The Pool

This morning was a day like any other. My husband rolled over, brushing his stubbly chin against my forehead, then righting his position to give me a kiss on the lips while I slept. It was no longer a sound sleep, though. I smelled the coffee brewing downstairs, and the dogs had awakened and wanted us to know they were ready for all of us to begin our days. They liked to pretend I was their personal hopscotch grid to ensure I was aware of their immediate needs. Still, however, I stayed in bed while the house awoke around me. Our son had decided a year ago to decamp his room because his bed was too full of clothing and parts and pieces of his life for him to be able to sleep in it. When remaining in bed was no longer tenable, I went downstairs, spoke loudly about the weather forecast for the day, took some vitamins, then went back upstairs to shower. There was always a decision to make when we went downstairs to finish awakening our family. We could either be sensitive to our sleeping child, or we could go about being the loud people we were in an effort to encourage him to clean off his bed and sleep in it like a regular person. Generally, we opted for insensitivity.

I didn't have anything on my schedule today but thought about the tree branches that needed to be trimmed back on the old walnut tree in the backyard. Here's the thing: If I trimmed them, I would be able to see the abomination of an above-ground pool our neighbors who lived behind us had erected 2 years ago. Our town had an ordinance against above-ground pools, and it was only enforced if the city received a complaint. No one had yet complained because the eyesore was still standing. God himself tried to tell the neighbors about the atrocity and infraction by dropping a tree on the pool during a storm. No matter. They removed the tree, and even with a dent the size of a car's grill in the side of the pool, it was still staring back at me every time I looked out the windows at the rear of my house.

If I didn't trim the branches, I wouldn't see the pool, but the tree branches would grow heavy with walnuts, and the lower branches were already heavy and weak. Trimming the lower branches would improve the tree's overall vigor. Loving the trees more than I hated the neighbor's pool, I went to the garage to get some safety glasses and gloves and the chainsaw. I'm not someone I would ever trust with a chainsaw; however, I had access and motivation to do home improvement. Also, a fun fact that plays into this story: I was absolutely no good at physics.

Getting started early in the day on my tree trimming project was better than waiting too long, when the heat and humidity climbed. As the air became thicker, it seemed to serve as a magic carpet for mosquitoes, and West Nile virus was not on my agenda now or ever. Getting started before the mosquitoes were active was key. Also, I didn't care if the sound of the chainsaw woke the neighbors behind me because they didn't seem to care about the ordinance forbidding their heinous, dented, objectionable pool. I made several trips back and forth between the backyard and my garage—a trip for the garbage can, one for the chainsaw, and one for the ladder.

I pulled the cord on the chainsaw, its motor coming to life, the sound hungry for something to cut apart. The lowest branches were easy and didn't require a ladder. They fell without much noise or ceremony, making me feel triumphant that I was doing a good job. The next lowest branches, however, held a lot of walnuts. At the moment, the nuts were covered in the apple green outer skin. The tree branch looked loaded down with tennis balls. I positioned the ladder close to the tree trunk, taking each rung very gingerly. I pulled the cord on the chainsaw once again, balancing myself against the upper rungs on the ladder and aimed the saw close to the limb's insertion point in the trunk. What I failed to gauge was the overall length of the limb, the distribution of the limb's weight, and where it would likely fall when severed from the tree trunk. I just went to town, sawing the limb, and when I reached the very last bit of the limb coming loose, I had to scold myself from yelling, "Timber!" It was a very good thing, too. The limb fell onto the side of the neighbor's pool, crushing the outer wall, causing water to begin soaking their backyard.

What to do? Turn off the chainsaw, first and foremost. The neighbors would know someone in my home was probably the culprit when they saw the limb because it was a clean cut obviously done by the chainsaw that had probably woken them that morning. Should I go over and apologize for the accident? Should I be a bad neighbor and ignore it? Well, hold on…weren't they bad neighbors for the ordinance infraction? Who was the worse neighbor? If I wanted to win the contest of being less bad, I would own up to the mistake.

I climbed down the ladder, setting the chainsaw on the ground. Not wanting to leave it unattended, I took it with me when I walked through to the neighbor's backyard and around the house to the front door. I rang the doorbell. If they hadn't been alerted to the new day by the chainsaw attack on their pool, they would be up soon enough. Their four-year old answered the door, and seeing me with the chainsaw, gloves, and safety glasses, looking slightly wild-eyed, sent the little girl screaming back inside the house. Soon, the husband came to the door. Even though these people lived right behind me, I had not met them.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He smelled of coffee and an early morning cigarette. I hated cigarette smoke, and didn't he know anything about second- and third-hand smoke?

