The Stranger at 32 Sycamore Street

Mrs. Ferguson

Mrs. Mavis Ferguson knew everything there was to know about the life and times of Sycamore Street. In fact, she saw it as her personal business to monitor all local on goings. The tidy houses with their swaths of lush green lawn and shiny Cadillacs repeating in an idyllic, domestic parade was something like a tiny vulnerable realm in her eyes, with herself, the head and founder of the neighborhood’s homeowner’s association, as the sworn protector. One could almost picture a shining knight’s sword in place of her perpetual gardening trowel.

So yes, she knew – knew that the Billings were planning on getting another dog (hopefully a quieter breed), that old Mrs. Angstrom was cultivating even more of those tacky zinnias to plant out front, and that the Mayberry boys were almost certainly the ones who had broken her side window with a baseball. She was even aware of the eyerolls and jeers from neighbors that viewed her attentiveness as obsession. Nevertheless, she persisted in her crusade of constant vigilance.

Which is why she could determine with certainty that she absolutely did not recognize the man walking across the street that Tuesday afternoon. She turned away from the already-immaculate rosebush she was pruning to give him a sharp once-over.

He walked in a jaunty, self-important kind of way at odds with his shabby clothes. Youngish, but aged by too much drink and not enough food. No fresh shave or neat haircut could hide the sallowness earned by a lifetime of rough living. A beatnik she thought, disgusted. This was exactly the sort of threat she had sworn to ward off from her beloved dominion.

Seeing her watching him, he called a passing greeting. Too well-bred to do otherwise, she gave a polite bob of her straw sunhat in acknowledgement but didn't smile. She didn’t like the look of him at all, but even more concerning was his manner. This stranger strutted about with a boldness, a familiarity that struck her as a personal offense. Who does he think he is?

She made a mental note to report the passing of the ruffian to her husband and perhaps even the association at large. Such riffraff would not be tolerated on her precious Sycamore Street.

August Mannon

The dainty chime of the doorbell could barely be heard over the cheerful cacophony resounding through 32 Sycamore Street. The bells rang in concert with little Jeanie’s wails as she faked a very tragic death on the living room carpet (she had been recently cast as lead in the fifth grade play and was taking the role quite seriously). Nor could the chimes rival the din of the kitchen where August Mannon playfully teased his wife, Claire, who swatted him away, laughing, their dinner burning unbidden.

A round of knocking finally dragged August toward the front hall, still chuckling at the last rib Claire called to his back. He wasn’t overly eager to answer the door – they weren’t expecting anyone, which meant it was probably one of his neighbors, which meant it was almost certainly Mrs. Ferguson coming to tell him their trashcans were the wrong shade of silver or some such.

He peeked carelessly through the peephole and froze. The lingering smile slid from his face.

He dearly, dearly wished it had been Mrs. Ferguson.

August stood there motionless for a long moment, his face pressed to the wood of the door. His rapidly increasing breaths fogged the peephole glass, clouding his view of the face he’d thought he’d never have to see again. This wasn’t supposed to happen – this couldn’t happen.

Claire called from the kitchen, inquiring after the visitor, and August finally snapped out of his stupor. Slowly, gingerly, he pushed himself away from the door and breathed deeply, like a diver about to plunge into a freezing ocean. Then, with a damp palm, he opened the door.

Staring at the man before him, August was reminded of a Western he and Claire had seen on their last date night – he could almost hear the sound of spurs tinkling and distant coyote cries as the men held their stand-off, toe to toe, utterly silent. August drew first. “Evening sir, how can I help you?” He struggled to keep his tone light, to not speak through gritted teeth.

The stranger wore tattered work clothes and an oily smile, which grew wider as he spoke at last. “Yes, I think you can help me... August.” The man pronounced his name slowly but playfully, like delivering a punchline.

August wasn’t going to play his games. “I’m sorry, have we met before?”

He got a dark chuckle in response, then the man’s eyes swiveled over August’s shoulder. August followed his gaze, finding that Claire and Jeanie had joined him in the front hall. He wished they hadn’t.

In the same moment, the man’s laugh changed, smoothly shifting into nothing but innocent mirth. “You must be the beautiful Mrs. Mannon! Your husband here is such a prankster – after all these years still pulling the same ‘do I know you’ gag. Ha! Never gets old.”

Claire stepped forward and threaded her hand through her husband’s arm. “Well, he may not know you, but do I?”

The visitor’s laughter kicked up again. “Nice to see old Mannon found someone with the same sense of humor. The name’s Stith, ma’am, E. G. Stith. Your husband and I served together. We were thick as thieves back in the corps, weren’t we Auggie?” he said, with a playful punch to August’s shoulder.

