The Good Neighbor

     The evergreen overrun of Balboa Park--9th Street, San Diego, senile mansions sliced into apartments--housed a crosscut of American blood: black, white, Mexican...Vietnamese.  Good neighbors were those you didn't see or hear and only met in passing for hello, the weather and a squint for the dead bird or rat in the dumpster, no doubt.

     One time, the death smell grew and with it conversation; the first rushed you along, while the second forced a stop.  Two trash days came and went, but the stench, nearly visible, remained.  We guessed cat, then dog, and searched, but failed to find one.  Then someone thought to ask about the old man who lived upstairs.  No one had seen him in weeks.  We climbed the stairs, knocked, and got no answer, so boosted a  young man up to the balcony, his feet on our shoulders.  He pulled himself up and over the ironwork, and, looking through the French doors, called down his description:  "It's him, all right!  He's slumped over in an easy chair, dark, slimy looking!  The smell's choking me; I'm coming down!"

     Tina, from number two below, telephoned.  No one knew the old man's name, knew of any relative, but the coroner came flanked by two men dressed in white, angels with hairy arms and black shoes.  They picked him up so gently, the old man fell apart, so they shoveled him into a bag and rolled him away on a cart.


(March 1986)