Mrs. Hollister, Bitch

Part 1

Anyone who knew her and described her honestly would have said Amy Hollister was a bitch. Probably even her relatives would have said so, had any been unlucky enough to end up living anywhere near her.

I was unlucky enough to own the house she moved next door to when she arrived in town. There was nothing she liked about me or anybody else she ran into, and made no secret of it. Among ourselves, we neighbors asked each other what was wrong with that woman? How could anyone have that many bad days in a row? Or have PMS every day of the year?

I'm a pretty level headed guy and get along well enough with people who aren't out and out jerks. This division left a very small margin for Amy Hollister to occupy. However, my residential property line bordered one edge of that margin.

In my part of the country we have a range fence law, and the medium sized town I lived in followed the same logic for residential property, meaning each property owner builds and maintains the right-hand half of the communal fence separating the two properties. This also applies to hedges and trees and other growth inhabiting the joint property line.

A previous owner had quite accurately planted two trees on the property line I shared with Mrs. Hollister and these trees had matured and grown large enough to cause the problems deciduous trees normally cause. Mainly they shed leaves and other crap all over both yards. I, understanding the situation and appreciating the trees' other benefits, calmly cleared the crap from my side of the line whenever prudence directed.

Mrs. Hollister did not.

"Mister Annis," she said as she came across her yard toward where I was raking up my half of the latest dose of debris the wind had knocked from those trees.

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"This time clean up all of your mess, not just what's in your yard."

"Not my mess."

"Yes it is. I didn't plant those trees, so you clean it up."

"It's half your mess, half mine. I'm just about finished cleaning my half."

"That's your mess," she said pointing at her ground. "The wind blew that over here ... off your trees."

I calmly repeated myself and added, "Those trees are exactly on the property line, far as I can tell, so the mess is half yours."

"Clean it up or I'll sue you." With that she turned and stomped off.

Well, needless to say. I didn't rake her yard for her.

When I came home from work the following afternoon, though, she had. She had raked all that stuff onto my side of the line and left it there. I, being the calm-minded, peace-loving sort of guy I am, raked it all up and set it out for the garbage men to load the next day. I probably set a bad precedent in doing so, but so much for that right now.

The following week the wind blew again, and of course the crap fell in both yards again, just about equally. Fair is fair, so I raked my yard's rubbish off into hers before she got home from work—or whatever she did during the workday.

You can probably guess the explosion that caused! The threats that woman hung on me at my front door and the language she used to do so, would have only not made a sailor blush, it would have made the whole port city, the freight docks, all ships at dock, those at anchor in the harbor, and the entire surrounding countryside blush—for twenty miles in all directions.

The only thing that saved her from a stout bash in her toilet mouth was the fact she was still dressed in her business clothes, and, I'll admit, looked pretty good. And through the dining room view window at the back of her house, I'd also seen her wearing not much of anything around inside her house, so I knew without that suit on and not particularly fixed up, she'd still look pretty good to any guy my age. Sure, she was maybe five years older than me, but that only put her at thirty or so, so why not look?

I shouldn't have done it, I know, but I did anyway. I went out, raked up all that crap, and overpaid again that week to have the garbage guys cart it off. Did I get any thanks for that? You can guess. Not even a five buck offer to pick up half the garbage tab.

My feud with Mrs. Hollister then took a month-long hiatus. Mainly, the wind didn't blow so there was nothing to dispute. The following week, though, it blew like hell, hell meaning like a tornado. It ripped one of those mature trees out of the ground and broke the other up pretty badly. The one that toppled, fell on her house and it fell hard, right on the middle, breaking her house's back. Luckily, my house escaped with only a window being broken in, an easily repaired, small one.

I waited two days, expecting each evening to get some sort of summons to fix Mrs. Hollister's problems. It never came, although I kept my eagle eye out in self-defense.

