Yusuf DeLorenzo

Doing Timeline

I caught myself before I could do a double take. Pixels on Street View don’t move! Nothing does in a series of still photos. Sure, when you click, you move, from place to place. But click to move, see that you’re thirty feet down the road, stopped at the next place, and then see something on the screen move? That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen. No, it doesn’t happen that way. At all. Even the internet is subject to the laws of nature.

It was a vertical sort of movement, whatever it was. Maybe a fading of rogue pixels from a previous window? Or one of those annoying pop-up ads? One that started to pop up, but fell victim to ad-blocking software? Whatever its origin, whatever the explanation, it was little more than a flicker on the screen.

Anyway, it’s not there now. I click into the overhead view of the map, Satellite View. If I zoom in enough, I can see the path leading to the remaining open areas of the golf course at the fringes of the upscale residential development.  Wondering if I might have another look at the phantom I thought I’d seen, I go back to Street View. The image of the house gutted by the fire is pixel-hazy, but it’s almost the way I remember the place when it saw it enveloped in smoke that day. Using the mouse to turn away from it and look into the wooded area in the lot across the street from it, I see the path that runs through the pines and undergrowth there. The thing that moved in those woods, or so I thought—and now I almost have to laugh—was actually upright before it darted behind one of those pine trees, the one with the biggest trunk. That’s what it looked like. Maybe ‘darted’ is the wrong word. It was more like it slunk behind that tree. I may have blinked. Screen fatigue or whatever it’s called. My eyes playing tricks on my brain. You know, that thing where the eye sees maybe no more than an outline. Then the brain fills in the details from memory.

I’d taken my time at the computer searching the neighborhood. Too bad no one was looking over my shoulder when I saw the movement. There usually is. Today, they might have seen what I saw. Or what I thought I’d seen. But, today, of all days, I’ve been left alone. Except for the guard, but he’s not looking.

Back in Satellite View, I zoom in over the neighborhood until I can see the green squares of manicured lawns, the blues and greens of the swimming pools, the oranges of tiles on the roofs, all arranged along the lines of blacktop on the streets and the whites of the sidewalks running parallel. There were no cars in the streets to interrupt those straight lines and obliques because the rules there are that you keep your cars in your garages. Still, in Satellite View I see a few parked in their driveways. 

From hovering overhead, I click into Street View and find myself facing the woods. I take a deep breath and pivot on the screen, leaving those woods behind me, and the burnt house is once again in view. It occurs to me then that the pivoting on the screen is like the blur of passing time. When the blur resolves itself, I see the charred bricks that broke free when the chimney on the flaming colonial replica caved and buckled. On the night it happened, I saw the fiery collapse. I sat waiting, hands tied behind my back, on the sidewalk opposite. I remember the frenzied upward flight of yellow, red and white sparks. Then, the bright lights from the red fire trucks pushed through the night. The blinking yellow lights of the ambulance. The flashing blues of the police cars.

People were out in the street that night. Neighbors. But, on the computer screen, I see only the vacant daylight version of the street. I click the zoom button, once, twice, and I’m standing in front of a blackened pile of debris. I’m uncomfortable dwelling on that image, so I pivot again. The screen blurs. And there’s that pine tree at the side of the path. That’s when I see it. When I see the movement. When something slips behind the trunk of that big pine. It moves. Of course, there can’t be anything moving in there. I understand enough about computers to know that I’m viewing a static digital image. But, again, my mind plays its trick on me.

The crew cut neighbor said he used to walk his dog on that path every day, in the morning before he left for work and in the evening when he returned. That was his testimony to the court. That evening, I waved to him and his dog in the near darkness. For the last time.

Ramadan completed, fasting over, my parents were entertaining relatives for the Eid celebration. Just before sundown, I excused myself to go outside for a walk. Baba and my mom were all excited about showing off the new house in the nice neighborhood. I knew, too, that they wanted to talk about my sister’s upcoming marriage. I wasn’t supposed to be there when they did. So, when Mom nodded, I said salam to the friends and relatives. Then I went outside to explore. To sneak a quick smoke.

I was a few steps from the path into the woods across the street when I waved to the neighbor. I guessed he and the dog had been walking on what remained of the old golf course.

