Never Fear (34 page)

Grandpa smiled.” Why don’t
you read the next little gem here? It’s called,
Small Price To Pay.”
He handed the
book to Dan.

“
I might need a little
more of your eggnog, my dear.” He raised his empty glass to Judy.
“Go a little heavier on your ‘secret’ ingredient.”

Judy took his glass, saying, “I see
where Dan gets it now.”

“
Speaking of...” Dan piped
up.

“
I suppose…” Judy said,
taking the glass from him. “I’m glad I made a full
pitcher.”

“
It
is
the best ever,” Nick called after
her as she walked to the kitchen. “Go ahead, Dad, read the next
one.”

SMALL PRICE TO
PAY

DON BRUNS

The man started earlier every year
with those damned holiday lights. Here it was barely October and he
was up on the roof, two members of his construction crew helping
string row after row of blinking colored lights. Oh, they weren’t
blinking yet. That would be reserved for the “grand event” as his
neighbor called it. They would blink after all the other lighted
decorations were in place.

And every year there was something
new. Not to replace, but to add to this menagerie, this massive
collection of wired chaos. Casting a harsh, garish glow over the
neighborhood, Glen Roberts’ creation would draw thousands of
vehicles that slowly drove by his house, often parking on Kevin
Cleary’s lawn. He’d mentioned that to Roberts a couple of
times.

“
Small price to pay for
sharing the holiday spirit, Cleary.”

And there was always that
toothy smile that accompanied the sentiment. Cleary would have
liked to put his fist through that smile. Maybe a bullet. But this
was Arborsville, and it was all about civility and brotherhood.
Even the
Arborsville Gazette
agreed.

“
Another Holiday Miracle
at 188 Arbor Lane,” the paper announced. They may as well have
announced that 185 Arbor Lane was right across the street and
people should feel free to park on his lawn and enjoy the show.
People should feel free to let their kids pee on his lawn, because
several times, when Cleary looked out his window and saw the parade
of cars, trucks and vans, there were little kids doing number one
in his yard, obviously with the full support of their parents. He’d
never seen a parent doing number one but he wouldn’t put it past
them. And come spring there were always brown spots in the grass by
the road.

He’d mentioned the brown spots and the
little brats pissing on his property.

“
Hey, Cleary, a little
fertilizer, a little water, and it will all be green by summer.
Small price to pay.”

He’d thought about throwing buckets of
urine on his across-the-street neighbor’s yard, but he refrained.
He’d thought about a lot of things he could do to his neighbor, but
would always take a deep breath, and over the years he’d kept it in
check. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep, and his wife finally
suggested selling their house. All because of the asshole across
the street and his holiday show.

For sixty-some mornings every year, he
would stop his car at the end of the driveway, get out of the
vehicle and put ten, twenty, thirty pieces of trash into a Glad
bag. Drink cups, French fry containers, sandwich wrappers and the
occasional diaper. One morning he’d found a used condom. People
were utterly amazing. He considered putting spikes in his yard,
dispensers of poison, but he took a deep breath and kept it in
check.

For five years he’d mentioned the
trash and the every-morning pick up that he did, and for five years
Roberts had said through his toothy grin, “Small price to pay.” He
wanted to destroy that grin. He was ready to take Glen Roberts
down, and he quietly decided no one was going to stand in his
way.

Cleary wasn’t the only one
who was tired of the annual calamity. Very cautiously, two other
neighbors had reached out and expressed their anger over the
disruption of their normally quiet suburb. Cautiously, because it
was politically incorrect to rag on the number one event of the
year.
USA Today
proclaimed the Arborsville affair as one of the top ten
private holiday happenings in the country. If you complained about
the “light festival,” you were almost un-American. There was a
rumor that the
Today Show
was coming this year to do a feature on the
event. Now he’d have a national TV show giving even more
credibility to the jackass across the street, and the traffic would
be worse than ever. Something needed to be done.

And there was that God-awful music.
Hooked up to a computer system, there was bass-heavy music that
triggered all of the lights—the lights that wrapped around trees
and bushes, the lights outlining the roof, the flashing lights
around each window, the lights that streaked across Roberts’ front
yard and up his garage door. His brick chimney was ablaze with
those irritating, infuriating lights. And there was the light-up
Santa with his sleigh and eight not-so-tiny reindeer. As the bass
notes hammered the air, enough to rattle Cleary’s front door, the
lights would change from green to red, orange to blue, yellow to
purple, and the assembled crowd, hundreds of them every night,
would often break into rowdy applause.

“
Enough is enough,” Zeke
Elliot said. “I mean, we’ve threatened before but something has to
be done, Kevin.”

The three men sat around a felt,
green-topped card table in Cleary’s basement man- cave, sipping
beers and smoking cigars.

“
I won’t sleep; the new
baby is going to be crying all night, and it’s just not right,”
said Bobby Gillian. “It’s only my second year here, boys, but I’ll
be damned if that sumbitch is going to destroy my family for two
and a half months.”

“
I understand,” Cleary
said. “At least you guys are a couple houses down the road. Those
lights blind me from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m. I can’t watch TV, can’t
even hear my TV, and
hell
, I can’t enjoy an evening meal.
Libby almost demands we go out to eat every night, and stay out as
late as possible, and as far as hooking-up with her for two months,
forget it.” He took a long swallow from the tall glass and tapped
his cigar, the ash falling into a ceramic ashtray.

“
So,” Bobby Gillian looked
at both of his co-conspirators, “what do we do?”

“
Roberts owns a
construction company,” Kevin said. “His crew sets up about ninety
percent of the show.”