I thought the situation sort of strange, nobody coming or going from her place, no one moving around inside, and at least that I could see, no one going to work. Through the small glass ports in her garage door I snuck a look and made out her car sitting inside her crumpled garage. No lights burned, ever, including the night security light that usually lit her garage door and shined in my bedroom window and kept me awake night after night. Had she had a heart attack and died in there like you hear occasionally about old folks' demises?

Well, wouldn't have been much loss to the neighborhood—or in her case, the human race.

But finally curiosity got the better of me. Since the storm damage left her doors askew and unsecured, one evening after work I picked my way in, without a clue what I'd find. In what had been the living room, I found disaster, but not much else because where the tree had centered its fall, it crushed the building to its floor. Both bedrooms? Nothing in the way of a clue, only more destruction. Kitchen and dining room were complete losses, but in the kitchen I found the stairway to the basement. So I went down and had a look around.

What I found was a bit unusual, to say the least. The builder, long before they became popular because of that Jodie Somebody movie, had built a 4-sided, poured concrete safe-room in the basement's center and installed a very stout steel door to hold it secure. From the outside I estimated the room was probably no bigger than four feet by four inside. One limb of the tree had broken off at its trunk and come though the building's collapsed roof, then its stub pierced through the main floor, and along with the destroyed floor joists, jammed this steel door closed.

I wasn't quiet or trying to hide my presence, so with the utilities dead, every move I made sounded like a Normandy invasion in progress. I took two tours around that concrete monolith at the basement's center before I decided to try that jammed door. Nothing.

The basement's concrete floor was ankle deep with water, stuff floating on it, making it a tripping hazzard and smelling like a marsh at the mouth of a small-town's sewage plant outlet. I supposed a water pipe somewhere had broken, either a direct result of the tree's fall, or some collateral damage.

In one basement corner I found it, the basement's drainage sump. No wonder the place was afloat with rubbish. Of course her electrical service had shorted out, popped all the breakers, so now the house was electrically dead and the sump pump had no power with which to keep the basement pumped out.

So what to do now? I knew better than try to repower the house so the sump pump could do its thing. Great way to electrocute ones self walking around in water! And what about Mrs Hollister? Why had she not shown up, seen the situation, and called one of those water damage clean-up places you see advertized in the cheap want-ads?

So the big mystery remained into the following day. No change. No lights on, no traffic, her car never moving, nothing. So, being the good neighbor I am, I gathered up my collection of heavy extension cords, made the assumption her sum pump was 115 volts, found my closest 115 volt receptacle, and strung the cords together out my basement window, over to her house and through one of her basement windows, across the basement, plugged in her sump pump, then went home and plugged the whole lash-up into my power. From outside her basement window, I heard her sump pump make the appropriate noises, so I figured by the following morning, the tide in her basement would have receded enough I could walk around in there without getting wet above my ankles.

The next day was Saturday, so right after breakfast I disconnected my power to her sump pump, and went over to have a look.

Not much had changed except the water level had receded to just enough to wet the soles of my engineer boots. I expected her sump pump, like most, included a float that would stop the pump before it ran out of water and ruined itself, so I re-energized it and let it run until noon.

At her basement window after lunch I no longer heard her pump humming. That left two possibilities: The float switch assumption had been wrong, the pump had run dry and ruined itself, or—and this was the big OR—the pump had worked until it pumped the basement dry, shut off as it should, and sat there waiting for the sump to refill enough to need pumping out again.

I disconnected the cord lash-up, went over again, fought my way through the devastation, down to the basement, and found the tide was out. Good, except a broken pipe was still trying to return the basement to its previous tide level. But that would take a while, so I looked around to see any clues that might resolve the no Mrs. Hollister mystery. Nothing except that safe room with it's door still jammed shut.

Well, like my every other experience with Mrs. Hollister, I'd probably get no thanks for my efforts, but I went to my shop and got my chainsaw, thinking all the time if she walked in on me, I'd probably be explaining the cops why I was in her basement, uninvited, with a running chainsaw. Yes, I thought about that quite a bit as I got ready, gassed, oiled, and checked the saw, and carried it and the other anticipated tools to her basement.

