The New Stranger

Coming outside, breathing this new, white picket, suburbia for the first time was like a new beginning.  My yard looks identical to the others.  The grass looks so green and it really looks fake like those artificial grasses you see at football stadiums and on some city streets.  I glance around, taking in all the two story, blue bordered houses that parallel down Chestnut Street.  Each one are duplicates but they all have their own identities and they live in breath like us humans.  One yard is celebrating there trivial rose garden then another one has obviously the home and garden network and has color palettes bricking lining there front with different ferns that look dead and stone statues lying about but mine, still fresh and crisp is burdened with weeds signalizing to all the neighbors that I was new and also a stranger.  These carnivorous plants cut away at my grass and started to mark off its territory by the fence and along my yards boundaries while the sun burns formless circles of yellow, hanging blades.  Before I am talked about in this community for lowering their property value I must take action and remove these weeds from their rightful habitat.  Who am I to say that these weeds aren’t supposed to be here?  Oh yeah, they look awful.  And looking awful isn’t really in style these days not like in the 18th century.  I don’t want to lose anyone’s superficial money for them so I must apprehend to these societal pressures.  I’ll do this murdering with my hands.  I went out last night so I didn’t look silly picking dandelions.  Someone will come over to my house and want to shake my hand but not with someone with green and yellow patches on his palms.  That would be disgraceful in such a this honorary country.  At the local hardware store I got gardening gloves that were $25 bucks for just work gloves with daisies for the print and this weed killer which was really cheap and ineffective and made me wonder what was actually in that opaque bottle and if they killed weeds what did it to my mind. 

    As I approach my white picket fence, where the weeds are making an advance into my neighbors area.  I see a guy possibly a little younger then me step out of this house and his path seemed to lead over to where I was.  I quickly get on my hands and knees and began grasping the weeds by the handful, trying to stop their getaway.  The last thing I need is for everyone to hate me.  Not only will I lower there wealth but they won’t even like me.  If I could charm them then they will forget about my lack of caring about my property but if I just refuse to treat my yard which spreads into theirs.  The closer the man got, in his blue jeans and orange collared shirt, the older he looked.  I could witness the gray hairs growing on his black, short hair.  Wrinkles were showing on the crevices of his grin and just above his eyes.  He looks tired.  To not be rude, when he put his hands on my fence, I stood up and acknowledged his presence with a stare.  I sort of looked up in his direction and slightly nodded my head while blinking.  He tapped the wood like a drum roll and told me his name.
    “Hiya, I’m Andrew.”
    I reached out my hand, removed my right glove and went in for a gratuitous greeting.
    “Nice to meet you, Andrew, I’m Seth.  Seth Chrome.”
    “Yeah, Seth, just moved in huh?”
    “It was about time, just got out of my home town.”
    “This was my first area too.  So my wife, see her in there” as he was pointing to his kitchen window to a brunette taller than Andrew, wearing a female apron that resembled a blouse “wanted me to come out here and meet the new stranger.”
    “Well here I am.” as I faked a laugh, just like his.
    “But I’m not really used to these type of ... arraignments, more into business transactions, yah know, like salesmanship.  So what do you do.”
    “I’m still trying to find that out.  I’m good with my hands and on top of my mind.  I’ve worked roofing before and have done a few jobs in sales as well.”
    “Well this is a good area for that.  We got new jobs popping up what seems to be everyday.  You can’t blame them though, look at this suburb.  Remarkable.  What brought you here anyway's, Andy...you mind if I call you that?”
    I couldn’t tell you if it was the clouds just passing, stopping the sunlight from our private conversation or the motions of weed-picking.  But I lost my visuals of Andrew and was taken back.  The fence and all blurred into darkness as I recalled my story, why I thought I came here to live in Suburban life instead of living with my families tradition and entering my families trade as roofs men.  I’ve been doing it for years and I told myself that it was just a job and I was looking for a career.
