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Karen (Al & Karen) Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
Al had gone in to watch TV. I sat outside, having my last cigarette of the day, though it was cold enough that I turned on the heater to warm my feet. I was thinking about our kids, who never seem to get their acts together. The oldest moves from job to job all the time, always unhappy with how “they” treat him. I mention, as gently as possible, that constantly shifting jobs looks bad on an application, but he insists I’m old-fashioned. “People have lots of jobs over their lifetime now,” he’ll argue. “It’s not like when Dad hired on at the plant and stayed for forty years.” He might be right, I don’t know, but I can’t believe the next job will be better simply because it’s new.
My younger son is the opposite of his brother. He works at a place where they treat him like dirt, but he never looks for something better. “It’s not so bad,” he’ll say, but his wife tells me what he puts up with: the ever-changing schedule, getting sent home halfway through a shift because business is slow, expected to come in on short notice to cover those who call in sick, and unsafe working conditions. I often wish I could give a little of my first-born’s confidence to the second one, and some of my baby’s humility to his elder brother.
The night had quieted around me. Most B-Bird residents are in by dark, so few cars went by, and the night was cool enough that not many walkers were out. As I stubbed out my cigarette and rose to go inside, a figure passed under the street lamp a few yards down from our lot. He moved at a dead run, which led me to conclude it wasn’t a resident. Most of us are too old to be in that much of a hurry, unless maybe our shoes are on fire.
For a few seconds I was...not scared, really, but alert. Only the day before, one of the women at the meeting hall had insisted a man followed her down Cormorant Street, staying twenty feet back no matter how slow or fast she walked. Alice, who’d been with me at the time, rolled her eyes, suggesting she thought the woman was exaggerating.
I waited to see what would happen next. Was someone being chased? No one else showed up. No one screamed. No one shouted, “Stop, thief!”
A minute later I heard a car start up at the end of the street.
A visitor had cut between trailers to get to his car. The practice is discouraged by park management, but that doesn’t stop people from doing it, day or night. Rumors were making us all nervous, but there wasn’t anything to worry about. No one had reported anything missing for months, and despite Al’s fussing, I wasn’t all that concerned about the Peeping Tom everyone was upset about. Surely if there was one, he’d get bored with watching senior citizens watch TV and move on.
Making sure my cigarette butt was completely extinguished, I went into the trailer and forgot about it.
