Wednesday, November 27, 1996, 4:50 p.m. — still a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
From a second-floor window in the home of Mr. Charles Van Wormer, a security camera records the moment, as it records all moments, around the clock. One takes nothing for granted in a beautiful neighborhood. The price of clean living, like the price of liberty, is eternal vigilance.
The camera documents a smooth, uncracked street pouring into smooth, white driveways, every driveway leading to a two-story brick home, every home like the one beside it. Each comes with a square of the greenest grass, inserted with a tree of one variety and size. Everything is as it should be. All’s well on Justina Court.
Now look again: There is a black man in the yard next door. And he isn’t going away. He lives there, and his name is Mr. Joseph Sybille, and on this day before Thanksgiving, he is shoveling sand into the low spots of his lawn. It is slow work; the minutes slowly, blandly go by.
5:01 p.m. — Here comes Mr. Van Wormer, pushing his mower across his lawn for the second time in a week. He follows the usual pattern, starting on the grass between his driveway and Mr. Sybille’s, careful not to miss a blade. Side by side they work, two homeowners keeping up their property, a model of the kind of civic responsibility and ethnic diversity enjoyed in our suburbs today.
5:03 p.m. — Mr. Van Wormer finishes the center strip and turns to the small patch at the end bounded by the curb, the sidewalk and the driveways. Mr. Sybille, coming up his own driveway with a wheelbarrow full of sand, pauses to have a word. The camera is far away, but Mr. Sybille seems to be greeting his neighbor (as in, “Good evening to you, Charlie”), and his neighbor, stepping toward him to turn the mower around, seems to respond in kind (as in, “A fine evening it is, too, Joe”).
But according to Charlie, this is what Joe really says: “Hey, motherfucker, you’ve got grass on my sidewalk.”
And according to Joe, this is Charlie’s reply: “Blow me, nigger. I’ll kill you.”
At which point Joe reaches again for his shovel, a clean, green lawn being the mark of civilization and of civilized men.
Because boxwood hedges do not retain their box shapes; because grass grows and leaves fall, and some people do not mow, rake, edge, trim nearly enough; and because these weirdos typically live next door;
Now, therefore, they, the worried people, did one day form a more perfect union. First Colony became “a master-planned community.” On the Sugar Land prairie, it was dedicated to the proposition that all people shall live identically. The founding document was the Declaration of Restrictions.
Article IV, section two: “No activity or use shall be permitted on or with respect to the Property which is determined by the Board to be obnoxious.”
Regarding hogs, there shall be none in First Colony. “No more than two (2) normal household pets may be kept in Residential Units.” There shall be no clotheslines visible from the street, no lawn jockeys in the front yard, no plastic flamingos, birdbaths or Big Wheels. No “decorative appurtenances” or recreational equipment in view at any time. Regarding mailboxes, “residents must use standard mailbox designs.”
Regarding trees, each homeowner shall maintain one tree in the public easement. All streets have been assigned a specific type of tree. “Homeowners are required to have that type of tree.”
Regarding home improvements, brick is the approved building material. Yellow or orange brick is forbidden. As for paint, “it will be necessary to verify that the color is on the Approved Paint Chart.”
Regarding any of your property, the homeowners association may assume responsibility for the maintenance of it, either because you make the request, “or because, in the opinion of the Board, the level and quality of service being provided is not consistent with the community-wide standard of First Colony.”
Regarding the financier of this work, it is you, homeowner.
Regarding your free will, if you choose not to pay, the association may foreclose on your residential unit.
“I think of First Colony as a very pleasant, livable community,” said Lynn Morris, director of the homeowners association. A place where children can grow up in safety and joy. A place, most importantly, where property values are protected. “A community,” said Morris. She liked that word.
To maintain the sense of community, residents of First Colony are encouraged to rat on one another to the Compliance Director. Doing so is considered an act of civic duty. Hostility is a problem in First Colony only when openly displayed.
This brings us to Charlie and Joe, who between the two of them have pretty much demolished the whole beautiful First Colony picture.
Joe is a 49-year-old black draftsman; Charlie a 53-year-old white mechanic. They are alike in all the ways that keep lawns clean — fastidious, methodical, obsessive — and share, too, a capacity for murderous rage.
Joe weighs 140 pounds and wears pressed white oxford shirts and a little calculator as a wristwatch. Growing up in the Third Ward, he says, he always found a way to take care of the bullies. He describes himself as an “easygoing guy” and claims strangers are just friends he hasn’t met before. But he also says he hasn’t a single friend who knows him well. His vision of a good neighbor is “someone who doesn’t intrude on the privacy and solitude of another.”
