Going to work last night gave me the creeps, after realizing that the Lynching of the Freddie Gray Cops was now well underway, and that black anger will be directed at me, for the crime of being born white, somewhere during the process.
The police chopper was not out.
Police cars were not in sight, not at all.
No one was out walking, except for the boy—who is growing into a man—at the house where I board the bus. He was setting out the trash for Thursday morning pickup.
The bus was ahead of schedule and moving at a crawl, trying not to get too far ahead of schedule. As I suspected, the bus was near empty. Of the 25 blacks and two Latinos that now take this bus [a slight drop from pre purge norms] only seven were on board, a Salvadoran dishwasher, an African woman, very pretty in her conservative white dress and natural hair, two African men, who were very polite, and three working black guys, who seemed nervous.
There were no incidents.
No one was on the street when I offloaded at Middle River.
This was my kind of night, sleepwalking through a frightened suburb. As with the purge, the mere start of the trial had many employed blacks staying home rather than risking a trip to work. The few hoodlums I usually see were elsewhere. With very few exceptions whites no longer use this bus line at night.
The Overtaken Day
The bus was late—the #55 out of working class Essex to middle class Towson—transporting students, and lowly clerks, cooks, waiters and dishwashers. I had nodded off on an ever more crowded bus. I fell asleep on a bus seating 30 blacks, and woke up on a bus seating 45 black folks, with ten standing in the aisle.
An older black man, a janitor/painter, who I patterned the Old Man Jones character after for the novel Planet Buzzkill, tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could have a seat.
I moved over, and a loud voice belonging to a well-dressed 40-year-old bald man, equipped with between $1,500 and $2,000 in clothes, shoes, electronics and jewelry, snarked in my direction, “That right muthafucker, night overtake day.”
I ignored him, as did all but one college student, and another middle-aged man, who looked at him questioningly, wondering why he had a beef with the sleepy white guy with the white beard. The bus rocked along, providing a rhythm section for his ten minute long monologue, most of which I cannot recall. He spoke about the metaphysics of Black God, Black Jesus, and how the Iron Man Comic Books and movies are Judaic prophecies about the return of the black kings of Egypt and the fall of “those motherfuckers.” He quoted gospel, scripture and the Koran. His was a gloriously fragmented mind.
When more college students and clerks and waiters and cooks boarded, he would turn his baleful gaze upon me, and begin saying the following, most of which he repeated multiple times:
“Night overtake day, just like we overtake those motherfuckers—that mutherfucker right there.”
“You young men need to stop getting high, doing the Whiteman’s drugs, and need to overthrow those motherfuckers—overthrow him!”
“What’s a matter with you all, killin’ one another while that talker in office, just talkin,’ when you should be rising up en overtaking those motherfuckers?”
“For four hundred years they whipped us, raped us, killed us—we fought against and ran from them motherfuckers ‘till this day. It’s time to stop the running.”
I rose to leave as more youth boarded, and stepped up next to a very attractive and conservatively dressed college student, who I barely glanced at.
This prompted him to encourage the young men around him, “There the motherfucker go, day giving way to night, oppressing us, shooting us down, using our young women! You should be prepared to risk your life. You should stop him, overthrow him, put him in the chains he put you in. It is the Back Man’s Time to rise!”
I offloaded by myself, at 10:04 this morning, at Northern Parkway and Glenoak, everybody on the bus silent except for the man calling for my destruction and the huge fat woman who had just boarded at Hilltop and was complaining to the driver about being hot and sweaty because he was late.
The bus pulled off, leaving this lone white ape to amble on home, still waiting for Baltimore to dredge up a black man who will finally stand up for his race, for what is right, and rub him out for the heinous and unforgivable crime of being born white at the dawn of the Black Man’s Age.
I'm guessing Malcolm XY XVII here wuz nuts. Probably also shaves his head, which folks of that sort think makes them look distinguished(?) or threatening. Cops, too. I call it the cropheaded look. That SS chic stuff. I'm sure if there were lightning flashes, they'd have them.
Preaching to the choir, as well. One idiot haranguing others. They want to believe that stuff. It brightens another miserable day, which I don't take issue with. Unfortunately, the really clueless believe it to be gospel truth. Again, idiots believe all sorts of insane, stupid stuff. My problem is that they then look on it as a call to action, or excuse.
Or as Herr Dr. Goebbels so eloquently remarked, tell a lie often enough, and people start to believe it.
War is peace, y'all!
The interesting aspect about the other passengers was this:
The old black dudes were disgusted with him.
The looks from guys between 30-50 seemed to range from 'oh, he's nuts,' to 'sing it brother.'
The youngsters seemed completely disinterested, with only the one sitting next to him nodding in approval.
I had the dim impressions—being half asleep—that he was addressing three distinct audiences.