James Hannah - Sign Languages

“Oh, I know Tom and Megan love kids… and who doesn’t? But they’ll come to see when they get back. They’ll learn. Those kids just moved in a few months ago. Parents never home and they’ve run amok. You oughta hear Buddy,” Barbie chuckled. “‘End of the world,’ he says. ‘Barbie, they’ll be the death of me.’”

“Bad kids,” Richard said lamely.

“Oh hon! I mean, they’ve just moved in. Before it was vacant a year — property’s hard to sell these days — and before that just Mrs. Clemson until she kicked the bucket. Didn’t realize it for a few days, those sorry kids of hers. And it was August, too.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Just been a mess,” Barbie shrugged and walked back to the front room, pulling her purse up on her shoulder. “We’ve never had anything like it here. Most of us have called the cops on them at least once. They steal things — newspapers, lawn ornaments, Mr. Eaton’s three-wheeled bicycle, we think, and wrecked it where the creek crosses under Helena Road over by the fire station. They smashed Madge’s herb vinegar she was steeping on the porch. Now the Bentendorfs say they’ve caught them in their garage sitting in their new Buick. And later found nails all in their aluminum siding. But what can you do?”

Richard shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, Rich,” Barbie whacked him hard on the shoulder, “just watch out for ‘em, huh? And if you need anything, Barbie and Buddy are right over there twenty-four hours a day. We never go anywhere… and seldom sleep. It’s a geriatric neighborhood, all right,” and she chuckled and waved a fleshy arm over her shoulder. Richard watched her cross the dry hot yard. Looking down at Megan’s zinnias bordering the porch, he decided he’d water and maybe even trim a few of the wilted hedges late in the afternoon, though Megan had written him about the young college student whom they’d hired to take care of the yard. Yard work was something he’d seldom done since he lived in an expensive condominium complex in Houston and had no yard and couldn’t possibly say who his neighbors were.

Friday morning, a day later, Richard sat up in bed and screamed, his voice rebounding off the walls. The face at the window disappeared.

He sat there and collected himself, breathed deeply before he swung out of Tom and Megan’s firm bed and looked out the window.

It was almost midmorning, the beginning of another endless summer day. The sky was already a milky haze; the bush below the window was dying from the drought, dropping yellow leaves as if it were fall.

A young, thin boy streaked around behind Tom’s metal storage shed. Then another child, a girl fifteen or so, leapt over the low, weed-covered wall and ran after him.

Then another girl, a bit small, but also blond, burst through the back door of the garage apartment; Richard could hear her yelling. It was high and shrill, full of real fear. She had a sandwich in her hand, the bread flapping open at every step. Right behind her came another boy, terribly thin and redheaded.

Richard opened his mouth, rapped on the glass. “No,” he said. “Stop it.” And, not taking the time to grab his bathrobe, he rushed through the quiet house to the rear deck, still damp in the shade from the dew.

Now he heard her scream, high and awful, as she scrambled over the cinder-block wall and crossed into Tom’s yard. Like a pirate, her red-haired pursuer put the butcher knife in his teeth as he raced up the pile of scaffolding, jumped into the high grass, and emerged like some attacking animal.

“Hey, stop it!” Richard pounded the wooden railing. He didn’t know what to do. He looked at the green house, hoping a parent would intervene, but the torn screen door sagged halfway open.

In the middle of the yard, the girl stopped, turned, and flung the meat-and-bread sandwich at her brother, who stopped too, stuck the knife in the ground at his feet, and glared at her.

“You sonofabitch,” she said, taking in gulps of air.

The redheaded boy squatted and pieced together the sandwich. Carefully he wiped the grass off it onto the knee of his pants and then took a bite. He spoke with his mouth full. “Fuck you.”

Richard was appalled. He felt trapped in the balcony at some terrible play. Again he stared at their house, the opened door, the black mouth of it. Some yellowed sheets and underwear hung motionless on a clothesline.

He’d never liked children, never wanted any of his own. Neither had the biting woman in Houston. “Little shits,” she called them. And, for a moment, he admired her, wished she were here to witness this.

“Hey, you two,” he shouted, and they turned and stared at him. The boy reached down and pulled up his knife; the girl shaded her eyes from the morning sun. Richard looked at them but didn’t know, now, what to say. He wished he’d stayed inside; he realized he was in his pajamas. He recalled what had woken him and turned his eyes to the metal shed. He saw two heads duck back around.

“You two come out from behind there. Right this minute.” He spoke in the office voice he used on subordinates who’d caused him inconvenience.

But they didn’t come out. Instead they laughed loudly.

“Kimmy, Chip, come on… hurry,” a girl’s voice coaxed. And, in a flash, the redheaded boy and girl were gone.

“Stay out of my yard, you little brats,” Richard shouted at them.

“It ain’t your yard,” the older boy’s voice answered.

Richard listened to the sounds of their feet and bodies scurrying through the underbrush. Turning to go inside, he stopped and moaned. All along the porch, where Megan had placed pots of flowers, were clots of wet dirt and shredded plants.

Richard sat on the deck and drank a freshly made old-fashioned. It was too dark to read any longer. He laid the opened book on Peter the Great on the wire end table.

Next door they’d been making noise since sunset, but, out of principle, Richard hadn’t paid attention. Now he watched them come in and out the battered door.

There were no lights on in the house. The older girl had a flashlight. They worked like ants, passing one another, pausing for a second’s contact — a shove, a pounded shoulder. “Ouch.” “You’re asking for it.” “You sissy.” “Little piece of shit.” “Bastard.”

They were loud, oblivious of the neighborhood. They brought out a folding table, straight-backed dining-room chairs, paper sacks.

All of a sudden, with an orange flash, the older boy had lit a fire on the ground.

They yelled behind their low wall and gathered closer to the fire, their faces yellow flickering masks. Richard noticed Kimmy the sandwich girl, wore glasses.

He thought about how, in the city, he didn’t live near children. And, in the malls, he paid them little attention except to sidestep them and their mothers.

Beyond the wall the fire died down until the older girl poured something on it and it erupted, causing them to scream with excitement. Then they began to sing, or maybe it wasn’t a song but a poem or chant of some sort. It was less melody than rhythm. He couldn’t understand the words.

In bed, before he slept, Richard parted the curtains. There was only a flicker of light; the house still dark. He thought he saw their shapes sitting on the chairs. He was sure they’d used the fire to cook their supper. He’d smelled the odor of meat. On the edge of sleep he wondered if they had electricity.

Then, after the memory, everything happened quickly. It was as if everything else was waiting for Richard to recall something he’d never really forgotten. It was early afternoon and he drove under the carport after a late lunch at the Golden Corral. Coming around the corner to enter the house from the deck, he stopped and edged closer to the wall. He felt like a spy as he cautiously looked around the corner. The blue-and-white police car was parked in the apartment’s driveway, and the officer stood by the opened car door. The children stood in a semicircle a few feet from the patrolman, whose lips moved and right index finger wagged. But a hot rising breeze obliterated his words. Richard watched him pull out of the driveway. For a moment the children stood transfixed, and then they shouted one long gleeful shout and scattered in four directions, hopping over upturned bicycles, screaming over the fence.