vituperation

“Don’t go in just yet,” I said. “I want you to see something.”

I opened my car door and got out. Robyn got out her side, and we met in the back to get supplies for an afternoon in Smallville — dinner, bird seed, and clean paint brushes — out of the rear hold. Motion out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and I turned to look. A man strolled down the side of the road in front of the house, on the other side. He was watching us.

The Smallville house is located on Smallville’s version of Main Street and as such, there’s always some traffic, whether auto, bicycle, or foot. Someone walking down the road towards the corner store is a common sight, one we’re used to. We’re used to being watched, too. It seems to be a country pastime. A pastime, I might add, that we’re guilty of, because we like nothing more during our work breaks than to sit on the front porch and watch people go by.

“I can’t believe we never noticed this,” I said as we walked out into the back yard. “I never saw it until I was looking at a picture of the woodpile and it jumped out at me. I was all, like, where’d that come from?”

When we were near the woodpile I turned toward the church next door and pointed.

“Did you know that was there?” I asked.

She stared in the direction of the church for a second.

“Where?”

“Right there.” I gestured with my hand. “Right in front of the church. Facing us.”

She started.

“Holy shit!” she said. “No, I never saw that at all.”

“Can you believe we missed it? I mean, it’s right there in our faces. It’s almost embarrassing we missed it for so long.”

We turned to go back around front and greet the kitties that don’t belong to us. That’s when I saw him again, the man walking down the street.

Only now he was walking down the driveway.

Goddamn, I thought.

It seems that not only is watching people a pastime in the country, but stopping by to talk to them is, too. We’ve had more strangers stop by the Smallville house in the nine weeks we’ve owned it than have stopped by the suburbia house in the last year. People asking about the tractor for sale next door, people wanting directions, people wanting work. I’m starting to understand why our next door neighbor ignored the door when I knocked last week.

“You take care of this,” Robyn whispered, and scurried around the front of the house. She could learn a thing or two from Tammy Wynette, let me tell you.

The walkin’ dude was of an average height and an average build. He was maybe twenty-five, and dressed in ratty jeans and a worn blue jacket. No hat covered his head, which was shaved to stubble. And I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way, even though it might make you think me a closeted racist: he was black.

I won’t lie. Situations like this make me tense. I don’t like unknowns, especially when they’re in the form of a person whose intentions I don’t know coming toward me. Had he driven up, I would have been completely at ease, but he was walking by and just happened to see us. Something in what he saw compelled him to come over.

My inner survivor voice sized him up thusly: He’s younger and probably faster, but you’ve got size and weight on him. Probably strength, too. You can take him if you need to. Watch his hands.

We all have the voice, whether we admit it or not. It speaks up whenever there’s a strange situation, like an unknown person approaching you when they have no apparent reason for doing so. Gavin de Becker calls this voice “the gift”, because that’s what it is. The gift can keep you alive if you pay attention to it.

He tried to speak, but his voice didn’t work at first, like he had laryngitis. He made some throat-clearing noises, tried again, then the third time was the charm.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he began, and glanced at the house. “Can I use your phone?”

His voice was high and squeaky, like Mike Tyson’s, and raspy.

“Sure,” I said, and pulled out my cell phone.

He looked at the house again, then took the phone and dialed seven digits. He pressed it to his ear.

“You need to dial an area code for it to work,” I said.

He looked at me for a second, phone still to his head, as if he were thinking. He hung the phone up, but held on to it.

“Listen, can you give me a ride to K-Mart?” he asked. “It’s just a little bit past Wal-Mart.”

My gift clanged the alarm bells and shouted: No fucking way are you getting in the car with him.

(Why does this stuff happen to me, anyway?)

“My sister works there and I need to see her before she gets off work,” he finished.

My mind raced.

“I can’t give you a ride,” I said. “But I’ll tell you what. I’ll call you a cab and get them to take you.”

That’s what I said. What I thought was Jesus Christ, you’re going to have to sit here and deal with him until a cab gets here. Why can’t you just assert yourself and tell him to move along?

He closed the phone, opened it, and dialed a couple of numbers. He glanced at the house again, like he was thinking, then hung up the phone.

“How much does a cab cost?” he asked.

“I don’t know. They should be able to tell us when we call.”

“Cause I don’t have no money for a cab.”

Of course not. God forbid.

“I’ll pay for the cab,” I said. “My treat.”

“You’d do that? Really?”

“Sure.”

Thinking: Goddamn me.

“How much you think that costs?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Twenty dollars, maybe?”

“Instead of paying for a cab, why don’t you just let me borrow twenny-fi’ dollars? That way I can pay this guy to fix my car. I’ll pay you back, man.”

Goddamn me more. Why me?

“Tell you what,” I said, pulling out my wallet. “I’ll give you the twenty-five dollars. It’s a gift.”

Subtext: Please go away and don’t ever come back.

