head, I mean.
As soon as my feet hit the sidewalk, I saw the culprit.
Old Mrs. Malene Fredricks stood outside her house, shotgun in hand, shooting buckshot into the trees.
Lady barked at Mrs. Fredricks. I scooped my dog into my arms and rushed across the street.
Malene, with curlers in her hair and wearing her floral housecoat, shouted up into a tree. “You get out of here, you pigeons! You and your poop can go on next door to Willard’s house.”
She fired again. Leaves and blossoms fell in a great heap to the ground.
“Malene,” I yelled. “What in the world is going on?”
Malene, which was pronounced with both a strong a and strong e sounds, whirled in my direction. “You stay out of this, Clementine. You are not gonna stop me from getting these darned birds out of my trees. They poop on my car every second they get.”
Before I could say another word, she unloaded a wad of buckshot into another tree. About a thousand birds flew off, heading into the air.
“It’s old Willard’s fault,” she explained, exasperated. Malene wiped a line of sweat from her forehead. If I had to guess—and I did not like to guess a woman’s age because it was a very sensitive topic—I would say that Malene was around seventy. She wore her blue hair in a bun, lines crisscrossed her face and her wire-rimmed glasses sat perched on the end of her nose.
“How is it Willard’s fault?” I asked, cuddling a shaking Lady to my chest.
“’Cause he feeds ’em,” she snarled.
“Malene,” a new voice called, “just what in tarnation are you doing out here?”
“Oh, here he is now,” Malene said spitefully. “Trying to stop the commotion when he’s the one who made it. Just like a man, isn’t it? They stir the pot and then wonder why it’s bubbling.”
“Um, I don’t think that makes sense.”
Malene ignored me, and with a smile of satisfaction plastered across her face, she turned in Willard’s direction.
Willard Gandy strode down the sidewalk. He was as much a character as Malene with his gray hair sticking up all over the place. He was tall, gangly, and every time I saw him outside of the pharmacy he owned, Willard wore Dickies short-sleeved coveralls colored in military khaki.
Y’all, every time.
“Malene, what in the world is going on?” Willard chastised. “You’re gonna kill somebody with stray buckshot.”
She shook her shotgun at him. “Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? It’s because of you that I’m doing this. You and your stupid need to feed the birds. You feed them, and then they poop all over my car.”
Willard gestured in frustration toward the street. “Look around, Malene; there’s an entire street to park on! Last time I checked, your legs weren’t broken. You can park wherever you want. You could even park in your own carport, which sits empty most of the time.”
“I keep it empty for visitors, you know that.” Malene’s face turned bright crimson. “Oh, you’d love to make me park half a mile away, wouldn’t you? Get a kick out of that, I’m sure. Listen, buster. If you’d stop feeding the birds, I wouldn’t have to come out here and shoot the trees.”
“Oh great,” Willard said, exasperated. “Not only is she attempting to murder the birds, but she’s going to kill our trees, too.”
Malene cocked an eye at him and spat on the ground.
“Oh, very ladylike,” he said. “What are you going to do next, fart on me?”
Malene lifted her slippered foot and looked like she was going to kick Willard, which was ironic since the shotgun was still in her hands.
“Oh, gonna kick me now, I see,” he said spitefully.
“I would, but it’d hurt my bunions,” Malene snapped.
Willard raised his hands in surrender. “Well, we wouldn’t want to hurt your bunions, now would we?”
Malene pivoted the shotgun and moved to train it on Willard.
Okay, I’d had enough. Though these two entertained me, it wouldn’t do for anyone to get hurt.
“Whoa now,” I said. “Let’s calm down.”
“Mind your own business, Clementine. The less you know about this old coot, the better. Shut your eyes and pretend you didn’t see anything.”
Oh no, Malene was serious. She and Willard did not get along—that was an understatement, all right. Just about every day I came outside to find them quarreling about one thing or another. But this—a shotgun showdown first thing in the morning—was taking things to a whole new level.
Panic spread across my chest, and even Lady seemed to shake harder, afraid of what would