HUMAN WRECKAGE
The Good Neighbour
Across the street beside the monster house is a modest pale blue bungalow of similar vintage to ours, the Crooked 9. Ann and I are casual friends of its owner, Vin. We know his wife and daughter by name and by sight but not much more. Vin is his family’s social patriarch. He visits with us on our front porch about once a week and the three of us sit together and chat about what’s on our minds from a safe distance.
Vin is one of those intelligent, overly curious people who needs to know everything about everybody. He asks a lot of questions and some are sometimes beyond the boundaries of decorum because Vin believes life and everything in it is very expensive and those particularly awkward queries of his demand gentle deflection. Vin is a goldmine of neighbourhood intelligence. If Ann and I lived in a police state we’d cut him dead. Though we keep an eye on each other’s homes, look out for each other, I’d hesitate to give him a set of keys to the Crooked 9 should Ann and I ever take another holiday. He’d treat the place like a real estate open house walk through and I’ve a hunch bedroom drawers would be opened for inspection.
If I’m awake early enough I watch Vin’s morning ritual. He burns incense in the planter by his front steps under the branches of the Ohio buckeye on his lawn. He crouches in prayer. After a few moments of tranquility, it’s go, go, go! Vin will sleep when he’s dead. We compete, as we must: whose lawn was cut most recently; whose grass looks better; whose driveway was shoveled first, who spread more grit on the public sidewalk. Vin’s need for speed has created at least one predictable habit: he tends to back his SUV into his driveway at high velocity.
I have smoked 25 a day for over 40 years. That’s a few hundred thousand cigarettes. Sometimes I wonder if their cumulative effects will be the death of me or will the fatal trigger be the fourth puff on the smoke I’ll have 15 minutes from now? I imagine my life as some sort of cosmic movie, ultimately the screen must fade to black. But given the nature of the film industry, I worry there might be a sequel.
These past few years I’ve caught myself emitting a lot of involuntary old person noises. The pain is not physical. The sighs and the groans stem from the yoke of sin. Raw regrets about very stupid and very bad behaviour which now cause me to cringe with vocal embarrassment and sorrow. And until last Monday morning I was fairly confident that I’d come to terms with the cross I’d hammered together all by myself for me and me alone to bear. Monday morning sure looked fine; my slate was pretty clean. I was a weightless being.
Vin zipped up the street with a load of lumber jutting out from the rear of his SUV. He drove past his driveway and shifted into reverse. His vehicle was about five feet longer than he was used to. He accelerated into the turn. God help me, I thought, “Please ram your garage door. That would really make me laugh.”
As Vin revved his Toyota’s engine I realized I’d cleared the edge of a tipping point in my life; I was the speeding cartoon character who’d paused in midair to look down. Vin and I do many of the same chores, but I take my time. That revelation was sort of like the abstract awareness of my mysterious and ultimate lottery cigarette: eventually my time on Earth won’t allow for just one more. I have eviscerated my soul alone in the darkness and confessed my flaws with moans, humility and shame in the witching hours. But I really, really wanted Vin to smoke his garage door, repairs would be expensive. I would’ve been highly amused. I cannot apologize for that malevolent little thought even as it undid years of self-examination and self-admonishment. And just like that, I’m going to Hell now. I am not sorry. No regrets.
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