Where the shadows at 8:35pm previously lived

Yesterday morning I had some friends over, helping me clear tree limbs and vines in my back yard so that there are fewer places to hide at night from the light of the streetlamp. My neighbors across the alley were cleaning up my K-cups and their Dr. Pepper cans that had been thrown out by someone rummaging through our shared dumpster the night before. It was hard to tell who drank more caffeine and vaguely depressing that neither of us recycled.

I introduced myself and told them that I just bought this duplex and live in it, that my security camera with a now more clear view of the alley has only intermittently been recording motion. How I wish I had video of whoever had gone through the trash! We made small talk about whether it's better to put the possibly usable trash in neat piles besides the dumpsters, but hopeful bums still go through the dumpsters anyway.  The woman bemoaned how the neighborhood has really gone downhill lately.

Shared articles on FaceBook, whispered gasps of "that is so close to your home", private messages, and NextDoor posts hung in the air where the shadows at 8:35pm previously lived.

I said I was sorry for their loss and told them that I had driven by the next morning on my way to work and seen the piles of flowers covering the bloodstained sidewalk from the corner where I come out of my parking spot and onto the main street. I said I wanted to introduce myself and give condolences before this moment of them cleaning up our spilled trash in the alley, but I didn't want to intrude upon their grief (that was splattered for everyone to see in the thumbnails of news shared on FaceBook and Twitter).

I didn't tell them that I had heard the gunshots that killed their granddaughter that night, and dismissed those loud pops as idiots harmlessly shooting into the air because that was that Sunday the Blues were losing to the Bruins, tying the Stanley Cup finals before their big win on Wednesday (which I guess was the day of their granddaughter's funeral). It had seemed more logical to question what I'd learned years ago in a college course with the most memorable "lab" component, Intro to Hunting and Fishing (101), and to wonder if maybe I was hearing firecrackers going off instead... Misinterpreted hearing and bad memory had seemed more probable than the possibility that at 8:35pm there was a 3 year old being murdered a few hundred feet away from my backyard where I park my car.

The grandfather fought tears, and if you've ever seen a strong working man cry you know what that looked like. The grandmother said it was people from outside of the neighborhood, criminal drug addicted "other poor" people who were being squeezed from their housing as rents in nearby parts of the city go up. She assured me that this neighborhood was never "that bad" until the past year or two. This was not a couple merely cleaning to keep a neat property, these were people attempting to accomplish the terribly painful chore of living.

I promised to get my security camera motion alarm fixed ASAP, and to get bright as fuck lighting put up to chase the night time shadows away. To get better cameras that will make my house and our shared alley a little bit of a harder target, that will record and document any further criminal activity, and to do my part in combating the violence that has suddenly hit very close to home.

I wanted to ask them if they needed me to make a casserole now that all the commotion was over (and all other casseroles either eaten or thrown away), if they needed provisions like toilet paper or milk, if there was any thing that I could actually do for them besides report gunshots to the police next time, fix my damn security camera motion alerts, and install bright as fuck lighting all over my property.

Suddenly there was no more trash to clean up, and my friends had put the tree branches and brush in the correct dumpster. Everyone was getting bit up horribly by mosquitoes. Nobody had a pen on them to exchange numbers with. We parted with words that now we know who we all are, it's nice to meet a friendly neighbor, and to holler or knock if ya'll need anything.

Sometimes the shadows at 8:35pm are very close to home.