Up the street he hobbled, his own distant noise—the shuffling of his socked feet on concrete—no more than the sound of the beating ocean surf to the sunbather. The sun burning his pink scalp through his feathery hair bothered him not at all but imparted a distant warmth.

Walking toward him strutted a youth dressed as if for prep school, though it was summertime. He was over six feet and under 150 pounds, walking like a giraffe that was proceeding with the conviction that he were a duck, but not just any duck, the gilt-green mallard of all mallards, embarking upon some mission of world-shattering importance. As this gaily dressed and jauntily comported version of a sneaker creature neared, it became apparent to the social critic for whom the assumption of Theodore Decker’s identity had come as such an inconvenience, that this odd being was waxing poetic.

As the bizarre young bard neared, the man was able to make out the following: [1]

“I got da knife ta stitch the snitch,

I got da nine to take what mine,

I got da bitch who scratch da itch…”

And off into the mumbledrum abyss, the sneaker creature pranced like some gaily attired caricature of a species that might have reached for the stars but became enthralled by the wonders of its own fecal pen.

Onward and upward he trudged until finally he reached 2145 and home, a delicate, well-manicured facade, woven with mad-caring hands about what might have been a manor house for some lord of former times but had been instead the nest of a burrowing creature of sorts, a creature who seemed to have lived an obsessively cozy life, a creature which children would adore in a picture book, but which the committed scientist would only study as a subject of maladaptive obsolescence. The man observing this house, once a scientist of simple gadgetry, now found himself to be precisely the man of science who would view this indefensible palace of solitary recumbence with puzzled disdain.

As he stood in a halting stoop before The Place Inviting, somehow afraid to enter, as if that might equate to a fall from some great height of the mind, a car eased up next to him, idling for s second of two beside the curb, and then quieting all together.

A car door opened and he yet stood, gazing absently at The Place Inviting.

A pair of hard shoes scraped ever so slightly on the asphalt and yet he did not turn to greet their wearer, as he gazed distantly at The Place Inviting.

The car door shut softly and still he stood, gazing coldly at The Place Inviting.

His curiosity failed him, as the driver walked around the front of the car with sure, easy steps, and still he stood staring, but nothing before him seemed to register as ought but an old picture in a tired frame that should be taken from the wall upon which it had so long hung unappreciated.

“Mister Decker. Mister Decker, are you well?”

He turned his head and saw, standing off in the gutter, a tall athletic looking man in a light blue suit. The fellow had a stern, sharp face that could have been drawn by a comic artist, it was so perfect. Atop the lantern-jawed, dimple-chinned, straight-nosed face was a high forehead dressed in the buzzed-cut roots of a blonde head of hair. The man stepped up on the curb and extended one big, scraped hand, the knuckles of which were dented and raw. In this hand, he held a phone, wallet, medical discharge papers and scripts.

I believe these are yours, sir. I saw what happened in front of the hospital from across the street. It took me a while to retrieve your things, and I followed you.

He took the collected artifice of a better forgotten life in his hands and began to shake a little, then caught himself and said, “Thank you, sir.”

The man, seeming to be in his early thirties smiled, revealing big, even teeth and said, “I assure you, Mister Decker, that it was my pleasure.”

I had every intention of giving you a lift. I apologize, but after I spotted you in front of the YMCA, I thought it more important that I retrieve this.”

As he spoke the big hand reached inside of the suit coat jacket, which seemed to be worn on this hot summer day without any discomfort whatsoever, emerging with Grandpa Decker’s watch and placing it gingerly on the papers and other daily impedimenta that was in the palm of his hands, as he stood wondering anew at the composition of a world he had appeared of late to be more unfamiliar with than he had previously supposed.

“How can I repay you? This is such a kindness and I don’t have a lot of time to…”

The younger man, built like some NFL linebacker, stepped next to him and placed one comforting arm across his shoulders and said, “Mister Decker, you owe us nothing. I do, however have a question for you.”

“Sure, anything, what is it?”

“Your Linkedin states your occupation as mechanical engineer.”

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Mister Decker, if I had a hose—a big hose—could you figure out a way to turn it into a pressure hose and have it oscillate like a sprinkler system?”

“Sure, that’s rather simple.”

The big hands then held his shoulders and the wide smile deepened as the man asked, “Would you be willing to come with me to meet my supervisor. This would be a huge help, and I think you’d appreciate the good cause?”

“Well, of course, after all you’ve done. What is your name? I don’t know your name.”

“I’m Brandt, sir, Brandt Larson.”

“Sure, Brandt, I’d be glad to help you out.”

For the first time in his life, he felt like someone of importance as the big man escorted him to the passenger side, opened the door, fastened his seat belt, patted him on the shoulder with a sincere, “Thank you,” and then passed menacingly across the front of the vehicle, looking this way and that like a Secret Service agent, and then rocked the big four-door sedan easily with his muscular bulk and started the car, which caused a muffled sound, like a whispered moan, to emerge from the backseat.

He looked back over the seat as Brandt did also, with a wide grin splitting his comic book, hero-sized head.

In the back seat was trussed up a young black fellow in sneakers, sporting two swollen eyes, a bloody nose and showing fear like he had never seen before as the eyes within the swollen sockets darted to his face and then over to Brandt’s.

Brandt appeared as happily content as any person he had ever met, as he spoke to the bound sneaker creature in the backseat with innocent abandon, “Don’t worry, Bro, you’ll have your chance to apologize to Mister Decker as soon as we meet the boss.”

The swollen eyes then began to shed copious tears as the round chocolate complexioned face scrunched up into a cherub of pain.

And the car drove, sure on its road in the hands of the mysterious Brandt Larson.

These lines were heard in Baltimore City, on a secondary street sidewalk at 7:30 a.m. on 7/29/16.