“
And?” Zeke Elliot threw
his hands up. “Are we going to kill the construction
workers?”

“
No,” Cleary said. “I own
an electronics firm. As you two know, my company designs custom
security and surveillance systems for companies all over the
country. We solve problems.”

“
We’ve
got
a problem,” Gillian nodded. “You
got the solution?”

“
Maybe. Let me finish. He
uses his workers; I’ll use mine. Here’s my plan, boys. I’ve given
this a lot of thought. A company in Michigan came to us last year.
They had a problem with break-ins. It was up in Detroit, and in a
bad part of town.”

“
Isn’t every part of
Detroit a bad part of town?” Zeke asked.

Cleary nodded. “They wanted something
to deter vandals. Vandals that were costing them thousands of
dollars every year. So we came up with a trigger
system.”

“
Trigger system?” Gillian
looked confused.

“
After hours, there were
four triggers. If someone walked onto the property, they tripped a
trigger. A voice would blare through some heavy-duty speakers
telling them to back off. The voice warned of guard dogs and armed
security guards.”

“
Wow,” Zeke leaned back.
“Serious stuff.”

“
There were no dogs, no
security guards. The company couldn’t afford anything like that.
But if the intruder advanced, we had a second trigger. The vandal
would step through an invisible beam and trip another audio device.
Dogs would bark and growl, coming from multiple
speakers.”

“
All for effect.” Zeke
smiled. “I can’t imagine they came any closer.”

“
Oh, some did,” Cleary
said. “After all, this was a bad neighborhood. Dogs didn’t
necessarily scare them. So we had a third trigger. You two will
appreciate this. It was the light show.”

“
Not like our esteemed
neighbor,” Gillian said.

“
Not unlike our neighbor.
If you, the intruder, ignored the warning voice, if you ignored the
yapping mutts, then we had another surprise. Blinding spot lights
highlighting every square inch of the property. These lights could
blind you. It was enough to scare off almost everyone. And the
vandalism stopped.”

“
But you said there were
four triggers,” Zeke pointed out. “If the vandalism stopped, why
did you need a fourth trigger?”

“
Ah, yes. Four. Now
understand the owner of this company was beside himself. Broken
windows, damaged machinery, stolen computers and the cops didn’t
want to come near the place. It was just a dangerous
situation.”

“
Should have moved the
company,” Gillian said.

“
Too expensive He
basically told us he didn’t care what we had to do. He was willing
to do anything to stop the problem. And he emphasized the
word
anything
.”
Cleary wore an almost maniacal grin, getting up and refilling his
beer from the tap at the bar. “Anybody else?”

They both held their glasses up and he
filled them to the brim with the amber liquid.

“
Four triggers,” Zeke
said. “I assume this story is going to lead to our
solution?”

“
It is. Patience,
Zeke.”

They all took a sip and Cleary
continued. “If someone got through the warning, then the dogs
barking, then the piercing lights, there was one more trigger.
Another couple of steps past the light beam brought you to within
ten feet of the building itself. My team developed a very shallow
underground mesh that surrounded the structure. We buried the
narrow mesh in a trench that encircled the business.”

“
Kind of like that
invisible fence for dogs?” Gillian asked.

“
Very good, Bobby. It was
somewhat like the Invisible Fence.”

“
So it shocked them and
they wouldn’t go any further.” Zeke nodded. “But I still don’t see
how that works with Roberts across the street.”

“
Oh, we weren’t sure a
shock would stop them,” Cleary said, “so we increased the shock.
The Invisible Fence requires the dogs to wear a collar. We
triggered the system with a light beam and there was no need for a
collar. If you crossed that beam the shock system
activated.”

“
How many volts of
electricity?” Gillian was leaning in, intrigued with the
story.

“
It’s not the volts,
Bobby. Without boring you with details, i
t
is the current transferred, the actual amount of electricity
transferred. Lethal current is about 20 mill. amperes. So you could
have a million volts, but only say a 0.00001 mill. amperes and it
wouldn’t kill you. On the other hand you might have 20 volts at 1
ampere.
That
would kill you.”

“
Kill?” Zeke asked, taking
another swallow of his beer. “Kill?”

“
Kill,” Cleary
nodded.

“
You killed
people?”

“
Only two. We basically
fried them.”

“
Jesus.” Gillian drained
his drink.

“
It was enough to stop the
problem. The owner always came in an hour early. He’d shut off the
trigger system, survey the property, and when he found a burned
body, a grotesque charred human form, he buried it on the
grounds.”

“
Oh. My. God.” Zeke’s
mouth hung open and he stared into Cleary’s eyes. “Why are you
telling us this?”

“
Sometimes the end
justifies the means. These two were a menace to society. They were
thugs who only knew how to destroy things. We eliminated them and
the world is a better place.”

“
Kevin, your system killed
them.”

“
There’s justification,
Zeke. This is not for the squeamish. You can leave right now and
pretend you never heard this conversation.”

“
Again,” Gillian swallowed
more of his drink, “why are you telling us this?”

“
Because I’ve had enough.
I can’t take any more. I want an end to his giant extravaganza and
the idea I have for our friend at 188 Arbor Lane is pretty severe.
If you two don’t mind some casualties, I have a plan to rid us of
our problem.

*

The debate raged, fueled by more beer,
then whiskey.

“
Why don’t we just
firebomb the place?” Zeke asked.

“
Where’s the fun in that?
I want the bastard to pay for five years of torment.”

“
Burning up his house
isn’t payment?”

“
And if somebody dies,”
Gillian said, “I mean, damn, Kevin. What happens to us?”