Jumped Fence

Just before 1 AM, I heard the tell-tale rattle of a chain-link fence outside my bedroom window. In two steps I'm at the window with my fingers sliding apart two slats of the deep red blinds to look down into my back yard.
There, just passing beneath one of our large pine trees, threading his way through a labyrinth of toys left scattered across the grass by my kids earlier as they splashed in the blow-up pool, I see a tall figure illuminated in a white-blue light coming from the nearly full moon.
There's something slightly less than sinister about that loping unfamiliar figure, not hurrying, just strolling through the lawn I've only mowed a dozen times, towards the patio where earlier that evening we ate dinner with my in-laws. He's not heading for the house, just skirting along the back fence across the yard like he was cutting through a public park.
But that's not a public park and he doesn't belong there. I'm tired, nearly asleep, but I shout in a surprisingly robust voice through the screen in my bedroom window, "Stay out of my yard!"
Without turning or even starting, the figure bends into a jog continuing across the yard, unexpectedly tossing a "Sorry" over his lowered shoulder. It sounds obligatory and not at all contrite, as if he's hopped the fence a dozen times and attributes any sense of wrong-doing to outmoded views of property ownership that need revision.
The deck coming off the kitchen obscures my view of the part of the yard that he's in now, so I leave the bedroom. Instead of turning into the kitchen for a better view of the back, I veer to the living room window, wide open to let in the cooler night air. My house is a corner lot, so I expect this trespasser hopped my fence to cut the corner, though I can't see how it would save him any time. If that had been his route he should have reach the street by now. Peering as best I can down the road running parallel with my window I don't see a soul on the sidewalk.
After a short wait, I turn to the kitchen and scan the now-empty shadows. No movement, only the steady crickets texturing the darkness with their trilling.
Back in bed, Traci and I converse briefly about the intruder. She soon rolls over and sleeps. I lie awake. The crickets' chirping is tantamount to silence as I wait for other sounds. Though I'm nearly certain my yard is empty now, the silence fails to comfort me. I wait.

The first time I saw people cutting through my front yard, I was annoyed. Neighborhood kids did it on their way to school in the morning. A couple of loud-mouthed women had run across it one night months ago, tripping in a narrow rut running from the sidewalk to the front porch and dropping a nearly-full package of cigarettes which I threw in the trash the next morning with great relish.
The easiest solution to the problem would be to extend the fence line that enclosed my back yard along the west edge of my front lawn. Even the low four-foot chain link one would discourage most people. But apparently not everyone. To some, fences exist only to be jumped: there are no boundaries to some people's sense of self-entitlement, or their contempt for others.
I could put up a taller fence, perhaps a nicer-looking vinyl one. But I don't like the idea. A fence is not a friendly thing. In trying to wall too many things out, I fear I would only wall out more good than bad, while leaving myself feeling walled in. Transforming my yard into a prison, barring me from conversations with my elderly pigeon-keeping neighbors or friendly passers-by, would take a much greater toll on me than the guy who may just as soon scale an 8 foot fence.

Around 2:30 I call the police to report the neighbors to the east who are laughing loudly on their back porch and playing music, keeping me awake at least as much as my unease. Maybe that's why I didn't see him on the street: my yard was a more direct route to the backyard of my neighbors. Perhaps he lives right up the street from me. Or perhaps he's the owner of the small purple coupe parked on the corner by the fence that he jumped.
Either way, I don't know who he is, but he has an easy way to identify me. I'm the one coming out the front door of the large brown house on the corner with the low fences, trying to reconstruct an imaginary line that can't be crossed.