At 3:24 A.M. a mixture of wastrels, oldsters and one polite, blond Mormon kid with a blue shirt and black backpack, de-train from car 610 of the #6 train, known as the California Zephyr Eastbound. The #5 originally brought me west to Caliphornica.

The morning was cold at a damp 40 degrees, the pavement puddled from the recent monsoon rains in this desert. As this old hoodrat and young hobo shorts steps ahead of the rest, a seven foot tall Negro wearing a blanket, walks down the westbound train tracks past me, staring zombie-like ahead.

I had just finished a text round with Jason, the ESP Autobiographer from Baltimore who bought me lunch in med July. His writing had been uneven and was seeking my advice on what one of my books he should consult for style and pacing pointers, to which I ventured the Jericho Bone, a fictional treatment of an historical event. He then said that my output was incredible and that he wanted to find the same level of energy. To this I admitted, that I am driven rather than motivated, haunted by some twenty pressing urges to write history and fiction in a race against madness. Some of his response is copied below from my flip phone:

“Sounds to me like you are in fact inhabited by a literary spirit. I mean someone is inside of you doing the writing. No single person can write so much in such a short period of time especially in this day and age.”

It does feel involuntary and I agreed.

“I got high on LSD years ago and Chaucer inhabited my body and I was talking in Old English. So I think old poets and writers can inhabit you if you allow them in, how muses work... I need to learn to channel one or several.”

“That's another story in my arsenal. Yeah, I'm a conduit for lost souls.”

I know the feeling.

“If people knew that all the great writers were actually haunted by spirits trying to get a message out, it would cause a revolution...”

I halted the text exchange to navigate the worse part of the safest large city in America.

As I walked ahead of the people who got off in front of me, I noted that at the head of the line of passengers ready to take our places to points east, was a caring Mormon conductor, being questioned by a small waif of a girl. She was 15-to-18, barely a woman, slight and of red hair, with a small button nose. She wore a yellow hooded sweatshirt, pink sweat pants and canvas sneakers over ankle socks and was visibly shaking from the cold.

The conductor said, 'Go into the station to get warm.

A mentally ill or drugged paleface staggered insanely by.

A tall recovering addict with deep voice angrily advised whoever was seeking advice on his smartphone that “They weren't shit and wouldn't be shit until” they “stopped doing what” they “were doing.”

A Bantu elder camped out on one of the many covered four person seating shelters, more than all of the mass transit stops in Baltimore combined.

A spry, thirty-something Bantu warrior loped by me, the saw my heavy pack and started towards me. I shucked the pack and braced my legs as I put palms on the steel head of the T-cane and he steered back in his original direction.

[To the American mind, neither of our aggressive acts are aggression, but misunderstanding!]

A towering Bantu bum, wearing a huge white backpack, walked down the street and looked towards the platform where I stood, scanning for opportunity, saw none, and kept going.

The passengers who were not waiting for the greyhound bus, boarded two sedans and left.

I stood alone within 50 paces.

Came the little waif, like a shade out of Jason's big, soft heart.

From three paces she stopped and pointed at my rucksack where it reposed unworn on the blue wire bench, “Bra, do you have a spare blanket you would trade for this bag of Dorito Twists I just got at the train station?”

“Miss, I do not have a single blanket, not even a jacket.”

“Dam, Bra, I'm amazed you aren't freezing in those short sleeves.”

“I'm still fat enough to stay warm.”

Pointing at the cane I leaned on like the hilt of a two-handed sword, she admired “Awesome cane, Bra. I'm Ajay, from Ogden [Utah].”

“What are you doing out here alone, Ajay?”

“Oh, I like to go explore.”

[Probably home neglect or abuse or addiction or all three.]

“You shouldn't e out here alone on the platform. You don't know me. I'm a strange man.”

“I know,” she peeped, wiping her nose with her sleeve.

She then began to walk back towards the station, then circled around the shelter and came to my other side as I turned and pointed to my pack, “You wouldn't happen to have spare pocket knife in there I could have, for this bag of Twists?”

“I'm on a special diet—I'm old. More importantly, why do you want a knife, Little Girl?”

To be continued in Ajay 2...