In the early 1990s I worked on a night crew in Baltimore City as the frozen food clerk/turnkey. The all black grocery crew was run by Monando Cay, a West Indian man who worked as a mule for a Jamaican drug gang and only worked this job to generate a tax shelter.

Monando was a very cool guy. We would come into work an hour before the rest of the crew, and, in the darkened and empty supermarket stockroom, have what he would call “Island hong fu versus white boxing” bouts. We did not go for the KO, and kept it light, just getting a few bumps and bruises. With Monando towering a foot over me I felt more like the psychotic butler in the Pink Panther movies attacking Peter Sellers then anything.

This was a segregated crew that had been reorganized along racial lines after some racial violence. When Monando needed a guy for the dry side, the owner would hire a black. When I needed a guy for the perishable side I would get a white. The owner hired all of the employees for the night crew right out of prison. I believe he got some government kickback for this.

One night this rugged white man with shaggy brown hair bushing out to his shoulders and large unblinking eyes behind thick glasses, reported to work. His name was Mark. At about six foot and two inches tall and weighing 210 pounds Mark was extremely strong, a gift of what I think is Polish ancestry. He had done 14 years for armed robbery, during which he “smoked PCP every day” while imprisoned. How this is accomplished in prison I did not think to ask.

Mark never blinked.

I have known Mark on and off since 1992.

I have never seen Mark blink, except for that time in June of 2010 as he stood and considered life anew in front of the liquor store after unsuccessfully trying to run down the fleeing motorist that had knocked him off of the stolen bike he had been riding.

Mark’s mother received him home with open arms, his father having passed away. Mom had befriended the neighborhood squirrels, feeding them with her hands in the back yard. While Mom was not around, one-by-one, Mark killed the squirrels, skinned and dressed them, and roasted them on the grill in her back yard. He said they were “right tasty.”

The squirrels gone, Mark came to work with me, my helper having returned from whence he came to the netherworld of the Criminal Justice System like a ghost returning to hell. After the tour of the place, and going over our equipment Mark said, “I’ll be right back boss.” And off he was, to Mister Silverstein’s bakery on the other side of the store. Mark returned eating a doughnut, with Mister Silverstein walking with an entire box of the morsels, and saying to me, “Could you put a leash on him, please?”

As Mark and I enjoyed the doughnuts he informed me that he did not think it right that these should be thrown in the trash, and that the night crew should get them. Mister Silverstein had objected to this thought as he wanted the crew to buy the fresh pastries he made by hand. Mark had suggested tossing him in the ovens, citing “Uncle Adolf” to the terrified baker, and now we ate.

Later that night as we pulled out our freight through the back aisle and I introduced Monando and his crew to Mark, he was telling me about the squirrels, about how stupid they were, about how his Mom had weakened them. Then his big wide eyes grew wider as he looked around at the five or six black men and whipped out his lock blade and thumbed it, with a rhetorical question I shall never forget, “Hey Boss, what season is it?”

“No Mark, no, not here.”

Flourishing his blade he announced in cheery tones, “Its niցցer season!”

I forget how I got Mark out of the aisle and back to the coolers, but can assure you it was not a physical solution. Mark has always been hardly muscled. Even his face has muscles. With Mark safely way from the crew they milled nervously about as Monanda approached me and pleaded their case, “Mon, please, never ever schedule that crazy mon to work when you not here. We will all die! He will kill us!”

The next installment in the Tao of Mark will be Firing Crazy Mark, here, on White Wednesday.