Hang on. If I’m gonna talk to you, I need slippers. It’s distracting how cold m’feets are.

…There.

The closet door is still open because Milhous is in there. The moment I opened it, he went DASHING in there like the closet has many interesting sites that he’s only read about online.
Anyway. Edsel and I did not get a lot of sleep last night, because there is some sort of drama next door, and here’s what I know.
I’ve spoken about the guy next door before. We’ll call him T. I’ve heard different accounts, but from what I can gather, he hovers around my age (looks older) (in MY opinion) (maybe everyone in the hood thinks we’re a matched set and they’re just waiting for us to fall for each other) (which might be difficult now as I think he is dead) ANYWAY he hovers around my age and I think he has lived here his whole life. I’ve heard rumors he had a full life outside of this neighborhood, failed, and returned. But I think he told me himself he grew up here.
I do know that in my back yard? Where that shed is? He cut that door that’s there when he was 8.

Apparently there was a dog who lived here and they never let it in (I know. Frown face) and he cut that door so the dog would have shelter. How the dog got the door open, I don’t know.
About a year ago, he came over with some paintings of his. “I thought you might like these,” he said. They were pretty good! I have two of his paintings up. “Yeah. I used to do stuff,” is what he said as he handed me the paintings, and that broke my heart.
He drinks, see. He’s bad to drink, as they say here. Therefore, he had almost no money. He did odd jobs here and there, but couldn’t really afford water and power. For awhile, the neighborhood chipped in for his water bill.
When I first moved in, he had this woman living there, helping him pay for that sort of stuff. She planted seeds from the dollar store and little white and yellow flowers grew on the side of the house. At night, they’d sit on the deck in back and Milhous would jump the fence and join them and their cat, Sissy. It was sort of lovely. She hung their laundry on the old line that their yard still has.
Then T, the guy next door, and his roommate with the flower seeds got in a terrible fight and she moved out. Not long after, he moved a young couple in. They seemed wiry, nervous. Even just watching them walk across the yard you got a wired feeling from them. Jittery.
The woman and I sort of became friendly, though. She liked gardening, and asked if she could pull weeds from my flower bed when she saw them, and sometimes she’d ask for a clipping of whatever was growing in the front or back of my yard. I always said sure. I gave them ice in summer when they didn’t have water. Sometimes I gave them food.
But it was obvious there were drugs involved, and then drug sales, and people walking in the back door, which meant past my damn windows, day and night.
Last week, about 647 police cars pulled up. They took my neighbor T. outside while they raided the house. They found … a lot. And they took the couple to jail, where they may be for a long time, according to the neighbors who know from this stuff.
Meanwhile, we all worried about T. There was rumor they might condemn the house, and then where would he go? His house was very quiet this past week.
Last night,
BOOM.
I heard what sounded like a gunshot. I don’t know why I didn’t hop right on NextDoor, which might as well be renamed, “Did anyone hear gunshots?” That’s all my NextDoor ever is. Except there’s one wingnut who gets on there and capitalizes every word and either praises or condemns the police, depending on his mood. His posts are always slightly racist, as well.
But the wingnut is neither here nor there. The point is, I heard a shot. But then right after I heard a motorcycle, and the people across the street have two, so I thought, Oh, their motorcycle just backfired.
But when I went to bed, I saw I had a text. “Did you hear that?” my across-the-street neighbor had texted me earlier. “Sounded like a gunshot real close.”
This morning, at around 5:30 a.m., I heard talking. You’ve never been in a neighborhood as quiet as this one at night. There are no neighbors behind us, just tracks and a steep dropoff, and we’re on a dead end behind us and also at the end of one road. So voices woke me up. Naturally, I turned on my Ring to see the front yard.
There were four police cars outside. They were next door.
I pulled on my robe and was delighted to see my sizeable ass in said robe on the Ring camera when I checked it later. A policeman was at the threshold of T’s door, taking pictures. “Is everything OK?” I asked, and oh, sure. We’re just a band of policemen taking pictures of a room before sunrise. Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morrrrrrrnin.
“Everything’s fine, ma’am,” said the cop, and I have to tell you I don’t believe him.
So, I never went back to sleep, but no coroner came or ambulance. No fire trucks or anyone but police. And by 7 a.m., they had all left.
So what is UP? I’m dying to ask the neighbor across the street, but even though I saw her light on I didn’t dare text that early.
Did T shoot himself? Was it some sort of drug thing even though he wasn’t involved in the drug part? Is he dead? What is going on?
If I find out more from the neighbor at a decent hour, I will alert you.
Mysteriously,
June
UPDATE: A neighbor says she thinks she saw T. in the police car early this morning. So if that’s true, he’s not dead.
UPDATE 2: Same neighbor just went over there and the door is locked and there’s no answer. Which is odd. FRaDW.
UPDATE 3: OK, the guy who got arrested for drugs is out of jail and he came home (next door) to find all this stuff gone. That is why the police were called. The gunshot? No idea. That was hours apart. The gunshot was at 9:40-ish and the call to police about stolen stuff was at 4 in the morning.