She had eight more minutes before she had to face the uncaring day. We are two of a losing kind, still making poverty wages as we had in our youth, even as the children who no longer respect us live in demi-mansions far beyond the reach of the busses and our old tired feet.
“I’m heading down for some coffee,” as I shook her feet.
“Four minutes—I have four minutes!”
Realizing that the commute could be 90 minutes and possessing little more confidence in my continence then I had when I was six years old trying not to pee my pants after being bullied out of the school boys room, I skip the coffee and read a text thread from Chris, a man who so recently moved his family out of a high end Baltimore City enclave to a small town far away:
“Dude with knife tries to retreat from a fight of honor but one dumbass wants to get into it, pursues, postures, but sort of backs off when the knife comes out. Then dumbass friend rushes in. Bumrush friend catches knife to carodid in a split second and is bleeding out on the floor 13 seconds later.”
I then put this description together with a video that I recently saw and recall the beauty of it, that the knife man backing away was luring in his prey, that he was the second biggest of six Yutish Tribesmen involved. The thrust was delivered as a pronated stab, overhand, palm turned down, which maximizes the chance of severing that artery as the blade goes in wide, laterally, into the narrow, vertical target, being the neck. He did save the world from one dumbass and also granted that dumbass perhaps the only moment of grace in a baseless life, as he stood in repose and died on his feet, still and for once in a mindless life sentient. I thought it was a wonderful scene, possessed of a clear beauty. Do note that this is why gladiators were not permitted neck coifs. The Romans wanted to see this type of graceful end.
“I was lucky to live in a community in Baltimore City where people really look out for one another, and we kept things safe. Smalltown will be safer, but not as tight knit. There is a certain camaraderie born living where the head law enforcement officer is herself a criminal and you are outnumbered and outgunned by violent felons a mile away.
“I’ll continue to enjoy your work as time allows. Please pass my greetings to Clark Savage [1] when you meet. Will give status report when I get settled.
“You need to be a guest on Tucker Carlson Today. Would 1000X book revenue for next two years. Also a fascinating interview. He’s happy to shit on the idiots who run Baltimore (rightly so), but should hear from someone who has lived that decline for last several decades.”
I texted back, “I’m honored you think I wouldn’t blow that interview.”
Megan and I walked outside, past the Mexicans starting up their work trucks and down to her nice new office job. We passed a large corner yard with a grassy lawn where a woman our age exercised five greyhounds—beautiful animals, one of which ran to greet us, never barking, long needle like snouts and glass eyes making them look like lithe land sharks. We both said good morning and the woman looked at us like we were criminals—she was white, of course, middle class besides, and to see a white man wearing a back pack and a white woman who does not have a car and must walk along like some Mexican wench brings the hard light of judgment to her karenesque eyes.
I lightened things up, “You know the conquistadors used them to hunt Indians. Could you image trying to run from those?”
“I’ll miss you, Poppy. You be careful out there—and call me. Give me a kiss.”
“Later, Baby,” and she walked on down tot he office lot, gingerly, in the only shoes she has that don’t hurt her feet.
Seeing her to work I walked across the main street and caught the next bus. The bus service is better then ever, how it should have been back when many people used buses. These days, the thugs and hoodrats who used to prowl the bus lines and walk in gangs, they drive expensive cars, like the BMW that almost runs me over while running the red light as I cross Eastern Avenue.
Are the people that run this city idiots?
Or are they competent functionaries, doing their jobs over the decades, to drive working palefaces towards the sunset?
Four black women are on the bus headed to their menial jobs.
I note that as the bus leaves the east side of the city, now predominantly inhabited by recent Latino immigrants, that there are far more vacancies in the county, in what was once the place where whites fled the blight of jabbering night. Vacancies include entire strip malls, massive club stores, eateries, banks—yes, banks—medical centers, everything but the government buildings and liquor stores and bars are closing.
But just as the plan to use criminals to wash clean the city of working white trash leaves tribal criminals unwilling to leave their conquests, the old Essex trash yet blows upon the wind. As the cool July morning made me shiver, I saw the same lean, working class white trash walking about, taking the bus and tipping their greasy caps over deeply tanned and creased faces as inhabited this eastern Baltimore County waterfront when I was young. They have already been left behind by the criminals who now hound their pale betters out into a better, more bitter suburbia.
As I pick another bus up and it winds back and fourth across the city county line through areas I have lived, worked, walked and bussed for decades, the story is the same, the blight is incomplete, the jabbering legions of apish night crave the good life, want cul de sac suburbia even as they blare rap from 100k cars and continue their hunt like the greyhounds of some transhuman parody of a more honest, more sanguine age.
Ironically, the people of Tucker Carlson’s rariffied class have, in their quest to drive the working paleface to extinction, cultivated a zero-empathy criminal class that holds their same values, an ancillary predator class of parasites that need well-to-do whites to survive and will follow them to the ends of the earth, while trash like Megan and I get blown against the fence as our economic and racial betters pass us by.
Notes
-1. Author of The King of All Things
