4It was one of those summer nights, when you could hear the pop of fire crackers and Roman candles in the distance, and when one tried to open a door it stuck fast from humidity. The buzz of the cicadas had been strangely absent, though, but was not exactly missed. And the darkness of the night was like a fuzzy blanket, folding itself around everything and giving a sense of being something you could reach out and touch.
I sat up on the roof, even though I knew very well that this wasn't something I was allowed to do. My parents would've been very upset to find me there, but I was still full of the adolescent feeling of invincibility, so the idea that I would be caught was never a serious possibility in my mind.
A radio clattered with static in the background. It was set on the windowsill, and the volume was turned up so that it was possible to understand what the people were saying even with all the static. It was the national broadcast of the Sunday night baseball games, the Dodgers versus the Astros. The Los Angeles Dodgers, not the Brooklyn Dodgers. I didn't know if the fact that they were playing the Astros made this obvious or not, because I had the vague notion that the Astros were an expansion team, but did not know from which year.
But I really wasn't a fan of either teams, so it didn't matter to me that the Astros were winning, or that it was setting itself up to be the Rocket's tenth win of the season. I knew those facts at the time, and I can still remember them now, but it doesn't matter to me now, and didn't matter to me then. It was just a ball game to listen to. I wasn't a fan of any one team in particular, really. I was more just a fan of baseball in general. Although, at that moment, I was rather enamored of the Devil Rays, but it was hard not to be. They were on the win streak of the century, afterall.
The air was heavy around me, and there was a stillness which hinted that it would rain later on. And there was a distant rumble of thunder, and once in a while the radio crackled with even more static as lightning somewhere far off beyond my vision cracked through the star-robbed sky. Downstairs my mother watched the ball game on TV, and my brother played computer games, and my father napped off and on. I could hear the dull noise of the game on the TV even from where I sat. She always had been the fan of the family.
At night, there was always degrees of darkness. The things on the ground that were tall, such as telephone poles and trees, were always the darkest, and I could see the vague outline of them against the slightly lighter sky. The humidity of the evening made me feel as if I was just another part of the darkness, and wasn't an entirely unwelcome feeling. It made me feel better to feel as if I was part of it, sort of part of nature. I felt closer to myself at times like those.
There was nothing special about the night. It could've been any night, really, except that the Astros and Dodgers never shared another Sunday night national broadcast again that summer. But it barely registered with me what teams were playing, just that baseballs were being caught, thrown, and hit around, so it could've just as easily been the Twins and the Mariners. There wasn't anything about the evening that made it different from any of the others that summer.
But, then, I suppose, something happened, and the night became a file to be set aside and stored forever in my memory, for me to remember every insignificance of what had been done that evening and by who. Otherwise I wouldn't've remembered who had been playing baseball, or how many roman candles I had heard going off, or that the radio was sputtering with so much static from the distant thunderstorm.
My neighbor stepped out on his terrace, and was talking to himself. It wasn't what made me remember, because it wasn't an unusual thing to see him speaking with himself. No one paid any attention to it, really, and when they did it was only to have laughing fits about the absurdity of his conversations. Even in the 21st century, people were still having fun at others expense. People were still looking down on those less fortunate than themselves. People still didn't stop to consider that they could help instead of laugh.
I listened to what he said. I didn't know why I did it, since the ball game was more interesting in the long run to me. A quick laugh at the schizo's expense was a moment of amusement, but the ball game was more interesting to listen to than the ramblings of a mentally ill neighbor. But I decided to listen to what he was saying, and turned down the radio so it was only a fuzzy sort of background music.
He said some pretty scary things. And maybe I should've realized what was about to happen. No, really, actually I should've been able to tell and actually done something other than remain sitting on the roof of my house. My parent's house. I didn't own it. The man next door owned his house even if he was probably a good case for a mental asylum. He owned the house he lived in, but I didn't own the one I lived in.
He pulled out something indistinct from his pocket as he stood there rambling to the person none of us would ever be able to see. I could see the very vague outline of it as he brought it closer to himself, and I probably should've yelled. It may've stopped him. But if I hadn't, everyone would've been too late. If I didn't stop him there wasn't any chance anyone else would've.
But I didn't stop him. No, I just sat there in a teenager-ish sort of haze, not aware enough of the implications as I should've been. Even if they were obvious. Even if I didn't realize just how obvious until I could look back in retrospect.
The man shot himself in the face.
In the distance, another roman candle popped.