Thomas, I remember when we were younger, how in the streets dodging cars we gamed Bats were limbs stolen from neighbor's trees, old houses. Houses closed up, shuttered out the newly wealthy set of our parents and their pretty pampered children. These broken, stolen limbs served us for a few innings, then we threw them off into the wooded area now gone for the sake of more houses. Our street, once a perpendicular line drawn from the wooded border, now extends into our lost treeline.
How we would roam the woods, not quite a forest. Inside there was a place where a man once lived. Must have been homeless. It was as if an apartment had been surgically excised from a projects building from further east, then set down to form an absurd degenerate profile. You spoke of this man.
Here he was. He once lived here you see. Who'd he know, who were his friends? I don't think he had a television out here, and there's just this one book which I'll never touch
There was little you would touch. I told you we could find adequate corkball bat material from the woods, but you refused, telling me that you were certain that the trees were infested with ants that would crawl up our sleeves and hide in our clothes, ready to sneak into our ears and noses when we were sleeping to do their queen's evil bidding. Or that the homeless fellow might've wiped his shitty ass with his hands and then grabbed our branch. In later years I would say rather that we chose to torment those neighbors who earned their crazed hermit reputation, to torment with the defacing of of their own trees. In myth, this is due to spite over Halloween or a tennis ball baseball corkball equivalent lost in a fenced yard with a big dog. I lie about these times a lot.
I remember when you left, Thomas, your parents had to move to a cheaper place because your mother lost a significant percentage of her intestinal tract and the medical bills did not cease. I remember how I cried when you left, and how, lacking in a corkball accomplice, I turned to television and more indoor pursuits.
It was at about this time that I began to have a peculiar fear of that man in the woods. While loping around the hallways in my parents‘ house, I would catch a flash in the side of a window. These were nothing more than reflections of passing cars or the odd cat's tail. Then, at one point, I thought I saw, rather I should say I did not think I saw a man. That is, for a moment my senses warned of a person peering through the window, but then I soon connected the sound of the passing truck with that brief flicker in the window. I realized that I had seen nothing other than a truck.
The image persisted, the image of a man standing just beside a window, quickly shifting in and out of sight of the people inside. At first, I did not think much of the theoretical spy, other than to think of how I would feel if I were to see him. I imagined casually passing a windowed room and seeing a brief glimpse of a man shuffling out of sight, leaving nothing to see but impeccably manicured lawns. More often I thought of this possibility, spurred on by cats and dogs and seed pods spinning down from a neighbor's tree. It became a pastime for me, newly on my own. The fear delighted and intoxicated. I knew firmly that my perception tricked me, that there were no such people standing outside my family's windows, peering inside.
Regardless, Thomas, I received your letter some time ago. You asked if I had been hanging out with that homeless man in your place. The thought of this man has begun to weigh upon my mind. He was always a lighthearted figure to me, as he rambled about his wooden shack, defecating and scooping out his ass clean with long-nailed hands. Details invented to terrorize a young neatnik such as Thomas. I thought of these things as I read your lines, and then I realized that my false spy had always been this man
I do not know that I can explain this phenomenon adequately, but I began to walk more quickly past those windows which had no curtains drawn and the view from which was black and featureless. Those windows which afforded a view of even a streetlamp were much less frightening than those which showed nothing. In those days, our kitchen was a room filled with such windows, and once inside I would begin to tremble and hasten my movements. At points, I would even begin to jog around inside the household, just to move away as quickly as possible from those horrible windows.
I saw them, I saw them every day and every night. I saw those windows in countless contexts, and yet when it was night, and nothing could be seen through them, they became the most fearsome objects. And yet, it was not so much the fear that I would see that man and his soiled hand peeking in on me. Rather, I was afraid that I would see the glimpse either turning into or away from the window. The blackness, the solid unbroken tone was a field to be disrupted, and that disruption was the most fearsome thing I could imagine.
The thought of that man has not left me. Although I have adequately shut off his tableau with blinds and cloth, the notion persists in taunting my thoughts at night. While I do not like to dwell on the idea, I have, from time to time, thought of that man slipping out from around a corner, from a doorway, from a corridor curiving off to a side.
As I lay awake in bed at night, I have seen that fellow's grim face suddenly peering out from the hallway, then darting back. I hesitate to write it, though, for I am certain that the more that I dwell on this image, the less likely I am to fall asleep. It has been a terrible time, Thomas.