Whump! thunker-thunker-thunker-thunker dang!
"Like a prowler shot off the roof," Kit groaned.
"We'll get used to it, I'm sure," Ronkers said.
"Well, Raunch, I gather Bardlong has been slow to adapt "
In the morning Ronkers noticed that the Bardlong house had a slate roof with a far steeper pitch than his own. He tried to imagine what the walnuts would sound like on Bardlong's roof.
"But there's surely an attic in that house," Kit said. "The sound is probably muffled." Ronkers could not imagine the sound of a walnut striking a slate roof--and its subsequent descent to the rain gutter -- as in any way "muffled."
By mid-October the walnuts were dropping with fearful regularity. Ronkers thought ahead to the first wild storm in November as a potential blitzkrieg. Kit went out to rake a pile of the fallen nuts together; she heard one cutting loose above her, ripping through the dense leaves. She thought against looking up -- imagining the ugly bruise between her eyes and the blow on the back of her head (driven into the ground). She bent over double and covered her head with her hands. The walnut narrowly missed her offered spine; it gave her a kidney punch. Thok!
"It hurt, Raunch," she said.
A beaming Bardlong stood under the dangerous tree, watching Ronkers comfort his wife. Kit had not noticed him there before. He wore a thick Alpine hat with a ratty feather in it; it looked like a reject of Herr Kesler's.
"Kesler gave it to me," Bardlong said. "I had asked for a helmet" He stood arrogantly in his yard, his rake held like a fungo bat, waiting for the tree to pitch a walnut down to him. He had chosen the perfect moment to introduce the subject -- Kit just wounded, still in tears.
"You ever hear one of those things hit a slate roof?" Bardlong asked. "I'll call you up the next time a whole clump's ready to drop. About three A.M."
"It is a problem," Ronkers agreed.
"But it's a lovely tree," Kit said defensively.
"Well, it's your problem, of course," Bardlong said, offhanded, cheerful. "If I have the same problem with my rain gutters this fall as I had last, I may have to ask you to remove the part of your tree that's over our property, but you can do what you want with the rest of it."
"What rain gutter problem?" Ronkers asked.
"It must happen to your rain gutters, too, I'm sure...."
"What happens?" asked Kit.
"They get full of goddamn walnuts," Bardlong said. "And it rains, and rains, and the gutters don't work because they're clogged with walnuts, and the water pours down the side of your house; your windows leak and your basement fills with water. That's all."
"Oh."
"Kesler bought me a mop. But he was a poor old foreigner, you know," Bardlong said confidingly, "and you never felt like getting legal with him. You know."
"Oh," said Kit. She did not like Bardlong. The casual cheerfulness of his tone seemed as removed from his meaning as the shock-absorber trade was from those delicately laced trellises in his yard.
"Oh, I don't mind raking up a few nuts," Bardlong said, smiling, "or waking up a few times in the night, when I think storks are crash-landing on my roof." He paused, glowing under old Kesler's hat. "Or wearing the protective gear," he added. He doffed the hat to Kit, who at the moment she saw his lightly freckled dome exposed was praying for that unmistakable sound of the leaves ripping apart above. But Bardlong returned the hat to his head. A walnut began its descent. Kit and George crouched, hands over their heads; Bardlong never flinched. With considerable force the walnut struck the slatestone wall between them, splitting with a dramatic kak! It was as hard and as big as a baseball.
"It's sort of an exciting tree in the fall, really," Bardlong said. "Of course, my wife won't go near it this time of year -- a sort of prisoner in her own yard, you might say." He laughed; some gold fillings from the booming brake-systems industry winked in his mouth. "But that's all right. No price should be set for beauty, and it is a lovely tree. Water damage, though," he said, and his tone changed suddenly, "is real damage."
Bardlong managed, Ronkers thought, to make "real" sound like a legal term.
"And if you've got
to spend the money to take down half the tree, you better face up to taking it all. When your basement's full of water, that won't be any joke." Bardlong pronounced "joke" as if it were an obscene word; moreover, the implication in Bardlong's voice led one to suspect the wisdom in thinking anything was funny.
Kit said, "Well, Raunch, you could just get up on the roof and sweep the walnuts out of the rain gutters."
"Of course Fm too old for that," Bardlong sighed, as if getting up on his roof was something he longed to do.
"Raunch, you could even sweep out Mr. Bardlong's rain gutters, couldn't you? Like once a week or so, just at this time of the year?"
Ronkers looked at the towering Bardlong roof, the smooth slate surface, the steep pitch. Headlines flooded his mind: DOCTOR TAKES FOUR-STORY FALL!