    “I used to sort of be a street racer.  I didn’t do it for money or anything but it was one of those things that you did when the moment presented itself to you.  I had a 1994 Supra and I figured if a person next to me at a street light wanted to rev there engine while staring at a red light then they should be considered a worthy foe.  Well there was this one time when this pickup truck revved there engine in the only highway in my town, that lead through the strip malls into some bowling alleys and bars and which then dipped down and then picked back up into a slope where it led into a 3 way stop which connected our town to two other neighboring towns.   He looked at me, a man in his early twenties as I gripped my stick shift and held down the clutch, as I glanced back at him, a fat rounded head man that looked to be in his late thirties.  I thought he was to old for speed but when that light turned green I saw the moonlight shine off his eyes.  He wasn’t doing it for the win but for the excitement.  I got a lead do to my front wheel drive but his four by four eventually picked up and we were hood to hood for a good stretch of the road.  We passed Kohl’s doing fifty and then half a mile later we passed Dairy Queen doing 115 but then the two lane road merged and I was on the right, the lane about to close, and he gripped his steering wheel and smirked over at me and floored it.  I wasn’t in the business to risk my car over these extremities so I bowed down and went behind him like a pace car.  We kept our speed as the road dipped, just following each other.  But then I looked up the road at vibrating lights creeping closer to the three way that we were approaching.  First they reflected off the trees, as the blue and red lights flashed one by one and then the road underneath the stop light.  The police were going awful fast but we both witnessed these lights so we took caution.  The truck turned right down a subdivision that was finally completed and I took the next one I could see, right across from the bowling alley, where the roads were paved out but only two houses besides the model home actually existed.  The streets were muddy due to the construction crews that would work on these houses for a week and then go work on a house that would actually get lived in the remainder of the month.  The ride got my ride a little dirty in the process because the engraved mud from those oversized cement trucks left them to automatically flake up on contact.  The road formed a ribbon and I quickly turned around and tried to see where the cops were going.  I saw one fly by my street and make a left into the pick up trucks territory.  I breathed.  Then I saw a second one pass as I begin to move forward to make my escape but the lights, and the police man’s face looked urgent when he looked down my road.  I was too afraid to move.  I just sit there, for at least a half and hour until they came down my road and arrested me.  They were pretty surprised when I was still there, almost like I was some sort of humanitarian but they still had to give me my punishment.  They told me that they never did catch the pickup truck guy.  But it didn’t matter because they still hand cuffed for my bout of wreck-less driving.  I’ve always thought you couldn’t be determined wreck-less unless you had someone to reference off of but everyone was asleep and I still got put in the back of a cop car to the county jail.  The ride was long in those tinted windows, sitting on my hands, and listening to cop A and B talk about sports like they were discussing politics or they were some sort of commentators.  I had to just watch the sun moon lower into the horizon.  Then they started going faster until we approached a big facility which was the County Jail which I have never seen before this point.  It was just grew around the exterior like an airport, a hangar, or a prison.  Window-less and the route up was confusing just incase someone pulled an old smash and go into the prison walls routine they would never be able to find there way out due to the confusing nature of such roads and the inability to do such task sober.  Then we parked out front, they lifted me out of my seat with my hands still behind my back, tugging until my shoulders were being bent the wrong way and I wanted to scream out in fear that my arms would only work in a praying mantis gesture.  They brought me into the prison, to a desk with another white man, who asked me for all my information.  But before that I had to wait into an invisible waiting line to be served which was me just sitting by myself for twenty minutes so the police officers could talk over a cup of joe at three A.M.
    I looked up because I heard a noise, the only sense to pull you away from a story, and it was my neighbors door.  His embalming wife came out without her apron on and started swifting towards us.  I paused for a few moments and Andrew seemed to take notice. 
    “I’ll just wait for her.”
    She came over and greeted herself with a very blush voice and glossy lips.
    “Hey, I am Catherine.”
    “I’m Seth, I am just telling you husband the reason I came here.”
    “Yeah honey, it’s interesting so just listen.”
    “So then when I finally gave them all my identification, everything in my pockets which only included my wallet and set of keys, they lead me off to a small room, still white that just had a payphone in it.  They told me my bail was 2500 and if I didn’t find someone to pay it I would be in here for a month.  Yeah this wasn’t my first ticket for street racing, it was about my fourth.  I never knew when to quit.  I think I might of gotten caught each time I have done it which just seems stupid now.  I decided that the only person to call was my father because he has helped me out in the past and would get the pain that I have been through in the last two hours.  Nothing is worse then waiting.  I pick up the phone which was connected to the wall and entered my fifty cent which the officers gave me and dialed his number.  It rang three times before he picked up. 
    “Hey Dad, I got bad news.”
    “Who do you think you are calling at this time of night, you might wake your fucking mother.”
    “Dad, I am in the slammer.  Can you come get me out or something?
    “What the fuck for son, did you get caught street racing again?
    “Yeah dad I’m in here for wreck-less driving.  The bail is 2500.  Is there anyway you can clear that and I might be able to pay you back.  We can work out some arraignment.
    “If I get you out this time, you’ll just do it again and again until my dumb ass is so tired that I get a wreck-less driving ticket and you are to poor paying me back to be able to bail my ass out.”
    “Haha good one dad.”
    I began grasping the metal cord holding the phone to the wall, trying to twirl it around my arm like a bracelet.  I wondered how long this would take until he caved.
    “But seriously, I got work tomorrow down at the docks and I can’t be late.  They will probably can me for sure this time.
    “Son, for christ’s sake did I ever tell you the story before I was a roofs men. 
    “I don’t think so but what does it have to do with me.”
    “Well just listen and find out.”
    I looked around again and it seems like a crowd has started to engage in my conversation.  There was two kids hugging onto Andrews pants pockets which I am guessing are his kids and another family has come by.
    “Before I was a roofs men I was a farmer’s hand.  I would help the farmer do all his tasks unless it meant driving his tractors or touching machinery.  It was before I was 16 and my family needed some extra money because our grandparents were in the hospital and couldn’t pay off all there bills.  I decided to blow off school so I could attend to my family.  I worked all summer long but it was the worst weather this area has seen in fifty years.  It was either raining to hard and caused the plants to be over watered and then for July it was just continuously hot so they just withered and decayed.  The farmer looked at me at the end of August and told me that he was sorry but he couldn’t pay me.  He would hopefully get to next year.  I didn’t argue with him or complain and I just told him that I understood.  I never saw that money that he owed me but my family didn’t need it any ways. 
    “So what’s that got to do with me?  When are you going to be here?”
    “I’ll be there when you understand the message?”
    “I stayed in prison for the whole month.  He never came and got me but now I think I know the meaning.  And that’s why I think I am here.”
    They all just stared at me like I was the new stranger and they didn’t know if they were ready to accept me just yet. 
    “But that was ten years ago.”
    I tried to clear it up but they still just stared at me like I was wearing a stupid outfit.  Suburbia has another thing coming.