I believe I have previously written about this incident in 1998 when composing The Fighting Edge. I dislike that book—I won’t even crack it—and am therefore writing this from memory—a 23 year old memory. If you are one of the five people who bought The Fighting Edge then, when considering any inconsistency in these two accounts, go with the first one. This account is more fleshed out as it is an oral history, not a survival scenario, and therefore includes impressions and context not provided in the original.
Mark was a big—but not huge—muscular white wildman recently released from a 14 year prison term, during which he claimed to have ‘smoked PCP every day.’ The previous week—his first night on the job—he had threatened to throw the Jewish baker into the bread oven, and had declared, before the five or six black men on the dry grocery crew—as he flourished his knife in the air—that it was “nigger season.”
Mark, a week later, had still not blinked—never blinked, with eyes wide shut to the world he hated. I was the employee who trained all of the new white male employees. Even if some guy was being hired to run a register during the day the owner made him work a night or two with me to pick up the basic skills of the grocer’s trade. So, even at the young age of 29, I had trained over 200 men since beginning to work in the grocery business at age 19.
I had developed a sense for resentment. Although I had become good at training and supervising men with an easy non-demanding tone I gained a feel for when they resented it. Black men and men who were older than me resented having me instruct them more often than most. However, the guys that resented it with the most vehemence were white guys who were older than I. Mark was a few years older than me, and I could tell with every instruction I gave that I was chipping away at a block of ice that encased—and held back from the tender world—some savage beast.
In the back of the secondary stockroom where the bailer and the engine room was, stood an ice cream box; an extra insulated walk-in that kept bulk orders of ice cream purchased at a discount at 20-40 below zero. To keep ice cream fresh requires consistent 20-below storage. One night Mark and I were stacking a pallet of Sealtest ice cream that came in plastic wrapped bundles of six ½ gallons—essentially three gallon bricks. Ideally, when a runt like I and a big man like Mark, work together the tall man hands off the top of the pallet as the short man builds the base of the wall stack or display. Then, when the half way mark is hit, and the pallet is below waist level, and the stack is getting to shoulder level, they switch. This limits wear and tear on the two toiling low income bodies.
We began in this fashion, and when I suggested to Mark that we switch he grew angry, accusing me of weakness. I stepped onto a milk crate and kept stacking. When I made this adjustment Mark began throwing the ice cream as hard as he could, and aiming for my head, trying to hit me in the face or temple before I turned from placing the recently caught bundle of frozen milk bricks. I was playing a lethal $10 an hour game with a psychopath. The chill I felt was not from the extreme cold.
A few days later Candy [I forget his name but it began with a C] the smallest and smartest man on the all black dry grocery crew, came to me and informed me that I should walk with him to the meat room, but not enter. He said something like, “Your man has been at it. This isn’t the first time. I wouldn’t go in there.”
From outside the darkened meat room from our vantage in the aisle, we could hear Mark screaming threats and obscenities at the hanging pork joints and sides of beef—threatening the animal dead.
Later in the morning, after Mark left, the morning meat cutter complained to me that Mark had been standing by the stockroom door peering into the meat room with wide unblinking eyes and speaking about cutting people up and disposing of them in the bone and fat cans.
Later still, just before I left, Ronebone, our gargantuan biker produce manager, came to me with a fearful look in his eyes and confided that Mark ‘scared the shit out of’ him.
I knew now where this was headed and had a talk with the owner who had hired Mark. He seemed saddened, and confided in me that he liked the idea of me having a big white sidekick on the night crew incase Monando [the West Indian dry grocery supervisor] lost control of the American blacks and there was ‘a darkie uprising’. He gave me latitude to terminate Mark’s employment if he became belligerent, but was not prepared to fire a hard working man [which Mark was] just because he ‘talked to the walls.’
Sometime within the week I had the ominous task of informing Mark that the name brand grape juice and store brand apple juice did not belong in the same row. He ‘went off’ roaring furiously down at me, thumping his thick calloused squirrel-killing finger into my chest, and telling me I had no authority over him.