I spent several hours chewing through the rubbish blocking the safe-room's door shut. Of course in the process I hit that saw operator's nemesis: Stray nails I didn't see, which set me back a half hour each time while I went back to my shop and resharpened my saw's cutting chain.

But by mid-afternoon I got to the door itself and cleared enough space the door should swing clear.

But it was locked! I mean, who locks a safe-room door shut to keep the weather out? Or did she keep it locked all the time and was simply gone out of the country somewhere?

What now? I pounded on the door with all my might, but achieved nothing. Only change was the tide was edging up again. Do something, Dumbie! There must be a main water shutoff valve somewhere!

I traced the piping back until it focused into the basement's southwest corner. Sure enough, there it was. I grabbed the handle and twisted, but nothing happened. That valve had probably never been closed since the house was built.

I gave the handle all I had, fearing I might break it off. On my third try, it moved—just a little. Next try, a little more, but next try, no more.

So back it up, then try it again. It went closed next time, requiring all my strength to make it do so.

And with the flow stopped, the basement's quiet became even more profound—all except for that guy two doors down on the other side of the street jacking his Harley throttle. I've never understood why a kid with a loud car exhaust gets noise tickets, but Harley-Davidson can build motorcycles year after year that run at OSHA prohibited industrial hearing loss sound levels, yet that's okay. Some time when you've got more time than good sense, explain that legal puzzle to me. Well, so much for my rant on that topic.

I waded back to the safe room's door, and between Mr. Harley's throttle blasts, beat on that metal door again.

Nothing.

Well, maybe she really was gone.

I found something hard and long, and between the next exhaust blasts, beat on that door for all I could.

Still nothing.

Another assault, but at it's end this time I screamed at the door, "Anybody in there? Answer me for god's sake!" Then I put my ear to the door, solid enough I should have been able to hear a whisper a hundred yards beyond the door.

Nothing again.

I renewed my torture to the door with all my strength, then listened. Damned, just then Mr. Harley jacked his throttle again, but in the millisecond before his exhaust again drowned out everything, I heard something that didn't jive.

I beat on the door again and yelled at it. I swear, had anybody seen me, they'd have thought I'd gone nuts. But there it was, the weakest, "Help me," I can imagine to this day.

God, somebody was in there!

I stepped back, and yelled again, but this time I had no question. "I'm calling 911. You stay calm. We'll get you out. Just take it easy. Help's on the way."

***

She could have died in the time it took EMS to get there. God, bureaucracies move with the speed of cold, oil rig drill slurry—or slower, and they got it mostly wrong when they did arrive. And you better believe my being in the basement of someone else's house with a still smoking chainsaw took a lot of explaining.

Luckily they did find a capable locksmith fairly quickly and liberated Mrs. Hollister from her safe room prison. But I've never seen a person closer to death who wasn't bleeding or having a stroke or heart attack.

This was exposure without exposure, a shortage of oxygen being cooped up like that, her body temperature must have been under 80 F, lying there half buried in cold water, with no room to stretch out for most of four days, and surrounded by the stench of fear and bodily eliminations. Wow!

She was still alive when they carried her from the basement and hauled her away by ambulance, but you never know.

What I did know was the cops figured I may have locked her in there and tortured her for the whole four days, holding her against her will. Maybe the fact I said sometime along the way that she was an absolute bitch and the neighborhood would be better off without her had something to do with that?

But finally one of them showed a glimmer of common sense and pointed out the tree had fallen due to natural causes, come through her roof and floor due to natural causes, and the chainsaw had been used to open a way to get her out, not keep her in. So eventually clearer heads prevailed and they let me go home. They did impound my chainsaw, however. You never know when a chainsaw wielding nut case is going to hold up a convenience store, or maybe a bank or a US Post Office!

A week later, I found a message on my answering machine from some unrecognized, local hospital I at first figured was trying to wangle a donation out of me. But I called anyway. Once the receptionist—probably a retired volunteer—and I got through the required preliminaries, the essence of the call was Mrs. Hollister had asked to see me.

