Every step was an agony, fire shooting down his leg and a sickening ache seizing across his low back, threatening to halt him altogether in his hobbling quest.
The towering weeds of late summer swayed like grotesque hedges, unkempt by the hand of man, as if mocking his inability to sway at the waist like he once had. Slippy Braxton was hard to hit because Tom Jones had been hard to hit. They had drilled the hip swivel together, an odd, intergenerational, interracial dance to no music at all…
The green shadows mocked as he hobbled on, quite attached to the chunk of curb in his hand, realizing of a sudden that it was worsening his gait and causing his back to seize up. So he let it fall with a deadening “k-thunk” and hobbled on with somewhat more dignity, but unarmed again into the grey-roofed, green-walled night.
He was soon on Carter, the vast bulk of the ancient school squatting like a hideous, geometric toad, the barbed wire all around protecting the sacred, spell-binding precincts within, dimly lit by the old yellow lights powered by the screaming generator, drown-boxes crowning the light poles that marked each of the six corners of the irregular perimeter.
The crickets could still be heard above the shriek of the generator, such a hideous instrument, but oh so crucial for any outfit that meant to stay in business through flare-ups—and schools were mandated flare-up facilities.
He hobbled out to Hamilton Avenue, to the large, ancient house where his father had bought groceries, where he had bought beer, where the Sharia militia men manned the sandbag perimeter, two of whom eyed him stoically as he turned his back on them and continued toward Harford, half hoping some yo-punks would jump him now. The Sharia militia were known to plug them for sport.
What’s their power source? he wondered, bemused by that unimportant question as he limped onward.
They were soon lost behind him in the swaying night as he walked in the gutter, the sidewalks crumbling and choked with weeds and overgrown hedges, dancing like green shadows in the streetlight.
Behind him glared the bright white lights of the Sharia safe-house—safe only for the right kind of Muslim, barred to him.
Above him the flickering municipal lights, barely resuscitated by the whining poles—one of three of which were now dead—cast their wan light on his dubious progress.
Ahead, licked the flames of the barbecue bins at Harford Road, where the yo-punks still ruled their version of the night. Avoided by the cops after sundown and by the Sharia patrols at all hours, the primary street offered his only chance to make it downtown. Bus service was his only option. The hip was getting worse with every step, not better.
The safe-house cutoff from view by the intervening bend and the Hamilton Crossroads just in sight, Tom Jones paused to collect his resolve, to take a deep breath and to mumble an unheard apology to the poor woman crying and biting her nails a mile behind him, in that ancient prefabricated cottage she called home.
“Sorry, Girl—it’s every bit as bad as you feared.”
A Hoodrat Halloween: The Legend of Reggiemon Thom
