House on the Hill

She has a small pallet board homestead

She stands about 5′-2″—wind-blown Jet-Black hair. Dark skin, she Weighs maybe 90lbs. Because of her small size, her striking features, I think she might be South American. She wears jeans, plaid shirts, sometimes a black jacket over the shirt.
She has found a place behind Seahawk stadium, facing 4th avenue. Small empty green space, slight incline, a small tree to the north side of the clearing, small bushes on the street side.
She has built a small pallet board homestead. Shes lined her home with tarps, pieces of wood she has found.
The home sits on pallet boards as well. She steps up to the opening that is used as a door, pushing the tarp to one side, then steps in. Her place appears to be about 3 or 4 feet deep, 7 or 8 ft wide.
The area that she cleared for herself is clean. The grass is pulled, weeds are pulled. I have seen her collect garbage that blows its way into the area.
I have driven by in the mornings and have seen her sitting in front of her place eating. She uses a bowl and utensil. I begin to wonder where she has come from, how long she has been there. As the city has cleaned out other tent towns and homes over the last couple of years, she seems to have survived this, her house always clean, always separate from others, no one has moved into her territory. I have wondered why.

The small tree on her homestead is about 20 feet away from her door. She argues with it. I have seen her shake her fist at it. Break a branch, throw it on the ground. Then stomp to her house.
I have seen her stand at her property line, next to the street as cars and buses, trucks buzz past. She doesn’t seem to notice us. She stares past the hustle. Her dark eyes are busy with things on her mind. And She is busier than the street in front of her.
She looked my way last Sunday, I was hoping to see into her eyes, but we never connected there. She turned again to the tree, waved her arms, stomped to her door.
Behind her, lights of Century Link Stadium.

Author: transittransientsandother

I have been driving for Metro for about two and a half years now, Love this job. Driving has always been fun for me, and adding on the parade of people on a daily basis in a large beautiful city like Seattle, is the extra foam on my macchiato, Thanks for dropping by…. I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I do writing them

One thought on “House on the Hill”

  1. Ahhh Eric another brilliantly described snippet of vision from the driver’s seat. Thank you for this gift you share with us. I feel like I know her too…. or at least want to know her and what the tree says back to her.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: