After spending 24 hours away from the old plantation house, I decided to go on a walk down into Cedonia, returning before dark. I had a binder with manuscripts for Martha to read while she recovers from her surgery, and a copy of Organa for Megan to read while she recovers from her own hospital stay. This is a sign that one is getting old. The smash and grab push up White Avenue from Cedonia during the April Purge ended when five blacks with bats were stopped by one white man with a gun fifty feet from Martha’s house. Megan lives a mile farther along into the ghetto.

Walking toward me as White Avenue dropped into Route #1, was a superheavyweight of about 35 years. He saw me coming with my binder and book and white beard, and crossed the street so that I could pass, saluting me with a “Good afternoon, sir” from the far side.

Next a 30 year old heavyweight rounded the bend and I switched my binder into my right hand so he could pass on the narrow walk. When I looked up he was walking by my right side in the gutter, nodding and saying, “Hey, what’s up?” as he continued about his way.

These men were going out of their way to make certain a guy who they could have easily squashed did not feel threatened.

On the other side of Route #1 a woman was walking along cussing into her phone.

Up on the Cedonia Ridge two tall light heavyweights in their late teens were approaching me, speaking, one bouncing a basketball idly. I am not a threat, with my copy of Organa. The fact that they slowed, stopped talking and began using hand signals with each other as they turned and observed me as I passed, was a sure sign that I was being measured. Fortunately I did not make it onto their menu.

On a small parking lot one woman was blocking in another woman as she tried to leave the very parking spot that the blocking woman wanted. Windows were rolled down. Swear words were exchanged, both of them having the same name, “Bitch.” The woman that was blocked in dismounted and spit through the window into the woman’s face as she sped off screaming. Both wenches were threatening to have sons and other men called in to harm the other.

I passed a white stoner, a small, tanned, furtive looking fellow, who was slinking away from two menacing teenage thugs and was thrilled to see me, saying, “High there, sir.” as he kept to the center of the side street to avoid being jumped. The two thugs cut off through a grass covered alley, looking at me inquisitively over their shoulders with dark scowls across their brows.

On my way home I stopped at Sunny’s Speedy Mart and held the door for a muscular 30-year-old man who thanked me and smiled, calling me, “sir.”

As I selected my glass bottle of pineapple juice and paid for the weaponized nectar as the church bells over in still Christian Hamilton signaled six in the evening, an extremely muscular man of about 40, nodded respectfully to me, and thanked me after I held the door as I walked off in front of him and he began gassing his car.

As I walked up onto the Hamilton Ridge two teenage boys ahead of me, who were paying more attention to house windows and parked cars than they should have been, began sizing me up. I crossed the street so that I could keep them in my peripheral vision as I passed them. As I picked up my pace and palmed the bottle meaningfully instead of drinking from it, they skulked off through the grassy lot to the secluded subsidized housing complex, which was so thoughtfully provided with its very own mugging path for the occupants to use when they prey upon passersby.

As I crested the ridge I saw the police chopper over Hamilton, circling. It had been coming in for a pass earlier, just before I left, but I had been expecting to see it over Parkville to the north. As I crossed Walther the chopper broke off and headed for Parkville. An ambulance came screaming away from the helicopter search area down White Avenue in my direction, followed by three cop cars with lights on but no sirens.

In that one hour walk just before dusk, I was “sir” to every male over 25, and “prey” to every male under 25.