Is it possible to stay neighborly if they’re detonating explosives next door?

Don’t move to Upstate New York if you can’t abide the sound of gunfire.  This time of year, it reverberates across every ridge top and echoes down every valley.  It blasts out from the next field over, and the next porch over.

I’m no fan of guns.  But this is my culture.  The laws that allow chickens in backyards, that respect a family’s right to keep a junk car on the lawn for spare parts, are the same laws that tolerate the firing of weapons, whether the hunt is for food or recreation.   I don’t like it.  But I don’t fight it.  For a number of my neighbors, it’s a good way to put clean meat on the table.

But on Sunday afternoon, it isn’t gunfire that comes from the Westchester’s, the new weekenders from downstate who bought the house next door.  It’s an explosion. The girls are playing upstairs while Cornelia and I sit at the kitchen table, crunching numbers from this year’s turkey supper and making plans for next year’s.

It rocks the house, causes the dishes to rattle on the shelves, makes the girls cry out in fear.

I leap from my chair.  “That’s my $%^ing neighbors!” I shout, simultaneously enraged and deeply frightened as we watch a plume of smoke rise in front of the kitchen window.

Corny stares at me, wide-eyed.  “That’s not gunfire,” her voice is unnaturally calm.  “And you need to call the police.”

I sit back down, burying my face in my hands.  “The police won’t do anything,” I  lament, “except get me in trouble with the neighbors.”

“So you’re going to do nothing?”  She looks at me evenly.

I fix my gaze on the floor.  It’s complicated, I want to say.  “I don’t want problems with my neighbors.”

“So they can just do that to you?”

“We were hoping they’d settle down,” I try to explain.  That’s the way it usually goes.  New folks move up from downstate.  If they have a penchant for hunting, they get trigger happy with their weapons for a while, then they either get bored and go back to their flat screen TVs, or they become part of the place, melting into the landscape like the rest of us.  The Westchesters haven’t settled down yet.   They’ve brought their fear of the dark and their fear of silence upstate, smudging out the stars around their house with flood lights, porch lights, and flashing red lights to line their driveway and blink in our bedroom windows through the night, even during the times when they’re not around.  They’ve installed a lit fountain in their pond that comes on every afternoon as we’re coming home from the farm, drowning out the sound of evening bird calls in summer.  And when it comes to the weaponry, they’ve gone from firing ordinary rifles to louder and louder explosions.  But this Sunday afternoon in late fall, they have achieved a new height in destruction.

I’m 41 years old.  I’ve never complained to my neighbors.  Save for one time when weekenders were filling our hay bales with buckshot, Mom and Dad have never complained to their neighbors, either.

Some communities operate on zoning laws, code enforcement officers, leash and license laws, pooper scoopers, local councils, homeowners associations and committees.  We function differently.  We don’t complain about gunfire, asinine outdoor lighting. or the never-ending drone of snowmobiles and four wheelers that flatten the former hayfields.  The neighbors don’t complain about our un-mowed grass, the dog shit, or the scrap metal piles.

“You were hoping.”  Cornelia interrupts my thoughts and  pulls me back into the conversation and waits for me to catch on.  She grew up here, but she’s spent the last twenty or so years living in the Hudson Valley.  She no longer blithely accepts the local norms.  But this is my call, she makes that much clear.

I think of all the work our town did to ban hydro-fracking.  If my neighbors continue with their newfound detonation recreation, it could be even worse.  “It needs to happen now, doesn’t it?” my voice is weak.  “If I don’t say something now….”   My knees are wobbly.  I try to stand, then can’t seem to peel myself off the kitchen chair.

I like to see myself as an easy-going neighbor.  I’m tolerant.  To some folks, stepping forward and complaining on a matter like this is a no-brainer.   For me, with a lifetime lived in a community that ardently believes in property rights, where ice storms and flood waters easily cut us off from the rest of the world, leaving us only each other in times of need, this is a major crisis.

“I’ll go over with you,” Corny offers.

“I guess we better.”  And before I lose my courage, I’m out the door, Cornelia close behind me, making sure I don’t turn back.

The Westchesters are laughing when they come out of the woods to greet us.  They pull off their ear protection to see what we want.  Still avoiding a conflict, but unable to contain my emotions, I channel my outrage into worry.

“Is everything okay?  Is someone hurt?” I rush at them.

They look at me as though I have four heads.  As though nothing has happened.

“The explosion!”  I volunteer.  They glance at each other quickly, then Mr. Westchester adopts a mock worried expression.

“Explosion?  There was no explosion.  Where was there an explosion?”  He grins at his wife. This is a game.   “I didn’t hear an explosion,” he says to her.  She pulls off her headphones so she can hear him.

“Huh?”

“Explosion.  Did you hear an explosion?”

“Explosion?”  She shakes her head.  “Nope.  Nothing here.”

