Pine Rock, by Daniel Mullen

“I’m sorry, Mr. Santos. With the market as tight as it is right now, we can’t afford to overextend ourselves…”

The loan officer’s voice droned on about risk management, bail-outs and the buzz-phrase of the year: turbulent economic times. Justin Santos’ eyes had long since glazed over as the bank executive closed his well-rehearsed loan-denial speech.

“Mr. Santos?”

“I understand,” Justin stood and shook his hand anyway. He and his family were about to be locked out of their house forever. He was three months behind on their mortgage, had used up their savings, and had no way out except a high-interest personal loan, which had just been denied.

His long, cross-town drive home was uneventful. His mind didn’t race forward, he didn’t grasp at financial straws, he no longer hoped to climb out of the pit in which he now found himself. He was calm. His drive took him past Inland Auto, his employer of 18 years. Former employer. The auto dealership looked like an empty parking lot instead of Disneyland on opening day. The carmaker’s financial wizards had blown everyone’s pensions in a Ponzi-scheme, whatever that was. Justin chuckled as he remembered this. He always heard “Fonzi-scheme” and imagined Henry Winkler making a mad dash in a leather jacket with duffel bags of cash.

“…medium to heavy traffic on the interstate, and there’s a two car accident that is blocking…” Justin changed the station to some classic rock, which didn’t cheer him up. After three quarters of an hour on I-90 and then Highway 27, the unassuming development sign, lit by two small spotlights from below, became visible on the left. “Pine Rock.” The developers in Spokane write 8 words on scraps of paper, toss them in a hat and pull out two, proud they had successfully named a new sub-division. Pine Rock, Pineview Estates, Rockcliffe, Cliff View. All equally bland. All equally non-descript. Though, to give them some credit, there were pine trees, rocks, cliffs and bluffs all throughout the Inland Empire, that dry stretch of fifteen thousand square miles east of the Cascades and west of the Rockies: Spokane the unofficial capital.

There were 24 houses in the first phase of the sub-division. It was a quiet community, just south of the Valley. The Santos’ lived smack dab in the middle, on Walker Lane, first left after the sign. The cool evening breeze slowly rocked 24 for sale signs, and Justin was speechless. Not only speechless, but thoughtless. 23 families hadn’t been allowed to plant roots, but had, like grass on rocky soil in the midday sun, withered and blown away on the wind. His family would be next.

Justin breathed in deeply as he sat in the garage for a minute, collecting his thoughts. He got out, slowly closed the door, and walked into his house. “The bank’s house,” he thought.

His sullen face was met by the beaming smile of Debbie, his wife of 5 years.

“I wasn’t able…”

“Doesn’t matter!” she interrupted as she threw her arms around his neck and kissed her exhausted husband.

A small voice came from the living room, followed closely by the three year old producing it. “We won, Daddy! We won!”

“What did we win, Sweety?” Justin asked his daughter.

“I don’t know, but we won!” Alina wrapped her entire body around her daddy’s leg, like a souvenir of a bear and a tree from Yellowstone.

Justin searched his wife’s eyes for answers but gave up, hoping she wouldn’t torment him too long and just tell him.

“It’s Tuesday,” she hinted.

“Yep. All day,” he responded, truly believing that joke hadn’t ceased to be funny sometime in the 7th grade.

“You’re hopeless!” she laughed. “We won the lottery!”

“What?!”

“Well, not the whole thing,” she corrected herself. “But enough to pay off half the house if we wanted! We don’t have to move!”

“Oh my God!” Justin immediately took back all those nasty things he had said about the lottery and those who play it.

“We won, Daddy!”

“Yes we did, Sweety.” The group hug that followed was unlike any Justin had enjoyed in well over a year.

~

Within two weeks, every house in the sub-division had sold. The Santos’ noticed, but should have registered how odd that was, what with the “turbulent economic times” and such. They should have, but they didn’t.

