Last night I arrived at work on foot, after a serene bum-free walk out into the county, only to have some dirty blonde thirty-something redneck in a sweat-stained John Dere hat lean back slightly over the railing outside the egress point to my eight hours of low income toil, and grouse, “Spare any loose change? I’m tryin’ ta get on this bus.”

The last bus had just passed me. He obviously wanted to cop some crack from Yo Somoti behind the dumpster.

He had been fairly un-abrasive, so I answered as lazily as he had asked, “Nah.”

As I entered he snarled over his shoulder, “Well fuck you too asshole!”

I smiled radiantly and headed to the time clock past a clan of morbidly obese twenty-something foodstampers and their milling spawn, as they heaped pop tarts, potato chips, tasty cakes and soft drinks on the register belt.

My boss has no balls and is not going to drive this scum off the lot. So there is no point in giving him a head’s up. I just go to work. Panhandling Season is beginning to bud later than usual. It is still not enough to generate a new Panhandler Nation, which strikes a deep sorrow in my bleeding heart. If these bums don’t start showing more initiative I’ll have to dig into the Harm City archives for some old school panhandling tales.

Walking back toward the city, this morning at 6:52, a fine new vehicle, that seems a hybrid between an SUV, a station wagon, and a pickup truck, speeds by me doing about 40 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. Not looking up in time to see the motorist, I wonder if the local hicks are getting soft, or if the local upper crust white bread is getting wannabe gritty at the car lot. Then I hear a large booming pop. It sounds like a nine-millimeter report as heard from the breech side of the firearm in a concrete alley. Only this is five to six times the magnitude of an automatic handgun report.

I look for a truck backfiring before me and realize that the sound has echoed from the building ahead of me, but originated behind. I turned to see an overhead wire tangling in the gutter over a felled light pole and a small splintered tree. The vehicle is still moving, but appears to be just gliding down the incline toward the waiting curb where Eastern Avenue narrows by the park entrance. I have no idea what condition the front of the vehicle is in.

Once again forgetting that I was raised by two Good Samaritans, I do recall that I have a bus to catch, and that I would like to read a chapter in my Phillip Jose Farmer novel before it pulls up, and continue on down the sidewalk, content to be a pedestrian.