“Hi, Mister. Nice dog.”

“Kid.”

That’s all he said. Didn’t even look at me. Or, so I thought. I stopped to look into the early evening sky for a glimpse of the new moon. Ramadan lasted only twenty-nine days that year, and I was looking for evidence to support my suspicion that the Eid had been announced a day early. I’m kind of a geek about moon sightings. I knew if I stood at the end of the driveway, I’d see it come up just after sunset over that house next to ours. The one that burned to the ground. The one I’ve been looking at on Street View today. The one the neighbor with the dog said I was standing and staring at with a crazed look in my eyes. My so-called lawyer should have objected then. ‘Speculation, Your Honor!’ But he didn’t.

Maybe ten minutes later, or maybe half an hour, it was dark and I wasn’t wearing a watch, I was a few streets over. I was still looking into the sky for the tiniest sliver of moon when I saw the white smoke and red and yellow sparks rising over the roof of that house. I didn’t know the number of the house where I stood. I didn’t even know the name of the street. Somehow, that would have made a difference if I’d remembered. That’s what the dumb ass lawyer said anyway. The one the court appointed for me.

The first thing that got me in trouble was when I said, “Allahu Akbar!” The prosecution had affidavits from six neighbors who’d heard those words from my mouth that night. I don’t recall, but I guess I was saying that when I left the street to rush through other people’s lawns and go straight across to be where the fire was. I guess that’s why no one saw me running down Maple Street, or Birch, or Oak, or whatever. To me, from where I stood, it looked like the flames in the night were coming from our house. That’s why I cut across the lawns. I couldn’t believe that none of the witnesses had seen me on their lawns, when they all testified they hadn’t seen me on the streets I couldn’t name. So, when I ran up, through the neighbor’s backyard, and came out behind the burning house, that’s when the neighbors saw me. Some of them testified that was when they heard me yelling ‘Allahu Akbar.’ I probably was. But I must have stopped when I saw them staring at me. I think the fire would have stopped, too, if it recognized the expressions on their faces at that moment.

I had no choice but to run when they all looked at me like that. That was another thing against me, the running. That was probably the worst thing. That, and that I’d been seen coming out from the backyard of the burning house and yelling ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Every one of the witnesses said they’d seen and heard that much. Why couldn’t they see the reasonable explanation that I’d come from two or three streets over? That I’d cut across lawns and backyards to get to my parents’ house. Why? Because no one had seen me on the street. Does that even make sense? But then, I ran into the woods across the street and down along that path where I’d seen the neighbor walking his dog through the pine trees. So, I guess, I was not making much sense either. The thinking came to me later. Long after the fire. At that moment, I was running on pure instinct.

They caught up to me, two of the men, neighbors I’d never seen before, at the pine tree with the big trunk.

I tried, but I couldn’t hide. Not then and not now.

When the police came, they found a lighter in my pocket. The one I’d used to smoke the joint I took outside with me. So, no cigarettes. Only a lighter. Yeah. More than suspicious.

The Timeline feature takes me back the five years, so that I might view the house as it was at the time of the fire. At seven years, I can see the house as it was before it burned half to the ground. I can see those woods, imagine the scent of that pine tree with the big trunk by the path to the old golf course. It was there seven years ago. And five years ago. It’s still there now, in the latest Street View.

How cool would it be if you could click the Timeline button forward into the next year, and the next, and the next. How many years would it take for the whole neighborhood to disappear? To go up in flames like that one house? To be bulldozed away for a new interstate? To disappear in a gaping Florida sinkhole? To be erased by a Tsunami? How many years before history would be no more? Before images would have no viewers? No technology in the world is going to make that happen.

Anyway, thank you, technology. Maybe I should say, thank you, Allah, for Street View and Timeline. They help me see things. I guess the question I should ask myself now is not ‘How many years before I might see myself in those woods again?’ but ‘How many years before the neighbors see me, satellite or street, before they see me at all?’

Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo has published translations from Arabic, Farsi and Urdu and is the author of a series of mysteries set in Algiers during the final decades of the Turkish Regency. He is represented by Lara Lea Allen of the Lotts Agency. You can find Yusuf online at www.yusufdelorenzo.com