View current page
...more recent posts
Ghetto To Boondocks
In Virginia I don't do this but in New Orleans I used to respond to violent crime trends that seemed especially local by propping a loaded shotgun near one of the doors in my house. The illogical nature of that decision was not lost on me. I mean I knew that people killing each other in close proximity to where I lived did not actually mean I was all that more likely to be killed, but the gun, for me, simulated the idea of appropriate response. It made me feel proactive. It made me feel--community-minded. I don't feel the threat of that anymore though, which is not to say that I don't experience fear out here in this affluent and bucolic Virginia boondocks.
There are no stop lights in this town of 200 people. There is a diner next to a post office across the street from a five star restaurant to which some dignitaries fly from surrounding areas by helicopter, or are driven to by limousine.
There are a handful of large 19th century homes and all but the one I look after (and the one other ramshackle mansion I would like to look after, across town) are Bed and Breakfast establishments. The other structures of note are churches, or smaller homes converted into shops which sell--jewelry, knick-knacks, antiques, art. One of the art galleries also rents movies and has a larger VHS than DVD collection.
There is a gas station/grocery but the saltines are stale.
In the middle of town there is a ye olde fashioned grocery where you can get what either are or appear to be, organic products, and wine and beer, and steak for 20 dollars a pound, and candy out of jars just like when I was a...well...just like a hundred years before I was born.
Behind that grocery which simulates the childhood I experienced via TV Westerns there is a newly constructed and never used plaza with beau coup comfortable outdoor chairs and a fountain and a free standing rock fireplace and a wistera covered gazebo-like thing. There is a cute little house with a cushioned wicker love seat glider out front, and it, the house, tried to be a pet supply store for awhile but failed. You can sit on the glider anytime you want and act like you live there. I would live there but Lorina says I wouldn't have the privacy to walk out my front door naked and even though I don't really do that I said, why wouldn't I? and she said, because of the people, and I, like a New Orleans domino player bent to intimidate, slapped my hand down hard onto the table surrounded by comfortable outdoor furniture, and said--What People?
The reason we are sitting in those comfortable outdoor chairs is because they are comfortable, and nearby, and on a good Friday or Saturday night we might be able to see five or six couples walking by on their way to the 5star, while we sip contraband from plastic go-cups. The men wear suits and the women wear what they are told to wear, which this year is a skirt cut like those worn by that sexy dynamic duo--Betty and Wilma, from the Flintstones. And of course, presumably, pink is the new black, unless you live in New York, and then we can safely guess that whatever is happening elsewhere, is already passe' there. You know, that low constant rumble you can sometimes hear on New York streets is actually people mumbling to themselves--been there, done that.
A couple of mornings in a row I would notice on my rounds of the property here a puddle of water on the pool deck right where the stairs lead out so that it appeared someone was pool hopping early in the morning.
The suspects were: a friend, a bear, a groundhog, a homeless person/traveler/itinerant worker, or, somebody I would like to chase around the property with a baseball bat. After the second morning I decided to camp out in the bighouse, which overlooks the pool, and see what I could see, which turned out to be nothing. For now I have decided the culprit to be the pool monster, which is an automated sweeping device set to run from seven to ten in the morning. Sometimes it gets stuck in a corner and will shoot water from a spout.
But with the heightened awareness caused by the real or imagined pool interloper I have set out to keep a closer eye on the bighouse.
And so it was just the other night that instead of watching Witness for the Prosecution down here in the cottage, I suggested to Lorina that we go on up and watch on that little TV in the bighouse study.
Thirty minutes into the movie and slumped we both were on the leather couch as the sun set and I don't know if you've seen that crop circle, extraterrestrial-invasion movie, Signs, but it was really just like that, both of us seeing out of our drowsy, movie-hypnotized eyes, two nearly human silhouettes moving across the front porch, back lit by the dusky night. There had been neither the headlights nor gravel crunching of tires to alert us of human invasion, and the house sits a good three hundred yards up the hill from main street, and it is pretty much hidden by dense foliage except in winter. It is not the type of property to invite casual tresspassing. Intentional tresspassing then. Sub-humans. Freaky stuff happens all the time to other people and apocryphal or not, in New Orleans, ghost stories by many are accepted as matter of fact. I accepted them, and experienced them as such, when living there.
So momentarily, for both Lorina and I, it was dreamlike in the worst way. The forces of fear both exciting us and immobilizing us. Neither one of us were able to get up from the couch in one swift movement. That the shadows had seen us inside seemed evident. That they moved off hurriedly like a scared wild animal made them no less threatening. We both ran to the front door and I fumbled with the lock just like a character from a B-movie who is always stupidly moving towards danger rather than away from it. But dammit, to face fear in the course of maintaining and protecting this property is part of my job. Could this tresspass be any worse than the many I experienced in the New Orleans ghetto? Is there something more frightening than a disaffected 15-year-old with a TEK-9 he's not afraid to use?
I finally got the door open and came face to face with my worst fear. Out on the lawn, moving in a retreating fashion from right to left, was that which is the seed of pure terror--it is the thing you least suspect, the thing all your experience has not prepared you for. It was two tourists from Easy Street, probably from a neighboring B& B, a man, who was way out front leading the retreat, and a woman, wearing a dress sort of like Wilma Flintstone. The woman spoke rapidly in profuse apologetic tone. We're sorry, we're sorry, you have a nice house she uttered while squinting to see if a shotgun was pointed at her head. I felt sorry for her. I said simply--you're ok. She apologized again while retreating. I said again, you're ok, and shut the door.
Afterwards, we heard inexplicable noises in the house and were afraid.