Country Nightlife

Nowadays I typically stay awake until the wee hours, very much unlike the recent past when I would have been getting ready for market just a couple hours after when I now hit the hay. The late hour is actually more of what I am used to, not so much from a practiced bohemian lifestyle (although that does play into it) but more that from an early age I always seemed to catch the graveyard shift at any one job. Add to this my preference for naps, and it is quite difficult for me to put head to pillow before 0200.

DW, on the other hand, usually falls asleep around 2230, no problem, and wakes early for some quiet time and the feeding of the inside animals. Last night was different. She was still writing at 0130 but quit soon thereafter. As she put it later, she knew there was a reason she stayed up.

I heard her going up to bed about 0145. Three minutes later I heard her running back down the stairs, through the kitchen and to the dungeon door.

“There’s something going on outside!”

By the time I made it up the stairs, she had the backdoor open, which caused me some concern for I was still not clear on the proximity of whatever it was that had gotten her attention in the first place.

“I think it’s coming from Steve’s.” As I reached the back door I heard swearing and what sounded like wood cracking. Not big wood, mind you. Just a size that one person might use to break over another person. And it wasn’t coming from Steve’s. No, it was the drug house. We went inside, I called the Sheriff, and we retired to our bedroom, not to sleep, but to get a better view. 

The response time was maybe fifteen minutes, which is pretty good for a county of our size and for the two cars responsible for the northern half. The first one pulled into the lane for the drug house, and by the time it made it up to the house, another was coming up the road. When it reached our house, it accelerated to such a degree for such a short distance before it would have to turn that I uttered, “Oh-oh, something’s up.” I imagined blood or bloodied.

We watched parking lights for a half hour. Occasionally we saw a flashlight walking through the yard as if looking for something or someone. DW went to sleep and I went back to work. When I came up to bed and hour and a half later, one set of parking lights remained.

“It must have been a good one,” I said to a drowsy DW. “They’re still there.”

Hoping to get some kind of report, we called the Sheriff again this morning. Six people were in the house, a domestic battery and an outstanding warrant was all the information we were given.

To be continued, unfortunately.