"Uh, hi. So, I live right behind your backyard, and I was trimming tree branches. I cut one that was pretty substantial, and it fell on your pool. It broke your pool. Your above-ground pool."

He stared at me a moment, taking me in with the gloves, glasses, and not to be missed: the chainsaw. "Excuse me?" he said.

"Yeah, I broke your pool with a tree limb I cut just now—for the health of the tree. You know—to improve its vigor."

He didn't say anything for a moment then muttered, "Jesus Christ," and I thought Jesus wasn't going to be able to undo what I'd done to his pool. He slammed the door in my face, and I heard him running toward the back of his house. I went back home, reversing my previous route.

The funny thing about the walnut tree was how it straddled our mutual property line. Whose responsibility was it to maintain the tree? Well, my husband and I assumed responsibility because all the walnuts seemed to fall into our yard (or was our stupid infraction-loving neighbor pitching them into our yard?). Sometimes the dogs would get bonked on the head by an errant nut, and sometimes when I was de-poopifying our backyard, I had trouble differentiating the older walnuts for a nugget of dookie.

"Hey, crazy lady," the neighbor yelled at me. "Aren't you going to come back and get your tree limb?"

I looked back at him. "Look. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to break your pool, and I'll come back to get the limb as soon as I don't have to slosh through a swamp to get it."

"You mean the swamp you created?" he yelled.

"Well, yeah," I answered. "And you know you're not even supposed to have an above-ground pool. It's against the city ordinance."

"Oooh. Well, I guess it's okay since the pool police haven't been here to cite us," he jibed. "You know, you're going to have to pay for the pool."

"No, I'm not. I refuse to support your blatant disregard for the city's ordinance against above-ground pools. Sorry," I said as I carried the chainsaw back to my garage. "I'll be back for the limb when the ground is a little less swampy," I added without looking back. I pictured him giving me the finger, but I still felt like I did my part by apologizing for what I'd done.

My husband hadn't left for work yet. He was on his second cup of coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal on his tablet. "Did I hear you talking to the neighbor back there?"

"Uh, yeah," I answered.

"Is he nice?" he asked.

"Well, today is probably not the best day to gauge if he's nice. I broke their stupid pool when I was trimming the branches on the walnut tree. I can't say I regret it, though. The tree needed to be trimmed, you know, to improve its vigor. I apologized, thinking I was taking the high road, and he called me a crazy lady," I said.

"We're going to have to pay to replace it, aren't we?" he asked, maybe a little annoyed by having an expense we probably could have avoided.

"No way. That stupid pool probably cost $300 and was meant to be temporary. I don't know how on earth he has managed to keep that temporary eyesore there for 2 years. God tried to smite the pool, and it survived. Uh-uh. Not paying for a replacement." I was firm on my stance.

Around noon, I went back to the neighbor's backyard and moved the limb out of the demolished pool. I cut the wood into manageable sized pieces and put them into my garbage can. Afterward, I took my ladder back to my garage. I didn't see the neighbor the rest of the day or the rest of the week, which I thought boded well, all things considered.

Then the weekend arrived.

Saturday morning, I looked out the kitchen window into our adjoining backyards while I was chewing my vitamin gummies. I learned I could make a whole meal out of dietary supplements in gummy form. The neighbor and some of his friends were removing the broken pool from his backyard. I kept my phone handy in case they had the bright idea they could throw the pool carcass into my backyard. But, being a relatively decent neighbor, he and his buddies hauled the destroyed remains to his garbage cans. The next thing I saw, though, had me practically apoplectic. There was a box. A very big box. As they took everything out of the box, I saw the picture on the side. Another pool. Another infraction.

"Honey!" I yelled for my husband. "They're putting up another pool! This is ridiculous. And they know it's against the rules."

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked. "I want you to think very carefully about what your plan may be. Do not be impulsive."

In the end, I didn't do anything. We weren't planning to sell our house and move away, and neither were the neighbors. I didn't want to get into a feud with these people I didn't even know, and I learned to turn a blind eye to their pool…but I only had to turn a blind eye for three months. That October, we had straight-line winds. There was a very large pignut hickory in the neighbor's backyard. It had been struck by lightning before, and it wasn't the healthiest thing in their yard. The winds took out the hickory, and it landed not only on the pool, but it took out their whole back deck. Insurance covered the deck, but not the pool. And in the end, I won.