The Picket Fence People

    The feel is different when walking at night, I like it.  Tonight though, I started out kind of late; and there’s still a long walk ahead, at least eight or nine miles.  I guess I should have left the bar earlier, be back in the barracks by now.  Old, drafty, wooden buildings, but they’re better than nothing; I’ve had that too.  Hope I get back before daylight.

    I flip my collar up, hopefully making it a little warmer inside my field jacket.  Army fatigues don’t keep you warm like you think they would.  October in Arkansas can be cold, bone chilly cold.  It’s not quite freezing cold; more like shivering that won’t stop cold.  Hope it doesn’t rain, or sleet, or something like that, then it would be freezing cold.  The collar on my field jacket wouldn’t do much good then. 

    A shrill wind is blowing through the pine trees; it’s kind of eerie.  The clouds rolling pass the moon makes it even darker, an Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King kind of darker.  Next thing you know I’ll be hearing a raven calling, or see someone floating through the trees.  The goose bumps running up the back of my neck are from the bite in the wind, not the phantoms in the night; I keep telling myself.

    These look like nice houses; the windows have curtains and bright lights, the yards have trees and picket fences, and the cars look new and don’t have dents.  Every house probably has a big living room so the people can get together, and lots of warm, cozy bedrooms so everyone has their very own.  I bet those are nice people in there, too, a mom, a dad and a couple kids, a family.  It’s not like the barracks where you live with fifty other people, all by yourself.

  I don’t want to get too close, so I stay out here in the street, probably spook the nice people, anyway.  If I saw someone like me walking by on a night like this I’d be thinking, “What is he doing out there?”  It sure is cold out here and dark, except for the lights in the windows.  These look like nice houses, with picket fences and nice families.  I wish I had one too, a family.