In New Orleans, Joe was a Coast Guard safety inspector, whose rise through the ranks stopped at lieutenant because he had the habit of questioning his superiors. After he retired in 1993, he and his wife, Ria, and their two sons decided to return to Houston. For its better school system, they chose to settle in Fort Bend County and bought their house in a section of First Colony known as the Plantations. It wasn’t far from Rebel Ridge and Dixie Court, and Joe was the only black man on the street. But he says he found happiness until Charlie moved in.
Joe had never met anyone like Charlie, and it’s safe to assume Charlie had never had a neighbor like Joe. Charlie wouldn’t talk about the feud, but he has left a trail of disputes wherever he has gone.
He appeared in his yard as a large man with a belly that stretched his T-shirt and with typically a baseball cap on his head. Even more than most, he was deeply devoted to lawn care. His wife, Rosemary, was a large, stolid woman with dyed blond hair, who could often be seen peering through windows or out the front door.
They had lived in several local neighborhoods since 1979, but no one on the cul-de-sac was aware of the deep impression Charlie left behind. His previous neighbors variously described him as “a nasty person,” “very territorial” and “somewhat intolerant of other ethnic groups.” One neighbor recalled her time near him as “a real scary situation.” Another said that to get along with Charlie, you had to acquiesce at every step. “You’ve just got to know that guy,” said a third, “to understand how he can get to people he wants to get to.”
None of these people wished to be identified, or would provide any details that might locate them. It was their fear that Charlie would come after them.
There was something terrifying about Charlie that, until now, no one in the cul-de-sac ever knew. Probably it never would have been discovered had Charlie and Joe been good to each other. It is this: the striking resemblance between Charlie’s life and that of another Charles Van Wormer, a Charlie who rode the bus to school as a 13-year-old boy in upstate New York. One late afternoon in November 1958, the driver of this bus, Beatrice Furbeck, was found dead near her car. She had been beaten, stabbed twice and shot 14 times.
The details were never publicly explained, but 16 years later, after a tip, the police arrested Charlie. He was a grown man by then, and under existing laws his arrest created a dilemma: what to do with a man who committed a crime as a boy? Newspapers say Charlie confessed to the killing, but that didn’t help.
“Authorities concluded they could not turn Van Wormer over to the state department of corrections,” an account reads. “They also concluded that he could not be sent to reform school, because he is now 29.”
According to newspapers, Charlie was charged with juvenile delinquency and was confronted with the charge in juvenile court. The proceedings and records were sealed, but Charlie was seen walking out of the courtroom a free man.
The newspapers described him as a graduate of Schalmont High School, a mechanic in the town of Niskayuna and a married man with two children. His uncle Aaron said the Van Wormer clan isn’t one to keep in touch, but he recalled that Charlie later settled somewhere in Texas. His wife’s name, if he remembered right, was Rosemary.
Charlie, the Houston mechanic, is the same age as his New York counterpart, and in court records he lists his hometown as Niskayuna. His middle name is Edward, which is the name of the only Charles Van Wormer to graduate from Schalmont High School in a five-year period. He and Rosemary raised two children.
By the time the Van Wormers arrived on Justina Court, their daughter had gone away and their son had been sent to prison for burglary and car theft. Rosemary wrote the homeowners association that they had no children or pets “which would cause problems for neighbors” and just wanted to live “in peace and quiet in our home.”
If the cul-de-sac were a clock face, Charlie’s house would sit at 1 o’clock and Joe’s beside his at 2. Charlie paid $171,350, and Joe $149,900. They were the largest houses either family had ever owned.
The Sybilles moved in first, and Joe, worried about who would move in beside him, built a fence between the driveways. When the Van Wormers arrived in July 1994, they turned out to be “the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet,” said Joe — when they needed a favor.
Rose had always wanted a pool to go with her big house. Within a few days of arrival, she asked if Joe’s fence could be removed to make way for the backhoe. Joe, easygoing guy that he was, consented. The fence between them was taken down, and they began fighting like dogs.
A laborer told Joe that it was not absolutely necessary to remove his fence. Other routes for the backhoe would inconvenience the Van Wormers, but Joe was appalled that the Van Wormers preferred to discommode him.
