When my neighbor put out a Trump sign, I knew it was for me. We’re the only houses on our road, facing off across a dirt circle in rural New York.
We’ve never talked politics. I’m a vegan poet and university instructor with a standard poodle and a Human Rights Campaign sticker on my Honda CRV. He’s a mason who works for his dad, who is also a mason, and drives an old Ford F150. He has “over twenty-one guns.”
When he hunts on my land, my neighbor sends me a text: “Me and [name of friend] are going hunting. [Friend’s] waiver is in your mailbox.” My neighbor has signed waivers for swimming and fishing in my pond, for driving his snowmobile over it on warm winter days, for hunting with bows and guns. He and his associates have released me from liability for the length of my natural lifetime. When I see his text, I send a thumbs-up emoji.
My neighbor moved in nine years ago when he was twenty, my son was a baby, and emojis were novel. On his twenty-first birthday, he lit fireworks at midnight. Now, when my neighbor plans a party, I go on vacation. The time I dared to stay home, I had to text him to quiet down at 1:00 a.m. He texted back at noon the next day: “Was it the yelling or the shooting?”
Come fall, my neighbor mows my field with his brush hog for $300 in cash, which I put in his barbeque. I make sure to text him dollar-sign emojis before dinner. It takes him thirty hours to mow my field. I justify these paltry wages because he wants the grass cut when it’s time to hunt deer.
Most years, my neighbor mows over at least one ground bees’ nest and gets stung. Early the next morning, he goes to the nest with a gas can. He drenches the nest and lights it on fire while my son and I watch out the window.
My son and I took a video the day we thought flames were consuming my neighbor’s kitchen. Nobody ran out of the house, so we assumed nobody was home. It was a good opportunity for my son to learn how to call 911. When the fire department came, my neighbor texted me he was only burning cardboard outside his kitchen window. It was summer and there was a burn ban. I showed him the video and told him I would pay the ticket. I was just trying to help.
My neighbor knows a lot about animals, and not just ones he kills. After he texted me a picture of a porcupine nest, I took my son to see it. We recorded it on the wildlife app on my phone. I didn’t want to tell my son I hadn’t known it was a porcupine nest until my neighbor told me.
When hunting season ends, my neighbor plows our road. I see him outside at 5 a.m., window cracked to accommodate his lit cigarette. When we have a blizzard, he drives his dad’s skid steer down our road and scoops the snow into great piles so the bus will be able to turn around when school reopens. For this, I buy him a case of beer and leave it on his porch. I buy artisanal beer even though I know he drinks the beer in blue cans. From my window, I see him at his kitchen table while I bathe my son after his day of playing on snow piles, pretending to drive snowmobiles and shoot things. I hope my neighbor is enjoying my beer and scrolling through my thumbs-up emojis.
My neighbor checked that everything was okay when my burglar alarm went off while I was at work. After, he asked why I have a security system. I mumbled something about savings on my homeowner’s insurance. He told me he solves the problem of intruders by leaving his door unlocked, and guns.
My neighbor knows a lot about plants. He and his dad are farmers as well as masons of local renown. My neighbor and I stand at the edge of my gardens, and he gives me advice on growing things. My neighbor mostly grows plants indoors. The grow lights in his upstairs shine day and night.
Many evenings, a strange vehicle comes down our road. The stranger goes into my neighbor’s house. I see their silhouettes upstairs. They come outside and smoke on the porch. Things change hands; the stranger leaves. My son and I raise our eyebrows to each other.
I wish I could relax like my neighbor. When he swims in my pond, he doesn’t worry about the snapping turtle the size of a Frisbee. “Snappers don’t get you in the water,” he says, which is true. When he shares a joint with a stranger on his porch during a pandemic, I see peace pass between their pursing lips.
My dog is named after a Judy Blume character. My neighbor’s dog is an all-white pit mix named Adolf, but “don’t worry,” my neighbor says, “he’s named after another dog.” Adolf still has his balls, but he’s better behaved than my dog. The UPS man isn’t scared of him.
Now, Adolf has Cushing’s disease and can’t hold his pee. My neighbor spent a sweltering weekend building an enclosure with a wading pool and shade arbor so Adolf can be outside when my neighbor is at work.
I practice what I will say to my neighbor the day he hangs a confederate flag on his house. Some of his friends hang them in the rear windows of their trucks. These friends are the fathers of my son’s classmates. Their little girls go to school in floral dresses and perfect pigtails. My son goes to school in a camo shirt from Target, his camo lunch box tucked inside his camo backpack. I see these fathers at the school budget vote, held in person even during the pandemic. I know we are all voting “yes.” We all want new school buses, and they cost $80,000 each.
My neighbor went to my son’s school. The bus driver knows him and thinks it’s cute when Adolf gets on the bus with my son. Most of the teachers know my neighbor, just like I hope they will know my son as he grows. They know my neighbor got kicked out of college for bringing hunting weapons into his dorm. I hope they will know my son, through his mistakes, into adulthood.
When my neighbor’s brother died, pinned against a wall by his drunk girlfriend in her car, I went to the funeral. Hundreds of people were inside the community church while I waited on the steps in my black wool coat. I had only ever driven past before. The thick red carpet muffled my footsteps and the sobbing. I walked by the open casket and hugged my neighbor in the receiving line. It’s the only time we’ve hugged.
On his brother’s birthday, my neighbor texts me to close my windows. It’s the only day outside of hunting season I don’t tell him he can’t shoot his rifle. I close the windows and doors, gather my dog and son, and send a thumbs-up emoji. My dog cowers in his crate. My son grabs the binoculars and runs to the window with the best view, the one facing the Trump sign.
For more from the Fall 2022 special issue of MQR, “Fractured Union: American Democracy on the Brink,” you can purchase the issue here.
