Hoarding out for a hero.

Nobody on Ramsey Street ever went down to where it dead-ended. The two houses there, side-by-side with their backs to the ravine, didn’t look much different from the other houses on the street, frame 2-bedrooms with siding that didn’t have too many years left in it. It was the people inside that made them different. Or, rather, the things those people filled the houses with.

For Sylvia, at 3125 Ramsey, it was cats. Dozens of cats, of every color of the feline rainbow and every disposition of the feline heart. For Clarence, at 3127, it was lights. Flashlights and lanterns of all sizes, power sources, and intensities. Ask Sylvia or Clarence what each thought of the other, and they’d say the same thing as everybody else on the block: “That weirdo?”

Of course, they had to maintain a nodding acquaintance. But the closest they ever came to recognizing their common eccentricity was on Halloween. They sat under their porchlights, Clarence with his bag of glow sticks and Sylvia with her bucket of cat treats, and waited. Watched the costumed children of Ramsey Street knock at every door but theirs. Finally, with a sigh and an exchanged shrug of the eyes, went back inside, bag and bucket still full.

Then the storm came. The rain and wind were past their peak, the thunder just an occasional rumble now. Ramsey Street had already turned its attention to the late-night talk shows, the microwaved bedtime snack, the civilized business of tomorrow morning. Suddenly, silence. Darkness. The power was out.

Clarence waited half an hour. The rain slowed to a drizzle, then stopped. Looking out his back window, he could see through the trees that the people across the ravine didn’t have power either. He walked to the corner of his yard where he could see a couple of blocks down Ramsey to busy Prospect Avenue. Those lights were out, too. Even the big lights at the Shop ‘n’ Buy. This was a big one.

Clarence put on his headlamp and went room to room, filling a big trash bag with lights. When the plastic bulged with the corners of a hundred flashlights and lanterns, he headed out to the cracked sidewalk of Ramsey Street.

Some doors opened wide at his knock, some just a sliver to reveal one tentative eye. “Thought you might need this,” Clarence said to each one, holding out another light or two from his sack. Everyone was grateful, even the ones who already had lights of their own and refused his offer. By the end of Clarence’s rounds, nobody thought of the end of the block with quite the same disquiet or sadness.

There was one neighbor yet to visit: Sylvia. Sighing, swallowing his unease, bracing himself for the smell, Clarence walked up her front stairs for the first time in the 19 years they’d lived side-by-side. She opened the door, then paused in the darkness, startled to see her weirdo neighbor, unsure what to expect.

“Thought you might need this,” Clarence said, and then realized Sylvia was crying. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Tiffany,” she sobbed. “She ran out the back door when the lights went out.”

Clarence looked at the cloud of cats at Sylvia’s feet, as if to ask, what difference does one of these vermin make, more or less?

“You don’t understand,” Sylvia said. “Tiffany’s not an outside cat. She’s delicate.”

Clarence’s first thought was Let nature take care of it so the health department doesn’t have to. But another look at Sylvia’s stricken face and he sighed the sigh of duty again. “You see where she went?”

“Down the ravine.”

He rustled around in the bag for a moment, pulling out two LED lanterns. He clicked one on, handed it Sylvia, then clicked the other on for himself. “Got your shoes on?” She nodded. “Let’s go.” The neighbors walked together into the ravine, two gentle lights swinging through the darkness.