Good Neighbors

 I came home yesterday to find the owner of the apartment house next door to us in our back yard. The good news is that we know one another and are friendly enough to limit the questions to "what're you working on?" The answer, as it turned out, was pretty obvious: A large section of the fence that has stood between our two properties for the better part of three decades was lying in pieces on the ground near his feet. Some of it on our side, some of it on his. 

After a brief look at what he was working on, I went to our garage and grabbed my stock and trade: the cordless drill and a box of screws. 

Happily, as I began to pick up slats and try to piece them back into some sort of vertical assemblage, I noticed that the posts had been pushed back to more or less upright by a number of means, including a brace that tied one to a tree on his side. The goal for us at this point was to make as much of a barrier as possible with the remaining bits of wood. The chunks of dry rot were tossed aside and some clever adjustments were made with the not-so-rotted pieces. 

As we worked, conversation was limited. Mostly we talked about the task that stood in front of us. Not just the repair in which we were currently engaged, but also the eventual reclamation of the entire run. A few years back, my son and I had taken on the front half, replacing the fence that stood at the north end of our front yard. At that time, it was our labor, and the cost of materials was covered in part by our neighbor. At that time, it was done in just a couple days because we had a dog that who needed a line not to cross. Caution tape where the fence once was turned out to be an ineffective reminder for her. 

Now we were a home for an indoor cat. An indoor cat who has made a great show on the occasions which he has chosen to dart outside to reclaim his kingdom makes short work of the back fence, leaping from the ground to the top rail, then over. I thought about this as I continued to screw slats into the empty spaces, a little bit of fence orthodontia. 

Eventually, we had recreated a semblance of the former "fence," and we agreed that once spring had arrived and the days grew longer, we would meet back in that corner of our shared world for a discussion about what we knew would be another few days of home improvement. I figured I would be seeing him again, from time to time when he showed up to drag his building's trash bins back from the curb, about the same time I arrived home from school. Just in time to drag my trash bins back from the curb. We would chat, as we have for all these years about sports and the weather and the fence. The one between us.