The next morning, assuming the truth of everything he had been told, Joe told Charlie that his wife had “misrepresented the truth.” Joe felt he was being diplomatic; he hadn’t used the word “lie.” Charlie protested, and later so did Rose. But Joe just told them to make sure his fence was restored to its original condition.
This wasn’t done. When the fence was up again, the nails began to rust and streak, like nails of a crucifix. Seething, Joe photographed the fence and vowed never to make such a sacrifice again.
Charlie took care of his own property. On moving into First Colony, he had read the Texas A&M manual on the care of saint augustine grass. He had learned that if you cut more than the top third of a blade of grass, you can “stress” your lawn, and, trying to prevent lawn stress, Charlie became stressed himself. Mowing twice a week, he rarely managed to get the top third. He figured it was usually about half. Charlie mowed in the same pattern every time and often mowed it twice to ensure he didn’t miss anything.
He thought Joe was sloppy with his grass, and Joe thought Charlie was sloppy with his grass clippings. One evening after Charlie had mowed, Joe knocked on his door to tell him he had left clippings on the curb. It was for just this purpose that Charlie had bought a $500 Lawn Vac, but he refused to employ it. He told Joe to “get the fuck off” his property. And to never return.
This was less than two months into a relationship that presumably would last the rest of their lives. From the end of Joe’s fence down to the street, Charlie eventually built a “line of demarcation.”
Charlie seems to have thought it a plot that soon after evicting Joe, Joe’s sons, in football season, began kicking footballs that occasionally landed in the Van Wormer yard. Rosemary, alarmed to see that her cul-de-sac was “becoming a playground,” notified the homeowners association.
“I do believe FCCSA has an obligation to its homeowners to preserve their rights to peaceful enjoyment of their respective properties,” wrote Rose. She reported the Sybille boys for trespassing and asked that, until a playground could be built in Plantation Colony, the association enforce trespassing laws against children.
That was the sheriff’s job, said the association. Sheriff’s deputies told her that to file trespassing charges she would need a “No Trespassing” sign. Signs are not allowed in Plantation Colony, said the association.
So it was in October that the Sybille boys were playing football when Charlie rushed out of his front door and caught 13-year-old Christopher dead to rights. “Stay the fuck out of my yard!” Charlie shouted to the boy. “Stay the fuck out of my yard!”
Ria says she found her sons crying about it later. Then Joe came home, and he was stunned that Charlie would speak to his child this way, “after all I did for the guy.”
At about 10:30 that night, Charlie opened his door to find Joe and a deputy. In the glare of his porch light, Charlie gave a full confession. He even added that he would confiscate any future balls that landed on his turf. Arrest him, said Joe, but the deputy said Class C misdemeanors were matters for the justice of the peace.
So Joe went to the justice of the peace. He filed a disorderly conduct charge against Charlie, under the provision regarding “use of vulgar language.” No longer willing to martyr himself to the fence, Joe also sued his neighbor over that.
Then it was Rosemary’s turn: She upped the ante with a check for the fence and criminal charges of her own. Having seen Joe and his boys riding motorcycles without helmets, Rose, an Exxon legal assistant, spent some time with the law books. She charged Joe with “endangering the public safety” and, because she cared, “endangering the safety of a child.”
The Sybilles received a letter from Rosemary informing them they were not good neighbors and that the Van Wormers would certainly never have anything to do with them. But if they were willing to drop the charge against Charlie, she would drop the charges against Joe. “No further action, including apologies by any and all parties, will take place,” wrote Rosemary.
Joe declined her gracious offer, and in July 1995, just before the court date, Rose made her offer again. Again, Joe declined, which turned out to be a bad decision. In a full trial, the jury found Charlie innocent of the crime of profanity. Joe, a month later, went on to be convicted of endangering the public safety.
Afterward, Charlie said that Joe shouted to him, “This isn’t over! You’re both going to be sorry!” Charlie took it as a threat. In any case, Joe appealed his $1 fine, and he lost the appeal, too.
When the Van Wormers would leave for work at 5:45 in the morning, they began finding Joe standing in his driveway, ready to exchange the morning greeting. Joe would typically greet his neighbor as “asshole,” said Charlie, and Charlie would hail Joe, said Joe, as “nigger.” Ria was “nigger bitch.” Rosemary was simply “bitch.”