~

“Mommy, can I play outside?”

“Yes, but stay in the front yard, where I can see you.”

Even a month after saving their house, their sanity, their way of life, Debbie, still could not believe their good fortune. Things like that just didn’t happen to her family. As she stared blankly out the window, fantasizing about their lives if they had won the jackpot, a dog’s bark snapped her daydream, yanking her back to reality. A new neighbor was walking his dog and had stopped to let the curious little girl pet the small beast when the terrier had caught wind of a cat. Now it was barking, yapping really, at Alina.

“Alina!” called her mother as she hurried out the front door. “Leave that dog alone.”

“Swell day,” the stranger commented in Debbie’s general direction.

“I’m sorry about this,” she returned. “Alina’s never been around dogs before.”

The neighbor stared into the space between them, possibly working out complex mathematical equations in his head. That or he was stoned on Valium. Debbie couldn’t tell, though she unwittingly raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to one side, creeped out by this guy and his half-smile, glazed over eyes and oddly small dog. She broke the awkward silence. “I’m Debbie Santos. This is Alina. My husband, Justin, is out running errands.”

“You’ve got a dead spot in your lawn.”

Debbie followed the man’s gaze to a generally brown section of her lawn, but didn’t say anything.

“Swell day.” He and his now quiet dog continued their walk, moving at a pace somewhere between casual and slow-motion instant replay.

“Alina, come inside,” Debbie told her daughter.

~

“It’s just creepy,” complained Debbie over the phone to her husband. “Every time one of them walks or drives by, they look at the lawn as if trying to will the dead spot green again.”

“Well then, I’ll pick up some Weed ‘n Feed on my way home.”

“That’s not the point,” she explained, unsatisfied by her husband’s lack of insight into the female psyche. It’s none of their business if we have a dead spot on our lawn.”

“But have you noticed the other lawns in the neighborhood? Even after just a couple weeks, the grass is greener; the flowers are in bloom with colors I thought I knew until now. I’m tempted to ask one of them their secret.” Justin was chipper, still on Cloud 9 from the win.

There was no arguing against what he had said. Debbie had never seen such beautiful, yet simple gardens and lawns. If the old black and white television shows like Lassie and the Andy Griffith Show had been in color, the Pine Rock development would be their real-world counterpart.

Still, Debbie’s stomach turned like a pig on a spit whenever someone passed close to their house, which was more often than one would imagine, given it was the middle of the day in the middle of the week. Just how many of these people had jobs?

By dinner time, Debbie’s paranoia had passed and she was looking forward to Justin’s return. That morning she had sent him to town with a mile-long list of supplies for home improvement projects, new toys for Alina, and hoped he would pick up a surprise or two for her as well.

The door swung open. “Christmas is a bit early this year!” declared Justin, his arms overflowing with shopping bags and boxes. He did, however, manage a kiss for his wife. “I parked in front. There’s more in the car, mostly gardening stuff. I’m so hungry I could eat a three year old girl!”

“Daddy, you’re so silly!” laughed Alina.

“Well, that works out, because dinner’s ready. Let’s eat. We’ll worry about the rest of the stuff after dinner.” Debbie relieved her shopping hero’s arms of a few bags and trotted off to the kitchen.

No more TV dinners. Rarely a trip to McDonald’s. Since Renewal Day (it was Debbie’s idea to name the day their lives had turned around, though Justin vetoed its original moniker “Winning Day”), the Santos’ had eaten healthily, three times a day, sometimes to the chagrin of little Alina, who had rather enjoyed their months of fish sticks, chicken nuggets and microwave burritos, and whose mouth had a difficult time pronouncing the new dishes. Kitchen catch-a-moré?

With dinner concluded, the two adults cleared the table, while Alina raced for her room to squeeze in an extra 10 minutes of play time before her mother, tired of yelling “Bath!”, manually hauled her off to the tub.

