I found Sherri’s house on another quiet street in deepest South Central. It was a garish house, mostly red, with a cluttered porch running the length of its front. There was a chain-link fence all round the yard and I was looking for the gate as a dog barked (yapped rather) from the porch.

Suddenly a deep female voice said, “Come through the hole”.

“Excuse me?” I looked up to see the source of the command.

“There’s a hole in the fence”.

“Oh sure”. I saw it then, a ragged, not very big hole in the chain link. I ducked, went through the hole, across the parched lawn to the porch where Sherri was sitting deep in an old leather armchair – a very old chair.

“Hi, you Robert?”

Sherri was black, full figured, in jeans and an old T-shirt. She was in her late twenties.
The small brown terrier was still barking, on a long leash tied to his kennel on the porch.

“Don’t be scared of him. That’s Brown Sugar.”

I went up to him, let him smell my hand and fondled him.

“Oh, sweet Brown Sugar doesn’t scare me. I’ve four of my own”.

“Can we talk out here? House is a bit of a mess. We just moved from across the street.”

“Why did you move?”

“Landlord was a shyster. Anyway, this house is bigger.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, sposed to have five bedrooms, but we’ve only found three so far. We’re still digging though all the stuff”.

I was dying to see what that meant but decorum dictated that I stay on the porch with Sherri and Brown Sugar.

“Who do you live with?”

“Just my wife. She’s back in there now – eh Ginny?” she shouted over her shoulder.

A muffled acknowledgement came from the depths of “the stuff” inside. Obviously a lot of sorting going on.

“And the four dogs. And three cats”.

“Really? They all inside, too?”

“Yeah. Except for…..”

“……Brown Sugar. Of course.”

While he got to know me I asked my questions of Sherri. She seemed to be pretty robust – you could say butch – but said she’d had some symptoms already. Because of the disruption of the move from across the street a midday meal was tough for Ginny to prepare so she’d decided to call us.

“Quite right”, I said.

I finished up. We talked about dogs a bit and the problems of having several. While that gave us common ground, I fancied that her problems were somewhat different from mine. I stood and shook her hand. She stayed wedged in her chair. She seemed pretty much a fixture there, on the porch, with Brown Sugar, leaving Ginny to burrow through stuff in search of the remaining rooms.

“Well, I hope you find the other bedrooms”.

“Oh, we will. Or we’ll get a rent reduction”.

“Either way, you win.”

“Damn right”.

“Take it easy”. I was sure she would. “Bye, Brown Sugar”.

I went back across the lawn, through the hole in the fence and into my car. As I drove off I waved to Sherri sitting expressionless in her chair.

There was a postscript to this. Some weeks later the volunteer driver who regularly does this route called to say she refused to deliver there any more as the house was such a disgusting mess and she didn’t want to go in.

The office asked me what I thought. “Why go in?” I said. “Seems to me that life goes on pretty much on the porch. Just leave the lunch bag out of the reach of Brown Sugar”.

They assigned someone else to that route.