David Was an Introvert

David was an introvert. The kind of guy who got along better with pets than people. Maybe his father killed himself when he was young. He lived in the big blue house on the other side of the ivy covered fence. Lived there with a woman who I presume was his wife but had the look of being more like a sister. David would go running sometimes. He wore nothing but flimsy little blue running shorts and shoes and socks. His mop of dark hair would flap behind his crown of baldness. He would run fast and come striding back into his yard on his long skinny legs with his bare chest heaving. Like a train wreck, I couldn’t help looking.

He came outside to work in the yard sometimes. Except for when he was running he moved very slowly. His other outfit was a blue flannel shirt and jeans, even in the summer. He was one of those people who got lucky in style from 1988-1993 but that’s all over now. David didn’t care. He had two cars. A late model but not new royal blue Ford Thunderbird and an old minty blue Chevrolet boat, I don’t know which model. He usually parked them one behind the other across the street. One day a car coming down the steep hill to the t-intersection of our street misjudged the right turn and crunched the corner bumper of David’s old car. They drove off without stopping. David didn’t work, or at least he didn’t leave the house everyday in any sort of work-like schedule. He barely left the house at all. On Sunday mornings he would come out followed by the mousey blond woman. They didn’t look dressed for church. They got in the Thunderbird and drove off.

Sometimes David would be out sweeping the sidewalk or tending mysteriously to some chore in the yard when I came home. He would look up but would never be the first to speak. If I didn’t say something we would pass in silence. But I always did, even during those months that I was mad at him for tagging along behind our other jerk-face neighbor who stormed into our yard one evening all red in the face and oozing Napoleon complexity, demanding to speak to “the renters” after we lit off some fireworks (good ones from the BC rez too). David was a follower. I couldn’t hold that against him.

So I always said hello and he was glad to talk, albeit clumsily. He didn’t offer much conversation from his side. But he held his gaze steady wanting more from you. I often closed with a several rounds of farewells tossed back over my shoulder as I huffed bags of groceries or the baby seat up the stairs to the yard, “Well, nice seeing you, David.” “Okay, take care then, David.” By the time I got to the front door he would still be standing at the edge of our yards in his blue flannel and hunched shoulders peering around the shrubs.

One day he met his match in our friend Michael whom he must have happened upon while Michael was smoking out front under the big cedar tree. Michael falls along the left-hand continuum of social uniqueness too but in a completing functional way – hyper-functional even. His father killed himself. He likes cocaine. He talks more than anyone I know, even my mother. But there are interesting things peppered into the constant stream of dialogue. He cares nothing for social mores or political correctness but is full of emotion and has an exact and lasting memory. He’s damn funny as a result.

I don’t know how long he was out there talking to David, but he came inside with more information about him that I had ever uncovered. David was an amateur radio broadcaster. Had a studio in his basement. Sure enough, there was a huge antenna on his roof that I once saw him fiddling with. His old minty Chevy had a cryptic license plate that apparently was his call sign. I imagined his basement was outfitted like some kind of bunker. If there was ever a disaster I could use my weird anti-social cat that David and his sister-wife liked to gain access to his food stores and radio.

I don’t see David anymore. We’ve moved away. But his cars are still parked out front when I drive past from time to time. Last night I had a dream about him. He was down in the arboretum raking up huge piles of leaves. He was there with my dog, Blue.