Last night I spoke to two Harm City Silverbacks, law-abiding African-American alpha males[this is the new Urban American Dictionary definition of a silverback] who came face to face with a ravenous beast that many thought was nigh unto extinction.

From among the lotus lined shores of Whigger River, Maryland, the decadent drinkers of the doomed bliss of the night flowers, waving cryptically in the still air, which bring lunacy and black madness, have arisen, and stalk the world of men…

These three men are customers at the store where I work nights. Tim and TomTom are small black men in their late thirties.

TomTom just got out of prison after doing ten years for “no big thing.”

Tim is TomTom’s best friend, with whom TomTom is now living since his release. He said, “You know us black people, when a nigga gets out of prison it’s like Christmas time, got to walk the neighborhood, go get a soda at the Seven-Eleven, and definitely have to buy yourself a new pair of sneakers. It’s a tradition, just stupid shit we do. Now most everybody has cars and jobs ten years after his ass got locked up. But we want to do the walk, so we get Big, scowling, Joe to walk with us.”

Joe is a dark-skinned black man who stands 6-foot 7-inches and weighs about 450 pounds. He has a bald head, hands the size of my skull and arms longer and thicker than my thighs.

Joe and his friends were walking round the neighborhood reminiscing on Thursday Night when they spotted “two scrawny white-boys” walking toward them, “with ragged clothes on, hole-filled shoes, and wide empty eyes. Both of them was maybe five-eight one-thirty or one-forty—definitely no bigger than Tim or TomTom. They was skinny to the point of unhealthy, somewhere in they twenties—young dudes—both of dem together smalla den me.”

The lead white-boy said something that sounded “like a growl or animal noise, like what you’d hear from a thing that was tryin’ to eat your ass but wasn’t quite done eatin’ the last dude he kilt!”

The man then punched Joe “a good one” and Joe punched back, hearing something in the white-boy’s face crack and sending him flying back on his butt only to pop up like he “had a spring in is butt” and renew the attack. Joe and the scrawny white man exchanged punches for minutes, to the point where they were both exhausted and slowing down. According to Joe, “It was like fightin’ Spiderman! You could put him down but then he pop right back up.”

In the meantime Joe’s friends were defending themselves against the other attacker, barely able to hold their own. Eventually the fight broke off in a draw due to exhaustion.

On Friday all three men were sore and badly bruised, with Big Joe’s dislocated shoulder paining him as he drove his sister to the market, his arm in a sling. His cell phone had also been destroyed in the attack.

He told his sister, as the two scrawny creatures advanced toward his parked car with hair matted to their heads and clothes torn, “Those are the dudes that done jumped us—good Lord!”

As Joe wondered how he could possibly fend of these two little savages they stopped short, said, “Sorry about last night,” waved, and then went on their way with no explanations, just a vacant look in their glassy eyes.

Big Joe was wondering what kind of drug or insanity or mental retardation of these white boys might account for them being “meaner then rabid hoodrats” so violent and indestructible they were. I answered by describing two attacks on me from years ago by men under the influence of PCP, which seemed similar in spontaneity, intensity and duration.

Tart Two: Herman’s Uniform will be posted soon.