Savay, I met on the #36 bus from Towson to Essex, where we both picked it up as it dipped into the City, three weeks ago and I cannot get his monologue out of my head. Savay is about 70 years old, 5-foot and 8-inches tall, thick-boned, and bent from some injury. His hair is a close cut afro and is streaked with white, his beard the same. He wears denim overalls over a yellow shirt and goes barefoot. Behind him he wheels a large luggage carry-on as he pushes a handy-capped walker/seat. The seat of this thing is loaded with a milk crate of bottles and cans collected for recycle. He sees me and approaches, sitting in the last right-facing bench seat for elderly and handicapped and leaning on the plastic barrier before my first forward facing seat, both of us behind the driver. In case violence breaks out, this is the power position, as the bus banks often to the left, and any yutish adversary harassing us from the aisle, may be dispatched using the force of the bus banking in to the next stop. These are considerations from the previous era, before the yutes became hypnotized by their smart phones, and the buses came equipped with audio visual equipment and the federal penalties for violence on mass transit were posted.

The man sees in me a ready ear and begins his story, leaning towards me in a conspiratorial posture, smiling with his wide jaw and mouth, his teeth still there, but yellowed as he searches my one eye for signs that I get the meaning of his various narratives.

“Are you well, friend?”

I nod, ‘Yes.’

Points to cane and eye-patch.

“Service, military?”

I shake my head, ‘No,’ and ask, “West Indian?”

“Yes, Jamaica. Land of the best rum. You know, they make rum from the sugar cane, brought the slaves over and have them at it with machete…”

Mimes sugar cane harvesting, flipping imaginary machete in hand to use the flat against the other to stack cane.

“It’s a wonderful process. You know, they make it three-hundred proof—three-hundred! Put a cap full and light it and its gone. They cut that down to One-fifty-one. That is five dollars at the rum bar. The weak stuff, watered down, is two dollars, for the cheap man that the barmaid will not like, a dollar. A man who wants standing, he buys the good stuff, the One-fifty-one. That cane is grown down low.

“Up in the highlands, where the Rastaman live, they grow the ganja, the weed—you know what I mean?

I nod, ‘Yes.’

“You smoke?”

I nod, ‘No.’

“Oh, so you don’t care what is done. In any event, it is legal now, no need to smuggle. The Rastaman with his weed is now doing well, and legally so.”

“Now, the cocaine, from Columbia, there is still a need to smuggle that. I worked for a shoemaker, one of the best, made the perfect shoe. He made shoes with hollow heels that would be filled with cocaine, ship a pallet over to Florida. This is better than a woman holding the cocaine in her vagina. Like this woman here, with baby, would hold cocaine in her vagina—that is no good!”

Brown woman with baby looks on in horror and holds her child closer.

“Shoes are very important to people, especially soldiers,” as he points to his bare feet.

“I learned this when I enlisted. Royal Marines, trained in New Castle, England: left right, left, right, march! Left right, left right—twenty mile run before breakfast. This was a good life, lots of mountain training. When we were in Iraq, in that place, this mountain training paid off.”

[I assume 91, Desert Storm.]

“That man, that Saddam, he stood no chance. You know his troops were pretty good. We respected their artillery fire discipline and their Republican Guard—but one nation cannot fight the entire world. Even America, this great nation, does not fight the whole world—even The Dragon who scorches the earth with fire has a master!

“I learned about military history in New Castle. You know Operation Barbarossa, Russian Front?”

I nod, ‘Yes.’

“The Germans, they all most take Moscow. But they needed to secure oil production too, down in the south, so had to divert troops to that purpose. Even then, they come within twenty miles of Moscow, twenty miles from their arising a different world! Think of that, a different world with a Cold War between Germans and Americans instead of Soviets and Americans? You understand this?”

I nod, ‘Yes.’

“Good, good man. So the cold come, the Russian Winter. You know, we are cold here in this American Spring. Imagine the Russian Winter: forty below and the oil does not flow. Machines do not like the cold. Then come the Russian Eskimos on skies—what are you going to do in your unlined trench coat when Eskimos on skies, with guns, come for you in the snow?!”

I shrug shoulders.

“You know, their leader, Hitler, he was not crazy, not insane like they say. He had good reason for what he did. People hate him for the Jews, what he did. But he did it for Jesus—you know, I’m a Baptist and believe in Christ—and the Jews, they nail this man to the cross, our Savior, nail him up good!”

Makes hammering motions with his right hand as he mimes holding a pair of feet to the bottom of a crucifix!

A tall lean youth is shaking his head in horror as he holds the overhead bar. The woman with the child cringes and scrunches her eyes.

“You know, and the Jews were destructive to Germany too! You know this?”

I look around 360 degrees.

“Oh, they are not on this bus! They have money! They have nice cars! Do not worry—be honest, you are a serious man—you must know this, that the Jews run the world: newspapers, government, TV, banks!”

I shake my head, vigorously, ‘No!’

“There it is, the proof! Look at you, a serious man, on the bus with a cane, unafraid of the criminals that walk; you who this batty boy” [points at young man] “here shrink from, you who do not fear those who were sent to drive you into hills to be a Billy man! You, white Rastaman, YOU fear the very name!”

I shake my head, ‘No.’

“More proof—my serious man! I give you some shots of 151 and you will agree.”

I rise and extend my hand, “My stop, Sir. I’m James.”

He wiggles his big brown, splayed hobbit toes, grins and takes my hand in his bigger, darker hand and declares, “I am Savay, the Baptist. Walk with God, My Friend.”