Blackout

It was the damn Galloways on Loman Street again. Cal shook his head and rapped his wedding band against the steering wheel in time with the Waylon in the speakers and watched headlights tumble through the dark intersection as he waited for the signal to change. A brick cape cod with gray-and-red shingles and neatly pruned shrubs; the Galloway place caused more trouble than the rest of the neighborhood combined. Not that anyone would say so outside the comfort of their own living room, but the gossip and the in-ground pool and the late-night, backporch wine parties guaranteed the Galloways were nobody’s favorite neighbor eleven months out of the year and December was a different story altogether.

Three nights earlier, Ike had told Cal and Wolf over a handle of Johnny Walker Blue that the station got calls all the time about the Galloways; and not just for Christmas lights. “Oh shit naw, Cal, every week just for ticky tack stuff.” He took a sip and stared into the moths bound to the bulb over the back door. “You know. The racket when they have all them folks in from the burg to booze and carry on in the back yard. They’re just loud; tiresome and all but it ain’t no ten dollar problem.” He took a sip. “Now when them lights are up it’s a whole ‘nother make and model. Twice a day the whole month.”

But Cal knew that already. Last December, he’d left the old split level and backyard scrub-fire haze a couple times a week to make late-night calls to Loman and Bennet Streets. Keeping a lawn festive enough to attract the city papers stressed the feeble grid and he was the only electrician in the book. Flickering, interference, weak or interrupted current, loss of power altogether; the power company didn’t give a shit unless a transformer was out or a bill went unpaid so the Galloways’ neighbors called him with their problems and stood while he checked the breakers and fuses and wiring, tapping their feet and talking about “the god damn nerve, Cal, not a soul in the world deserves this treatment.” He’d nod without looking up from his work. 

Half the time, Wolf’s Herman & Sons Pest-Be-Gone van was already in the neighborhood when he arrived. It might have been the electricity, the noise, the exhaust from cars that carried gawkers from three counties over for the spectacle, or just the presence of so many people posing in front of dead-eyed automatonic reindeer and the jolly old colossus the Galloways erected at the end of the driveway by the garage. It might have been simple disgust at the gaudiness of it all, but every rat and squirrel, roach and mole, groundhog and ant, fled to the peace and quiet of the first suitable house or garage or woodshed they could find that wasn’t the Galloways’.

Cal shook his head, rolled through the intersection, passed the gas station and the decrepit victorian at the hill’s bottom, and climbed the poplar-shadowy incline, lined with street lamps and neat two-story homes free of crab grass and weather-worn plastic lawn furniture. The dark brakelights of late model after late model winked in the drives as his lowbeams bounced over the uneven pavement and manhole covers. Loman Street smelled like chimney smoke and magnolia and he shook his head as he passed under the last street lamp, into the heavy blackout silence of extinguished porchlights, dark windows, and furtive flashlight beams. The whole neighborhood lay somnolent in the pitch darkness and unfamiliar stars twinkled at the edge of his windshield and he whistled to himself. At the top of the hill stood a large house, lit by the ragtag light of a dozen cars, all parked on the shoulder in varying stages of departure. Catty-corner across the road, Wolf’s van leaned with two wheels on asphalt and two wheels in the drainage ditch. Wolf was smoking a cigarette and squinted into the headlights as he passed. Cal parked his van in front of Wolf’s and drank briefly the humless silence. Cold bit him when he opened the door and he zipped his coat and walked back toward Wolf.

“How long you been out?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets and leaning against the van’s panel-door.

“Burrs called about an hour ago,” Wolf said, nodding to a stucco rancher down the block just inside the headlights’ penumbra. “Said they had mice in the window-well.”

“Said?”

“Didn’t find nothing.” He spat on the ground. “Whole neighborhood went dark while I was looking though.”

“Mm.”

“Yup.” Wolf blew smoke out into the night. “Figured you’d be out any minute here.”

