Welcome to the Neighborhood

The cabin on Molkom Street had been vacant before I moved into the neighborhood. That was over fifteen years ago now -- a lifetime, it seems, as my days before are quite hazy. I thought it had been condemned; for years, shingles peeled off the sagging roof and the white siding appreciably faded, but it had potential, I guess. It had a rather large yard -- for a home in these parts, at least. Years ago, Murph’s lead broke after lunging at a grouse, and they scampered under the evergreens and spruces leading behind the cabin. By the time I made it around back, he was at the far end of the property and it took him a good twenty seconds or so to bound back to me through the grass and weeds and wildflowers after I called him. 

Sometime in April, earlier this year, Russel moved into the cabin. I don’t know the exact date -- I’m not good at recalling numbers like that -- but I clearly remember the day. There was a fresh dusting of snow on the ground, not so much as to make you want to wear boots, but enough to make you regret not wearing the moisture seeped through your tennis shoes. A peculiar moving truck, the cab seemingly too large for the size of the bed, passed Murph and me on our morning walk. We followed it, turning right onto Molkom. I saw the movers, but no one else, and they were just sitting in the cab as we passed by. I guessed they were waiting for the new owner to arrive and didn’t think too much more of it.

At Joe’s Java later that morning, I overheard Chet, who also lives on Molkom, talking about the new resident. 

“He’s an old Vietnam vet,” Chet said, “Those movers, careless bastards, were unloading an old foot locker and they dropped it. The thing busted wide open, spilling everywhere, I saw it. There was a South Vietnam flag, yellow with red stripes. Three of them, horizontally.” He used his finger to draw three stripes on the countertop.

“He looks too young for Vietnam. Maybe it’s his father’s or something? An uncle’s?” Jeannie said.

“Boys as young as fifteen fought in the war. He ain’t too young. A whole bunch of guns fell out too. An M1, M16. An AK. Hell, I even saw a bayonet as they scurried about putting all that back inside.” Chet told Jeannie all about the weapons he carried and how he was drafted and shipped out within two months. She nodded patiently. Being married for over fifty years, she had to have known all this, though he told it as if he never once mentioned it to her yet.

Murph and I took the long way home; I sipped my coffee while he yellowed the already melting snow along the way. Hawk stood at the edge of his driveway, his bathrobe open, revealing his Cleveland Indians World Series tee shirt and flannel pajama pants, reading the newspaper. Murph bolted his direction as soon as he saw him. Hawk always kept milkbones in his pockets. 

“Can you believe this? This whole world’s gone to hell in a handbasket.” Hawk said when he saw me. 

“Good morning, Hawk.” I said.

“These people get away with everything, if they got enough money. They found 5 pounds of coke and $30,000 in his car. Open and shut, case, right? No, no, no: his crooked lawyer conjured up some story about his client’s rights being violated, yada-yada-yada. Get this: he got off scott free; they’re even going to reimburse him for the time he was held in jail before the trial.” Hawk crumpled the paper under his arm and leaned down to give Murph a treat.

“Did you see someone has moved into the white cabin? The one up on Molkom?”

“Yeah yeah, I saw him. Long-haired hippie type. Not someone we want around here, if you ask me. He came to the lumber yard as I was picking up some supplies to replace a couple rotted out planks on my deck. Been putting that off far too long. Anyway, I saw him up there, I didn’t recognize him, and I know everyone in this town, so I went up to introduce myself. He said his name was Russel and he just moved in and he was here to get some wood to make some repairs to the cabin, ‘comfort upgrades,’ he called them. Well, he was polite enough, but I could tell he was in a rush, so I went about my own business and let him be. But I overheard him talking to the yard worker as I was measuring the cuts. He was asking about how strong the wood was, how well it could weather abuse. Abuse! He used that word, can you believe it? He then asked about soundproofing, where in this town he could get some or if the worker knew anything about it. He’s up to something, I don’t know what, but something more than ‘comfort upgrades,’ that’s for damn sure.” 