I wasn't looking forward to that, but what the hell? I asked about visiting hours, but found out Mrs. Hollister—Amy—could only have visitors while an advocate was present in the room, so by appointment only. Advocate? What the hell did that mean? Counselor? Advisor? Guard? Someone handy with a straight jacket? Well, the Mrs. Hollister I knew needed a counselor if anybody in the world did.

The first available appointment was at 7:30 the following evening, so that was it. I showed up on time and got directions to her room. It surprised me it wasn't a single room. How did that poor woman she got paired up with manage? Oh, well, not my problem. Just get this obligatory visit out of the way and head home to peace, quiet, and no chance of a Mrs. Hollister confrontation.

The Counselor met me in the hall, took me aside, and filled me in on Amy Holister's latest. By her finish, I wondered if this woman really was the Mrs. Hollister who lived next door to me. Then we went in and the Counselor woke Mrs. Hollister.

Amy could have passed for a corpse. I guess if you survived four days half submerged in cold water, sure any moment the water level would rise farther and drown you, in a space too small to sit other than scrunched up, with no water other than what you sat in, sweated in, and eliminated in, with barely enough oxygen to keep brain cells functioning, and no food, you'd look like that, too. But she looked no worse than when the locksmith and those EMS techs got the safe-room door open.

I put on my best manners, both toward the Counselor and Mrs. Hollister, but after ten minutes the Counselor instructed me to say goodnight, led me back out into the hall, and filled me in further about Amy's progress.

At home, I wondered about that. It just wasn't her! No bitchiness, no nastiness toward me, certainly not the Mrs. Hollister I knew.

The following evening my phone rang. I figured it might be the hospital again, but no.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Annis?" a weak voce said.

"Yes?"

"This is Amy? Amy Hollister?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for coming to see me last night. Sorry I wasn't better company. They had me pretty drugged up."

"Oh, no problem."

"Yes, it was, and I'm sorry."

Amy Hollister? Saying she was sorry? Couldn't be the one I knew!

"They tell me I get out of here in three days. They won't tell me where to, but I think it's some sort of nut house."

"Oh, I'm sure ..."

"No, really it is, and in case I never see you again, I want to thank you for saving my life. I know you did. I didn't deserve it, but you did it anyway." She sounded as if while saying this, she nearly broke into tears. "I thought I heard somebody out there several times, but I couldn't make you hear. Nothing but me in there, and I could hardly move or say anything. And the water kept getting deeper and deeper." Then she did break into tears. "I thought it would drown me if I didn't die from the cold first."

"It's okay, now, Amy. You just take it easy and get well. No water, nothing to worry about."

"But there is, Frank," she said between sniffles and her tears. "The Counselor said it's fairly common for someone you save from death to feel this way."

"How?"

"Like that old Indian way of thinking I read about once, that your life belongs to that person who saves you."

"No, you don't. You belong to you."

"I want to belong to you, Frank. Can I please? When I think about that, I feel lots better. You'd want me, wouldn't you?"

Well, what could a guy say to that? You were the bitch next door and I hated you? But you got the finest body I ever saw on a woman you age? And as good a body as any woman of any age could wish?

She went silent for a long moment, then whispered into the phone.

"I'm getting tired, now. Will you come see me tomorrow? They're moving me, so call ahead and find out where. Please?"

***

Two days later a change began at Mrs. Hollister's house. It was as if a logging crew arrived, heavy equipment, trucks, cranes, noisy saws, and all. In less than a day they had the tree's trunk cut up, lifted it all off her house, and hauled away, along with all its limbs and the branches broken from both trees. Then, after some XYZ-named moving and storage company packed stuff out of her house for a day and a half, another crew came and extracted her car from the garage, after which a demolition crew started in on the house. Two weeks later only a torn up back yard and a hole in the ground remained. No concrete from the basement, no wood or roof, no nothing else. Our town requires a demolition permit for this sort of work, so I assumed they had one. The crew went at it as if this was regular work for them.