Cal nodded. “Any idea what happened?”

“One of them spectators said something about sparks on the colossus but they dont know nothing.” He nodded toward a group of idlers across the street, pacing about and shivering absently. “I tell you what though, Cal. You should of seen the neighbors when the generators kicked on and those damn lights were the only thing with power in five blocks.”

“Don’t say?”

“Yup.” He lit a fresh cigarette and held the pack out to Cal. “Started lining up at the end of the driveway in their coats and bathrobes and whatnot but it all went dark a couple minutes after everything else. Galloways said the generators died but I reckon they cut it all off to keep from starting a damn street-fight with all them kids here.”

“Mm.” Cal shook his head and pushed the pack back toward Wolf and stared across the street. “Looks awful weird like this, dont it?”

Wolf put the pack back into his pocket. “Sure as shit.”

A dozen cars sat, bumper to bumper, on the shoulder with clusters of two or three at intervals down the street; headlights shone and idle engines coughed into the frost and cricket thrum. Men and women milled about in the frozen headlights with their hands stuffed into pockets or with coffee mugs or drearily steaming cider cups. They exhaled frozen breath and checked watches while a swarm of children darted through the dark yard, overfull and rotten with wire stars and plastic candy canes; bursting with sleighs and life-sized reindeer and elves and christmas trees and rotund snowmen and a towering Santa Claus at least fifteen feet tall; littered with gaudy decorative nativities and intricate snowflakes dangling from the limbs. String lights and colored glass bulbs covered every inch of every extravagance, but the yard lay dark as the rest of the neighborhood, save the headlights. 

“Reckon they might a gone a little overboard this year,” Cal said as he slapped Wolf on the shoulder.

“No!” Wolf gasped sarcastically. “You figure?”

“I did the math on the meter once –––”

Wolf put his hand up and shook his head. “I don’t even want to hear it, Cal. World’s plenty dumb enough without having to hear the particulars.” He rapped his knuckles on the panel door and flicked his cigarette into the frosted grass behind him. “Well there ain’t much more for me here, Cal. Think I’d better be off.”

Cal nodded. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Shit,” Wolf said as he opened the driver’s side and climbed in. “Sure as hell hope not.”

Exhaust encircled the van like a mist as Wolf lumbered from the uneven ditch, into the street, and down the hill until the brakelights disappeared in darkness. A long, thin shadow fell across the street and Cal pulled his tools from the van and crossed it like a bridge to the driveway where Stewart Galloway stood waiting with bony thumbs looped into his braided belt. His eyes were anxious behind the thick tortoise-shell frames and he scratched at his tousled shadowy hair as Cal approached.

“Thanks for coming, Cal,” he said.

The dark hid Cal’s grimace at the sound of his nasal voice. “Dont mention it, Stew.”

“Stewart,” he said, glancing down at the pavement as he scratched the hair behind his ear again.

Cal nodded. “Don’t mention it Stewart.”

“Stew’s fine.” He waved away the offense and turned without lifting his eye. “My cousin called me Stew actually. Stew’s just fine. Just fine actually. Come on in.”

Neighbors stood out on their stoops with curlers in their hair, shaking heads and tapping feet impatiently; a handful still stood with their arms crossed and their faces burning alongside the drive. Cal’s distaste for Stewart Galloway rose from the depths of his belly, further with each step he took. The little boy – Nicky Galloway – sat idly behind a cider stand, collecting quarters from cold patrons while his sister, Ashley, walked families around the yard and pointed out the various attractions like as you can see the Saint Nicholas by the driveway is sixteen feet six inches tall, in its fifth season with us and “Oh! There’s our electrician right now, folks. Looks like we should be –––”

Cal rubbed his eye such that his face was obscured from the angry neighbors and hurried after Mr. Galloway. They traipsed past the trashcans and around the back porch where three gas generators sat idle along the barren garden. Dozens of daisy-chained extension cords and surge protectors clumped together and tangled their way down the slope to the basement door. Mr. Galloway held one finger up as he entered and Cal waited outside and listened to the clatter of his confused fumbling.