I was afraid. I would have feared Mark even back in my violent teenage days when I was not much better than him at finding nonviolent solutions to what vexed me.
I stepped back and spread my hands and said something to the effect that he was his own boss. I did not want to say anything that might lessen my chances of making it to the phone before those big paws closed on my pencil neck.
As I walked up front the black crew members looked at me as if surprised I was alive, and Monando was standing on a milk crate sliding a steel bar down off the overhead rack in case he had to defend himself.
I called the police and informed them of the situation. I waited up front with Candy, who I think was hoping to be able to escape through whatever shattered panel in the store front window my body was tossed through. Fortunately Mark never came up front.
Within minutes a Baltimore city police cruiser rolled up in parcel pickup. The car was driven by a petite Barbie doll of a copette, a real cute little thing. When she got out Candy said something to the effect that we were all about to die. Then, as she stood by the driver’s side door as it closed, the entire cruiser shivered and tilted on its shocks and a huge muscular cop with a crew cut and a short sleeved uniform that showed off his U.S. Marine Corps tattoos, got out of the car.
I think Candy said, “Good God, that’s the biggest white boy I eva seen!”
I explained to the lady cop—the he-man cop apparently a mute cyborg with but one purpose in life—about Mark, and that we did not want him hurt or even arrested, just removed.
She followed me, and was in turn followed by the pro-wrestler sized cop, who was followed by Candy—our very own resident Spike Lee. I found Mark between the produce displays where he was speaking to the fruit. As I turned the corner he glared and snorted at me belligerently. I do not recall if he said anything. Then, as the lady cop came around behind me he ogled her, and said something humorous laced with sexual innuendo, to the effect of ‘What’s this about?”
Then the behemoth cop walked around the corner and Mark shrugged his shoulders, indicated that he knew what was up, and did not resist at all, but walked out uncuffed under verbal command.
The black guys thought this was amazing. They could not get over how big, muscular and intimidating the white cop was. It then occurred to me as I saw them leave that as small as Mark was next to the giant cop, that was how outgunned I was next to Mark.
The next night Mark showed up at work, claiming to have been rehired by the owner. I had him removed and spoke to the owner in the morning, who admitted that Mark scared him to death and he was afraid not to rehire him. Eventually, with the help of a cop, I convinced Mark that he would keep getting removed from the property and get locked up for intimidating the old man I worked for. I do not recall the details, which leads me to believe the cop took the lead in this.
Why I Owe Crazy Mark
After this I decided I had enough working for Mister Len and resigned after training my replacement. My two mile walk through Northeast Baltimore, through back alleys and side streets I knew well, was now replaced by a three hour walk-multi-bus commute through some of the worst areas of Baltimore, including Mark’s neighborhood of Belair Edison.
Thus began a new nomadic life that entailed five hours of mostly nocturnal travel time a day through a city that was catching fire from the crack epidemic and from which whites that had not already fled where leaving at the tune of 1,000 home owners a month! Disillusion concerning my employer’s loyalty to me, who was totally loyal to him, caused me, in fear for my life, to literally leap from the frying pan into the fire. The endless stream of violent ex-cons that Mister Len hired for me to train had, after all, gone to prison for crimes they had committed on the very streets I was now negotiating on my way to a distant cross town employment opportunity.
Thanks to Crazy Mark—and my fear of him and resentment of an uncaring boss—I would now be forced to adapt or die, to learn the lessons I have since used to write 15 books on the art of thriving in the ruins of a mid-sized American city.
Thankfully for me it was a cold wintry November night as I headed through Belair-Edison, past the Chinese carryout and Korean liquor store, on a Sunday night to board the #22 down into East Baltimore. For my bandana-wrapped head and high-hiked collar served to obscure my identity from the large insane man who rooted through the dumpster as I rounded the crumbling stone wall, and he regarded me with wide, unblinking eyes that hated the world.
I thought it was the end as I saw the weird light in his eyes, but then as a lack of recognition played across his rugged features and I hurried on, I came to the conclusion that that low level management job had thoroughly unmanned me; that I had become a soft society-trusting sissy, and that I needed to change that, and fast.
