The case of the disappearing neighbors

You remember the neighbors who kept their three dogs locked up in one room of the house for 8-10 hours every day while they were both out driving trucks? (See Note of July 3, 2008.) The neighbors whose noisy diesel pickups would come and go at unfortunate hours (12:30 at night, 5:30 in the morning)? One of whose trucks used to be left idling for at least 15 minutes – once for as long as half an hour! – in the driveway right outside my bedroom window, at those unfortunate hours?

Well, they've disappeared. When I returned from my trip to Pennsylvania both trucks were gone, as were the three dogs. And they were gone for several days. What really got my attention – after all, Matt and Patty (not their real names) could have just been at "the in-laws" (an older couple who have put in an occasional appearance, either singly or together, and who have sometimes supplied Patty with a ride when, apparently, her truck wasn't working) – what really got me wondering was: they'd torn down their fence! There used to be a fence of pointed, flat, unpainted stakes separating their back yard from mine. It was in that fenced-in back yard that the dogs would tear around, barking their heads off, whenever they were let out for a few minutes. But now the fencing stood in the middle of the yard, piled up in the shape of a small A-frame house.

The dog situation had actually gotten a little better in the couple of months before The Disappearance, at least partly because Matt, or someone, had fenced in that part of the yard that opened onto the narrow side yard, which led to the driveway and thence to the street. The only entrance used by Matt and Patty was the door leading into the kitchen, which opens off this side yard. That was where they would let the dogs out, having to be careful to corral them off to the left, to the back yard, when where the dogs really wanted to be going was to the right – the driveway, the street, freedom! Then whoever let the dogs out would have to stand guard, to make sure the dogs did not leave the yard.

But then the new fencing went in, so it was no longer necessary for a human to be standing guard; and I suspected a doggy door had also been cut into the back wall of the extension off the kitchen, that juts out toward the back yard, because the dogs were now out in the yard much more often. It was also possible that they were just being let out more often through a regular door at the back of that extension. This was a possibility because Patty's truck very often remained in the driveway all day, so perhaps she was home. And that seemed more of a possibility because she seemed to have had a baby!

The woman never looked pregnant to me. But one day as I was about to depart for work the female half of "the in-laws" came to pick her up, and when Patty came out of the house she was carrying one of those baby baskets people use these days. Before climbing into the front seat, she swung the basket into the back seat with what seemed like great casualness to me, were it indeed a baby. So I wasn't prepared to swear it was a baby. Or maybe it was someone else's baby, that she was taking care of for a while...

But not too long afterwards, when I was again out at my car, returning from someplace or about to leave for someplace, the young couple returned home in one of the trucks (the other truck being nowhere in sight. As I've mentioned before, sometimes one or the other of the trucks would disappear for a while.) Patty was driving, got out and went directly into the house; Matt got out, opened the back door, and swung out the baby basket, saying, as he did so, "Let me get my new baby."

So first there was the Mystery of the New Baby. And now there's the Mystery of the Disappearing Neighbors because, except for one very brief reappearance a few days after my return from Pennsylvania (Matt and someone else – not Patty – who seemed to sweep into the house and out again in no time; all of this heard only, as I was busy inside my house at the time), they have been gone for one solid month. This is too long for a vacation trip, especially if they have a new baby, and especially as they are obviously a struggling young couple. I would have said they'd moved, especially given the evidence of the torn-down fence, but they left the kitchen light burning (still burning after a month!), and I can see through the large kitchen window that all the furniture is still there, the clock on the wall, a big iron skillet hanging on a hook. 'Tis a puzzlement.

It's been lovely not having to listen to barking dogs, or roaring trucks. But I have to admit to a faint feeling of...is it loneliness? Having neighbors on either side offers a kind of comfort: there's somebody there. For some time now there's been nothing but an empty house and a back yard rapidly returning to its wild state.