I've got a new neighbor.

He moved in last weekend and came over to introduce himself on Sunday.

I shook his hand and when I told him my name, he tilted his head and said, “That’s a beautiful name.”

Beautiful? If my name were something foreign, exotic sounding, like Isabella, Alejandra, or even Gonorrhea, I could understand. But my name is utilitarian and nothing else, barely more than an article of speech, forgotten far more often than it’s remembered, and thus warrants no attention whatsoever. I therefore, in less than thirty seconds, had sufficient evidence to conclude that my new neighbor’s buckass crazy. I almost said it right then and there, but then I thought he probably has thrice-weekly doctor visits to remind him of that, so I kept my mouth shut. And I've kept my distance since then, but because my kitchen window faces his house, I keep an eye on him.

This works out well enough because he's obviously seen all those ads about how mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of and has taken that message to heart. He therefore lives his entire life on full display, sometimes on the front porch, sometimes in the yard, sometimes in the driveway, once or twice on the rooftop, but he's always outside, sometimes fully clothed, sometimes only in his boxers.

He's one of those wiry guys, small, thin, the waistband of his pants pulled up a tad too high, his thick, leather belt and a sense of barely-bridled rage cinching it all in place; he moves like an upright accordion, his shoulders pressing towards his knees with each step, and he’s always in manic-inspired motion, always on the prowl for something, anything, but a fight would be best.

I’d planned on sleeping a lot this weekend but, on Saturday morning, I awoke just before 7:00 to the noises of an almost-tuned radio blaring through my open kitchen window. From the sounds, either a cat was dying or someone was suffering a significant heartache, but, given that the radio dial was just a shade off the station, I really can't say which it was. It remained in that same position all day.

The knob that controls the volume, however, was fully functional and also remained in position all day, that position being two notches above that which is enough to cause the neighbors day-long headaches.

Mid-afternoon, I stretched out on my bed, somewhat hopeful of a nap but willing to watch some of the University's spring football game until then, but when I heard voices, male voices, angry voices, I screamed to my son, "Hey--look out the window--there's an ass-whuppin' going on somewhere."

He peeked out the front door and said, "Dang, Mom, that old man from next door is getting taught a trick." By the time I could get there, though, there was no more hitting, punching, grabbing, or thrashing about of any sort; there was just some jawing going on, and plenty of it.

My new neighbor was across the street, directly in front of my house, dog-cussing three men, one of whom was young, built like a tree trunk, and carrying a machete, and thus, to me at least, not a very good candidate for a dog-cussing. But all three men were walking away while my neighbor, like a tiny, ankle-biting dog, yapped after them until one of them turned around, stomped his foot towards him, and spooked him away.

My neighbor then scampered back to a cluster of pine trees directly across the street from his house, bent to pick up his hat from the ground, and searched for his glasses for quite some time.

Once he'd found them, he crossed the street and went back to his front yard, where he paced...and paced...and paced. I knew that, at the very least, his mind was busy re-tooling the story of what had just happened, knowing that, once his friends showed up, given what my son had seen (it involved my neighbor hanging on for dear life as the tree-trunk guy gave him three quick elbows to the back of the head just before he threw him in a splatter onto the ground), there wasn’t a chance that he’d tell them what really happened. And so he paced.

Before long, I heard another round of loud male voices through the kitchen window and Dylan and I gathered next to the sink, squatting down, so that we could hear without being seen.

"He took my damn knife," we heard him tell his friends. "That motherfucker better bring it back or he'll have to deal with me again,” he said, as the image of him thrown down onto a bed of pine needles flashed in my mind. “You know, I went to grab him by the balls and you know what? He didn't have any...I got nothing but a handful of hair." We stopped listening for a bit—we had to—we were laughing too hard—but when we were able to muffle ourselves enough to hear again, we heard him say, "Y'know, he knocked off my hat and my glasses...and when he done that, I took out my teeth because, by then, I was ready to fight."