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Trespassers in the Night

Stuttering footprints broach the smooth surface of the snow that has fallen in recent days. They approach along the side of the house and return. The waking world has pulled him from his sleep. A yawn bends his jaw open as he thinks about who might have made them and why. He thinks it must have been the gas meter reader. Momentarily, the realization comes to him that the meter has been updated for remote access.

Neighborhood discussion groups have been lively with suspected interlopers trespassing and casing houses in the neighborhood. Suspicious footprints in the snow have become a topic of discussion. Internet traffic has been heavy with complaints, outrage, fear, and, most curiously, pleas for guidance as to what to do. The neighborhood is affluent, with many young families and new homeowners. The suspicion is these trespassers are intent on theft and property mayhem. One laconic comment suggests: “Contact the police,” who are regarded with reluctance on these neighborhood pages, however much lip service of respect and gratitude is directed at their service.

The old man, mostly awake now, stumbles into his kitchen to brew coffee. He takes a moment to look out on his back porch. No footprints there. The interest was on the side of the house, and the notion that it must have been a meter reader returns. Turning back to his kitchen and the morning chores at hand, he notices the trap on the counter he set last night has secured another trespasser. The house has been infiltrated by mice now that winter has come on in full force.

The national news is rife with shootings, robberies, and mayhem. Luxury stores along the Magnificent Mile have been descended on by packs of thugs who loot stores of pricey goods and then disappear as suddenly as they appear. A shooting at a local mall pitted apparent friends against one another in an argument that ended when the two pulled their pistols and shot bystanders. The shooters were unscathed, suggesting they should perfect their aims before deploying deadly force.

The householders’ assumption is that deadly violence is coming closer to incinerate their perfect world. Demons are at their doors and will next violate hearth and home. Politicians proclaim a crackdown, the full force of the law, lawlessness will not be tolerated, prosecution is imminent. The nagging suspicion of the police persists because the local householder seldom sees them in her neighborhood and has little commerce with them beyond paying a traffic fine.

The old man stands on his enclosed front porch, steaming coffee cup in hand and wonders what he owns that might attract these vandals to his house. His big flat screen is seven or eight years old, he realizes with amazement, and his desktop computer is even older and in need of an upgrade, besides weighing so much that he can barely lift it. The two thousand books on the premises are valuable to him, but who among these heathens has the interest or the time to go through them in the heat of a home invasion. Personal photos, family mementoes, and his collection of paintings and prints adorn the walls, the work of hobbyists mostly who exhibit at village art fairs. Invading hoodlums would be sensitive only to the price an abstract expressionist would bring on the illicit market.

An entirely ordinary fellow, with some pretensions, he sees himself ensconced before the television in his comfy chair when the hoodlums burst in, guns drawn, demanding tribute. He waves an accommodating hand around his palace. It might be an easy way to rid himself of all this clutter, he thinks, before he’s gone and it’s too late.

Sipping again from his coffee, he notes that a large piece of cardboard is plastered against the concrete in the middle of the driveway. Garbage day has come around again, and a stiff winter wind has been howling around the house overnight. All the neighbors have put their garbage and recycle bins out up and down the street, where they have borne the wrath of the angry wind. Further up the driveway, his recycle bin is tipped over in the weeds. The recyclers come down the street first, at some ungodly early hour. Turning back off the porch and into the living room, he notices more slabs of cardboard scattered across the lawn in front of the house. The contents of someone’s recycle bin have been scattered around the neighborhood by the wind during the night.

Sleeping in has become a familiar habit for the old man in retirement. The urgency he once felt to have his chores and obligations completed first thing in the morning no longer troubles him. No wife complains about him; no supervisor dogs his tracks to encourage faster performance. The garbage was out at the street last night before he went to bed. Now, his late rising is time enough to at least retrieve his recycle bin.

His current daily outfit consists of warmup pants and hoodie over a long-sleeved t-shirt. In a couple of weeks, he may reconsider his wardrobe choices. Stout hiking shoes round out his ensemble. This should be sufficient against the frigid winter wind to fetch the recycle bin.