“Did you see what he ended up buying?”

“No, I didn’t get a chance, I had told Roy I’d meet him at Joe’s at 8:30, he was going to help me with the deck, but only if I got him coffee first.” Hawk leaned in close, as if someone might be listening, “I tell you what, I’m keeping an eye on him. Something fishy is going on with this soundproofing. He’s got nobody within a quarter mile of his place, what’s he need soundproofing for? There was this guy in Cleveland, a few years back, when I still lived there, who kept three girls locked up for years. Over a decade he held these girls hostage in his basement. No one knew, everything seemed normal. But one of the girls escaped somehow. They found the creep built a bunker in his basement. Fully soundproofed so no one could hear anything. And this was smack dab in the middle of the city!”

“Well, keep me posted. I heard Chet saying he saw a Vietnam flag and some guns with his things. Says he’s probably a veteran.”

“Could be.” Hawk gave Murph another treat. “A lot of them boys came back all messed up. We’ll have to wait and see, but I’m going to keep an eye on him. Find out what he’s up to.”

We continued up the street, Murph chasing squirrels up into the safety of their trees. It was Saturday, and I don’t remember having any specific plans for the day, so I decided we’d keep walking, take another pass by the cabin. Molkom was a steep road, tucked right into the hillside, its steepest section reaching 14% grade. Right now, it was lush with budding shrubs and wildflowers, the yellows and purples and blues popping out amongst the greens. By June, the growth would become more sparse and by July, the dirt road would be difficult to distinguish from the dead land around it. I approached the cabin and heard hammering, buzzsawing, then silence. The sounds came from out back, not inside. Hawk was wrong; he wasn’t building a cage or bunker for captives. Maybe it was a stand-alone structure, but not a bunker, at least. 

For the next several weeks, Murph and I took Molkom every day. My legs protested more each day we made the steep climb and I noticed Murph slowed too. After just two days, the construction noises ceased and nothing else seemed out of the ordinary, except Russel didn’t appear to ever leave. His pick-up sat parked in the same spot and there were no new tire tracks leading to or from the driveway. One morning, Becky was pushing her little one in a stroller up and down the steepest section.

“I’m training for a marathon in September,” she said, “I need to build up my leg strength, so June and I have been coming out here to work the hill three times a week.”

“Have you seen Russel? The new guy that moved into the cabin.”

“Once, yeah.” She pulled a water bottle from a pocket in the stroller and drank a few gulps. “I was resting on that stump not far from his mailbox one morning. He took out the trash and we chatted. Nice guy.” 

Becky had lived here longer than me, probably over twenty years at this point.

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh nothing important. What type of weather to expect up here. Whether Joe’s or Coffee Cabin is better. I told him Joe’s, obviously.”

“Did he say anything about where he’s from? Or why he moved here?”

“No. And I didn’t ask. People come up here to escape, you know? I figured if he wanted it to be known, he’d say something. I think he’s a genius. Some type of inventor that is just living off the royalties of a patent. I saw a lot of schematics in the trash, all hand drawn. Things I couldn’t make sense of. Letters and numbers and symbols scribbled all over the page. It looked like those mathematical proofs Marty’s working on in his algebra class this year. You remember those?”

“Yeah, I do. Do you have any clue what it was?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” she bent her knee and grabbed her ankle, stretching the front of her leg, “I’d never seen anything like it before. But …”

“But what?”

“If you wanted to see, I came back later that night and took a couple of sheets out of the bin. I know I shouldn’t have, it was stupid, but I was curious and people have been talking about who this guy is and Hawk thinks he’s some lady killer and I wanted to know if I needed to be worried, you know?”

“Do you have them with you?” 

“Oh gosh, no. They’re at my house. But I can show you if you want to come by?”

“I’d love to.”

