Devonne Brown

Life seems incomplete without a red wagon of some sort in my life. Now that my gardening wagon has been stolen, trash and all, from my back porch, there’s a whole in it. There’s a hole in the fence, too. It made me so mad to have to put the fence back together I thought I would explode. Luckily, it’s a nuisance of a gate and I could reassemble it rather than have to get a hammer out. Somebody stole my wagon.

It’s a mean somebody who’d steal an old lady’s red wagon in the dark off her back porch. Somebody knew that wagon was there. You can’t see it from the road. Nobody lives behind me. Somebody’s creeping around the neighborhood. My porch is fenced in with a stupid gate. It’s hard to get it out of there. They had to want it, and know where to go to get it. I wish they’d taken it during the day so they wouldn’t have made such a mess of things.

Why would anybody go to the trouble to get my wagon? Is this a prank? Did a homeless person find their way to my back porch, wedged, and I mean wedged, between two houses and find the lure of the wagon too much to bear? Was it really the trash they wanted, but needed the wagon to haul it in? Was it desperation, revenge, or “ just-because” that needed to take away something and have me mourn it? What kind of soul has to use darkness as a tool?

Yes, I’m mourning a red wagon, and another old friend I’ve had for years. I’m irritated by the inconvenience because wagon replacement invites another theft. This old lady needs a wagon to carry items from A to B. It makes me sad. I’m also mourning the loss of my “safe” neighborhood.