The window had no curtains, no blinds. Though the back of a big screen TV obscured a portion of the view into the living quarters of the duplex. Passing by I’d often see a young man on a couch, facing the TV, controller in hands, inexplicably wearing a medical mask over his mouth and nose; inexplicably, I say, because he was alone. I’d only ever seen him leave to take the trash out. He’d walk with stiff and jagged gestures, with the unsteadiness of old age though he looked to be in his 40s.

Neighbors didn’t judge; he was a veteran and Lord knows what he’d seen.

Neighbors did wonder. And pieced together a life story, brief as was his time on our street before he moved onto somewhere else. 

Thinking about him, I realized that there is something like a touch of the tragic about many of the lives of the young men on my street in a small town in southwestern Ohio. It’s a homey town in a fast-developing and affluent county, not far from Cincinnati, with a good school district, close to opportunity in many ways. But there’s something quietly amiss, something about the men. I think of them as good men—often sensitive, often kind. 

But it’s like the train left and they are still here waiting.