three

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1. Mrs. Schneider had spent the morning peering through the curtains at her across-the-street new neighbors. She didn’t know just what the world was coming to when Mexicans could move onto a decent street where decent people lived

without so much as a by-your-leave. They played loud music in Spanish and they shouted at each other in Spanish and they always seemed to be cooking something foreign.

If they wanted to eat strange food and speak a strange language, then why hadn’t they just stayed in their own country instead of coming here to take jobs away from good American folk? she wondered.

She knew that most of the adults in that house had jobs on the canning line at the chili factory and she didn’t think that was right, even though Mrs. Schneider didn’t know anyone who’d actually lost a job on account of these creeping Mexican intruders.

It was the principle of the thing, she decided. What if a real American wanted a job at the chili factory and couldn’t get one because of them? And one of them was actually a police officer! She’d seen a man that lived there—she couldn’t be bothered to remember all these foreign names—climbing into a Smiths Hollow squad car every morning. How could such a thing even be allowed?

She’d noticed Karen diMucci from down the street talking to one of the women who lived there, and their young children even played together. Mrs. Schneider had thought about warning her off but then decided that she’d better not. Karen might take offense. Everyone knew that Mexicans and Italians were practically the same, though Mrs. Schneider had to admit that the Italians made better food.

She wasn’t a racist, though. There were lots of black people in Smiths Hollow and Mrs. Schneider didn’t have a problem with any of them. They were all good and clean and hardworking—well, except for that Harry Jackson, who could be found in the Arena tavern at all hours of the day and night. Though even that was understandable. He just hadn’t been the same since his wife got cancer and passed on, so one had to make allowances.

She looked at the clock and decided it was time to take herself to the deli in town and pick up something for dinner. Since her husband died of congestive heart failure five years earlier Mrs. Schneider hadn’t bothered with cooking very much. She’d never enjoyed it, had only cooked for him because he liked home-cooked dinners. Most of the time she ate like a bird, anyway—just a half a sandwich or a cup of soup.

There wasn’t any point in driving herself all the way over to the next town to go to the large shiny supermarket, even though her next-door-neighbor Mrs. Walker said the supermarket had better sales. Besides, Mrs. Schneider liked to stand by the counter and chat with Frank and catch up on “all the news,” as she put it.

Mrs. Schneider collected her purse, double-checked to make sure the front door was locked (you really couldn’t be too careful with these foreigners in the neighborhood), and went out through the kitchen to the small back porch.

She noticed the flies first, a black swarm of them, many more than there ought to be even on a hot day like today. Her first thought was that a raccoon or a fox had died in her yard, which would necessitate a call to the town hall to have it removed by Animal Control. Like many yards in Smiths Hollow, Mrs. Schneider’s backyard abutted the woods and it wasn’t unusual for the occasional critter to wander through.

Her husband had put up high fences on both sides so “the neighbors couldn’t spy in”—Mr. Schneider had been a fastidiously private man, unwilling to have one of the neighbors spot him grilling and offer a beer that he might be forced to reciprocate—and sometimes animals got confused by the blocked-in lanes, the house and the detached garage, and the fences that enclosed it.

Then the smell permeated her irritated thoughts about calling for Animal Control—it always took them so long to come out, which she considered absurd in a town the size of Smiths Hollow—and she covered her mouth and nose, gasping. The smell was terrible, beyond terrible, and she wondered for a moment if a deer had died back there.

The cluster of flies hovered over the edge of the grass where it dipped down into a little ditch before the woods began.

Mrs. Schneider couldn’t see clearly from the porch what the flies were picking at, and she sighed.

She was going to have to investigate, and she didn’t really care to get closer to the stink emanating from whatever it was. But if she called Animal Control with just a vague “I think something died in my backyard,” that smart-mouth dispatcher Christy Gallagher would tell her that she couldn’t dispatch Animal Control if they weren’t certain an animal was involved.

“That girl is fresh,” Mrs. Schneider said to herself, using a word her own mother had always used to describe young and disrespectful sorts.

She pulled a white cotton handkerchief out of her purse, then dabbed a little bit of her Estée Lauder perfume in the cloth before covering her nose and mouth with it.

She was going to place her purse down on the porch for a moment but then decided that she’d better not. Anyone could come in the yard gate while her back was turned and run off with her checkbook and wallet. After all, the neighborhood

was not what it used to be.

With her purse tucked safely under her right arm and her left hand holding the perfumed handkerchief to her nose, Mrs. Schneider cautiously approached the black buzzing cloud of flies. Her mind had already leapt ahead to the inconvenience—she would have to put off her trip to Frank’s while she waited for Animal Control to get their bottoms in gear—and so she stepped in the blood before she realized it.

She felt the sticky pull on her shoe, lifted it up, and peered at the bloody sole. Her nose wrinkled again in distaste. Had this animal bled to death in her yard? She would have to throw these shoes away, and that was a waste of a perfectly good pair of tennis sneakers.

Her gaze was focused on her feet now, picking around the splashes of blood. Then something she didn’t recognize crept into her peripheral vision. Or rather, she did recognize it, but she didn’t really want to believe it was what it actually was.

Mrs. Schneider gasped, and raised her eyes, and when she saw what was there—what was everywhere, really—she dropped the handkerchief to her side and screamed and screamed and screamed.