August molded his grimace into some approximation of a smile. He didn’t know or like where Stith was going with this, but he had to play along in front of Claire and Jeanie. “That we were, sure. You’ll have to forgive me, Stith, if I never bored these two with many of our stories from back in the day. But what brings you here, after so long?”

Stith ignored the accusatory note in August’s voice and feigned surprise.

“Oh gee, did you not get my letter? I sent it out weeks ago when I heard I’d be doing work down here. Gosh, I sure am sorry to drop in unannounced like this. Boy, Auggie, I was hoping for a chance to catch up, but don’t let me interrupt your time as a family.” His tone was all apologies and meekness, but he lingered just a touch too long on the last word. He held August’s gaze, expectant

Stith had August over a barrel, and they both knew it. With a faux brightness equal to his inner dread, August opened the door wide and ushered their visitor in. “Nonsense! Jeanie, honey, would you mind setting the table? For four, please – looks like we have a guest for dinner.”

Jeanie Mannon

That night, long after the table had been cleared away and the dinner guest had talked himself into becoming an overnight guest, a pajamaed figure crept down from the top of the staircase.

She paused in a deep well of shadow three steps down – still concealed, yet well within earshot of the kitchen. She couldn’t see into the kitchen from this vantage, but she had a view in silhouette; shadow-puppet figures that danced across the living-room carpet in the long square of light from the doorway. It was a carefully calculated lookout – though she’d not been called upon to use the skill in sometime, Jeanie Mannon had once perfected the art of eavesdropping.

It had only been a handful of years ago, but in her young mind that was a separate lifetime. A time when any meal or outing or car ride might be another cause for contention between her parents, another piece of ammunition, mentally loaded to be hurled later in their nearly nightly arguments.

Jeanie could always sense the tension building – her theater teacher said she was very ‘in touch with emotion,’ that it’s what made her such a talented actress. She didn’t really want to be. It might’ve been nice to sleep in peaceful ignorance. Instead, their frustrations drew her like a physical force. Unbeknownst to her parents, Jeanie, clutching her teddy bear, would make the trek to her post and watch, night after night, week after week, audience to a furious puppet show set to a chorus of hushed, bitter quarrels.

And then, without prelude, the arguments stopped. The constant haze of animosity dissipated like morning mist burning off in the sun. Jeanie didn’t know why, but she knew she slept soundly through the night.

Until now, at least. Perhaps her mother hadn’t noticed the clashing gazes between her father and the strange man over the dining table that evening, but Jeanie certainly had, and knew kitchen was destined to be an arena again that evening. Gazing glumly into her mashed potatoes, she had heaved an inward sigh with a weariness far beyond her years and resigned herself to a night of strained listening and little sleep.

Pressing her face between the bannisters, Jeanie watched one shadow gesture to the other as her father’s voice drifted up the staircase.

“Okay, I’ve had it with the niceties. You obviously didn’t just decide to drop in for a meal. Tell me what you want and then leave my family and I alone.”

Mr. Stith's shadow guffawed, “Your family?! Oh, that’s rich, you telling me to stay away from them.”

“What, did the money run out? I can drive to the bank in the morning and drain the savings. Hell, take my car keys right now, I don’t care.” Her father’s voice had a note of pleading in it now.

All he got in response was another bitter laugh. “Again, you don’t get to offer me things that are already mine! You know why I came back. I'm here to stay.”

“After what you did?! Tricked me, stole everything from me, abandoned them, and – and...” he sputtered, too angry to form a sentence.

“Yes, well now I'm here to fix all that. You should be thanking me. What are you going to do? Tell them? Tell your – sorry, my – wife and daughter that they’ve been living with a stranger for years? Or maybe you’ll go to your commanding officers. That’d be great, actually. They might court martial me, but they’d probably just shoot you. Face it, Stith, you’re done here. You’re going to make a few phone calls in the morning, get all the equipment together, and then you’re gone.” The visitor’s voice carried a cruel note of finality.

The silence stretched long and thin. By the time her father’s voice answered, it shook with sobs, something Jeanie had never heard before. “Please - please if you care for them at all, just go. I know how it was for them before. Don’t make me leave them. Please...”

Jeanie’s head ached with confusion and unshed tears. What was happening? Why had that man called her father by his own name? What was bad enough to make her father cry? Clinging to her teddy bear, she stumbled back to bed, wracked with fear and questions.

Mannon and Stith, some years prior

The smoky, sticky-floored bar offered nothing in the way of atmosphere – just strong spirits in cloudy glasses slid across scarred countertops; fertile ground for bad ideas.

