October 27, 2008

From my perspective, the neighborhood looks quiet, almost drowsy, with a single train that pulls through every few hours. The high school marching band practices outside, blown off course by the tempestuous wind that has whistled into town. The sounds of their tubas and trombones pulse in my belly, and I let the wind carry me in circles over the tree lined streets and hrududus parked on driveways and lawns.

One of these little brown cube houses is different from the others. A family comes pouring out, the wife in tears, the father frantically dialing on his cell phone. The children look puzzled and cling to their parents’ legs.

“I need the police, my house’s been broken into,” the man in saying, pacing up and down his driveway. “Yes, that’s right. I don’t know, I just got home and we went inside and the place is destroyed. Goddammit!” he shouts, not into the phone but towards the sky, his eyes blazing. The wife draws her children close to her, gets down on her knees and enfolds them in an embrace. They wobble close to her, sticking fingers into their mouths. They don’t know what is happening, why mother is crying, or why father is yelling.

“Boxcar Run. Yes, that’s it. Thank you.” He snaps the phone closed and reaches for his wife. “They’re sending a unit out. It’s okay, honey. Why don’t you take the boys for a walk? You don’t have to wait here. It’s cold out.”

The wife stands, shakes her head, wipes her tears with the back of her hand. “I don’t want to go anywhere without you, Joel. We’ll be warm enough, right guys?” She offers her sons a false smile that they believe implicitly, squeezing themselves against her chest.

“Jesus,” Joel says, rubbing his face with his hands. “This seems so surreal. I just thought... when we walked in...something was wrong but I just thought...I guess you don’t expect...Jesus,” he says again.

“I wore my rings today,” the wife says, holding out her left hand. “I’ve been leaving them at home lately. Today, something made me put them on. I can’t imagine what I’d be feeling now if they’d stolen my rings,” she says. Her voice cracks.

“What else did they take? We noticed your laptop and my guitar...what else?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to go back in there until the police come.The way the television was on the floor..it looks like the thieves might have been startled...what if they’re still in the house?”

The parents each sweep one child into their arms and walk to the opposite side of the street, settling down on the curb to watch their home. The wife rests her head on her husband’s shoulder.

It isn’t long before the police arrive. Two police alight from the car: a man and a woman. The man has a young face with salt and pepper hair and kind eyes. The woman is small but fierce, blonde hair piled in a knot atop her head. She emerges from the car first, all business. She approaches the family, unsmiling, jerking her head toward the house. “This the place you called in?” she asks.

The wife nods. “Yeah. We’re not sure if anyone’s still in there or not.”

The two officers move to the house and draw their weapons. Slowly and without sound, they enter the house, leaving the family huddled together on the driveway. The parents hardly dare breathe. The boys have grown restless and are poking each other and wriggling. Neither Mom nor Dad pays them any attention.

Minutes later, the police emerge from the house, their weapons holstered. “The house is empty, but the back window appears to have been broken with a rock,” the man says. “I guess that’s how they got inside. We’ll ask your neighbors if anybody saw anything. Why don’t you all follow us inside and start looking around for what might be missing? You’ll want to have as much catalogued as possible for your insurance company.”

Joel follows the officers back into the house, his wife and sons trailing at his heels. I decide to follow them inside. It has begun to grow dark, they are dazed, and I am quiet. No one notices me.

“We’ll dust for prints and talk to your neighbors,” the female officer is saying. “Mr. Blake, do you want to follow me? We’ll start in the back; Officer Peterson can take the front,.”

Joel nods, following the petite officer to the back of the house. The wife sighs and drops to the couch, halfheartedly trying to corral her young sons. “Do we have any chance at all of finding the people who did this, officer?” she asks. She sounds tired.

One of the boys tugs on the policeman. “Do you have a gun?” he asks.

“I wanna see your handcuffs!” the other pipes in.

The cop grins, winking at the boys. “Hey guys, mind if Officer Jacob talks to Mommy for a minute, and I’ll show you my handcuffs later?”

The boys grin and shake their heads. They don’t mind.

