Well, at least  in Massachusetts, but all of New England was probably a pretty safe bet. Their prices were ridiculous—but then again, the price of anything is ridiculous these days. Their materials were shoddy. And the quality of work was, shall we say, less than top-notch. Oh, Mr. Flaherty would give you his personal guarantee that if a completed project wasn’t up to the customer’s expectation and complete satisfaction, he would send out a team to fix the problem posthaste! Unfortunately, because the quality of work was so bad overall, finished projects never met anyone's expectations; and no one was ever available to come fix the problem with your fence because they were always out fixing someone else’s.

The fat, tomato-faced representative—Skip—who showed up at the Vena residence to give a quote sure talked a good talk, though, boy. He was chock full of witty banter, bombastic, well-rehearsed anecdotes, raucous laughter and jollity, and general disconcerting over-enthusiasm. Essentially, he was chock full of shit, but it was well-disguised shit served with a smile.

“No, no, no, you want cedar, my friend!” he boomed, correcting Jake as they stood in his front yard. “Cedar!”

“I do?”

“Absolutely! Sure, pine is the more affordable, but you’re going to have to stain it. The whole thing! Don’t you value your time more than that? Of course you do! And then you’re going to have to stain it again next season.” Skip screamed laughter and twirled his foolish mustache. Jake winced. “Fences are like boats,” he continued. “You know boats, don’t you? You live right here by Collins Cove! Of course you know boats. You need to scrape the barnacles off the hull every spring, repair it, fix pinhole leaks, paint it, you know?”

“What if my boat is made of vinyl?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You have vinyl fencing, too. It’s even cheaper than the pine. And I read that it doesn’t need to be stained at all. Just hosed off every now and again.”

“You heard correct, my friend!” The fat man bellowed laughter. “But look around you!” Skip made a grand gesture that was entirely unnecessary. “Look at the other houses with fences! Look at the front yards! Especially that one! Wow, that’s a nice yard, huh? Beautiful garden. Reminds me of my wife’s garden, only with more hydrangea. Do you see any vinyl?”

“Well, I—”

“Of course you don’t! Because there is no other vinyl. It’s certainly cheaper, but it looks cheaper, too. That’s not going to fly in this neighborhood, no siree! Vinyl will bring the property value down. Hell, vinyl will bring the whole neighborhood down!”

“It will?”

“Of course it will! No one likes an eyesore right next to their house, right?”

“Then why do you sell vinyl at all?”

Skip laughed extremely loudly. “I like you, Mr. Vagina!”

“Vena! It’s Vena.”

“You’ve got a great sense of humor, Val!”

“You can call me—”

“So we’ll put you down for cedar! I guarantee cedar will be the best for you, your family, and your neighborhood. One-hundred percent!”

“Ok, I guess that will be fine.”

“Of course it will! And you wanted it around your entire yard, correct?”

“Well, no, actually. I really only want it in the front. Right here.”

Skip looked at him as if he had two heads and a donkey braying out his ass. “Why?”

“Well, Skip, because of that,” Jake said, pointing across the street.

“The Hertz truck?”

“Yes. I am sick of looking at it, Skip. Sick to death. I’ve called the police department three times during the last three weeks—three times—and each time they told me that they would send somebody out. They haven’t sent anyone out, Skip. I haven’t seen one cruiser, and that truck hasn’t budged in three weeks. I don’t see a ticket or citation on the windshield, do you, Skip?”

The fat, red man had stopped laughing. “No.”

“Of course you don’t. I want a stockade fence as high as you can build it along my front yard. I don’t care if it doesn’t wrap around. I don’t have a dog. I don’t have a toddler. I have the shreds of my sanity that I am desperately trying to maintain.”

“Geez, Mr. Vena, it’s just a big, yellow truck. It won’t be there forever.”

“Skip, this truck is making me lose my mind, do you understand? I moved here to Collins Cove specifically because of what it was. A cove. You see? Ocean? Sand? Boats? All I see when I go outside now is that truck. It might as well be a huge billboard that says ‘Fuck you, Jake Vena.’”

“I guess I see—”

“Exactly. And how soon can this fence go up, Skip?”

“Well, I can take some measurements, go back to the office, work out a quote, and get back to you by the end of today. It’s actually kind of slow right now, so I can probably have the materials dropped off within twenty-four hours of your thumbs-up, and have a team put the fence up by the middle of the week. Maybe three panels. It shouldn’t take more than half a day. They’re fast.” After a moment, he decided to add, “And good.”

“Perfect.”

The following afternoon, three cedar panels were dropped in Jake and Penny Vena’s driveway by who appeared to be an escapee from the disturbed ward at Danvers Mental Hospital driving a small flatbed, along with four posts and a bunch of concrete.

“You’re really putting that thing up, aren’t you?” Jake’s wife groaned, scrutinizing the dangerous-looking man hopping around in their driveway like a demented Rumpelstiltskin. She wondered how he had gotten out of his straitjacket.

