These days, uncertainty seems a little too close for comfort. I think of how danger slinks at the edges of our lives too. Or at least it feels that way.
Yesterday I clicked through some old writings of mine and found this one from early 2015. Perils lurked outside our front door then too, but I like how my five-and-a-half-years-younger self saw it. She had the right idea.
*****
The brick commercial building—lodged between the corner store and our house—was lackluster, and only its changing name captured my eye over the years. In the early days in the neighborhood, the sign indicated the building was home to Islamic gatherings. Then it went vacant. A year later, it sprang from obscurity, snagging attention from the big news outlets. The building had been used as an illegal after-hours club, we learned, and at 3:00 a.m. on March 7, 2013, almost a hundred people were gathered at the establishment when an argument sparked, turning into a scuffle. By the time it was over, two men were dead—one inside, one outside. And the two shooters had fled. The usual course of action followed: law enforcement marked off the place as a crime scene, investigations ensued, and the police issued the landlord a notice of nuisance—the legal form of a slap on the wrist—and he boarded up the building.
The morning after the shootings, we rubbed our eyes and wondered what had gone down a half block away at the brick building while we slept in our warm beds. The streets—for many blocks around—were barricaded, and exiting the neighborhood was as tricky as in the 2011 tornado’s aftermath. When the situation cooled, we noticed mourners had slipped in behind the yellow tape to build a memorial on the sidewalk. They left behind teddy bears, flowers, signs, photos of the deceased, and remnants of meals consumed right there on the pavement. The only things that touched us from the tragedy were the fast-food wrappers that blew on March winds into our yard.
The double homicide was close. But no bullets ripped through our lives. And neither did fear.
My brother, a New York City dweller, called me one day.
“So I’ve been streaming Joe Soucheray’s Garage Logic out of Saint Paul,” he said. “Anyway, a local news story came up. Notice any unusual police activity at the end of your block?”
“No,” I said. “But I haven’t been looking.”
“Sounds like a guy’s holding his girlfriend hostage,” he said. “They’ve got the place surrounded.”
I poked my head out the front door and flicked my gaze down the street.
“Well, sure enough,” I said.
The place hummed with activity. Police cars lined the streets and a SWAT team stood in position. Officers surrounded the house in question, guns drawn.
“Since it’s a domestic, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” my brother said.
“I’m not worried.”
The hostage situation was close. But no abusive boyfriend barred me inside my home. And neither did fear.
My neighbor Marta had a favorite spot in her back yard—her lounge chair—where she’d bask for a measure of each fleeting summer day. But on a Tuesday in the summer of 2014, obligation beckoned. Marta, a formidable culinary force, arose from her chair to serve the common good: she had a BBQ rib contest to judge.
While she was away, two cars sped through the neighborhood, the drivers working out their grievances through open car windows. But finding words insufficient, the men settled their differences with lead. One bullet penetrated a neighbor’s fascia, and another pierced Marta’s fence and skidded to rest in her most cherished place in paradise: right under the seat of her lounge chair.
The drive-by was close. But Marta still lived without fear—and laughed whenever she retold the story about the day she wasn’t hit in the backside by a bullet.
One of the shooters in the double homicide in the brick building on the corner pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison; the other had a second-degree murder charge against him dropped after serving almost a year. The hostage-taker in the house at the end of the block was apprehended, never to return. And the police caught the two speeding drivers and arrested them for gunplay on a residential street.
We knew the past, but we didn’t think it into our future. Unruffled by the exceptions who passed through our streets with guns, our area of the city always settled back into a rhythm. No over-the-shoulder glances, no lost sleep.
To be safe, though, we kept our doors shut tight, leaving fear locked outside where it belonged.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.