Justin, having relaxed for a moment listening to the nightly game played by mother, daughter and the dreaded bathtub, climbed the stairs to his wife, kissed her at the corner of the mouth and turned to finish unloading the car, but paused. He faced his gorgeous, smiling wife and kissed her as if his survival depended on it, as if his mouth had been created for the sole purpose of pressing against Debbie’s to allow the love and contentment he felt to flow from his soul into hers.

“What was that for?” she asked delightedly, hopefully.

“I love you,” he said, playfully spanking her butt and running downstairs.

Debbie shook her head in amusement, began the ritual of daughter-bathing, and let her mind wander and wonder just what Justin had in store for them that night, once Alina was tucked in. Her princess night light would ward off the bad dreams. In one short hour, Debbie would contemplate borrowing that night light to ward off her own nightmares.

~

“What the hell?” Justin shouted in disbelief.

Debbie hurried downstairs and out the front door to find him first at his car, then the front yard, then back to the car.

“What? What?” she demanded, though she could already see the light of the lamppost overhead sparkling off the shattered glass of the front passenger window.

“Look at the lawn,” he directed.

“What the hell?” she echoed. There was a torn bag of Weed ‘n Feed next to the dead spot in the grass and several handfuls of the product scattered on the brown area, which was now wet, as if someone had run a sprinkler over it for half an hour.

Debbie ran back inside, dialed the police and explained what had happened. Through a barely hidden chuckle, the 911 operator said a squad car was on its way.

“So…someone broke into your car, rummaged through your stuff…then did some yard work for you? Is that about right?” officer Del Rio asked, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

Justin, slowly shaking his head in unamused disbelief, answered, “Yeah, that’s about it.”

“We’ll take a look around, ask some neighbors if they saw anything and let you know if anything turns up.”

“Thank you, officers,” said Justin, fully expecting never to see them again. He closed the door behind them and leaned against the hard wood, shutting his eyes and breathing in the weight of the world. “Jackasses.”

Debbie couldn’t tell if her husband was referring to the landscaping vandals or the police. Maybe it was both.

“Let’s just go to bed,” Debbie said, emotionally exhausted.

“I’m going to clean up the glass, and then I’ll be right there.”

Debbie hesitated, her face flushing and palms sweating, “Ok, I’ll be in the bath, then.”

~

The clock display showed 3:39 am. Justin had also seen it display 11:14 pm, 12:15 am and 2:01 am. Debbie’s brow was furled and her breathing was labored. At least she was sleeping.

~

The next morning, while the King of her Castle looked for a job (though they had come into money, it wouldn’t last them forever), Debbie dragged the brown garbage bin to the street for morning pick up the next day. The same neighbor from the day before walked slowly by, the same unsettling grin spread across his face, as if he were in on some universal joke with eternal implications, and Debbie was the punch line.

“Excuse me…” the irked woman said. “Mr…?”

“Santos.”

“Excuse me?” Debbie said, though for a completely different reason this time.

“My name is Derrick Santos. We have the same last name,” offered the neighbor in his clean, tailored grey suit, not something a person would wear to walk a dog, except in a ‘50’s family sitcom, the kind with life-altering ethical dilemmas and clever social commentaries. Those shows had been put on the endangered species list in the early ‘80’s, and poached to extinction by executives in 1999 to make room for giant rhinos like Big Brother and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

“That’s really weird,” blurted Debbie. Embarrassed, she apologized. “I’m so sorry. That just came out.”

No comment. No reaction. Same disquieting smile.

“Anyway…someone broke into our car last night. Did you see anything?”

The second Mr. Santos slowly shook his head, though perhaps it was merely the breeze urging it from side to side, like the “foreclosed” signs that had until recently filled the view out Debbie’s living room window.

“Well…please let me know if you hear anything.”

“Looks like your tree is going to fall,” said the neighbor, ignoring her request completely.

