.020

The distant voice that hollered at my family and I as we stepped out of the car last evening belonged to a man who had made the abandoned area in front of a former CVS building, once reserved for shopping carts, his home.

My parents' ears aren't quite what they used to be (if at any point in their lives they were any better than they are now), so what they heard at first was a sound that greatly resembled a dog's barking. They turned to look at one another, at him, then back to each other and my dad mouthed, "Maybe he has a dog behind the wall."

The man, however, had no dog. In fact, the sound that he was making wasn't some incomprehensible nonsense, but actually the word "fuck": the 'eff' being nearly silent and the 'uh' being most discernable.

It didn't make sense to them that the "barking" stopped when they turned to look at him, and resumed only when they proceeded to walk forward.
Perhaps they thought it was a smart dog. One that could see through walls.

After multiple cups of coffee at one of the thousands of Starbucks locations in Southern California, our goodbyes with the typical Fermin/Tongson Friday group were said at the door and the Mateums headed back to the car, the one furthest from all the others and in the middle of the nearly deserted parking lot.

My parents' pace quickened as they realized that the barking had resumed as soon as they were noticed crossing beneath the light of the lot lampost, and that along with the now more coherently human snarls and yapping, the man behind the wall (that had been pissing in a nearby potted plant as the three families were parting ways) had begun to toss in a few mumbled

"..fucking fuckers.. pissing cunts, fucking pricks.. fuck you, fuck YOU" between each "bark."



As soon as we were within the safety of our locked doors and our risen windows, we remained in silence listening to him continue to deliriously rage on, though it was unknown whether his jabber was meant for us or for his own ears to hear.

"He's crazy," my mom proclaimed.