That sound is one more door locking

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Maple Street in Dexter still has its maples, rows of them on either side of the road. It has comfortable, older homes framed by small yards. It has good people — the town manager, the basketball coach, the assistant principal.

“It’s a nice neighborhood,” says James Anderson, who has lived on Maple Street for 21 years. “There probably isn’t a nicer neighborhood in Dexter.”

Anderson awoke at 2:30 Monday morning when he heard glass shatter. He rushed into his living room to find two intruders, one with a gun, standing in front of his broken picture window.

“I said, `What the devil’s going on here?’ They didn’t really have an answer to that.”

They did tell him to put his hands up. They pushed him back into the bedroom, where his wife had remained, and demanded money. Anderson gave them his cash. The one with the gun said he wanted more.

The good news is that when Anderson told them they had gotten all they were going to get, the robbers fled. The other good news is that police followed their tracks and arrested two young men, ages 16 and 18, later that morning.

The bad news is that long after police close this case, it will continue to intrude on the Andersons. Something will remind them of the antique crystal that was smashed. They will look out the window and recall the sound of a gun breaking through plate glass.

From time to time, they will think about that instant transition from sleep to the end-on view of a gun barrel.

And they will remember, with equal parts smile and grimace, that the robbers need not have come through the window at all — the front door was unlocked. Why would anybody lock the door on a street like Maple Street, in a town like Dexter?

In big cities, it has been a long time since people left their doors unlocked. Small cities, too.

Rural homeowners have learned to live on the defensive — their remoteness makes them targets.

But there are still a lot of people who leave their doors unlocked in small towns. They know their neighbors. They can see them from their windows. Strangers do not have the anonymity of the city or the cover of the country.

Even if small-town residents do lock their doors, they do so more out of form than any sense of imminent threat.

Whether people take it for granted, as part of the same life they have always lived, or they seek it out after living elsewhere, that is one reason people live in this part of Maine. The economy may be sluggish here, jobs scarce and incomes smaller; culture and entertainment may be farther away. But we are safe.

All of which is true, until it happens to you.

Ask the people in Newport, Carmel and Corinna. Police are investigating more than 100 burglaries in that area since July. That is about one a day.

The victims list electronics, guns and money on the official reports of what is missing. They do not list a sense of comfort, but that is missing, too.

If you don’t believe them, ask me. I got my call on New Year’s Day, when I was out of town.

I came back to empty spaces where I used to have possessions. Drawers had been turned upside down in room after room. The contents of closets had been pawed and shuffled.

Good, generous friends had already cleaned up the worst of it — the splattered eggs, broken glass, and water from frozen pipes. Friends like that are part of living in a small town, too.

And, in truth, the whole thing does not rank high among life’s misfortunes. Nobody was hurt. Most of the loss can be replaced. At worst, our household technology has been set back to the 1970s, and that may not be all bad.

But as we went through the house figuring out what was still there and what wasn’t, there was a permeating sense of how much had been touched by strange hands — hands detached from human decency. Our own belongings looked repulsive.

The thunk of the door locking behind me does not sound as comforting now. Leaving town will not be as easy next time.

These are little things, irrational things. But they make life in a nice neighborhood in a small town one shade darker. That’s not a complaint, just a description.

James Anderson is not complaining about his fate, either.

The gun did not go off — not when he confronted his invaders, nor when he told them they would get no more.

The police made arrests; that will make it easier for him and his wife to sleep tonight.

But the uneasiness lingers, even at a place like Maple Street.

“I guarantee that door will be locked from now on,” Anderson says.

“I don’t know what we’ll do about the window.”