She could have called...

Today, my mom emailed me to let me know that my neighbor had died. Apparently, he had not collected his mail since the 3rd and when another neighbor with whom he would occasionally discuss gardening stopped by to check on him, she received no response even though his car was in the drive.

He lived alone. His son has been in and out of institutions my entire life. First up in New Jersey. Later Virginia. He's a a paranoid schizophrenic and when he was much younger and his mother was still alive, she wouldn't make him take his medication. Lately, on his infrequent visits, his father would refuse to let him in the house. Once he came into ours unannounced and in his underwear, claiming that he'd struck his father and the old man had fallen down.  He was alright, but the police came regardless and Danny (the son) was  gone again soon after.

He's lived alone in the house for years now, his wife is long dead. I would watch him from my room, pushing an ancient lawnmower or raking for hours at a time. Meticulously cutting away branches from the shrubs in his front yard. Regardless, they always grew wild. They were never neat. The house always looked like you wouldn't want to stop there on Halloween.

Mom and I would always say that we needed to be friendlier to him. We were afraid to get too familiar. Danny always comes back and we didn't want to let him in. He was our Boo Radley, only the stories about him were mostly true. He would howl at the moon and lift manhole covers. He'd drape Confederate flags from the rear of the car he couldn't legally drive and yell from his stoop that the South would rise again. He told my mother he'd seen the Devil because he knew she was similarly religious and would understand why he then tried to remove his own eye. The eye is still there, he just can't see out of it. He used to send letters claiming he was innocent. I never knew innocent of what. Mom wouldn't say. Later I found out it was something about two missing girls but there not being enough evidence. That was the first time he went away.

My childhood was punctuated by missives not to walk certain places alone. Never answer the door. If the phone rings, it's a wrong number. If we did see him, we had to go home for lunch, or dinner. Whatever made more sense. I hated seeing his father alone the way he was. I just couldn't bring myself to go against what Mom had always said. That these were people we didn't associate with, We didn't let them in.