In retrospect I have Mark to thank for my current reviled state as social outcast, and I love him for it. This was also not our last dance at the rodeo. I would meet Mark again, a decade and a half later, as I patrolled the grounds of the Northeast Baltimore supermarket I managed, in my ill-knotted tie, socially acceptable slacks, and wire frame eyeglasses.
Next week’s White Wednesday installment will feature the third part in four of my dealings with this belligerent postmodern primitive: Messing with Crazy Mark.
It would appear that Crazy Mark (CM) may suffer from attachment disorder rather than psycopathy. People with attachment disorder are the proverbial people who were "raised by wolves", meaning they had little to no human contact as an infant. Like the foundlings raised in government run "factory" orphanages in the former Commmunist countries. Consequently people with this personality disorder are perpetually hostile, irrationally contentious and prone to fight at the slightest provocation, or none at all. They are totally devoid of any social graces; they are people who just "don't know how to act". The fact that CM over-indulged in PCP for years probably didn't improve his judgement and impulse control either. There may be other organic and/or genetic factors in the mix leading to CM's disturbed behavior as well. However, CM is apparently not a psychotic (out of touch with reality) scizophrenic or manic depressive (AKA bi-polar mood disorder), since when he saw that he was overmatched by the monster cop he gave up with out a fight. A very calculated and rational thing to do. Especially since, as any wordly and rational person knows, you can get shot dead fighting with the police (the Police will not concede defeat in a hand to hand fight nor are they required to do so). Psychopaths or sociopaths on the other hand are known for the most part for their superficial charm and likeability, as well as their lack of empathy for others. There are a few abrasive sociopaths, who are quarrelsome and enjoy stirring up hate and discontent, but even they know how to act nice when they imagine it will be in their interest to do so. People with attachment disorder likewise lack empathy for others, but they have no charm, no ability to pretend to be normal. They are not likeable. What is surprising about sociopaths is that there are many more parasites in their ranks than predators. Psychologist Martha Stout , author of "The Sociapath Next Door" wrote that in her experience the biggest red flag for psycopathy/sociopathy is the desire to be "pitied". Since human beings typically dispise and disdain weakness in others, few humans desire to be pitied, percieved as weak, by others. If Crazy Mark were a true predatory psychopath and decided he didn't like taking orders from you James, instead of getting in any kind direct confrontation with you, it's more likely he would have made friends with you to put you off your guard and then arranaged for you to have a fatal accident. Or get bushwacked while walking to or from work, if he lacked imagination or the technical accumen to set up a convincing accident.
That was great Jeremy.
Mark makes more sense to me now. And, when you read his two other stories from just a few years ago your diagnosis will hold even more true I think.
Thanks
You're welcome James. The other takeaway from the sad case of Crazy Mark is that one should not attempt to "fix" someone like Crazy Mark. Especially not if you are a layman and it is not your job to try to rehabilitate such disturbed people. People with attachment disorder are damaged goods, just like psychopaths/sociopaths. Neither can be cured of their disorder. They don't even want to be cured. Sociopaths are likely to manipulate people who want to help them. Even professional clinical psychologists and psychiatrists frequently get fooled by sociopaths. If it is a business or professional situation and the "helper" is resistant to manipulation, the sociopath will try to get them fired or sent away. People with attachment disorder are likely to physically hurt the people who try to help them or get close to them. For example, in one case where a couple adopted an orphaned three-year-old toddler with attachment disorder the child promptly took the new kitten the couple bought as a pet and threw it out his bedroom window. Likewise somebody like Crazy Mark could do much the same to anyone who dared to try to get close to him. And he sounds big and strong enough to do just that.
Can't wait to read what happens next. There is a woman I have dealt with that seems to have a disorder. She called the cops 200 times on something that was none of her business. She spread rumors about me, trying to get me beat up or something. She's certainly not as scary as Mark but apparently she tried to kill her husband with a knife a few years ago. Scary!
I have just interviewed a lady I was with who saw more of Crazy Mark at his last sighting than I did. I've been wondering about him with our extreme cold and snow over the past week.