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The Chairman of the Neighborhood Watch Committee
by Tommy Dean Ten years left on their mortgage and she wants to sell the damn thing and move to a nicer neighborhood. He points out the statistics: the cost to sell, the cost to buy a new place, the chances of a crime like this committed anywhere. Even in the face of these points she leaves the house at night, waiting until he returns from work, making him stand over her as she fits boxes into the back of the SUV. "Why should I stand here and watch this," he asks. "I can’t be out here alone," she says. "I need protection." Four months ago, someone had broken into their home while they were away at work. They were greeted by the crunch of broken glass against the soles of their shoes and a gaping hole in the frame of their front door. A man or men had rooted through their valuables, the jewelry he was supposed to take to the safety deposit box, the TV they thought too large and heavy to ever leave their house once it was in placed on the wall, the computer they had bought to do their taxes, and a bra his wife swears was hanging over the dining room chair to dry would come back. It’s this last item that’s he’s sure led to her hysterics. Now that his wife's gone he has taken to breaking into people’s homes. He waits for the members of the housing addition to drive off to work and then he goes from house to house, checking each one off his list. He documents the durability of the door, the deadbolt, and the chances of getting caught standing on a front or back porch in the sun-sizzling daylight. He has standards too. Three swift kicks from his steel-toed boots. If the door survives or the lock holds against his assault, then he smiles, nods, and puts a smiley face next to the address. He doesn’t steal anything; he never enters the house. It’s a duty, one he’s undertaken as the chairman of the Neighborhood Watch Committee. It’s a job he takes seriously. He often preaches from the scarred, fold-up tables placed at the front of the scuffed linoleum floor of the Kiwanis building about the need for perseverance in the face of danger. He talks about sledge locks and alarm systems; he recommends the installation of cameras and the use of timed lights. A scattering of people show up, most of them sucking on the straws of Big Gulps, waiting to launch into their most recent conspiracy theories. The latest conversation has centered on the rash of broken doors. These people, the men red faced and hollering, the women sitting with their hands in their laps, their voices no louder than a whisper, make conjectures, threaten to leave the neighborhood, wonder what it will cost to make sure they’re safe? How can they protect themselves from the menace that breaks in, but leaves everything untouched, as if the theft of privacy is bad enough? He nods in the face of their anger, checks his list against the name of the complainant, checks his desire to admonish or praise, and waits for their voice to drop away. They don’t understand. He’s providing them a service, a way of truly knowing whether their home would survive the kind of assault done by criminals and sadists. He wants to spare them the guilt and anguish of losing their wife, not to death, but to fear. A couple more houses remain on his list. Then he’ll tell the neighborhood, tell them he is the reason they returned some random night to find their doors caved in, possessions still intact. It was of necessity, he’ll tell them. We’re all safer now. |
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