Positions

The child came home from school today with an anxious look on his face; "Did you guys hear about the rape down the street? They're setting up TV cameras at the corner."

The news had mentioned a rape in the "northwest part" of the city but didn't bother to be more specific than that. The northwest part of the biggest city in the state covers a lot of ground so there was only so much of a concern it could add to the usual sense of distant besiegement.

Suddenly though, this distance is cut to a matter of less than a few hundred feet and the bearer of this information is my child. I swung my coat on my arms and went out the door, locking the deadbolt tight behind me.

There were three men at the corner in a clearing surrounded by vans with station letters on their sides. An enormous antennae stretched to the sky from one of the mobile roofs. I looked at them gathered together and talking with their hands in their pockets. As I walked toward them, I saw them size me up as well. I did not fit the description of the suspect, so they waited, aware that I was coming to watch the filming or whatever. Maybe I wanted to be on TV. I probably knew a few knock-knock jokes and think I'm a comedian, after all right? I could smell this from my backdoor even before I got my key out of the lock.

"My son just told me there had been a rape here in the neighborhood," I explained, completely unsure why one of these newshounds would tell my son such information.

"Yeah, well, we don't give out the information on the identity of the victim or the actual address..."

I looked at this man hard for an instant and could not contain a certain amount of anger, "I didn't ask for that and I wasn't going to." He shifted his shoulders lower into an act straddling stupidity and innocence all at once.

"It's not everyday I find out about a rapist loose in my neighborhood you see," I continued, aware that I had conjured at least a slight element of concern.

Had he pissed off a native who would make an obsessive quest out of getting him fired??? Was he facing a seething vigilante with dreams of Taxi Driver redemption, guns filled with dum-dum bullets scattered under the concealment of a long coat???

No. Not at all.

I was merely offended. But I could see in the suddenly animated hand gestures that he was falling to the defensive plea of a messenger accustomed to taking a beating for delivering bad news. Suddenly he was answering the question he'd told me not to ask, "The victim lives down this street," pointing to the west.

I glanced down the street, a street I've walked down many times since moving here, and I did not try to speculate which house or if I'd ever seen this neighbor before. I looked at him again. "Is there anything else you all have?"

"No," pointing again, "She lives down that way."

I think I said thanks for some reason and then started walking back to my house, tickling the keys in my grasp inside my pocket.