Sometimes they grew excited and began to shout at each other, and, hearing this one morning, another neighbor rushed over, thinking someone had been hit by a car. But everyone gradually learned to leave Charlie and Joe alone. While Joe scolded several of them for “illuminating” his property, Charlie told their children he would sue over any trespassing balls. Charlie and Rose came to be known privately as “the Worm” and “Mrs. Worm.” Parents warned their children to avoid that side of the court.
As well as the lawn-care manual, Charlie had read the manuals on home security. Joe soon noticed Charlie carrying a pistol as he tended his lawn. In addition to lawn care, Charlie began spending weekends putting in his security system. Before he was done, he had aimed three floodlights, three motion detectors and eight cameras at the Sybille house. “This property is under video surveillance,” read the sign visible only from Sybille land. When the Sybille back door opened, the lights would alert the Van Wormers that the enemy was about, and the cameras would record the show.
The Sybilles bewailed the invasion of their privacy. Joe asked the homeowners association to enforce the rule requiring that lights “illuminate only your own property or home.” Ria, meanwhile, began crawling in and out of the back door to avoid detection. Joe used the front door or sometimes tried to move so slowly that the motion detectors wouldn’t trip. When Charlie saw that, he added a “streetlight” on the side of his garage, right above the fence.
The Van Wormers later complained of what they watched on their videos. In legal proceedings, Joe admitted that he often gave the finger to the camera and grabbed his crotch, but he denied ever clutching his buttocks. Ria doubted any of this truly offended the Van Wormers. Flipping off your fellow man, said Ria, “that’s just the American way.” You get used to it.
The Sybilles began noticing that Charlie watered the strip of grass between them morning and night. The tilt of the land was such that Charlie’s water would pour into Joe’s driveway, and Joe would become furious. Standing there with arms akimbo, he shouted over and over, “Get your water off my driveway!”
Ria came out to snap pictures of the damage. She snapped one after another until her film was depleted, then she ran inside “and just boohooed because I felt so helpless.” She decided to buy a video camera of her own.
“Morning,” Charlie smiles to her in one scene. “I got better video than you got.”
Ria records him laying down his soaker hose, and Charlie quickly becomes annoyed. He tells her again, “My video’s better than your video,” and then Rose scurries away and returns with a still camera for Charlie. And Charlie begins advancing on Ria, shooting her again and again, and Ria is calling for help, asking her son to bring the bright light that will render Charlie’s camera powerless. But too late: Charlie gets a close-up of Ria so tight that her own camera cannot hold its focus.
Joe called the sheriff about the water, but Charlie was not prosecuted for watering his yard. Somehow Charlie always won. He won all of their lawsuits and gloated over it. “0 and 3 in court,” said Charlie to Ria. “Soon to be 0 and 4.” In the fall of 1996 the court ruled that Joe should pay $25 to Charlie for killing a patch of grass between them that was the size of a piece of notebook paper. Ria and Joe were backing down their driveway when Charlie turned off his mower and demanded the money. Joe kept going but heard Charlie say, “You niggers have a nice evening.”
About then, the homeowners association returned the final verdict on the Van Wormer security system. Inspections are done from the street, wrote President Jack Molho. Since the lights on the side of the Van Wormer house were neither activated nor visible from the street, “in this Board’s opinion there are no existing violations at the Van Wormers’.”
It had been observed, however, that Joe’s basketball net was fraying. “You do have an obligation to replace the net,” he was told.
The Plantation began to seem like a box to Joe. Then, on the day before Thanksgiving, Charlie crossed the line of demarcation.
“Blow me, nigger,” he said, walking away. “I’ll kill you.”
You cannot hear the sound of impact, but the video shows that the shovel landed on the back of Charlie Van Wormer’s head. He fell unconscious into the street, and Joe stood over him with the shovel, as though chopping wood. The second blow landed on Charlie’s shoulder. The third knocked off his hat. The fourth slammed into his upper back. Somehow Charlie rolled over then and raised his legs. Staring through broken glasses, he pleaded, “Joe, you’re killing me! Why are you killing me?” But Joe kept swinging.
He swung down on Charlie ten times, into his rear, his legs, his arms. Charlie rose to his knees finally, and, holding his arms to shield the blows, he stood up and ran for the house. Joe ran after him and gave Charlie one to grow on to the base of his neck.
Charlie arrived at the front door to find that Rose had locked it. He collapsed there and could hear her inside talking with emergency dispatch. He banged three times before she came to let him in.
Joe returned to his yard work and was still holding the shovel when the sheriff arrived. He was led away in handcuffs. Charlie left on a stretcher.
