The Most Trusting People You Will Ever Meet (Group UNO)

I do remember being afraid of the large windows of their house after once seeing a coyote pass by one of the bedrooms. My grandma had built up a real fear of coyotes in us, telling us never to play outside past dark. My brother had told me that it was because coyotes liked to eat little girls, ones about my age. I wouldn’t go outside without him or someone else until I was eight or nine from fear of being dragged into the woods and eaten.

There was never a real fear of people, however. My grandparents rarely lock their doors and never had any sort of alarm system or protection against people breaking in other than the false-advising ‘Beware of Dog’ sign. And the sign didn’t even work.

Around six months ago, my grandparent’s house was robbed. The robbers took very little, a handful of my grandma’s jewelry, a pillowcase, random, semi-valuable trinkets, and a safe with held copies of their birth certificates and the birth certificates of all of their nine kids as well as the deeds to their pieces of land but no money. Among the things left were the flat screen TV, the numerous carefully crafted WWII plane models and watercolor paintings, and the unloaded rifle that my grandpa keeps in their closet. By all accounts, it was obvious that the robbers didn’t spend too much time in their home and probably didn’t really know too much about what they were doing. My grandpa told me that the police thought it might have been a group of young people, just getting started in the robbing business. It could have been a lot worse, he says.

But my grandma still brings the incident up in regular conversation, declaring it to be an intrusion of privacy and a moment that made her question their safety living in a largely Hispanic town in rural Illinois. My grandpa only complains about the mess the robbers had made. He usually just sits and comforts my grandma as she talks about the event, rubbing her back with his hand, up and then down, with his leathery, liver-spotted hands.