I suppose Robert is about seventy now. He is a mild-mannered black fellow that stands about six foot four and weighed perhaps 210. I met him on a South Baltimore Bus Stop in 1998. He worked for CSX Railroad. Like many native West Virginians, he saw the railroad that cut through his state as a ticket to employment. After returning from Indochina he saw some men working on the rails and asked them how to get a job with the railroad. They advised him to move to Baltimore. He’s been here ever since, raising a family and moving them in stages to stay a few miles away from the blooming ghetto. The last time I spoke with him was in 2002 and he had just seen his coworker, Haynes [an old school black Carolina man], beat the snot out of some young black dudes that tried to harass them at the bus stop, for which Haynes was arrested, at age 55, for punching out two teenage muggers, which might be one of my first recorded incidents of the sacred hoodrat mobs being supported by the police against adult citizens.

Robert has had a certain amount of trouble adjusting to civilian life, and belongs to a support group for veterans. He counts himself lucky for being less afflicted with his military past than many others. The story below was a fond memory of his.

#63-23, 24: day, seconds, eye-witness/defender

“I was a combat engineer attached to a Special Forces battalion. We were up in the highlands where they had these monkeys. Pretty ornery things. They didn’t like the Vietnamese because they knew they wanted to eat them. But some GIs took them as pets.

"This one fella had a monkey named Cindy who used to drink beer and smoke pot, and lived in his hooch. One day she hid in the rafters, and when the cleaning girl came to clean the hut attacked her—bit a chunk out of her hip. I walked up when I heard the scream, and there’s Cindy, standin’ in front of the hut with a joint in one hand and a beer in the other, snarlin’ at me. Now, imagine a thing like that—and then imagine it attacking you! I popped the monkey with a jab and she backed off.

"The guy was pretty upset when he found Cindy with a black eye. But man, you have to defend yourself.”

-Robert