In the middle of the block, where the person was, the darkness was almost total; I couldn’t even tell if I was watching a man or a woman. I had a flash of an unpleasant recollection: my great-grandmother, in the act of saying, “Blacker than a nigger in a coal mine with his mouth shut,” and embarrassing everyone in the whole family quite unconsciously. Or maybe not; maybe that little nod of satisfaction had not been over a well-turned phrase but over the pained looks she’d intercepted passing between my parents.

My great-grandmother would have stomped out to the middle of the street and inquired what the person’s business was, quite assured of her own safety in doing so, too.

But I know better.

The person was pushing something, something on wheels.

Peering intently into the darkness, I tried to remember if I’d ever seen anyone out on my street before when I was up and wandering. I’d seen a few cars go by, residents or visitors of people in the apartment building, but I couldn’t recall ever meeting up with anyone on foot in the past four years-at least in this part of town.

On the bad nights, when I ghost all the way downtown, it is sometimes a different story.

But here and now, I had something to worry about. There was something furtive about this odd incident; this person, this other inhabitor of the night, was pushing what I could now tell was a cart, one with two wheels. It had a handle in the middle of the longer side, and legs on it, so that when you let go of the handle and set it upright, it would be steady and straight. And it was just the right size for two thirty-gallon garbage cans.

My hands curled into fists. Even in the dark, I could identify the familiar shape of the cart. It was my own. I’d bought it at a yard sale from some people who were moving; the man of the house had made it himself.

It was loaded down with something wrapped in dark plastic, like the sheets you buy to put in flower beds to keep weeds down; I could see the faint shine off the smooth plastic surface.