“Patient struck about head and shoulders with a large shovel,” the paramedic wrote. Charlie’s survival can perhaps be attributed to his enormous size. Doctors concluded he had suffered “a very mild concussion.” He was treated and released, and the next day Charlie was out in the cul-de-sac, shirtless, speaking, as he so rarely did, with the neighbors. He showed them what Joe had done to him: the swollen nose, the neck “like a grapefruit,” the shoulder “like a tomato.”
The neighbors were not entirely sympathetic, and Charlie was not really seen as the victim until he released his home video to the media. “The report we’re about to show you is not for the squeamish,” CNN began. Now see Charlie mow his yard; see Charlie attacked by vicious black neighbor. Thirty-four seconds multiplied into hours of programming: Charlie crumples. Back it up — Charlie crumples again.
“He’s finally getting his just desserts,” said an old neighbor.
Watching the news, another man recalled a co-worker at a Chevron station. Byron Knapp had watched that Charlie attack a black man, until the man was throwing car batteries at Charlie to get away. That’s him, said Knapp.
Watching the news, Ron Rust recalled a motorist who had so enraged him that he gave chase. When Charlie stopped, the tool that Rust chose was a hammer, and Rust smashed it down on Charlie’s Corvette. Rust paid a $10,000 settlement. That’s him, said Rust.
And watching Oprah one day in Schenectedy, New York, Beatrice Furbeck’s son, William, said, “That’s him.” He’s older and heavier, but that’s him. The man they arrested for killing my mother.
Joe got out on bond too late for Thanksgiving dinner. He was required to keep his distance from the Van Wormers, which improved their relations, though Rosemary did claim that Joe stood in the back of his pickup once to spit at her.
The trial was held in the Fort Bend County courtroom of Judge Brady Elliott. Joe wasn’t called to testify, but he seemed bursting to tell his side and had to be told by the judge to put down his hand.
Ria said they became so busy fending off Charlie, they even lost focus on their children. Charlie had laid down the line between their properties but had never respected it. When Charlie’s grass clippings, his water and light breached the border, Ria said the boys knew their dad couldn’t protect his property. And their dad knew they knew. And for Joe, she said, “it was — it was just difficult being a man” when he had a wet driveway.
Ria said Joe was completely justified in doing what he had done to Charlie, considering what Charlie had done to Joe. Lawyer Rocket Rosen asked Ria to describe the racial “epitaphs” she had endured. A video was played in which Charlie can be heard to say, “It’s the nigger with the camera.” The question of the hour was why they hadn’t moved. “I’m trying to teach my teenage boys that when it comes to their piece of the rock,” Ria answered, “you don’t pack up and move because a white man wants you to go.”
Charlie, meanwhile, waited in the district attorney’s office with “over 1,000 hours of videotape evidence” that no one wanted to see. When it was his turn on the stand, he testified that moving would cost money, “so we’re just going to tough it out.”
He had long been afraid of Joe Sybille, he said. That’s what the lights and cameras were about. He wanted to know where Joe was and what he was doing, but “it was systematic,” Charlie testified. “He would figure out a way to make a fool out of me.” Not to be made a fool, Charlie kept adding equipment.
One of the few surprises in the attack, he said, was that Joe had not whupped him with his bare hands. Charlie’s weight was double Joe’s, but Charlie figured that Joe, being a military man, had the combat advantage.
Nonetheless, when he first realized he’d been hit, Charlie said the words that came immediately to mind were, “Man, you really did it now. You really did it now,” as though to say he really had Joe where he wanted him, as though Joe were really going to get it.
The jury found Joe guilty only of misdemeanor assault. His sentence was ten days in jail, a year’s probation, community service, fines, restitution and anger-management counseling.
He could have gotten 20 years, but, unhappy with ten days, Joe appealed.
The condition of the appeals bond was that he must stay out of the Van Wormers’ sight. “That means while they are in their yard, you’re not in yours,” Judge Elliott said.
Joe says a new game began then. He would wait inside for Charlie to finish mowing his yard, and, when Charlie had finished, Joe would emerge to mow his own. At which point Charlie would decide to mow again, and Joe would be forced back inside.
Joe would come out to wash his car; Rosemary would hustle out to wash hers. In and out they went, and Joe was maddened that more purely than ever, Charlie and Rosemary had become his wardens. Joe appealed the appeals bond, too.