“Ah!” he shouted and a single dusty beam of light touched the ceiling in the pitch dark basement and began to flicker. Cal produced his yellow Black & Decker from the bag on his shoulder and flicked the switch with his thumb. The beam surged straight in over the carpeted floors and leather couch and caught the left side of Mr. Galloway’s face on its way to the back wall. “Right,” he said as he smacked his flashlight on the palm of his hand with no effect on the flickering. “Obviously you’d have one with you. Obviously.”

Cal rolled his eyes under cover of darkness and followed the flickering lamp over the threshold. Mr. Galloway’s fickle beam traced the wall as he tiptoed over the carpet and Cal’s heavy silhouette stood framed in the softer dark of sky and stars.

“Ah!” Mr. Galloway shouted again as his beam found the breaker box in the far corner. Cal started into the quiet basement and rolled his eyes again as Mr. Galloway fumbled with the cover and struggled to keep the flashlight lit. Laughter tumbled in from the front yard around the dormant hydrangeas and the dry mulchbeds and garden junipers and Cal sighed and surveyed the basement that lay smoldering at the edge of his beam: television on the wall, magazines and afghan folded on the recliner, video game controllers abandoned on the floor. He’d barely crossed the threshold when Mr. Galloway’s clacky metallic fumbling shattered under a tumble and crash of limbs, a shaking of furniture, a terrified shout: “Jesus Mary and God Damn ––– what the hell what the hell Cal for God’s sake!”

Cal sprinted over to where Mr. Galloway shrank into the corner, smaller and smaller and shivering as he pointed frantically at the open breaker box on the wall. “Jesus Stew are you ––”

“For God’s sake!” he shouted again, still jabbing his finger in the direction of the box. “Jesus Christ Cal!”

Mr. Galloway’s flashlight rolled forth and back and seasickness filled Cal’s stomach until he steadied the light with his shoe and cast his own onto the wall. He froze: a rat the size of a tennis shoe hung from the wall like a bizarre hunter’s trophy. In the dark and from across the room, it appeared to float in midair under the orange beam, a souvenir for an alien tourist. Cal crept slowly forward and snapped his fingers, shook the light over its inert body, shouted a series of harsh guttural syllables, but he rat didn’t move. By the time he reached the box, it was clear the rat was dead. He set his bag on the floor, rummaged for his work gloves, put them on and took the rat by the jaws; he half-expected them to spring to life and begin gnawing away at his finger but they didn’t. Mr. Galloway stirred feebly in the dark behind him and he pulled the rat off the thick black rubber that ran into the wall. The muscles were stiff and brittle and it smelled of burning hair and Cal dropped the rodent onto the floor beside him and stood back to admire its handiwork.

Every wire that ran off into the walls had been severed, gnawed straight through, reduced to fragments of rubber and frayed copper; every wire but the topmost on the right side which had finally stopped the saboteur in its tracks. Cal smiled in the darkness and heard Mr. Galloway gather himself in the corner and shuffle slowly toward him. Cal smiled in the darkness and looked at the wreckage the determined beast had left before a belly full of copper or a violent shock or the somber resignation of martyrdom and abnegation had finally done him in. “Now there’s a thought,” he said and shook his head.

“What’s that?” Mr. Galloway’s voice came from over his shoulder.

“I said I don’t think I can fix this tonight.”

“You what?”

Cal turned his light on the rat that lay on the floor. “I don’t think I can fix this tonight, Stew.” He shook his head. “I’ll have to come on back in the morning with the rest of my gear.”

Stewart Galloway stood back, just outside the flashlight beam and put his hands on his hips. “Well I don’t guess I could do much to make it otherwise.”

“Nosir,” Cal said. “But this hour’s on the house.”