The House Next Door
Over the years, in the house next door to the one I grew up in, at least three people have died—two of them execution style.
In my toddler years, Mrs. Mills lived in the boxy little bungalow with her adult sons, Marvin and Bud. Like most old women, Mrs. Mills was small but had a body shaped like a garbage bag stuffed with dumplings. She wore ratty slippers and flower-printed gowns that could've been mistaken for pajamas. Mrs. Mills was the first person I had ever known who died, much the way Dan Blocker was the first celebrity ever to pass away. I was probably five or six when she croaked from natural causes, inside that house next door.
Marvin, the older son, expired a couple years later, perhaps in that same house, though I cannot be sure. He'd worked at an amusement park nearby, distributing towels at the pool, back in the good old days before such jobs were outsourced to Bangalore. He was plump and had a cartoon face: sad-dog eyes, round nose, exaggerated creases on the forehead and around the eyes and mouth.
One day when I was retrieving a ball from his yard, Marvin came out and gave me a package of polish sausages. He could not eat them, he said, on account of his diabetes. A couple weeks later he was dead. I still think of him every time I bite into a kielbasa.
Bud lived in that house for many years after. Much in the fashion of his species, he wore so-called “muscle tee-shirts” and drab khakis and black suspenders. He, too, resembled a cartoon character. But while Marvin may have originated from the pen of a Warner Brothers artist, Bud looked more like a harried husband in a New Yorker cartoon. He had swirls of dark hair and wore outsized glasses. Those black glasses, in fact, dominated his appearance, in a Drew Carey sort of way.
Bud was the farthest thing from a harried husband. A confirmed bachelor, he continued to harbor warm feelings for a Filipino woman he'd met during the war. The fact that he was in the war has always puzzled me, for Bud had no peripheral vision. He wasn't allowed to drive a car, yet there he was, in the Pacific, battling the Axis Powers. At times I picture him as a prisoner of war, taunted by the Japanese: “Ah, poor silly Occidental cannot see from the corners of his eyes!”
In all the years he lived alone there, Bud never once had a guest. On occasion the old bachelor invited me inside to retrieve some magazines he was finished with. In that dark, smoky living room, his easy chair was sandwiched between identical coffee tables. On the nearer table were the magazines I’d take: Argosy and True and various Naval-themed publications. On the farther table were heaping stacks of Playboys and Penthouses. These were not proffered. At that young age, I didn’t know much, but I knew Bud had it good.
He had a good job at a print shop, but one day in the late 1970s he got sore over something and quit. He spent the next couple years traveling a lot, mostly to dude ranches in the Southwest, and he found time to become a Yahtzee aficionado. Then suddenly his passbook was bare. These were the days of stagflation, and it was difficult enough for anyone to find good work, much more so for a man of sixty with no peripheral vision. Desperate, he took a dishwashing job at an Italian restaurant nearby. He went through that position and about ten others like it until, mercifully, he reached retirement age.
Bud didn't die in that house next door, but he lost his mind there. He began suffering from Alzheimer's disease. While talking with him over the back fence, I found his sentences increasingly disjointed, as if a prankster had spliced audio tapes of his past conversations. Soon he moved to a subsidized high rise in Grandview, where by some accounts he was a big hit with the widows.
One of my brothers bought the house next door and lived in it for a while, even when it was no longer the house next door, owing to my parents’ move to a nicer part of town. The white bungalow and its neighborhood quickly reached an acute state of disrepair. My brother kept a pistol handy at all times, for he regularly heard gunshots at night. One day he came home from work and discovered new locks on the doors, a mystery that put him in the mood to shoot someone and ask questions later.
During the early 1990s, an arsonist torched a dozen or so homes in the neighborhood. Perhaps the fires and the gunplay inspired my brother to sell the place, to an outfit that converts rotten properties into Section 8 housing. About a year later, the occupants of that bungalow, a couple in their twenties, were gunned down while their young children watched. The newspaper said the male victim may have been a drug informant.
Just hours after the corpses were removed, that house was boarded up so securely that nothing but ghosts could come or go.
