The Gas My Neighbor Kept Taking

What the camera saw

The notification came at 6:12 on Sunday morning. I had my coffee in my hand, sitting on the edge of the bed, and I tapped it open expecting a raccoon.

It was a man in gray sweatpants and his socks.

He came across my side lawn at 1:07 in the morning, walking carefully on the grass so his feet would not make any noise on the gravel. He had a long length of clear hose coiled over one shoulder and a red five-gallon can in his hand. He unscrewed my gas cap like he had done it a hundred times. I watched him feed the hose into the filler neck, put the other end in his mouth, and suck until his cheeks pulled in. Then he swapped the end into the can and sat down on my driveway to wait for it to fill, his bare elbows on his knees, like a man waiting on a bus.

I knew the walk before I saw the face. I had waved at that walk through my kitchen window for nine years.

Clint Pickett lives in the brick ranch next door. He is forty-six, tall, with a wide, friendly face that makes people want to like him. He has a wife named Terri, who teaches second grade over at the elementary school, and two children, who wait for the school bus at the foot of my driveway because it is a good flat spot. I have watched those children grow from the ones who held their mother’s hand to the ones who ride bikes in the street with no helmets. Terri baked a pie for Paula’s funeral. I want to say that plainly, because I do not want anyone to think this was a feud. I had no quarrel with that family. I had never given Clint a hard word.

I played the footage three times. Then I put my boots on.