Under the Cover of Darkness

There was a picture posted on facebook. A woman walking up to a door. It was a clear shot of her face being in broad daylight. She was carrying a McDonald's bag and an energy drink, a sweater over one arm as she came up the steps. As she went down the steps, her arms were even fuller: she had taken a box on the front steps. 

I believe that I recognized where the deed was done, and it is not far from us. We've ordered quite a bit of stuff in the last 3 months (only two orders from Amazon, I am proud to say). In any case, the new ways of tracking packages makes it nice. If I know that I've got a package coming in the mail, I simply make it a point to be home when the mailman makes his rounds. He's fairly consistent. If the package is being delivered by UPS, it's a little harder because they do not make consistent rounds, but we have come to find that they generally come in the afternoon, so that becomes a day to get my housework done and wait on my packages. Sometimes, a package comes by Fedex. We know there is no point in waiting. We simply go about our business. The package is invariably left on the patio a street over. Tim stops in and picks it up once the man gets home from work. 

Anyways, back to my story. I live in a small town. The comments came in fast and furious. "Doesn't she work at McDonalds?" and predictably, in the matter of hours, she was outed by name. Someone made a comment that this was was a pretty regular pattern of behavior for her. Being a naturally curious person (read: Nosy as hell), I typed her name into google and the first thing that came up was a police blotter writeup. She and her boyfriend were each arrested and charged with domestic abuse not long ago. I looked up their records on the UJS portal and discovered charge after charge of 'defiant trespass'. The boyfriend (although both of them are in their 40s) has been charged repeatedly with being inside of other people's sheds. Like 3 or 4 times in the last month alone. 

I went to bed thinking about that, about what happens in our town while the rest of us are sleeping. I can't wrap my head around the idea that you get arrested, and then go out in the same week to do the same thing, again and again and again. 

I know that there must be an explanation for this, and that it is probably something to do with substance abuse. Or maybe it's simply an inability to make ends meet? I don't know. I saw someone advertising an apartment for $1300 a month and to me that is mindboggling. Who can afford that? Especially if you are a person with a drug history. You may be trying to straighten up and fly right, but you're going to be barred from many jobs that pay a livable wage. $1300 a month is going to be beyond your means, even with two people working. 

I lay in bed thinking about these things.  In any case, I can only hope that there are no small children involved. When a child's reality is watching one parent or another arrested, again and again, what hope to they have of breaking that cycle. To them, it is simply a fact of life. It's normal. 

I lay in bed thinking about desperate people living desperate lives. Sometimes that desperation is a result of their own poor choices. Sometimes they are simply born into it. 

I fell asleep finally, and woke up about 4:30. I padded barefoot down the hall of my own old and comfortable house, and caught a glimpse of flashing lights outside the window in the office. I'm curious. I may not have mentioned this. I came out to see what was happening and watched the neighbor's car being repo'ed in the night. The man, with a headlamp, worked amazingly quickly.

I went back to my warm bed and slipped under the covers in darkness and fell asleep.