Mostly, noise only happens here on the weekends.

On Saturday around dusk there was a noise of crowds drifting over, capped off by a booming loud announcer’s voice doing that Let’s Get Ready to Rumble yell coming in from a medium distance. It was a football game at the college, maybe even Homecoming given the time of year. But after the initial ruckus, there was hardly any more noise from them forthcoming. Maybe the home team started losing right away, or something, but it went quiet fast.

Around nine o’clock there were two very loud bangs back to back down the hill, like major firecrackers, M-80s even only louder.

A little over an hour later something made me go back outside onto the porch that overlooks the side lot.

There I heard a much softer and closer noise further up the hill. A rustling of grass … following by a breathy whuffling.

I thought about going back inside for a flashlight, but I didn’t want to leave my study of the sound.

It sounded smaller than a bear, larger than a squirrel. Coyote maybe? So weird to picture one alone so close to town. I just held still and kept listening.

Then I saw a flash of white moving through the starlit darkness not far away. My eyes resolved it into a skunk and I smiled. It didn’t make much sense that the noise and the skunk were related–their positions didn’t add up, and the noise sounded bigger. But my mind seized on the explanation anyway.

Then, with the skunk still basically in sight, the noise grew, and then someone said, “Quiet, quiet, oh quiet … ”

I said, reflexively, “Okay, I’ll be quiet”.

The other voice made a fearful chattering sound and said–Oh My God you scared me!

She came shuffling into view finally at the edge of the last little drop-off behind me cargo trailer, looking for a way off the rough hill and onto the driveway.

I said, “You want to be careful. There’s a skunk right there”.

With a final vocal tremor of terror she jumped down awkwardly and shuffled toward the porch. I was grateful for the little three-foot wall between us. I felt quite wary but modestly protected.

The first real thing she said was, “I need to find the producer”, like I was supposed to know what that meant. So I had a pretty good idea right off that I was dealing with crazy.

I studied her with my eyes and it was painful. She was totally bald. Her face looked greenish in the darkness. She was wearing ratty clothes. The overall impression was that she was Gollum.

I told her I didn’t know the producer and I asked her, Producer of What? Are you in a movie? It was a comforting thought, because it would explain her weird makeup and generally otherworldly self-presentation.

No, she said, it’s a kind of reality TV thing. It went kind of wrong. Did you hear those two gunshots?

I said I did, and she said that her boyfriend had shot somebody, once in the face and once in the chest.

Is somebody dead, then? I wondered carefully out loud. I looked closer. She didn’t appear to be armed in any way, but I took a casual step back anyway and leaned against the far wall of the porch up against the house.

I don’t know, she said. I just need to get back to the producer’s house. Do you know him? Have you been there?

It went on like that for a couple more minutes. Then I watched her wander up the steep street on her witless quest for home or some twisted version of sanctuary.

I went inside, locked up tight, and made a huge meal for myself too close to bedtime.

In the morning, trying to figure out where the hell she came from, I studied the map and drove around a bit. The weirdest part was that there is no street up that hill. It’s a fairly big open area that rolls back down the other side toward the unused railroad tracks, and the ditch that holds what’s left of the creek.

For all I know she came up out of the water like a tadpole.

I’m telling you all this a few days late because I’ve turned it over in my mind and I don’t know what else to do with it.

I have no doubt now that the two bangs were indeed shotgun blasts.

Beyond that I have no clue about any of it.

Except that it may be time to become a producer myself.