The Man Under the Front Porch

One morning at breakfast, Mrs. Leonard Reese said, "There's a man under the front porch."

"Don't start in on me with these things the first thing in the morning," Mr. Reese said.

"I'm not starting in on you with anything. I'm just simply telling you."

"How do you know there's a man under there?" Mr. Reese asked.

"I heard noises. And I looked when you were in the shower and I could kind of see him."

"Well, I'm going to at least finish my cereal," Mr. Reese said.

When he was done with his cereal, Mr. Reese and his wife went outside to have a look. Their house was small and fairly old, situated in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. The porch was set about four feet above ground level on an openwork foundation of concrete blocks. Mrs. Reese led her husband to a spot a few feet from the front steps and they crouched down and peered through one of the openings. "There he is," Mrs. Reese said. "See him?"

"I see him. Don't point." Mr. Reese studied the man a moment in silence. Then he said, "He's really a big guy."

"Some of the blocks are loose over on the far side. I (continued on page 172)Man Under The Front Porch(continued from page 133) think that's how he got under there."

They both watched the man a while longer. He was staring back at them, but it was too dim to make out his expression. Once he shifted his position slightly. He appeared to be wearing coveralls.

"Maybe he's reading the gas meter," Mrs. Reese said.

"You know the gas meter isn't under there," Mr. Reese said.

"There's no reason to use that tone of voice."

"Well, there's no reason to panic and suddenly forget where the gas meter is." Mr. Reese cleared his throat and called to the man. "Excuse me--this is the Leonard Reese residence. Are you sure you have the right place?"

There was no answer.

Mr. Reese stood up, brushing off his trousers. "I knew something like this was going to happen someday," he said.

"Should we call the police?" Mrs. Reese asked.

"I'm hoping we won't have to get involved to that extent," Mr. Reese said. He suggested they adopt a wait-and-see policy for the time being, in hopes that the situation might correct itself. He left for work after instructing his wife to be sure to phone him if anything new developed.

Mr. Reese owned and operated a printing shop that had a slogan on the window reading: No Job Too Big or Too Small. It had been on the window five years ago, when he had bought the shop, and it was a lie. The part about no job's being too small was true, but the shop did not have the necessary facilities for a large-scale printing job. Mr. Reese never removed the slogan, though, because he was afraid the regular customers might think that meant he wasn't as competent as the previous owner. They might even decide he was a drinker who was liable to trip and fall against important levers and ruin entire brochures.

An hour or so after Mr. Reese had gotten to work, Mr. Margolis came in with a large manila envelope. Mr. Margolis had been hired as a salesman by the previous owner of the shop. He was in his early 60s now, at least 25 years older than Mr. Reese, but Mr. Reese had the feeling that even as a young man, he had probably never been especially good at his job. Still, Mr. Reese couldn't bring himself to fire a man who was old enough to be his father.

Mr. Margolis began pulling paper out of his manila envelope.

"That looks big," Mr. Reese said nervously. "This isn't a good time to bring in a big one."

"It's both the luncheon and the dinner menus for the Gaucho Room."

"Oh, menus. Menus are OK," Mr. Reese said. "Listen, I'm sorry if I sound on edge. I've got trouble at home. There's a man under the front porch."

Mr. Margolis nodded. "That sort of thing is happening more and more."

"We don't know what he wants," Mr. Reese said.

"I saw in the paper just the other day where an attractive schoolteacher was knifed repeatedly."

"I think you're reading too much into this," Mr. Reese said. "He looks more easygoing than that."

• • •

At half past four that afternoon, Mrs. Reese phoned to say that the man was no longer under the front porch. "I poked at him with a long pole and he ran out," she said.

"That could've been damn dangerous," Mr. Reese said. "What long pole?"

"A long pole I found in the garage," she said. "I don't know how much good it's done, though, because now he's up in a tree across the street." She said she had the feeling he was going to try to get back under the porch again the first chance he got.

Mr. Reese said he was coming straight home. He hung up and called Mr. Margolis into his office. "I'm going to have to get home," he said. "This thing has cracked wide open."

"That's all right--I'll look after things here." Mr. Margolis said.

"Good." Mr. Reese put on his coat and hat. "Just one thing," he said. "If someone comes in with a job that looks----"

"Don't worry," Mr. Margolis said. "I know we can't handle a big one. As a matter of fact, I've been compensating for that all along."

"How do you mean?"

"I've been curbing my initiative."

"Jesus, I never realized you were doing that."

"Well, I've been curbing it since before you even bought the place, so I guess there's no way you could tell."

• • •

When Mr. Reese got home, his wife pointed out the tree limb where the man was sitting. "At first he was lower down," she said. "He moved to that limb only about ten minutes ago."

Mr. Reese tried to get a look at him, but there were too many leaves. He and Mrs. Reese decided to go inside and keep an eye on him from there. They took seats in the living room. It was a few minutes past five.

"It's funny being home early," Mr. Reese said.

"Yes."

They fell silent. Then Mr. Reese said, "You get a nice light from those side windows this time of day."

Mrs. Reese nodded.

"Kind of mellow."

"Yes," Mrs. Reese said.

They sat in the living room until it began to grow dark. Then Mrs. Reese excused herself to prepare dinner.

It was too dark after they'd eaten to see for certain if the man was still in the tree. "You wait here," Mr. Reese said. "I'm going to go check on him." He got a flashlight and crossed the street to try to get a better look. He could make out the man's shape, but unfortunately something was loose in the flashlight, so it would work only when it was pointed down. Mr. Reese hurried back to the house. "I'm going to call the police," he said. "It'd be different if I had a decent flashlight, but I really got scared out there."

Two squad cars arrived within a few minutes after Mr. Reese had phoned. He ventured out as far as the curb on his side of the street and pointed out the proper tree. The policemen trained their spotlights on the man and told him through a loud-speaker to come down. He obeyed them and they led him to one of the squad cars and took him away.

The driver of the other squad car accompanied Mr. Reese back inside the house to get the necessary facts for his report. While he was there, Mrs. Reese, who had disappeared upstairs, returned wearing a new dress. She said that it had been delivered yesterday but that this was the first chance she'd had to show it to Mr. Reese.

He felt neither the style nor the color suited her. "She looks much better in some of her other things," he said to the policeman.

"I like it and I don't like it," the policeman said.

• • •

A week later, Mr. Reese told his wife that he wanted to invite Mr. Margolis over for dinner. "He's quite a bit older, but last week, during that prowler business, we established some sort of bond," Mr. Reese said. "I think it would be nice to start having him over regularly."

As it happened, though, he was invited only the one time, because it turned out to be an awkward evening. Mr. Margolis had evidently been drinking heavily before he arrived, which may or may not have been the trouble. In any case, during dinner he dropped his napkin repeatedly and, under the pretext of retrieving it, spent minutes at a time sitting on the floor underneath the table, humming quietly to himself.