The two men had nothing in common besides their desire to drink away their woes. Mannon, his tie hanging loosely around a rumpled collar, stared miserably into his glass, hating the day to come and the next and the next – all of them, because they’d all look the same. He’d go to the cushy desk job his commanding officer (and friend of his father) had recommended him for after the war, a swanky, useless gig in military oversight for a government lab. He’d spend hours signing papers for a bunch of lab-coated eggheads and ogling his secretary, only to return to his suffocating suburbia, where his nagging wife and screaming brat awaited. What had happened to his youth? His freedom?

Stith, envious and disgusted, countered with a tale of opposites. He wished he knew what each day would look like. As it were, he didn’t know where he’d lay his head tomorrow, nor where he’d work, if he found any at all. He had freedom like a ship without an anchor –no family, no home to tie him down, nothing at all to return to. He drifted through life alone, eking out an existence wherever he could.

As they continued comparing sorrows, Mannon warmed to the description of Stith’s life. A roaring motorcycle, odd jobs in far flung lands, the open road – it smacked of the freedom he craved.

He also found his thoughts returning to papers he vaguely remembered signing; some scrapped experimental technology meant for use in espionage. The lab couldn’t get the numbers right - too great of a risk for brain damage. Well, so what if it was risky?

By the time Mannon had finished plying Stith with drinks, the other man didn’t protest.

Stith and Mannon

Mannon drove home in the nicest car he’d ever been in, a scribbled note in his pocket full of names and access codes and military lingo that would take him weeks to untangle.

Stith had to learn how to ride a motorcycle on the fly, while also learning how to use new hands.

The men would sober up to do very different realities in the morning. The new August Mannon awoke with dawning horror to what he’d done, realized the full weight of taking a husband and father from his family. He set about repenting and rebuilding a house in shambles.

A new E. G. Stith enjoyed the feeling of the wind in his hair.

E. G. Stith

It had been like the time when he was a boy and decided to run away. He’d spent a glorious afternoon exploring the woods, snacking on the bread and fruit he’d shoved in a rucksack; then when night fell and the air became chilly, he’d returned home, still feeling successful, even though his escape had only lasted for a few hours and he hadn’t ventured farther than a few miles. It was just a lark. That’s how Stith, soon-to-be-August-again felt about the swap.

It was fun while it lasted – the open road, the strange women, absolute freedom. And then when he was tired of it, he returned home. Sitting at the kitchen table after August stormed off in tears, all Stith felt was satisfaction. He’d get his old life back, and all would be well with the world.

He looked up and smiled as someone else entered the kitchen.

Mrs. Ferguson

Mrs. Ferguson liked to start her day with a brisk walk about the neighborhood, bright and early, assuring herself that all was right in her little kingdom.

Surely nothing could be more perfect than Sycamore Street emerging from a lacy mist of night to a shiny new morning. Dewdrops shimmered on velvety flower petals, birds chirped in maple boughs, and the first rosy rays of dawn shimmered off the glassy surface of the pond at the end of the street.

A pond where a body with sallow, bloated skin and tattered clothes floated face-down.

Claire Mannon

Claire was not a stupid woman. She could play the part of oblivious, contented housewife, but she noticed. She noticed just about everything.

Trouble was, as a younger woman, she’d had a bad habit of convincing herself she hadn’t seen the things she had. This became much easier when she had Auggie’s voice in her head, also convincing her that she hadn’t seen those things.

Like years ago, when they first started dating, no he hadn’t been flirting with that other girl. He was going out with her, wasn’t he? Don’t be stupid, Claire.

Or after their engagement, no Auggie’s mother wasn’t talking down to her. Don’t be overly sensitive, Claire.

Or after they were married, no that was definitely her own lipstick on his collar. Don’t be ridiculous, Claire.

No, he was definitely at the office all those late nights. No, he hadn’t been drinking. No, he wasn’t avoiding spending time with the baby.

No, no, no.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Claire.

He could claim whatever he wanted. She still noticed. She still saw.

She also noticed when it all changed. One day August had something gentler in his manners; a kindness, a meekness in his voice she’d never heard. The kitchen didn’t echo with arguments every night.

He began to play with Jeanie, remembered the names of her teachers and friends. They went out together as a family and rode home chatting and laughing, not in suffocating silence. He brought flowers to her first play and sat in the front row with tears of pride shining on his cheeks.

August noticed Claire. He noticed that she noticed everything. He saw how she knew, even if they never really spoke the words aloud.

The old Auggie never noticed anything. Not the labor of love she put into every meal, every day, every night. He didn’t see the new dresses or the new haircuts or anything she did just to make him notice, to look, to care.

She tried, she tried, she tried.

But he never noticed.

So, it was no surprise he didn’t notice her lurking in the shadows beyond the kitchen that night, listening to a conversation which only confirmed what she already knew. He didn’t notice the steel in her eyes as she entered the kitchen and politely offered him a nightcap. He didn’t notice the odd taste in his drink, not until it was too late.