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What was that? In the Neighborhood: News or Noise?By Rick Horowitz
The first one sounded like a skyrocket, a distant wail that started at an ear-bending pitch and then headed even higher, for the canine frequencies. The second one came just a few moments later -- it was half past three on a Monday afternoon -- and it sounded like another skyrocket, or maybe an approaching siren. It lasted three or four seconds, as the first one had. Truth be told, three or four seconds was simply all he'd noticed of it, all he'd noticed of either of them. They might have been going on twice that long, or longer, before he started paying attention. He was skilled at tuning things out. He worked at home; if he didn't tune things out, he'd never get anything done. The third one was a scream. He knew it instantly, as he suddenly knew that the first two sounds had also been screams. A girl's screams, and from just outside his house. He quickly began weighing the possibilities. More than likely, the screams were all in fun, kids letting loose at the end of a long day. Or maybe they'd been launched to ward off some loser of a classmate, a boy with hormones and pimples raging out of control. Overkill on the girl's part, certainly, and decades from now, the object of her inflections would still be telling the tale to his therapist. But that was for them to work out. (The girl and the boy, or the boy and the therapist.) He was just beginning to weigh the other, darker possibilities, when he heard another scream, and quickly, another. He was at his window in less than a moment, peering up and down the alley. But he couldn't see anything from there, and the screams continued. Down the stairs he raced, in his jeans and his undershirt. Out into the backyard and through the gate and (his pace slowing now -- if there was nothing major going on, he didn't want to startle anyone, and if there was a full-blown incident in progress, he certainly didn't want to stumble across it before he'd worked out a plan) down the alley toward the street. He saw them before they saw him, and what he saw was...nothing major. Or even less than that. There were kids, a dozen or so of them, teening their way down the block in little clusters of threes and fours. They had already passed his house, so when the next scream came, he only saw their backs, never saw a mouth move. He was almost sure it came from one particular cluster, but there wasn't anything in their body language -- or in anyone's body language -- to suggest that a crisis was unfolding. "Excuse me," he ventured at the cluster closest to him, and then a bit louder, "Excuse me." The cluster stopped, and turned toward him. "Is anybody in trouble?" Now all the other clusters had stopped, and turned. They had their coats bulked against the October chill; he was out there in his jeans and his undershirt. Nobody answered him, so he tried again, tried to explain. "We hear screaming, we come and see if anyone's in trouble." Nobody answered him. "So everyone's OK?" Finally, one or two of the kids nodded slightly: Everyone's OK. And everyone looked OK, which was far better, he realized, than he must have looked to them -- an overwrought man in an undershirt asking kids he'd never met if they were in trouble. He tried a smile, a smile and a wave, just to let them know he wasn't completely crazy. "Then have a good afternoon," he told them, and turned back toward his house. They may have thought he was completely crazy anyway -- despite the smile, despite the wave. But the screaming stopped. He was back inside before he thought about it: About how one of the girls who used to live in his house, who now lives a grown-up life off in the big city, had had her first encounter with a mugger just a few weeks earlier. About how she and her roommate had screamed their lungs out when he grabbed them, cut them, made off with their money. About how shaken they were by the whole thing. And about how grateful they were that the neighbors came running. Posted 10/08/02.
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Rick Horowitz