In my toddler years, Mrs. Mills lived in the boxy little bungalow with her adult sons, Marvin and Bud. Like most old women, Mrs. Mills was small but had a body shaped like a garbage bag stuffed with dumplings. She wore ratty slippers and flower-printed gowns that could've been mistaken for pajamas. Mrs. Mills was the first person I had ever known who died, much the way Dan Blocker was the first celebrity ever to pass away. I was probably five or six when she croaked from natural causes, inside that house next door.
Marvin, the older son, expired a couple years later, perhaps in that same house, though I cannot be sure. He'd worked at an amusement park nearby, distributing towels at the pool, back in the good old days before such jobs were outsourced to Bangalore. He was plump and had a cartoon face: sad-dog eyes, round nose, exaggerated creases on the forehead and around the eyes and mouth.
One day when I was retrieving a ball from his yard, Marvin came out and gave me a package of polish sausages. He could not eat them, he said, on account of his diabetes. A couple weeks later he was dead. I still think of him every time I bite into a kielbasa.
Bud lived in that house for many years after. Much in the fashion of his species, he wore so-called “muscle tee-shirts” and drab khakis and black suspenders. He, too, resembled a cartoon character. But while Marvin may have originated from the pen of a Warner Brothers artist, Bud looked more like a harried husband in a New Yorker cartoon. He had swirls of dark hair and wore outsized glasses. Those black glasses, in fact, dominated his appearance, in a Drew Carey sort of way.
Bud was the farthest thing from a harried husband. A confirmed bachelor, he continued to harbor warm feelings for a Filipino woman he'd met during the war. The fact that he was in the war has always puzzled me, for Bud had no peripheral vision. He wasn't allowed to drive a car, yet there he was, in the Pacific, battling the Axis Powers. At times I picture him as a prisoner of war, taunted by the Japanese: “Ah, poor silly Occidental cannot see from the corners of his eyes!”
In all the years he lived alone there, Bud never once had a guest. On occasion the old bachelor invited me inside to retrieve some magazines he was finished with. In that dark, smoky living room, his easy chair was sandwiched between identical coffee tables. On the nearer table were the magazines I’d take: Argosy and True and various Naval-themed publications. On the farther table were heaping stacks of Playboys and Penthouses. These were not proffered. At that young age, I didn’t know much, but I knew Bud had it good.
He had a good job at a print shop, but one day in the late 1970s he got sore over something and quit. He spent the next couple years traveling a lot, mostly to dude ranches in the Southwest, and he found time to become a Yahtzee aficionado. Then suddenly his passbook was bare. These were the days of stagflation, and it was difficult enough for anyone to find good work, much more so for a man of sixty with no peripheral vision. Desperate, he took a dishwashing job at an Italian restaurant nearby. He went through that position and about ten others like it until, mercifully, he reached retirement age.
Bud didn't die in that house next door, but he lost his mind there. He began suffering from Alzheimer's disease. While talking with him over the back fence, I found his sentences increasingly disjointed, as if a prankster had spliced audio tapes of his past conversations. Soon he moved to a subsidized high rise in Grandview, where by some accounts he was a big hit with the widows.
One of my brothers bought the house next door and lived in it for a while, even when it was no longer the house next door, owing to my parents’ move to a nicer part of town. The white bungalow and its neighborhood quickly reached an acute state of disrepair. My brother kept a pistol handy at all times, for he regularly heard gunshots at night. One day he came home from work and discovered new locks on the doors, a mystery that put him in the mood to shoot someone and ask questions later.
During the early 1990s, an arsonist torched a dozen or so homes in the neighborhood. Perhaps the fires and the gunplay inspired my brother to sell the place, to an outfit that converts rotten properties into Section 8 housing. About a year later, the occupants of that bungalow, a couple in their twenties, were gunned down while their young children watched. The newspaper said the male victim may have been a drug informant.
Just hours after the corpses were removed, that house was boarded up so securely that nothing but ghosts could come or go.
posted by JW at jwopks@gmail.com at 8:51 PM
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