Heinous Crimes

It wasn't him. Not that one that you are asking about. The one with the piercing eyes, palest of blue. Pieter. No, it wasn't him. He was a wisp of a man. Harmlessly, he haunted his own household and yard, at the edge of the neighborhood, with a wife that nobody hardly ever saw. Glimpsed here and there, to suggest, some vague existence of Mrs. & Mr., when the sliver sedan backed out of that rear detached single car garage. But that was all. It was a very quiet house.

That was the lemonade yellow home on the Left.

No, the one you are asking about, lived on the Right. Under the flag. Under the badge of medallioned veteran. George. He had half a left leg, and one-and-a-half loud attitude about what we did or didn't, and what he would if he could, unspoken, heavily axed in the silence of the air around the khaki and olive-colored porch he never seemed to venture off.

If we were late with cutting the grass, he'd crack something about "somebody having a bad back, eh?" or if we tarried with taking out the trash till dawn of garbage truck day, he'd be there on the front deck bar stool with his barrel of a service dog and stump of cigar, insinuating that "we forgot." If we did the bare minimum of shoveling, to attend to other tasks inside, he'd remark snidely about not bothering to go the extra mile.

In short, he made everyone feel handicapped. He preempted any sympathy one might have had, or any respect, as Civilian.

When they carted him away, in Sirens, it was his woman Ruth that had called. Standing on the deck, hands on her hips, watching the Police and EMS, I gave my condolences and asked with caution, "Was it coronary?"

She looked at me like she'd bagged a terrorist, something like a damp white handkerchief of a restraining order waving in her hand.

"Hon, he lost his heart in Afghanistan."