"george & lincoln"

He could almost hear Lincoln scuffling over from an acre’s length away, grumbling under his breath and kicking his brown field shoes in the dust. He could sense him coming to disturb his peace, just like he had apparently disturbed Lincoln’s. He was sitting on his porch reading a dusty book with muddy coffee, a typical morning event. In his quiet he could hear those brown field shoes, the unsubtle mumbling and now, as he was turning around the bend near their property boundaries, he could see him doing these things. He now could also see him deliberately walking straight into his near-budding pea patches, walking right on them like dirt without seeds. The grumbling got increasingly louder like a siren from an antique firetruck. As Lincoln approached the front porch, George wearily looked up over his eyeglasses at the pathetic and dusty man.
“George, George, now,” Lincoln mustered out of shortness of breath, “George, I’ve come over here to talk to you about a little something. You know, I’ve been tellin’ ya that…”
“Hello, Lincoln, fine morning. How’s it going?”
“Well, its, its fine, just fine, but I gotta tell ya, when’re you ever gonna learn that those dogs of yours…”
“Oh, boy, have they been bothering your property? I try and tell’em not to trespass but not much of the time they listen to me. You want a cup of coffee, Lincoln?”
“No, no, I don’t think I want any of that, no but I’m going to tell ya, that you know I’ve just been planting my corn here recent, and it’s the first time I’ve tried to plant corn? You might well know that their prices go up real high, so I figure grow my own. You know, you and me, we got all this acreage and we better use it as farmers, right?”
“You’re absolutely right, Link. That sounds like a neat idea to me.”
“Well your dogs, they don’t think that thing at all. In fact I don’t think they even think-a one thing in their noggins at all Joe, because they stomp and piss all over my corn like they’re some sort of weeds, Joe, and I don’t appreciate that one bit, and Joe…”
“Well I am truly sorry about that, Link.”
“Well, well yeah! I mean, their growth is stunted and all by this point, I don’t know if I’ll have th’amount I predicted when I planted ‘em!”
“I feel you there, Link, here, you wanna come inside and I’ll get you a cup of coffee?”
“Yeah, yeah okay, we’ll see our chat up in there.”
George led a riled-up Lincoln into his cottage, all the while wondering where Lincoln got Joe out of George. He poured him a full cup of coffee in a clay mug and asked,
“So, what do you think about my new furniture set? I finished ‘em just last month, I’d been working on them since I chopped down the spruces last spring. Fine set of table and chairs, don’t you think?”
“Oh yeah, yeah they sure are fine indeed. Ginny would love these a lot, she’d tell me, ‘Why don’t you make these yourself too?’” Lincoln chuckled. George again pondered where he got Ginny out of his wife’s name, Gemima.
“Well Lincoln, you’re wife’s got fine taste,” George smiled, “Especially her cornbread that she made for the neighborhood potluck? It was one of the best I’d ever had.”
“Well, well that’s nice-a you to say, Joe, but you know that brings me, that corn don’t come cheap these days, and,”
George was disappointed with the redirection of topic. “You’re right about that one, Lincoln. You got enough coffee there?”
“Yeah, I’m just fine Joe, but I do gotta tell ya, those dogs are lawless, I don’t know what you’re tellin’ ‘em, but they sure don’t wanna listen. And it ruins my crop, Joe, what am I gonna do when you’re dogs ruin my crop? I’m just supposed to tell ‘em to scram every time I see them diggin’ up my corn patches? They don’t listen, maybe it’s their breed, they don’t got right hearing, but…”
“You know, Link, they’re shepherds, they’re very good listening dogs. They just can’t stop their need to dig and piss and find something nice to bury their finds in.”
“Joe, Joe, they’re dogs! You train ‘em to stop doing that so you’re neighbors don’t gotta worry every day if they’re corn is gonna be gone! They’re worse than them crows, cos they get ‘em from the roots!”
“You have a scarecrow, Lincoln? I hear they can help with the corn problems.”
“Joe, I got me a scarecrow but it won’t scare no dogs away. The only scaredog I got is the belt I got on right now.”
“Oh, Link, you wouldn’t hurt my animals.”
“Joe, they don’t got no respect for my property. They got none for my corn. They stomp all over it thinkin’ its just dirt for them to stick their snouts in.”
“Lincoln, you’re talking now about respecting the property…”
“Damn right I am!”
“Link, then you go stomping all over my pea plants. What’s that about, Lincoln?”
“What? Joe what are you gone on talkin’ about? I don’t step on anything but dirt I see. The dirt and the grass!”
“Well I suppose you just didn’t see my pea plants. They weren’t marked at all. Maybe you see just like my dogs. You see the dirt and I see the seeds.” George looked out the window and smiled to see two of his four shepherds running by the grassed acre behind his house. “You know I think we all got respect for our lands, sometimes we just don’t know.”
“Oh, get back, Joe. You’ve always got the wise things to say, but I’m gonna tell ya that I don’t wanna see them dogs on my corn again. My property, for all that matter.” Lincoln’s demeanor had settled into subtle humility, while trying to remain some sort of domination in the case.
“I’ll try to make sure you’re corn plants stay safely rooted, Link.”
“Well I appreciate that, even if those damn dogs are like your children. You ain’t got no wife or kids, and I only got the wife and no kids, so I think I got the better end of the deal, don’t ya? I only gotta deal with the wife, the easier one, and you got kids times four, and no wife to see ‘em. No wonder they wonder into my patches.”
“Ah, Lincoln, I suppose you’re right. Maybe one day I’ll prefer something else than being daddy to four rascals but for now, it’s alright with me,” George got up from his stool and started to show Lincoln to the door. “You know, Link, I gotta say that I really do appreciate how good neighbors we are to each other. We’re allowed to say things to each other, we work together, don’t you agree?”
“Well, yeah I think it’s great too, Joe, I’m sure glad it’s you and not some dope-smokin’ hippie and brothers like they’ve been getting up north in the valley. Movin’ in with all the civilians and wreckin’ up the local economies is what it is. Lawless.”
George opened the front screen door for Lincoln and closed it gently after him. As Lincoln, with a calmer step than he arrived with, walked his two brown field shoes back to his home, wife, and corn patches, George looked out from the steps of his porch. He could see his other two dogs roughhousing each other in the corn patches while the two previously out in the field joined them and started to dig. Smiling, he picked up his book from the porch bench, carried it back inside and closed the door quietly.