My Sunday Feeling

The dog days of summer have descended upon Little Rock a little earlier than usual. The earth is parched. My flowers are all wilted despite repeat waterings. You really get no relief from the breeze. It just feels like a hair dryer is in your face wherever you turn. I don't like this. If I wanted to live in Oklahoma or West Texas I would move there.

People must be crazy from the heat. Rick was telling me that he and Sharon were coming back from North Little Rock around dusk the other night and were alarmed to see some goddamned fool walking along the top of the guardrail on the Arkansas River bridge. His arms were stretched out as he tightroped his way across. A misstep to the right and he would have plunged into the river. A misstep to the left and he would have gotten kissed by a tractor-trailer rig. I guess he made it. I didn't read about him either getting killed or arrested.

Not to worry, other people were more than making up for him in both the killed and the arrested departments last week. Little Rock is now up to thirty seven homicides this year. Thirty seven! That's a lot for a jerkwater town like Little Rock. Most of the killings are drug related as you might imagine. One of the theories I have heard from more than one knowledgeable source is that Hurricane Katrina messed up the distribution system for the Louisiana drug dealer types and that some of them are trying to take over turf occupied by the local criminals. I have also heard that some of the local talent is busy fighting to get turf back. In any event, the cops around have their hands full.

A week or so ago, they made a grisly discovery out at one of the old cemeteries over by the airport. Somebody rammed a car through the gates and then set it on fire. Naturally there was a guy in the trunk. We are just not used to this kind of mob style "send 'em a message" violence here. You add this dirty little war to the Saturday night drunks that get whacked over dice games or by jealous husbands-the kinda stuff we are used to in these parts-and it's like Dodge City all over again in some parts of town. I used to live in one of those hotspots. One of the guys they picked up for No. thirty-six lived in a house two streets over from the house I grew up in.

My, how the neighborhood has changed.

Maybe it was the heat that got to some old boy that J prosecuted last Friday for stalking this poor woman. It would appear that this girl had the extreme poor luck of buying a house next door to the elderly parents of this idiot who noticed the new neighbor on one of his visits over there. He took an immediate and inappropriate shine to her. At first he was leaving her notes and presents. Then he was following her around and coming about her place of work. They finally arrested him last Wednesday when he pulled alongside her on the Interstate and pointed his finger at her as if to shoot her. The victim took this provocative gesture to be a wholesale violation of the "no-contact" order she had gotten on him. This was J's interpretation as well and the good folks from the Arkansas State Police were dispatched in short order to get his ass into custody.

My brother John once said of stalkers: "One thing you can say about them is that they really, really care."

I suppose. But, still, I don't get it. I know any of a number of beautiful women, some of whom still return my calls and say "hello" to me on the street. How many of these women are worth me losing my job or going to jail? Not a goddamned one of 'em.

But then again, maybe I just don't care enough.

Back when I was young and had potential, long before I had been beaten down by life, I lived in a high-rise apartment over by the river. The place was awash with good-looking women. I was very happy there. Until one of the women-I confess I don't know how good looking she was. I suspect not very-that lived there in one of the 4 buildings there took an inappropriate shine to me. First it was notes on the car. These gifts progressed to weird shit like tiny stuffed animals, cut flowers and balloons. I am pretty sure it was someone that lived close by because my phone would ring just as I turned on the lights in my apartment when I would come home at night.

This was back in the olden days before caller ID, back when I used my answering machine to screen out Mother and the bill collectors. Usually all I would hear was sighing on the other end, punctuated by the tick tick tick of a clock. Sometimes all I would hear was the clock. I would look out through the windows at the other buildings to see if I could ever catch a glimpse of someone looking over at me. I never did see anybody in any window across the way.

One day she actually left a message. " I'm returning your call." my stalker said, in a voice cloaked with the sort of intensity that is only reserved for really bad actors and the deranged. "Please call me back. I love you." She pronounced the word "love" as "loff" as in "I loff you." Clearly a head case. I remember looking down at the answering machine and yelling, " I didn't call you! I don't even know who you are!"

I never heard from her again. I guess she took an inappropriate shine to some other lucky bastard. One that would return her phone calls. Either that or stuck her head in the oven a la Sylvia Plath.

I was asked if I found getting stalked by a woman flattering. No. I found it stupid and annoying. However, it's a different deal with men. Men who stalk women are dangerous and these situations can end very badly.

The jails are full due to all the guys getting whacked around here. Our hero was fined and released with the warning from the Judge that if he ever came around his parents' neighbor again he would "throw his ass in jail." That's a quote from the bench. He is even banned from visiting his parents. That's how mad the Judge is.

Good for him. There are folks getting plugged left and right around here. It is obvious that the Court means to take advantage of the opportunity to head off trouble on the front end for once. J says he'll violate the order in 2 weeks. I give it a month depending on how much money he had to pay his lawyer. One thing is certain. He will come back around. These guys never change. Because say what you will, they really really care.

And that's the latest from Little Rock. Where the lead is flying, the jails are full to the brim and everybody is crazy from the heat.