Becky made us coffee and I spent the rest of the morning looking over the drawings. It was just as complicated as she made it out to be and I’m no engineer, but it looked like it was some type of irrigation system, a network of pipes and valves and gauges, though there was no indication of water or plants. After some time, I gave up on understanding and Becky and I talked about other things over a second cup of coffee while Murph worried a stick in the backyard. She said she had no further use for the drawings and that I could keep them if I wanted. I did. 

I read for a while, but after a couple of hours I became restless and took Murph out for another walk. Again, we walked up Molkom, climbing the steep grade a bit more slowly this afternoon. Russel was sitting on his front porch. He had no furniture, so he sat on the edge of the deck where it met the concrete steps. His jeans were faded and torn in some spots, from overuse, not purchased that way like young folks do these days, and he wore a black tee shirt with the image of a wolf on it, something like you’d find at the old National Geographic stores that closed down years ago. Both arms were covered in tattoos. When Murph and I got closer, he looked up and smiled, nodding his head.

“Welcome to the neighborhood,” I said.

“Thank you. Beautiful dog.”

“He may look nice, but he can be a terror, that’s for sure,” I leaned down and ruffled Murph’s fur. “How are you settling in?”

“Oh, fine, thanks. It’s a beautiful town. It’s perfect.”

“Where’re you coming from, if you don’t mind my asking?” 

He ignored my question and stood up, “You have a minute? I have some coffee brewing now.” 

I paused, thinking of Chet and Hawk and Becky, everything they thought they knew about Russel. I thought about him being a mentally unstable veteran and building a hostage chamber. I thought about the drawings, which were still in my pocket. I thought of how he seemed to be a nice enough guy, that the people in this town were always wary of any outsiders: we rarely have people move in because no one ever moves out. Once people move here, they live here until they die.  

“That’d be great, thank you.” He disappeared inside, presumably to pour us some coffee. But maybe to retrieve one of his rifles. I brought his newspaper up from the end of the driveway and helped myself to the front page while I waited. 

“This town is just what I was looking for,” he handed me a mug.

“Are you coming from the city?”

“You could say that. I’ve been around, here and there.” He said. “How long have you lived in town?

“Oh, about fifteen years, give or take. But I almost can’t remember a time before I lived here, you know?”

He took a sip of his coffee and nodded.

“I know you’ve been watching me,” He said, “You. The woman. Everyone, really. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but you won’t find it.”

I sat in silence for a few moments, wondering if there was more. There wasn’t.

“You’re new,” I said, “we don’t get new people often. Hell, Roger and his wife were the last ones, and they’ve been here for seven years or so now.” The folded drawing in my pocket became heavier, as if it was going to break through the cloth and fall out on the steps, exposing me.

“Is that so?”

“People here are curious, is all. You can see, it’s a small town. This place,” I pointed my thumb over my shoulder, “it’s been standing, barely standing, empty for over twenty years. Someone moving in really shocked the people of this town. Some think you bought this place to kidnap people.” I offered a slight chuckle and sipped the coffee.

“And what do you think?”

I realized then that I hadn’t really thought to myself what Russell was doing here. Chet and Hawk and Becky all had their opinions, and I had considered those, but hadn’t drawn any of my own conclusions. 

“You’re running,” I said. “Trying to escape from something, I’m sure of that. But what from or what to, I couldn’t say. This town, these people: we are all running from something. Whether or not we break free, it’s hard to say. So, what do I think? I think you’re just like the rest of us. The details don’t really matter.”

We sat silent, finishing our coffee and listening to the woodpeckers nipping at the trees. Murph watched the squirrels, happy the scarcity of winter had passed, foraging the spring grass. Becky passed, pushing June up and down the hill, furtively glancing over at us. I smiled and waved. 

“I suppose you’re right.” Russell said after a while. “But we can’t ever escape, can we? Not entirely, at least. Who we are, what we’ve done, it always follows us around, wherever we go.”