2021 East Baltimore
Old Stump Mingus had directed him to head north and east, “the more east the better,” once he got off of the train at Penn Station in Baltimore. He had been likewise told to use Charles Street, on which the train station—looking a wreck and under halted construction—as his west most boundary. “Until you get north of Northern Parkway, west is generally worse.”
Banjo found himself on the Orange [bus] Line, unable to use cash or card, the only customer along with the masked driver, who stiffened terrified behind his plexiglass door. Banjo pulled his sweater up over his face in order to gain admittance, and decided to walk to the other gigs once this was done.
…
He sought Coach Sink’s BJJ school on Eastern Avenue in Essex, further east. The bus, empty but for him and the terrified driver, and the computer voice of an unreal woman announcing the stops, rattled past an abandoned mall, shuttered banks, over a dirty river on an ugly bridge where a man in yellow safety vest fished the brown water fed by the golden-domed sewage plant…
‘Good God, I miss the west! I’d rather freeze in Utah than feast in this place. But your wizened angel sent me here on some mission he didn’t cook up. Is it you, Vishnu, who propels me to some purpose across this Kali Yuga world?’
As was to be expected, no answer was forthcoming from Heaven, the clues rather to be placed in the sojourning way.
Eastern Avenue, described a deserted stretch of urban blight stuck like a dirty middle finger out of the gray-paved, clay-bricked shithole city into a land that was once a pristine estuary before the coming of Money Man. Now, Back River was a sewer for millions, with the combined volume of water exceeding the Colorado, Provo, Truckee, Sacramento, Green, Bear and Duschene rivers combined.
‘A river of sin. Has my soul been stolen, derailed maybe?’
That chill reminded him that Stump had spoken of this journey as something he was no longer fit for, that Banjo was, but was too trusting.
The diner to the right was closed.
Most of the businesses to the left in the old town front, were shuttered for the world-ending plague.
The gym had its windows entirely plastered with fight posters, with no means of seeing within. He rang for the stop, and the bell did not work, as the meter had not worked to gain him entrance, or to read the e-ticket he did not have, or even take the poison cash he did have, the cash slot jammed with a folded up bus schedule.
“This stop,” he said, raising his voice.
The bus jerked to a stop without pulling over, the driver peering at him through the mirror with worried amber eyes over sweating ebony cheeks and black mask. The door opened and the masked minion in the mirror, shouted, “Next time, no mask, no ride.”
Banjo smiled as he hefted the ruck, in his left hand and slung the backpack and banjo over his right shoulder, leaving the rolling tube of hell for good.
‘Not again, my never friend.’
Banjo crossed the street to the west side, counted how many doors down the gym was, then walked around and approached the back door from the alley, a dirty white cat and a giant black rat halting their scuffle and leaping out of his way.
A tall Slavic man, with a boxer’s nose and the build of a sambo champion, stood grinning in the doorway.
He eyed Banjo as they shook hands, a shake that was a test of strength and suppleness, “You are a bit light, but will do. I have a fight in Dubai. You help me prep for that, then stay and watch the place, sanitize the mats, spar with my team and you have a place to lay your head, provided…”
“Provided what, Coach?”
“Provided you can roll with me for the next hour, until my team gets here—then you box with them. If your work is good, you’re in.”
Banjo’s inner voice rose with a roar of confidence in his heart, a roar he muffled to an easy whisper for the world, whose monstrous keen ears he did not trust, “Then I’ll make myself at home—the threshold will be mine.”
The man pulled him in easily, with a wry grin, and shut the door, “Good work then.”
Banjo looked around and Coach pointed to a dressing room door, “Stow your gear there, and sleep on the mats after you clean them. You’ll get the key to this and the front door as soon as you keep me from gaining side control off a takedown. You won’t avoid the take down, but I expect you to sprawl like you could.”
Avoid the take down he would, he knew, the inner flame within him, certain as the steel in Old Stump’s ruck, and as cold.
…
Ninety minutes on the mat with the monster called Sink and they sat, the keys pulled up off a neck knife ring from under that soaked blue gi, and tossed across the sweat-streaked mat.
One stuffed takedown out of ten had convinced the Coach. Then, as Banjo scrambled and escaped twice, then earned a reversal out the back door from guard while some of the fighters rolled in and watched from the wall, he knew he had a place to lay his head.
Banjo grinned, “Thanks for not gong Quinton Jackson on me—you’re a beast.”
Sink grinned, then introduced the team. Banjo had a sweat-reeking home while he found work from the names and numbers—names and numbers on paper, not phone contacts, old bullheads who still used land lines. He broke as the fresh men rolled and Sink oversaw their work, took out the wallet from his jeans folded under the chair on his boots. From within he read the list folded in the wallet within, for a hundredth time, in case anything happened to it, like a night out in the rain. The description on the ATM receipt was in blue ink, from Stump’s shaking hand.
With the slap of back and hand on mat as a background, in his mind’s foreground he could hear the old bum’s voice grate steady as his hand printed unsteadily, while the Chinese girl named, “Min” looked on, seeming afraid that her ownership was going to be transferred again. He would never forget her smile of relief when she finally figured out that her savior was signing over his train tickets and vouchers, and not her.
The letters were jagged large case print, the numbers crunched and lacking inner voids, 0s looking almost like a small case c, 4s and 1s almost indistinguishable. His own clarification print was repeated under the questionably wrought numbers.
“Israel Flood, slum lord, needs eviction movers, 410-499-3104”
‘Great!’
“Doctor Daniel Landon, orthopedic surgeon, renegade shock doc, needs a door man in his ghetto clinic, 410-621-8888”
‘What the hell? A bouncer for a doctor’s office?’
“Danny Wilson, BIG titties, needy widow, pianist, can’t cook, 443-869-1626”
‘Like this can’t get entangled.’
Banjo sat against the wall, pretty sure he had just been concussed on the ninth takedown, the one where he got slammed against the wall first, tried to commit this list to memory, like an Irish James Bond, folded it, convinced the numbers might slip or combine in his mind. Feeling the world spin on its uncaring axis, he closed his eyes only to hear Coach Sink bark, “Banjo, on deck for round robin hands—glove up; no shins.”
“Yes, Sir,” he whispered with a self-effacing grin, as the real hazing began.
‘All four are ten years younger than me—never knew forty would feel so old.’
‘You knew, whispered some evil monkey in his mind—you just failed to accept me.’
