Up Close with the Screamer
There's a guy who lives in a delapidated house down the block. Joe calls him the Screamer. He's an old bachelor who has screaming fits late at night. I've never heard him, but Joe, who is often in the garage in the evening, has once or twice heard the Screamer in action. What he's seen more often is an Albany Police car parked outside the Screamer's sad little house near midnight. The policemen pound on the door and yell for the Screamer to either come outside or just shut up. The Screamer will eventually open the door a crack and insist everythign is okay.
I park in front of the Screamer's house sometimes, because there is usually a spot there. His yeard is patchy with yellow grass and brown dirt. The same blue recyling bin has sat on his doorstep for years. There's a partially gutted primer-gray Mustang on concrete blocks in the driveway. The curtains are usually drawn, but when they are not you can look through the front window and see a dark, sparse room with furniture placed randomly, with no regard for flow or logic, the way men who live alone just plop a chair or a table where there happens to be space for it.
The first time I saw the Screamer he was stepping outside his front door. I'd just parked on the street in front of his house. He waved and said hello. He was heavy-set and sort of greasy-looking, an older guy with glasses in thick, dorky science nerd frames. He seemed harmless enough.
A few years later our doorbell rang just before dinner. I thought it was Joe, coming back from a walk without his key. Nope--it was the Screamer. He was going around with a petition, collecting signatures for a statement that said e didn't cause a disturbance. I guess his next door neighbor was always calling the police because of his late-night fits--fits that he, there on our doormat, denied. He planned on using the statement in court, where this next door neighbor had taken a case against him. The neighbor also claimed that the Screamer played his clavichord at odd hours--I guess the Screamer is into early music.
I signed the statement, partly because it was true: I hadn't ever heard him screaming. But Joe had, and what if he were home? The main reason I signed the statement was to get him out of our doorway. I caved under pressure. He creeped me out. Something about him was not right. I wondered what it was. Why did he scream?
After that, I stopped parking in front of the Screamer's house so often. Every time I walked by I wondered what he was doing. He'd told me he was a writer. Was he on SSI? How did he afford that house?
The other day I went on a nice long run--a longer one than usual, so I made a point of walking the last quarter-mile to cool down. I walked past the bank of paper boxes on the sidewalk in front of the liquor store, and I stopped to grab the alt-weeklies. Some slow, pokey guy was right in front of the box with the East Bay Express, and I stood to the side, waiting for him to move. He didn't. I realized it was the Screamer. He riffled through the stack of papers with a deliberate slowness, a slowness that told me to get going. I scurried home, leaving the Screamer to his eccentric time-killing.
All those fleeting moments in front of the Screamer's house when I wondere what he did with his days, it all came to me: Nothing. He did nothing. He didn't write books; he just banged away at his early music in fits of maddness. I wanted to tske back my signature on his statement. What a sad life, wasting away in his wasted house with nothing but his late-night screams to keep him company.
I park in front of the Screamer's house sometimes, because there is usually a spot there. His yeard is patchy with yellow grass and brown dirt. The same blue recyling bin has sat on his doorstep for years. There's a partially gutted primer-gray Mustang on concrete blocks in the driveway. The curtains are usually drawn, but when they are not you can look through the front window and see a dark, sparse room with furniture placed randomly, with no regard for flow or logic, the way men who live alone just plop a chair or a table where there happens to be space for it.
The first time I saw the Screamer he was stepping outside his front door. I'd just parked on the street in front of his house. He waved and said hello. He was heavy-set and sort of greasy-looking, an older guy with glasses in thick, dorky science nerd frames. He seemed harmless enough.
A few years later our doorbell rang just before dinner. I thought it was Joe, coming back from a walk without his key. Nope--it was the Screamer. He was going around with a petition, collecting signatures for a statement that said e didn't cause a disturbance. I guess his next door neighbor was always calling the police because of his late-night fits--fits that he, there on our doormat, denied. He planned on using the statement in court, where this next door neighbor had taken a case against him. The neighbor also claimed that the Screamer played his clavichord at odd hours--I guess the Screamer is into early music.
I signed the statement, partly because it was true: I hadn't ever heard him screaming. But Joe had, and what if he were home? The main reason I signed the statement was to get him out of our doorway. I caved under pressure. He creeped me out. Something about him was not right. I wondered what it was. Why did he scream?
After that, I stopped parking in front of the Screamer's house so often. Every time I walked by I wondered what he was doing. He'd told me he was a writer. Was he on SSI? How did he afford that house?
The other day I went on a nice long run--a longer one than usual, so I made a point of walking the last quarter-mile to cool down. I walked past the bank of paper boxes on the sidewalk in front of the liquor store, and I stopped to grab the alt-weeklies. Some slow, pokey guy was right in front of the box with the East Bay Express, and I stood to the side, waiting for him to move. He didn't. I realized it was the Screamer. He riffled through the stack of papers with a deliberate slowness, a slowness that told me to get going. I scurried home, leaving the Screamer to his eccentric time-killing.
All those fleeting moments in front of the Screamer's house when I wondere what he did with his days, it all came to me: Nothing. He did nothing. He didn't write books; he just banged away at his early music in fits of maddness. I wanted to tske back my signature on his statement. What a sad life, wasting away in his wasted house with nothing but his late-night screams to keep him company.
posted by Lefty at 10:48 AM
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