Knowing full well that I was doing exactly the wrong thing, but helpless to prevent myself because the day may come when I have to rely on the kindness of strangers and I need karma to help me out, I pulled a twenty and a fiver out of my wallet and handed them to the man. He broke into a smile, and I thought for a moment he would shed a few crocodile tears.

“You’ve restored my faith in humanity!” he proclaimed.

I smiled. Now please leave.

He looked over at the house again.

“What can I do to help you out, man?” he asked. “You need me to do anything?”

He started toward the porch, and I made haste to get in front of him.

“We’re just painting,” I said. “We’ve got it covered.”

“You stay here?”

Before my gift could shut me up I blurted: “Not yet.”

Sirens went off in my head, and my gift screamed for all hands on deck. Man the lifeboats! Dumbass is sinking the ship! WHOOP! WHOOP!

“We’re just painting it before we move anything in,” I continued. The house is empty, and there’s nothing to steal, my gift projected.

“Oh. Alright, then,” he said, and started for the driveway. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

He held up the money.

“Glad I could help.”

Translation: Please don’t come back.

“I’ll get this back to you.”

“Really, consider it a gift.”

Inside, Robyn was waiting right by the door.

“I was ready to come help if he attacked you!” she said.

I told her the story.

“He was trying to get in the house! Did you see how he lost interest in using the phone when he found out he wasn’t coming inside?”

“Actually, that didn’t even dawn on me then but now that you mention it, he did seem to be interested.”

I took a deep breath.

“That was scary,” I said. “Do I look like an easy mark? Why do people always seem to pick me for this?”

We spent the next hour talking about what had happened, and whether or not we should do anything. Should we install an alarm? Should we start taking all the power tools home every night? What if he came back? We decided that we should: get an alarm when we move in, lock the tools up in the shed every night, and start bringing a pistol when we’re at the house.

Save your emails, gun haters. I’m not going to shoot anyone unless I feel there’s a serious threat to one of our lives.

“I sure as shit hope I don’t come out here tomorrow and find a broken window,” I said. “I don’t like the thought of—”

A knock on the front door interrupted me.

Now, a lesser man would be tempted to stop right here and tease readers with a “to be continued.” After all, a knock on the door would be the perfect place to leave people hanging. However, I am not a lesser man.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “He knows we’re here. I have to answer it.”

Quickly, I looked around the room for something, anything, I could take with me in the event I needed to defend myself. Irrational fear? Maybe. Too many thriller novels and movies? Possibly. I have a healthy sense of self-preservation, and like I said, I don’t like unknown people who make me feel uncomfortable.

What I found for a weapon was a tiny little girlish claw hammer that weighed maybe six ounces. I carried it to the front door, where I could see the shape of someone through the glass. I leaned the hammer against the wall, feeling kind of retarded, and opened the door.

It was a Hispanic boy, perhaps thirteen years old.

I suspect my relief was evident on my face.

His mother stood in the background, smiling at me with the kind of smile that says I don’t know English. Hopefully you understand what I mean by that. It’s a certain kind of smile.

“We were wondering if the logs were for sale,” the boy said. He gestured toward our massive woodpile, created by the sweat of my brow.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re not selling that. That’s our woodpile for next winter. It’s just sitting there to dry out.”

“Okay. Because we were looking for someone who is selling the logs.”

“Sorry I can’t help you.”

We all stood there for a moment, and I started to wonder if they were going to leave. Mom continued to smile at me.

“Okay, thank you,” the boy said, and they left.

Inside, I told Robyn what they wanted and we watched them through the porthole windows in the dining room. Mom tried to turn around in the driveway and nearly got her minivan wedged between my car and a big magnolia tree. Just when I thought I was going to have to go out and move my car so she could get out, she finally got pointed the right direction and they left.

(Incidentally, I shared this part of the story with a co-worker who lives in the country, and he informed me that a lot of times people assume things in the front yard are for sale, especially things that you don’t normally see in the front yard, like a wood pile. I guess it’s time to move it.)

“This hammer is practically useless for protection,” I said. “I need something better.”

I weighed my options: Sledgehammer or axe? Too unwieldy. Pry bar? Maybe. Bigger hammer? Maybe. Nail gun? Takes too long to wind up (it didn’t dawn on me that I could pull the safety shield back so the gun would wind up and make me capable of firing six nails per second at someone). Then the lightbulb in my head came on, and I went upstairs to retrieve a utility knife. Perfect. It fits in a pocket and has a razor blade on the end.

We ate dinner and talked more about all the people who come to the Smallville house.

“The honeymoon’s over,” I said with a grin. “We’re finding out the less-than-good part of being in the country. Now that I gave this guy some money, if he doesn’t come back and rob us he’ll probably come back for more until I say no. If this was a bad movie he’d start escalating things then and it would end with me having to kill him. Only he wouldn’t be dead the first—”

Another knock at the front door stopped me.

“Goddamnit,” I said in a low voice.

I walked through the darkened house to the front room, one hand in my pocket gripping the utility knife, thumb pressed hard on the switch controlling the razor blade. I turned on the front porch light and opened the door.

It was the walkin’ dude.

to be continued…