Debbie had noticed the split trunk half way up the young maple earlier that spring. A wind had snapped several trees off at the top throughout the sub-division. She had forgotten about that.

“Swell day.” And with that, the neighbor continued on his walk, blatantly glaring at the tree until he and his dog passed the high hedge that separated the two yards.

“Un-be-lievable,” she whispered, and went inside to get Alina ready for daycare. Winning a large amount of money had changed their lives some, but not as much as one might imagine. They still worked, had bills, watched their budget, but they now didn’t have to worry if they’d have a place to sleep and food to eat. Brewster, the family cat that had adopted them one cold December night four years earlier, slipped out the door as Debbie entered, almost tripping her.

“Alina! You’d better be getting ready up there!”

The sound of tiny feet scurrying from one corner of the upstairs to another told her that her daughter was in fact not ready for the day, and had been in Debbie’s closet trying on her shoes. On more than one occasion, she had caught her daughter walking around in one sandal and one high heel.

A knock came at the door, and Debbie walked to answer it.

“Hello?” she said after answering the door to another neighbor who stared past her into nothingness, a sublime smile plastered on the woman’s face.

“Looks like your tree’s going to fall over.”

It was Debbie’s turn to stare blankly. “Yes, thank you. We’ll be taking care of that soon.”

“And the garbage collectors don’t come until tomorrow.”

“We like to take out the trash early, so there’s no chance in forgetting it,” Debbie retorted.

The neighbor, perhaps 35 years old, clad in a flower-print dress and loosely curled shoulder-length hair, remained standing on the doorstep, smiling at nothing.

“I’ve got to get going. It was great talking with you,” Debbie lied. She closed the door on her neighbor, preparing to continue with her morning routine. “Oh. My. God.”

As she leaned against the front door, another knock came, frightening Debbie enough that she wet herself…slightly. She swung the door open with all her might, prepared to give the nosy neighbor a piece of her mind. Instead she stared in shock as one of the new tenants held a black and white cat at arm’s length just inches from the screen door. Debbie screamed. She would definitely have to change her panties now.

“What the hell?!” she demanded. Debbie looked closely at the cat. “Brewster? What did you do to Brewster?”

There was no blood, but the poor cat’s head had been twisted completely backward.

“I think my dog got to him,” said the smiling neighbor calmly.

“Your dog? Are you kidding? You killed him!” Debbie swung the screen door outward, almost knocking the man off her doorstep, but quickly retreated a foot or two back into the house.

The man deftly grabbed at Debbie as the screen door slammed closed. “Here’s your dead cat.”

A mob had gathered at the street in front of her house.

“We all have dogs,” said the man happily.

A voice came from the gathering near the Santos’ knocked-over garbage can, “Looks like your tree is going to fall over.”

This was all she could take. She slammed the door and ran up the flight of stairs to her daughter’s room.

“I AM getting ready, Mommy! I promise!” little Alina pleaded.

“It’s ok, baby. We need to go now,” said her mom, quite distraught.

Another knock at the door.

“Put these on, now,” she told her daughter, tossing some clothes at her. “Hurry.”

“Are we going to school?”

“Not today,” she said, as she fumbled her phone out of her pocket. “We’re going to see Daddy.”

“Yay!”

“Hurry!”

Debbie managed to dial Justin’s number and waited for her husband to answer, but instead the voicemail kicked on. Intermittent cell phone reception plagued the area. “Dammit, the interview!”

“That’s a bad word, Mommy!”

She ignored her daughter. “Justin, it’s me. The neighbors are insane! They’re harassing us. I need you here right now. Meet us—“

The phone beeped. “Call lost.”

“I hate this place!” She grabbed her daughter and headed for the garage.

~

Justin Santos’ phone vibrated, alerting him to a new voice message. He was in an interview with the human resource manager of a high-tech firm in Liberty Lake and had forgotten to turn off his phone.

“I’m very sorry about that,” he apologized, embarrassed.