There was a time a number of years ago when he thought the blue bin had disappeared entirely, blown away during another wintry blast of freezing air. Standing in the middle of the street he had grown desperate thinking that one of the neighbors would find it and begin using it, while he was left to purchase a new one. It wasn’t until he rooted through a neighbor’s bushes that he retrieved it and brought it home. If it hadn’t been lost entirely, it would have served as a road hazard for anyone venturing down the street. He was afraid to think that he might have committed the fundamental sin, failing to be a good neighbor.

The garage door rises on this inner drama to reveal the old man rubbing his hands together and having second thoughts about venturing outside. Then, he realizes that more of the cardboard has blown up onto the front of the house, pinned there against the siding by the wind. Someone’s recycle bin has tipped over, and the flattened boxes have been caught by the wind and scattered up and down the street. So much of it must be picked up that now his recycling bin is filled up again, through no fault of his own.

Returning down the driveway, back into the garage, his neighbor, a young woman, newly settled as a homeowner, is coming down her driveway pulling her recycle bin back into its storage space.

“This stuff is all over my yard,” she complains. “Somebody’s recycling is scattered all over my yard.”

The old man is sure of that but refrains from saying as much. The wind has been strong enough, and the bin had been full this soon after Christmas. He is concerned about the state of his own yard and not much about anybody else’s.

“It happens,” he sympathizes. “I’ve filled up mine again picking up all the stuff around my yard.” He isn’t sure the woman hears him or is even paying attention. She seems quite put out that one of the neighbors would allow this to happen and put a burden of responsibility on everyone else along the street.

“It’s usually the guy across the street’s garbage that has to be picked up,” he says from long experience. “He likes Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.” Picking up somebody else’s garbage because they weren’t paying attention still makes him mad, but at his age he has learned to tolerate it, knowing that protest is useless and his anger simply exhausting.

“It had to be someone down the street,” the woman says, “given this wind.”

“It happens.”

“This is the first time I have been outside in this cold. I have been working all morning.”

“Then I will let you get to it.”

Then, the old man has second thoughts and turns to his neighbor again, saying to her  retreating back, “What do think about these home invasions around town?”

“The what?”

“People are reporting trespassers in the night on the other side of town. When I got up this morning, I noticed footprints in the snow on the other side of the house. I expect it was the meter reader, but who knows. Possums and racoons used to roam the neighborhood with impunity, why not thugs.”

The young woman appraises the old man, frowning.

“I haven’t heard that,” she says. “I work at home, and most days I don’t have time to access anything else on the net.”

“The neighborhood watch pages are chattering about it. Trespassers in the night climb up on the deck and peer into the house through the back door. It’s eerie to think about.”

“You say you saw somebody?”

“Just footprints,” the old man insists. “They didn’t get as far as the back of the house, and then they returned. When I was picking up this cardboard, I saw them return to the street. It was the meter reader making his annual visit. Why they come when there is snow on the ground is beyond me.”

Playing the wise and knowledgeable old man is one of the few pleasures he manages to glean from his life. The neighborhood has always been enviably quiet and peaceful for all the time he has lived in his house. Once, someone rifled through his glove box when his car had been left parked in the driveway, and a peculiarly aggressive contractor had once pushed his way into the house with an urgent sales pitch, but for most of the time the neighborhood has been silent, except for the roar and bang of delivery trucks. Then, there is the tradesmen nuisance, of course, when they park every which way up and down the street.

“I’ll tell Liam,” she says. “Thanks for the head’s up.” Liam is the mysterious boyfriend who comes and goes but is never seen. “I suppose that’s something else we should be worried about.”

The old man turns to enter the garage and get back inside where it is warm. His naked hands are becoming cold, and by this point the remains of his coffee will be cold as well. Another day in the silent house stretches before him. The thought of mayhem descending on the neighborhood make him smile. It would be something to do in this perfect world.

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