On his knees, pebbles making painful indents in them, he nailgunned chickenwire to the bottom of the fence. Shot the nail. Bent the nail over the wire with a claw hammer. Repeated.
Stopped.
Thought maybe it wouldn’t be enough. Maybe he could find some cement parking blocks or–
“Excuse me.”
Saddle saw really clean athletic shoes with brown socks and followed the legs above them up to the face of his neighbor who lived across the alley, standing with his shadow over Saddle
It was pushing midnight.
The nailgun noise was probably annoying as hell.
“Sorry…” Saddle thought the guy’s name was Rich, but he wasn’t sure. Rick? “Sorry, man, I know it’s late, but I…”
“No, no current issue with the noise. That’s just what alerted me to you being out here.”
A “but” hung after that sentence like truck exhaust.
Saddle stood, tossing the nailgun to the side.
Hoping the neighbor understood the look. What do you need?
The neighbor looked above Saddle, past his shoulder, up into the sky. From the angle of the guy’s head he looked like he might be really stoned, but he was dressed like a guy who used a stopwatch to time the exact four-hour intervals on his aspirin consumption. It was frigging midnight and his slacks were pressed.
Then the guy pointed with his right hand while lowering his head to make eye contact with Saddle.
“I’d like you to take that green monster thing down.”
Saddle started to turn to look, but stopped like his head hit concrete.
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