“Well, we’re pretty much done here. This is as good a place as any to end the interview,” said the HR lady. “I appreciate you coming in on such short notice. We’ll be making our decision toward the end of the week, so you should hear something before the weekend.” She smiled politely, avoiding eye contact. This was Justin’s first interview since losing his last job, and he had expected to have the job thrown at him, though this was not the case.

As he reached his car, he remembered the voicemail and listened, not prepared for the massage he heard. Justin’s heart pounded and adrenaline surged through his body. It would normally take 20 minutes to get home via the freeway, longer if he took Sprague Ave, though at this time of the morning, I-90 would be crawling with commuters headed into downtown Spokane to start the workday. Sprague it would be.

~

With Alina safely buckled in, Debbie raised the garage door and backed out, but stopped. The horde of Prozac-zombies had gathered at the end of her driveway.

“What in God’s name?” whispered Debbie, exasperated. Speed over their smiling faces? Maybe put a frown on one or two of them? “Stay here,” she told her daughter, getting out of her Saturn Vue to confront the mob and make their escape.

The spokeswoman for the group separated herself and approached Debbie. “There’s an oil spot in your driveway. And your tree still looks like it’s going to fall down.”

“Look me in the eye, you psycho,” screamed Debbie, ready to trade blow for blow with everyone there.

Calmly, the woman turned her head slightly to face Debbie. For the first time, a neighbor looked at her eye to eye. Debbie’s breath fell short, for she thought she saw the flash of pure hatred rise up from the woman’s soul and out her eyes. That flash was, however, the glint of a shiny silver shovel being swung at the back of Debbie’s head by a smiling neighbor, clanging loudly as it made contact.

~

Justin’s Infinite 300 turned sharply left and sped down Walker Lane, screeching to a halt in front of his house. Debbie hadn’t answered any of the dozen calls he had made to her on his way home.

“Debbie!” he called out as he cautiously exited his car. No response. The Saturn was parked in the driveway, but it was empty. Searching the house for his wife and daughter, he found nothing except a tidy, well-kept home. No clue to their whereabouts.

“Backyard,” he thought.

He saw three neat, rectangular piles of dirt in the middle of the lawn and a rectangular hole next to them, in ascending order of size like a Verizon commercial. Justin realized he hadn’t seen the cat in the house during his search for Debbie and Alina.

He walked wide-eyed to the three mounds, not sure what they meant. A noise from behind drew Justin’s attention away from the strange piles of dirt.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Santos. We’ll clean up the oil spot in the driveway and take down the tree.”

“What have you done with my family?” Justin demanded.

“You don’t fit in here. We’re fixing the problem, making the neighborhood beautiful. That’s what we do,” answered the other Mr. Santos.

Justin stared at the mounds, back at his house, then at the neighbor. The reality of the situation socked him in the gut, sending him to his knees. “You…you killed my family!”

“We solve problems. We make things beautiful,” he answered warmly.

“My wife was beautiful! My children were beautiful!”

“We solved the problem now. To use one of your own axioms, why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?”

The broken man didn’t understand, only begged the psychotic stranger with his eyes to tell him he was dreaming, that this was a disgusting parallel universe, anything. Though Justin would never know this, he wasn’t far from the truth of the matter.

Calmly, the second Mr. Santos smiled as he reached for some object behind him. Then there was darkness.

If Justin Santos had been conscious as he lay in the fourth hole, he would have seen a shiny silver shovel dropping dirt on him.

~

The moving van finally left. Grass seed covered four dirt patches in the backyard of a recently sold home in Phase One of the Pine Rock development.. A man in a grey business suit was erecting a new section of fence where a disfigured tree had recently been removed while another sat leisurely in a chair on his porch, watching a neighbor walking his dog, his pace somewhere between casual and slow-motion instant replay.

“Swell day,” said the dog walker in the newcomer’s general direction.

“Swell day,” he replied.