To document his own suffering, Charlie commissioned a squad of physicians. It was agreed that Charlie’s back pain, as well as his difficulty visualizing a working engine, could be the result of the beating. His alopecia (“the hair pull test was positive”) was probably due to the stress of his living situation. Charlie filed his civil suit in December 1997, and he and Rose began carrying handguns.
Life between the neighbors returned to normal. The section of grass that Charlie was mowing when he nearly lost his life was the small easement by the curb, owned by neither party. Again, it became a battleground. Charlie reported to the sheriff that Ria had “scalped” the saint augustine. Ria was peeved.
“What is grass?” she said. “Does he think he mows grass better than the Sybilles?”
It seemed again that Charlie was trying to control property he didn’t own. When Ria saw him digging up the damaged grass, she told her boys to get their shovels — to help him. Rose was looking out the window, too, and when she saw the shovels, she called the sheriff again.
“Aw, you guys are acting like kindergartners,” the deputy said.
Ria pointed to Charlie. “He started it,” she said.
The deputy told them to leave the grass alone until they went to court, but Charlie found that hard to do. Ria was enraged to come home the next day and find that Charlie had covertly replaced the sod. She dug it up and dumped it in Charlie’s driveway.
That was the day Charlie was filmed snapping pictures of the dead grass, with a pistol in a holster and a shotgun on a strap around his back.
Ria got tired of Charlie’s lights, too. To block them, she finally nailed onto her fence a two-foot-high extension of sheet metal — an abomination in wonderland that prompted Rosemary once again to alert the authorities: “It is bad enough that we live next door to a convicted criminal,” she righteously wrote. “Do we also have to put up with our property being devalued?”
The Sybilles began receiving the usual dire warnings: “Fence Is Not In Compliance.” After the third letter, Ria replied. She informed the homeowners association that, in her view, the Van Wormer lights were also not in compliance, and if the association could not bring relief to her family, she was forced to do so herself. She asked that fines be waived until the Van Wormer lights were removed, or until “the court determines whether FCCSA has, in the enforcement of the deed restrictions, been arbitrary and capricious toward the Sybille family.”
This brought a hasty reply.
“Dear Ms. Sybille … We are taking no further steps on this matter until we determine the proper course of action. Please disregard the Jan. 22nd letter. I apologize for any misunderstanding and inconvenience this might have caused. Sincerely, Joseph A. Ristuccia, Compliance Director.”
The association proved ultimately powerless. Charlie and Joe’s neighbors began to fear for their property values and for the safety of their children. Maureen Simmonds complained that she didn’t like “the infamy of living in this neighborhood.” All hell broke loose in the master-planned community, and there was nothing the homeowners association could do. Without the power to oust people who are different, the association could only concede to different living conditions.
The easement was paved. A variance was granted for the Sybilles to build an eight-foot fence.
But peace remained a remote prospect until last summer, when Charlie’s lawsuit was quietly settled. The cameras came down then, with the lights and motion detectors. Everything looked beautiful again on Justina Court. The Van Wormers and Sybilles managed to agree they would no longer talk to each other. They would not photograph each other, would not perform any act calculated to embarrass, harass, molest, injure or humiliate each other. And they would not assault each other.
Very shortly afterward, both sides returned to court to accuse each other. It was said that Rosemary uttered, “Fuck you” as Joe drove up his driveway. It was alleged — there were no cameras — that Joe uttered the same words, as he grabbed his crotch, bent over “and stuck his finger in his anus area on top of his pants.”
Ria finally concluded there was no agreeing with the Van Wormers. One family would have to move, or one would die, she said, “and the way it’s going, someone is going to get killed.”
At his service station, Charlie was repairing a flat tire when he stood up and gazed through thick, crooked glasses. Had he ever been arrested in connection with murder? Charlie turned back to the tire. “Never, no,” he said. “Now leave us alone. You’ve really interrupted here.”
He seemed to consider the question an invasion of privacy, but defending private spaces, Charlie and Joe have lost their private lives. Having won the appeal of his appeals bond, Joe now wears a satellite monitor, recording his movement around the clock. He refers to it as his ball and chain, but he could throw it off the day he left the Plantation.
He took news of the murder quietly. As it sunk in, he began to smile, and the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. Finally, Joe had the dirt on his neighbor.
“Beaten, shot twice, stabbed 14 times. Hmmm,” he said. “I’m still not moving.”
E-mail Randall Patterson at randall_patterson@ houstonpress.com.
This article appears in Mar 25-31, 1999.