“As far as finding the people who did this? We’ll do the best we can, of course, but chances are, no, we’ll never find them. Crockett High is down the street--my guess is some teenagers walking the tracks behind your house saw the glass door and broke in. No dog, no fence, pretty easy target, actually. You do have a somewhat better chance of getting some of your stuff back if it shows up at pawn shops...” He stops speaking when he notices she isn’t listening.

“You look worried,” he says, laying his kit on the coffee table. “I know how scary it must be for you. But you know, when these things happen...the thieves don’t usually come back.”

She doesn’t look worried, though. She looks scared. She stands up, walks to the fireplace and picks up a vase from the mantle. “This is solid crystal,” she says. The vase looks heavy in her hand. “They took my husband’s crappy guitar, but they didn’t take the crystal. Why is that?”

Officer Jacob laughs, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t believe how many people ask us that question. Best answer I have is that nobody said thieves are smart. They come in, snatch what grabs their attention....if they’re kids, it might not ever have occurred to them that something like that could be valuable. Or maybe they didn’t know how to move it. Maybe they weren’t stealing things to sell but things to use themselves. Who knows.”

The woman smiles, or attempts to smile, and places the vase back on the mantle. “Well, that’s something. The vase was a wedding gift. It has sentimental value.”

Now that Mom isn’t paying attention to them, and since Officer Jacob is not taking out his handcuffs, the boys have broken away and are running into the kitchen where toy cars await them on the linoleum. Mom is scanning the living room, looking for missing items. She notices an empty space by the television and chuckles.

“CDs,” she says. “A stack of maybe 30 CDs. Joke’s on them, though; they were all kids’ CDs. Baby Einstein, Jack Frost, stuff like that. Still...”

“Miranda!” Joel’s voice is calling from the back of the house. “Are you wearing your gold watch today? The one you got at the outlet mall?”

Miranda pushes up her sleeve, nods. “Yeah, I have it.”

She turns back to Officer Jacob, her expression once again tense and afraid. “So they don’t come back? Are you sure?”

The policeman smiles. “There are always plenty of other houses to hit,” he says. “Sad but true. And good news for you. It’s better to get hit during the day when the family’s out than at night when everyone’s asleep. That’s when people get hurt,” he explains.

Miranda shudders. “God, I can’t even imagine. We never did get an alarm system installed. One of those things we always talk about doing....”

Jacob nods. “Hey, I’m a cop, and I don’t have one either. Sort of like the cobbler with no shoes, I guess. My wife has been on me about it for years. Just never got around to it.”

Miranda only seems to be half listening. “Maybe you should,” she says.

After a moment, Officer Jacob speaks up again. “If it makes you uncomfortable to stay in your house, don’t. Stay with a friend, or go to a hotel. Lots of families do it. Sometimes it’s hard to get over that feeling of...”

“Violation,” she says. Her voice is thready. She is looking out the window, arms wrapped tightly around her body. She’s shaking. Officer Jacob notices it too.

“Is there...? Do you ...?”

But Miranda shakes her head, waving him off, tears flowing quietly down her cheeks. “There’s just only so much violation a person can take,” she whispers.

It is something about the way Officer Jacob moves, the way he restrains himself from reaching for her, keeps himself from doing what would otherwise have come naturally to him were he not in an officer’s uniform that draws my attention and piques my curiosity.

He would have reached out, gingerly, testing her, and when he found her wishing to be comforted, would have pulled her into a careful embrace, letting her cry on his shoulder, letting her small body draw strength from his. He was thinking now that her husband should be here, unless he was the one who had done this to her, but he didn’t think so. He’d seen abused wives before. No, not the husband, then. Some other man. Some evil man. And so the husband should be here, should be holding and comforting her, unless he doesn’t know, unless she never told him or anyone...

He takes steps toward her against his better judgment, against his professional role, because he knows it is what is right and what she needs and decorum be damned, and when I see him reach tentatively for her shoulder and see the concern and general kindness in his eyes, I know he is good and worthy and normal. His cord shines brilliantly, vibrating against the darkness, and I ascend from my hiding place, snap the cord into my beak, and head out the fireplace, up the chimney, and out into the world.

I hear a woman’s scream as I leave. Perhaps it is because she was startled by a bird flying into her fireplace and up her chimney. But probably it is because she has never seen a man drop dead right in front of her before.