We Can't Bury Her THERE

  

I don't know about my fellow SleuthSayers, but the columns I write for this blog usually come to mind only a few days before they're due, and they're often triggered by a recent event or a conversation or a new publication, etc. The idea for my post today popped into my head while I was out in our back yard this past week, when I happened to hear our behind-our-house neighbors chatting to each other in their back yard--we're separated only by a six-foot-tall cypress fence.

Anyhow, hearing those voices made me think of something out of the past--an incident that happened out there in almost the same spot (though we had different neighbors then), and it's memorable only because it proves that real life can sometimes be a lot stranger than fiction.

Here's some background. Twenty years ago, a film producer who lives about three hours north of us had contacted me several months earlier about a Western story of mine that he'd read in a Canadian magazine. He said he thought it would make a good movie, and (of course) I agreed. After a lot of discussions and negotiations he asked me to write a screenplay for it and was soon in the process of putting together a crew, equipment, casting calls, music, locations, etc. Fortunately he allowed me to take part in most of that --I've never had so much fun--and we were swapping phone calls pretty regularly. (NOTE: Alas, that movie never saw the light of day, but for a year or so it was a real possibility, one that now reminds me of the old joke about the airline pilot who announces to his passengers, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, we're lost. The good news is, we're making damn good time.") 

Anyhow, while all this was going on and we were making good time even though we were lost, my Movie Man had decided he also wanted me to come up with a second screenplay, this one a contemporary murder mystery. And here's something else you need to know: Our neighbors in the house behind ours were fairly new to the area, and we hadn't yet met them. All I knew about them was that the husband was tall like me, because we occasionally caught a glimpse of each other over the top of the board fence. 

Okay, back to my story. On this particular day, a Saturday afternoon, my wife Carolyn was in the kitchen and I was out in our back yard, talking on my cell phone with the producer about the plot of my aforementioned in-progress mystery screenplay. The call lasted a long time, as our calls usually did, and when I disconnected and walked in though our back door, Carolyn looked up at me from whatever she was doing and said, "Do you realize what you just said, out there?"

I stopped and gave her my usual clueless stare. "What do you mean, what I just said?"

She pointed to our breakfast-room window, which looked out onto our back yard and--on that day--was open to let in the cool breeze of a nice spring weekend. "For one thing," she said, "you were talking too loud. I could hear every word."

"So, what'd I say?"

"You said, 'We can't bury her there.'"

Then I remembered. We'd been discussing the plotline, and my producer friend had suggested that one of my main characters, who had murdered his wife, should plant her body in a flowerbed on their property, which I didn't think was a good idea.

Continuing, my wife said, "You almost shouted it. After that, you said, 'We should bury her down by the railroad tracks instead, where nobody'll ever find her.'"

I still didn't see what the big deal was. I said, "So?"

She rolled her eyes. "So, our new neighbor was out in his back yard, the whole time you were talking. I saw the top of his head go by a couple of times, above the fence."

Understanding finally dawned. "You think he heard what I said?"

"Unless he's stone deaf, he did."

Well, I remember thinking, Even if he did hear me, he probably thought nothing about it. Besides, what was done was done. I shrugged and asked, "What's for supper?" 

And seriously, I thought no more about it. Until two days later, when I was mowing the grass.

We live on a big corner lot, and at the place where our side lawn bordered our neighbor's lawn, outside the fence and between it and the side street, I saw a shiny new sign, about a foot square, one of those flimsy metal Ten Commandments-like signs with two little wire legs, sticking up out of the grass on our property line. The sign was aimed at our house, and it said, in big printed letters, YOU ARE BEING PRAYED FOR. 

When I finished mowing, I came into the house, hot and sweaty, and reported this news to Carolyn. As it turned out, she'd done some research the previous day, and she now informed me that the husband half of the neighbor couple was the new youth minister at the local Baptist church. For some reason that struck me as funny, but she was not at all amused. I think she strongly suspected that the police might soon show up with drawn guns and a lot of questions about my future plans for burial sites and who might get buried there.

The cops and FBI never arrived, but what did happen was that our backyard neighbors moved away the following week--I swear that's true--and to this day my wife is convinced it was because of my big mouth and my announce-it-to-the-whole-neighborhood plot plans.

Final note, just to ease your mind: Unlike my suspicious wife, I'm fairly certain that (1) our neighbor did not hear what I was saying that day, (2) that sign probably had nothing at all to do with that incident, and (3) neither did our neighbors' sudden relocation to greener pastures. And you might be pleased to hear that I do now try not to talk so loudly on the phone (especially if my immediate family is listening). 

As I said, all this happened long ago, and in all the years since, I have never attempted to use that goofy incident in one of my short stories. Why?

Because fiction must be believable to the reader--and I doubt that this story, even though it's true, would be able to pass that test.

That's one thing that's always bothered me, about writing: Nonfiction is more easily accepted; it doesn't have to be believable. If it happened, it happened, strange or not--in fact, the stranger the better. With fiction, there are restrictions. If it's too strange, it won't work. On the one hand, we as writers are encouraged to mine our past experiences to come up with compelling story ideas, and on the other hand, we have to be careful not to make it too true. Has that kind of thing ever happened to you?

Real Life, as they say, is a trip. You can't make this sh*t up.