“There was smoke,” I push forward.  “There.”  I point to a spot in their field-turned-lawn.

“Nope.  Nothing.  You musta saw the dust from the clay pigeons,” Mr. Westchester continues.  “We were doing a little target practice is all.”

I am being lied to.  Unsure how to proceed, I back down.  I see it as an opportunity to maintain harmony with my neighbors.  Accept the lie, and they will hopefully recognize that whatever they just did shouldn’t happen again.  I begin to back away.  “I- I just wanted to make sure no one was hurt,” I stammer.

Cornelia fills herself up to her full height, several inches over my own.  She is equal in stature to Mr. Westchester.  She leans in close to him.  “Not.  Cool.”  She hisses.  “I’m from out of town,” she adds, insulating me from any repercussions from the weight of her words, “and whatever you’re doing is seriously not cool.”

We leave.  I am shaking, not so much from the fear from the explosion, but from the confrontation.  I feel like Gladys Sharp from Over the Hedge, driving around in her giant SUV, telling people what they can and can’t do in the suburban neighborhood that has been carved out of the wilderness.

Cornelia drives home, leaving me to my private identity crisis.

A few nights later, Bob and I are out for the night in Albany to hear a concert.  We’re sitting in the lobby of the theater, waiting for the too-loud warm-up act to end when two women join us at our table, beers in hand.  They’ve made the drive up to Albany from Poughkeepsie.  In spite of the chilly evening, one woman is wearing a tank top.  Her body is painted in tattoos such that I’ve never seen in my life.  She has begun the process of turning the entire right half of her body into a butterfly garden.  I’m mesmerized by the artwork, by how each flower is so easily identifiable by name…the dahlias, shasta daisies, sunflowers, mums.

The four of us make small talk for a while.  We’ve all come unprepared for the noise levels, and we make a game of designing ear plugs from toilet paper.  As the evening rolls forward, we take turns people-watching, sharing stories about other musicians and concerts.  Finally, I work up my courage and lean across the table to address the tattooed lady.

“Your tattoos are beautiful,” I volunteer.  “I’ve never seen anything like them.” Her jaw grows tight.  She nods.  “How did you come up with that design?” I continue.

She leans forward, her eyes suddenly fierce. “I’ll tell ya,” she shouts over the blaring guitars and drums.  She points to her left arm, which has not been included in the body garden.  “Cuz I was gonna have FUCK THIS written here!”

I shrink back wary of proceeding, but now I feel obligated to accept her story opener.  “How come?”

“Because life sucks!” she spits each word.  “Life sucks,” she repeats, “and people suck!”

For the next half hour, she tells Bob and me about her life and work in Poughkeepsie.  About the cruelty of people.  About the ugliness she witnesses on a daily basis.

It is rare that I have a chance to share a space with a person as deeply unhappy as that.  And as her story unfolds, what becomes clear is the powerlessness she feels within her world.  The feeling is so strong, I eventually realize, that the only  place left where she has control, where she can make something beautiful, is on her body.  The tattoos are her last ditch effort to make something beautiful in her life.

Her story hangs with me for the ride home.  It haunts me through the night, follows me on my walk the next morning.  As I hike home, I pass by the Westchesters.   And there, along the side of the road, gazing out at the assortment of shiny SUVs, and ATV’s sprawled across their property,  the tattooed lady’s story suddenly makes sense.

There is the matter of honoring local culture, which melds into local law.  And then there is the matter of feeling powerless over one’s life.   There’s playing by the rules, and there’s playing the victim.  It is one thing to tolerate guns and snowmobiles.  But it is another matter entirely if I choose to sit back and be polite while my neighbors take Upstate cultural liberties to extremes, leaving me feeling as angry and powerless as the tattooed lady.

I look up, and another neighbor from downstate who I’ve befriended in recent years is driving down the road.  I recall that she had some connections with the Westchesters before they bought the house next door.  I am not powerless.  I flag her down.

“Can we talk about something?” I begin with a smile.

She heard the explosion, too.  She lets me finish my story.  “We don’t do that downstate,” her voice is firm,  “and we don’t do that here.  I’ll take care of this.”  She drives away, and moments later she is down in the Westchester’s driveway.  A little while after that, Mrs. Westchester is on my front porch, apologizing.  She still denies there was an explosion.  “I don’t know what it was,” she says, her voice lilting high as she ponders the pretend mystery, “but whatever it was,” and now her voice lowers, “I’m sorry it upset you.” She thinks carefully about what to say next.”….and it won’t happen again.”

Whatever it was you can’t admit to, I think, must be highly illegal.  But I don’t push it.  In every human being lies the propensity for deceit, selfishness, and thoughtlessness…as well as love and decency.  An apology is a step toward the latter two.  And it will be our job in the coming years to find more of that in each other.  But for now, next flood, next ice storm, next power outage, next time the car breaks down, that’s my neighbor.  So that’ll have to be good enough for today.