It was the first time I’d been to my friend’s house.
We share a winding path that burrows its way into small nooks and crannies of ravines and street lights. Rubble paved a social barrier between my neighbours and me, I expected my friend to do no different. There was a small simple unspoken agreement that our tiny neighbourhood would remain quiet and intimate. As an introvert myself, half of the reason I moved here was the beautiful ways in which I didn’t have to interact with another soul (unless I wanted to).
There was a long stretch of the canyon that separated my friend and me. For the sake of simplicity, let’s call him Lumber Jack. Our streets were at a standoff, as the two sides of our rivine seemed to never touch. It was a peaceful and unlikely non-verbal friendship I had formed with this man. Driving down, I’d wave to Jack as he worked up the courage to build something new for his patio. I’d heard of him lumbering around his neighbours houses asking if they needed any help with fixing old brokens. Sometimes he’d write or draw things on scrap pieces of wood—things to make me smile. Once, he drew me staring at myself on a block of wood, hung it in his windowsill, and captioned it as “Hello little Neighbour:)” . It was awkward, but the sweetest form of flattery I’d ever received.
Every day he’d wave to me going inside, and it became a daily routine and a necessary step to putting a bright big smile on my face. One week, however, Jack didn’t greet me as usual.
I set aside my afternoon plans of watching paint dry and decided to make the hike to his side of the gorge. A sharp bowl of soup in one hand, and a get well soon card in the other, I made my way to his cozy cabin in the rocks.
Streetlights seemed duller on his side of the canyon. Almost as if the caves were just holes in nature’s great recorder, there was a subtle whistle that rang through the cracks of rock and rubble. Hiking uphill, every step I took ached to go back. Eventually, despite my body telling me not to look, I knocked on Jacks’ front door; which I watched him build several weeks ago.
There was no answer. Already getting the chills from this scorching day, I left the soup on his porch and quickly spurred off from the same place I had come. Heading back, I realized I had forgotten his card. Sputtering around I flat out ran to his front door, dropping the card almost half in the covered soup.
I’d made my adventure, but my gut wanted to head home. That is, however, until I saw the wood he painted earlier that year. “Hello little Neighbour:)”. It was just a pair of cartoon eyes smiling over to look across at the house below. Above? They were my eyes. He’d clearly seen me watching him make this slab and decided to paint my eyes as a gotcha. A little “I know you’re watching me work! Isn’t it marvellous?”.
It had never occurred to me how small I must’ve looked from his patio, though. He painted my eyes—cartoony, yes, but the colour was right. He’d even painted my thin-framed glasses. I couldn’t see any other person in such detail from this height. It’s not like green is a very guessable eye colour, either.
I looked behind the cabin.
Slabs of painted faces lay before me.
His neighbours—the little one who always biked up the road, a husband and his wife who sit on the front porch. My neighbours—a man who hadn’t been home in a few days on vacation, an old woman that lived directly above me and stayed inside knitting. My friends—one who’d stopped by a few times to deliver a cake or two, another whom I hadn’t seen in years. Each slab I saw revealed a different person, more intimate to my closed-off life.
I visited my neighbour’s house for the first time today, and like hell it’ll be my last.