Face in the window

I’m told that when clean-up crews came in a few years ago to clear out their house in my boyhood neighborhood, they found whole nations of cockroaches and other multi-legged critters; mountains of broken furniture and fixtures;  and spewing more reeking trash than any network television political commentator. The poor devils assigned this onerous task had to protect themselves in Hazmat suits.

Not sure why exactly the previous owners cleared out, it could have been death or foreclosure or a thousandy-zillion other reasons, but they were gone. And that was that.

I do know that they resided in that decaying enclave for many years, stretching back to the mid-1960s. No one knew much about them; they kept their distance. Except for the pudgy head of that household.   

Indeed, he was the mystery of our little corner of the struggling yet tidy Country Club Manor. He owned the night when the weather was good. Today, they call them “serial voyeurs” and they are described as virtually harmless. Back in my youth, we called them “Peeping Toms” in the same tone you would utter any filthy noun-verb modifier.

His access routes were the narrow, meandering alleys separating yards. And for a fat man, he was fast.

Our phantom made his presence known quite often. Stealth was not his strong suit. His face would occasionally appear in window here and there; his choice viewing area being bathrooms at night when our mothers and sisters would go about their business. He was here, there and everywhere after the sun went down.

And I recall he paid at least two visits to my family’s home. The first was on a sultry summer night when my older brother awakened and saw his grinning, pallid pace in window of our bedroom. Then the man melted away into the darkness.

The second time it was me: I didn’t see his face but I was conscious enough to hear his fingernails scratching against the window screen, and then heard his heavy-footed escape. The next morning, we found a couple of crushed cigarette butts beneath the window.

For months, I slept with a pillow pulled over my head to avoid hearing any kind of sound beyond the safe walls of our home.

The Moms in our neighborhood naturally were concerned. The Dads were, too, on a more basic, resolute level. Most were combat vets of WWII. They had a solution if they could ever catch the rat bastard.

Off and on, Tom’s adventures went on. When I was about 15, my friend Mark and I spent most of one summer camping beneath the mildewed canopy of an Army tent I bought. We smoked Marlboros, talked about girls and mainly plotted ways to mete out justice to our neighborhood Tom if we could catch him. Occasionally, we would hear footsteps, a cough, a distant sound of a whippoorwill, the most mournful sound after the sun has winked out.

Later reports indicated he was still on the run, but on an abbreviated schedule. 

Time, age and accumulating weight catch up with you, I suppose.

Now he is gone. No midnight forays keeping folks up late at night. It was a spooky time so long ago. And, in the end, he remains a mystery and not a revealed Boo Radley.

To this day, however, when my windows are open and the weather is good,  and I have just switched off my reading light, I hope that scratching sound on my window screen is a misguided moth or a twitch in the breeze.

If there is any doubt, I wrap my head in the pillow.