The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Up behind us and through our woods there’s a road that snakes into the interior, got a few houses back there, even some folks who live there full time. Marge was one of those. She moved here when the clearcut ruined her own woods down by Lake Stevens. Course, about a year later, two or three of her neighbors cleared their 2 and a half acres and she felt like there was really nowhere to hide anymore.

She asked me to come up one day. Her husband was there in the livingroom with a whisky glass and the TV tuned to a game show. It was about 10 in the morning and he was drunk as a purple skunk and friendly as most alcoholics, meaning he wouldn’t say hello or shake hands. Marge made muted apologies, said he was a boat skipper, gone a lot of the time. From what I could see he was gone most of the time, even when he was in the room.

Marge shot herself a few years later, I can pretty much guess why, sad deal, sad woman. Her husband offered the place to his no-account kin, some punk pedophile the sheriff warned us neighbors about. The kid ran around with a crossbow, putting arrows into the neighbors’ houses, killing deer and leaving them to rot. He had parties the neighbors complained about, but he told them to jam it, he’d do what he wanted. The cops weren’t much help, pretty typical, so for four or five years we had this drug addict Chester the Molester for a roommate on the South End.

A few years ago Marge’s husband stopped by my shack during our annual Ma Day Studio Art Tour. Said he was moving, just wanted to say so long. “I haven’t been much of a neighbor,” he said sheepishly, “but I’ve quit drinking and I’m starting over. Wanted to apologize and say goodbye.”

A better man might’ve accepted that hand and that apology. But … I’m not that man. I leaned in on him and said, “I’m sorry too, Charlie, but it’ll be a better place with your sorry ass gone and your evil kin too. Adios, man. Move a long ways away, be all right with me.”

I believe in second chances, I really do. But I’m not one who believes an apology necessarily makes things right. I know he didn’t hold the gun to Marge’s head. I know he didn’t kill her, she killed herself. But I’ll be damned if I’d shake his hand and say good luck. I said instead, good riddance. Like I mentioned before, a better man …. that’s not me.

Hits: 75