Lincoln Michel

So this clown Dave buys the house next door to me and now he is my neighbor. Okay.

It’s one thing that he’s a carpetbagger who thinks he can turn himself into some sort of old-fashioned down-home country folk by wearing a cowboy hat and boots with plastic spurs on them. This is Virginia mind you, not the goddamn Wild West. I don’t mind, I’m a tolerant guy. But what sticks in my craw is the weathervane.

Lord knows what airplane catalog he found it in. The thing looks like it was designed by someone who was abused by farmers all his life and now gets revenge by making ugly weathervanes. It’s gigantic and has some sort of Southwestern theme. The rooster is painted fluorescent green with a pink beak and it has metal ribbons that twist in the wind.

“Dave,” I tell him the first day I see it. “That is one ugly son-of-a-bitch rooster.”

Dave takes this as some sort of Southern joke and pats me on the back.

“Looks marvelous, don’t it?” he says.

Now it gets pretty windy in this part of Virginia and the first big storm that hits, the weathervane snaps right off his roof and stabs into my front yard. Imagine if I had a daughter and she had been playing out there in a sandbox or something? She might have been decapitated by a giant rooster! How is that supposed to make me feel?

So I do the only thing I can do and go out and pick the weathervane up and toss it through Dave’s living room window.

Well, this Dave is a stubborn guy. I see him out there the next morning directing some Mexicans up a ladder to fix the weathervane.

“Damn thing blew off and into my window in the storm,” he says. “Might have to put some crazy glue

Well, the next big storm that hits, what do you know? Snap, whoosh, crash. I stumble outside and pick the rooster up off the wet grass. While it technically landed in his yard this time, it’s close enough to mine to make me concerned. So I march over and toss it through the jerk’s dining room window.

Dave pretty much stops talking to me after that. But the weathervane goes back up and then a few months later another big storm hits. Dave is out of town this time and the weathervane doesn’t snap all the way, it is still half-attached and flying around in the wind like a circus flea tied to a miniature trampoline. How am I supposed to sleep knowing that any second this giant weathervane could snap off completely, fly through my bedroom window, and murder me in my own bed? So I grab my ladder, go over to his house, and wrench off the weathervane with my hands. Then, when Dave comes back a few days later, I grab the rooster, head over to his house, ring his doorbell, and when he answers I try to toss the damned thing through his stupid asshole heart.

Dave’s a nimble fellow and he leaps out of the way and pretty soon I’m sitting in the county jail with a whole host of freaks and perverts. I pay my bail, return home, and what do I see as I pull in the driveway but Dave and the goddamn Mexicans reinstalling the goddamn weathervane!

I mean, I’m a man. What am I supposed to do? I’m a farmer, I work with my hands. These days that means pulling levers and pushing buttons on giant machines, but I try to keep some pride in my life. It’s been hard lately. I’ve been lonely since Molly left. She had been the only girl I ever loved and I’d always thought we would be together forever, but she had different plans. Every winter seems colder than the last and the bills only get longer. And on top of all that, I have to deal with a neighbor who doesn’t have an ounce of respect for me or my property? What am I supposed to do?

I just want someone to tell me what I’m supposed to goddamn do.

Lincoln Michel

Lincoln Michel

Fiction

Commencement 2013

What You Need to Know About the Weathervane