“You bet, Penny. It’s going up.”

“You know that stupid truck won’t be there forever, right? You know you don’t have to spend whatever it is you’re spending making yourself look crazy to everyone around us, right?”

“I will not look at that grotesquery for another day. Will not.”

“Honey, it’s just a truck.”

“Will not.”

“Ok, Jake.” She went back inside.

Penny knew. If Jake Vena had his mind set on something—no matter how stupid—it was going to happen, make no mistake. He felt that everything was some weird contest of wills. Or some imaginary competition. Like the time he drove them out to Rockport for the day. Now Rockport is a quaint, coastal town that is very enjoyable to visit for its shops and scenery, but only if it is not during a hurricane. Penny watched the dark clouds rolling in while they were still on Route 128. She saw lightning flash. She casually mentioned to Jake that rain might ruin their fun day out, but he wouldn’t hear of it. They were going to Rockport, and they were going to enjoy themselves. So naturally, by the time they rolled into town, three days of nonstop torrential downpour had just begun. Jake acquiesced, and they drove the hair-raising twenty miles back home…after lunch. Lunch also ended up being a disaster, by the way, but that is neither here nor there.

In other words, $1,000 for three stupid panels of a fence was worth the ranting she would otherwise be forced to endure. She didn’t know how long it would take before he decided to take matters into his own hands and set the damn thing on fire, for example; but she knew it would happen eventually. No one got the better of Jake Vena—not the weather, not the traffic on 114, not the fact that they didn’t make Mr. Pibb cola in New England, and certainly not some damn truck, goddammit.

The next morning, the “crew” showed up bright and early. Penny recognized the Danvers Hospital escapee from yesterday, and assumed that he had scoped their house out and was coming back to murder them. He had two friends with him. One was close to seven feet tall, thin as a rail, with eyes that bugged out two-and-a-half inches from his skull. His skin looked like tanned, tissue-thin leather pulled too tightly around his wiry frame. It looked like it would tear off at any moment and the Terminator would be underneath. The other one was shorter and had more of an “aggravated assault” look to him, what with his faded neck and face tattoos, multiple missing teeth, jagged scar from his forehead to his nose, and heavily soiled, stained, and ripped t-shirt with, “If you can read this, the bitch fell off,” printed on the back. Penny made sure that all of the windows and doors in the house were latched and locked. Jake sat at a window and watched.

Say what you want about this trio of Dis castoffs, but they were quick. Skip was right about that. Actually, the tall, skinny one and the shorter, scruffy one were quick. The Danvers Hospital escapee must’ve been in charge because all he did was stand in the shade and play with his phone. In all fairness, he was probably conducting business. (But in actuality, he was browsing pornography). Regardless, the panels were up before noon.

When he was sure that they were gone and wouldn’t circle back to collect some tool they had forgotten, or murder them both, Jake ventured outside to inspect his new partial fence. The next door neighbors were inspecting the fence, too, Penny noticed with some embarrassment, from their living room window. It looked good. Nice and even and straight. He reached out and pushed on one of the panels. Sturdy. And, yes, the cedar looked much nicer than pine, he had to admit.

But most importantly, he couldn’t see the Hertz truck mocking him from its home across the street. Jake smiled.

That night, someone set the truck on fire and it exploded. The unholy racket woke both Jake and Penny out of a sound sleep. They both ran to the window, but couldn’t see what was happening because of the fence. “Are those flames?” Penny screamed, but Jake had already put on his bathrobe and was bounding outside to investigate.

It was confirmed shortly after that, yes, indeed, they were flames. And yes, indeed, they were coming from the fully-engulfed truck. There’s $1,000 down the drain, Penny thought as they watched from the sidewalk the fire engines approaching. Other people started coming out of their houses. Some guy across the cove was hooting and cheering. Penny had to remind herself that it was still cheaper than if her impetuous husband had been the one who set the fire. Which he would have done eventually. She knew he would.

Penny looked over at Jake, standing there approvingly with his arms folded across his chest. The flames lit up his face in monstrous ways, contorting his features into a twisted sneer. Jake didn’t set the thing on fire. No way. Not this soon after putting up the stupid fence.

Right?

The following day, instead of having a spring in his step because the problem of the lurking yellow nightmare across the street had solved itself, Jake Vena was nonplussed. Sure, the Hertz truck was gone, but Skip should have maybe tried a little harder to talk him out of getting the fence in the first place, no? On the one hand, the customer is always right. But on the other hand, you have businesses taking advantage of persons in distress. It happens all the time. Look at the funeral industry.

“Who are you calling?” Penny asked when Jake reached for his phone. She already knew.

“I am calling Flaherty Fence right now,” he replied. “They are going to remove this eyesore from my property by the end of today. Just you wait.”

And she did.