When I awoke on the Fourth of July, the silos were there.
There had been no silos on Cherry Street before that day. An extra shelf might be needed for jars of canned green beans or tomatoes from gardens, but not midnight blue silos looming high above roofs.
No one seemed alarmed except me.
The next day I drove to work, past the backyard silos, each an identical rocket-sized, solid steel phallus, flat on top.
Somehow, the neighbors had clearly gotten together without me—me the lone unmarried person on the street. They must have decided that the best way to survive whatever was coming is to each have a silo, filled up for the long haul, maybe for a lifetime. I mean, these are big silos. Prosperous farmer silos.
At the T-intersection ending the street, however, I saw two houses without silos. I thus dismissed the idea I’d been purposely left out of the loop.
But when I returned that evening, I discovered those two houses also had silos.
I’d clearly been left out. Why? Something about me? I was the most recent neighborhood arrival, so perhaps they needed time to properly assess me. Maybe there was some secret neighborhood society I had yet to be initiated into.
Or maybe it’s my house. Cherry Street is a normal suburban neighborhood—a little cul-de-sac street, one block long, all the houses aspiring to be above the middle of the middle—new siding in trendy colors and huge decks.
All except mine.
My house is smack in the middle of the middle, or perhaps right below that. My house is without adornment—a rectangular box, tan in color, like dry earth. My roof has no overhang on the sides, a dead giveaway that this is the house of a poor person right smack below the middle of the middle.
My house was previously owned by a Korean man with an American wife, the only diversity in the neighborhood before me. I mean, I’m white, like everyone else here, just single and—being honest with myself—not very attractive. I think I’m actually too white, beyond pale. I sunburn so easily I wear sunscreen like a cloak of invisibility against the sun, the spray bottle always in my pocket like a magic amulet. Here, for your trip across the desert of life you will need this talisman. Keep it safe and do not reveal it to others. It is called SPF-70. Do not speak its name aloud or it will be stolen by your lobstered companions.
I suspect my singleness and my house’s austere design have kept me from being initiated into the secret silo society. And yet, my neighbors seem pleasant enough, often waving at me as I pass in my car, or at least nodding their heads.
All the houses on Cherry Street except mine are two-story constructions. They all have wide porches across the front, porches that are not deep enough to provide comfortable places to sit. I suppose that’s why I’ve not seen anyone sitting on them.
My house has no porch—only a protrusion like the bill of a baseball cap over the door that does not even keep the rain off delivered packages. They are left exposed to the elements, like unwanted kittens, the soaked cardboard barely holding in the innards.
I keep expecting someone—perhaps one of my neighbors on each side, whose last names I’ve seen on their mailboxes—to ask me if I want ‘in’ on the silos. But the days keep passing, no one letting me in on it, leaving me fearful of asking why I’ve been left out.
I tell myself I don’t care. Secret societies are so bogus, the initiation rites a bunch of mumbo jumbo—and then you must bow before the 425th Degree Barbecue Master.
Who needs that?
And so, every morning I go to work down north-south running Cherry Street, the eastern sun casting silo shadows across it, creating waves of light and darkness my car must cross. When I return home, the shadows have reversed polarity, now extending from west to east, just reaching the road. When I cross the shadows, I worry about them engulfing my car, so I hurry, pressing the magic button that gets me into my garage. Once inside, I press the magic button to seal me in before getting out of my car. I then slip quietly inside my house through the garage.
I have yet to see anyone on Cherry Street enter by their front door.
Each evening, I eat at my kitchen table, watching the silo shadow grow from my neighbor across the street to the west, growing toward me. The absence of light soon swallows my house like the singularity at the heart of a black hole—where nothing, not even light, can escape.
I wait until darkness swallows the shadow, then I reach out on social media to hear human voices, but the only sound is the tapping of my fingers.
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