In May of 2010 I was involved in an altercation in front of the store with a crack head. I called the police and he was apprehended. The officer who handled me was a woman who also had some questions about Mark. She asked if he had given us any trouble. I told her that Mark was a good customer, that we had an understanding, and that he regularly stopped in with change for the Coin Star machine.

She sighed, “Yeah, that. Mark is involved with stripping copper out of vacants, although he claims to just be vacuuming the basement floors to get coins. We think he’s living in the vacants—at least spending the night. We have an address for him but he’s never there. The new carwash next to you on the hill here, he’s been digging through the vacuum housing for coins. Please, if you see him ask him to leave the car wash alone. We don’t want to have to arrest him anymore. He has definite issues with resentment of authority.”

When I saw Mark I told him not to bring any more change to us as the cops were accusing him of stealing it.

[Numerous times I have seen groups of young black fellows come into the market with a 10 gallon commercial water bottle full of change and get receipts of over $1,000, which I would have to sign for. No way did I think these kids had been saving tooth fairy money since they were tiny tykes, especially when they would return in less than a week with another grand or two worth of change, in a similar bottle, not having bothered to take the original bottle with them. These might not have been thieves but kids selling bottled water on street corners for 50 cents.]

Mark knew this, and knew the cops didn’t have me turning his change-hauling enemies away. This brought on his grumbles that scavenging was not stealing, but he complied. I saw less of him thereafter, though I did run into him at a bus stop out near the county line and had a friendly conversation about nothing in particular.

Then, one night after work in June, Megan and I American Woman had stopped at the liquor store. While I was inside picking up our six pack she waited in her car. When I came back out Mark was standing looking down the street insanely at a car that was driving down town. He then began ambling after it into the night, more of a statement of moral intent than any vain hope of catching it. She said, “Let’s get the hell out of here. I’ll tell you about it later.”

Last week I interviewed Megan about this incident in which she also reminisced about her brother Big Bruce. This is what she had to say about her last Crazy Mark sighting.

“That guy was off his rocker. I couldn’t believe you used to encourage him to shop at the store. What an animal—coo-coo, krayzee!

“I’m sitting there in the car and this older black lady is turning onto Belair Road and here comes this nut on his bike crashing right into her. The bike bent on her passenger side door and he went flying over the hood—face first road rash. The lady was panicked and he jumps up in a rage—asphalt and glass all stuck in him—a shredded up mess—and starts yelling, ‘What the fuck! My bike, my fucking bike!’

“The bike was gone—toast. He threw it aside in a rage and she gets out to ask him if he’s okay and he starts screaming, ‘Fucking niցցer!’

"I stepped up and told him it was his fault and to leave her alone. And he says, ‘What about my bike? My fucking bike is ruined!’

"This black man made to step up and help the old lady, who was afraid, and I stopped that, ‘Sir, no, you don’t want to do that,’ and gave him the crazy sign. The man stepped back and I asked Mark if he needed an ambulance because he was so messed up, but he could care less. All he could care about was that bike. I asked him if he was okay and he said, ‘No!’

“I said, ‘What’s the matter?’

“And I’ll never forget this. He looks around at the woman, the man, the people across the street and roars, ‘Fucking niցցers is what’s a matter! Niցցers everywhere! I’m sick of niցցers.’

“I told the woman, ‘Leave ma’am, now,’ and the man who had wanted to help got the message and he left. Then off he went into the night, a hot bloody mess."

The author believes that Mark’s attachment to the bike was twofold:

1. He had won it in battle against one of the packs of black youths he was perennially at war with

2. That bike was his ticket to the county, a place where most of the faces were white, where the cops were not looking for him, and the world was a little more like that of his youth before his neighborhood of Belair-Edison went from 90% white to 90% black while he was in prison. He had returned to society as an alien in his own neighborhood.

I promise our readers to dedicate a week this summer to Finding Crazy Mark.