The rain pattered down, muting the cricket-song ever so slightly as the scudding clouds overhead merged into one oppressive gray ceiling enclosing the night sky. Ahead harsh yo-music, unchanged since his youth—the monotonous drumbeat of bitches, niggas, hos, cash, guns and drugs—the most timeless aspect of this place that was once a city, in some better time before his birth, beckoned sardonically.

And so he went, hobbling along past the lazy sentries, resting their assault rifles on their shoulders and making the “not a cop” and “not a sandnigger” signs to the BLM commander, who was huddled with his officers around the grill, the center of yo-punk street life, that sidewalk grill. The BLM crews ostensibly occupied bus stops to protect their people from cops and sandniggers. There was a bit more to it than that.

Hoping they did not take his bus pass, which was a monther, with a few days still on it, Tom limped over to the five hombres. He recognized the Commander, a kid he had coached oh, twenty years ago and was somehow still alive, but didn’t dare say his name, for he now carried whatever name his position and street-cred required.

He was barred by one stamped-steel Ak-47 pushed against his chest by a big man who could have knocked him down, who snarled, “Wachwhityou, olewhitemuvafucka!”

Tom answered calmly as he slid his hand into his front pocket and brought out the roll of pennies and said, “I brought this.”

The bully soldier then spat in his face and snarled, “Fuck yocheapassw—”

The marvel of slurred diction never came to completion as Tom wrapped his whip hand around the pennies and slung a cross into the jabbering jaw, knocking the yo-punk BLM soldier out cold.

Amidst silence, he then tossed the roll of copper-colored coin to the checkpoint commander, who flashed a wide grin, stood, kicked the fallen soldier in the ribs to rouse him, and said, “I be damned if it ain’t ole Jonesey—shia, you gots ta be a hundred years old by now. Watchyou out en about fo?”

“Slippy Braxton, my latest guy, his brother got popped by the Park Heights Crew. He’s hiding and I need to know he’s okay—probably bring him out here to my place.”

The man that used to be a talented boy named Trayvian, patted him in a hugging manner, returned the roll of coins and then grabbed the assault rifle from the downed man, obviously intent on something. Tom followed his eyes and saw that he was looking at a shadow above the drone pole. All four drone poles at Hamilton and Harford were topped by the shot-up ruins of the police box and the wreckage of the drones they housed. The Commander raged, “Nigga, while you jackin dis harmless ole cracka, dem Jewmuvafuckas be repairing dey bots!”

Grown Trayvian then unleashed a torrent of lead, marked by tracers, as a hovering shadow exploded above a drone port it was repairing. The mechanical claws flailed, the rotors sputtered and the repair drone crashed to the sidewalk.

One soldier then darted across the shadowy, rain-streaked street to salvage the software as Trayvian dragged the bleary-eyed soldier to his feet, handed him the gun and detailed him to reinforce the sentries watching the road to the Sharia safe house.

Trayvian then turned to Tom and said, “The Nineteen be by in twenty minute. Pork chops is done, Ole School, en da nigga you decked missing out, so get yo eat on. Where you goin’ id might be yo lass.”

With that, Tom Jones was handed the first piece of pork he had had in a long while and felt momentarily guilty about poor Betty, living on boloney and chicken pellets for two years now. It occurred to him then that he ought to treat Betty to a pork chop dinner when he got back.

“Thank you, Sir, this is excellent. You must be doing pretty well with the tariffs if you can afford pork.”

Trayvian grinned over the bone he was gnawing and snorted.

“Shia, dis shit mo expensive den weed. But when da wind be blowin' up Sharia House way, we throws a couple on jus’ to piss dem sandniggas off!”

Trayvian then cleaned his bone like an old country girl clearing corn from a cob, most impressively. He then began shaping it expertly on the curb. Within five minutes the BLM Commander held in his hands a wicked punching shank. He looked it over and held it up to the others, who nodded their approval and then tossed it to Tom, who caught it and turned it over in his hand.

“That’s impressive.”

Trayvian then winked at him and said, “Dat fo da jab-hand Ole School—I done killed tree niggas and one sandnigga wit a pork chop punch. Where you goin’ yo ole ass needs it.”

Fairly horrified that this once bright young boy had used the skills he had taught him in the gym to climb the BLM ranks in such a brutal fashion—but hiding it—Tom Jones nodded thankfully, saluted the others and hobbled over to the bus stop across the rain-swept road, stowing the half-eaten pork chop in his zipped jacket pocket for Betty, for tomorrow and sliding the wicked bone between belt and hip.

Across the street, looking at him from under a camo rain poncho, the firelight flickering across his face, Trayvian seemed to regard him like some gargoyle, perhaps a gargoyle like the ones that had frightened him as a boy when he had looked up at the soaring bell tower of Saint Dominick’s church. That venerable church, a block to his right, was now nothing but a single story BLM soup kitchen, the granite black and bell of the tower long since requisitioned by municipal order to provide building materials for the Iraqi-Syrian Holocaust Memorial at the Inner Harbor.

Tom Jones was one of the elder souls of this fallen city, and was valued by some for his store of lore. But he knew precious little about what awaited him at Asquith and North Avenue, had not been there in five years and that during the day, with Slippy.

He leaned back against the sagging wall under the drooping eve, out of the rain that seemed to be picking up drive from out of the north, blowing in the direction he had come. For a moment he felt fortunate to be fed, and relatively dry, out of the old-man-killing monster rain.

“Thank you, Trayvian,” he mouthed into the night, and the man he addressed rocked on his heels and grinned, white teeth sparkling in the firelight.