9:43

I wake to the loud playing of jazz music in the room below, beneath the bare boards. As I rise my hip rotator knots up and I dress clumsily to the quirky sounds, unable to stand or walk correctly. By the time I am seated, experiencing the exquisite pain of tying my shoes, big band music is winging through the empty house—the old cat no doubt hunched somewhere, unblinking and unpleased.

10:01

Due East

A young man is pacing back and forth before the halfway house where he resides, asking someone on his phone if he left his wallet in their car. Then he sees it in the street and leaps out and snags it. He jaunts happily up onto the sidewalk, smiling, thanking the person on the phone for their patience and good advice for his search.

It is a clear, beautiful—though starless—early autumn night.

10:02

Due North

A small sports car with tinted windows, which has been parked on the other, east side, of the street, gets my attention—how I do not know—as I clear my head from my two-hour nap. When I turn my head to look at it, the headlights come on and it zooms off down Sefton, turning west on Mary in front of me.

10:04

I hear a scratching sound and look around, seeing nothing. Two houses down to the right, across the street, behind a large pickup truck, I hear a young man say, “Rambo, no!”

The scratching gets louder and is coming from the front right. I lower my gaze and see a pit bull charging at me flat out, three car-lengths off. My hands are in the jacket pockets, holding one pen each. These will be almost useless against this beast, but they are in hand. As he nears I tuck chin, crouch slightly, hold the right pen at my hip and present the left pen, hoping he will munch on that so that I can get my knife out.

This happens so quickly that I experience no stress or fear, but simply engage the animal by rote, as I have many others of his kind.

The dog sees something in my hands at one car length and stops and immediately begins circling behind me.

I turn to keep him off my back and the man walks up and says, “Sorry, he won’t bite—Rambo, what are you doing?!”

I continue, pens in hand and the dog follows, drawing a yell from the young wife, “Rambo!” as the man catches him and walks him home.

Up ahead I can see a large black man, on the next ridgeline, almost to Royston, moving in an agitated manner, pacing in the middle of the street. I replace the pens in their pockets and keep my hands loose, determined to rely on the knife at my belt.

10:06

Due North

A car speeds by from behind so I take to the curb, the shrubbery clear on this corner. One person walks east from Harford Road with a backpack. To the east a car speeds across Glenmore on Glenoak.

10:09

Due North

I do not see the big man. The shrubs and lawns are overgrown and dark so I walk in the street, five feet from the leftward, western, curb.

A car begins to speed up behind me, so I walk in the gutter. The car then slows and passes me at an angle—a black, four-door sedan, driven by a small black boy and seating three large black men. The car is pinching me against the curb, blocking my path.

I can’t step up on the curb from this sharp of an angle without my left hip seizing up, so as the car doors began to open, I do a reverse right triangle step to the back bumper as I draw the skinning knife in an ice pick grip.

As the knife—hidden by my hand—clears the sheath the doors stop opening and the small driver, examining me in the rearview mirror, says to whoever he was talking to, “This ain’t the guy.”

The doors then shut and he zooms off, making a hard turn east onto Royston

This time last year, one Thursday night, two large youth chased and stalked me for two miles, all the way up from Cedonia. Just as they were closing in on me, I crossed Walther Boulevard, four blocks east of this point, and they stopped dead in their tracks, unwilling to cross the empty street. I recall thinking that I must have some ruthless neighbors that I didn’t know about. As that black car speeds around the corner, I feel fairly certain that I have just become acquainted with them.

10:19

Looking West as I come out onto Northern Parkway, I see a young paleface fellow in a jacket walking towards me on the sidewalk. Since the Race Purge began in Baltimore in April 2015, the polite thing to do on the street at night is to cross rather than share the sidewalk and he does so, plenty nervous about his own safety as he looks this way and that, hurrying toward whatever destination is his.

10:26-27

Looking West

I experience a childlike sense of gleeful relief as I see the bus cross Harford Road and head my way. The proud Negro that drives this bus will not stop for me unless I block his path, so I do so, making sure not to thank him when I board and pay.

11:03

Looking East

As the bus pulls off, I am left alone at this once bustling transfer point, except for the terrified African woman across the street, waiting for the #4 to take her to work at Franklin Square Hospital. A couple weeks ago she pleaded for me to stand with her as she pranced and swiveled her head in terror. I had coldly ignored her. She looked at me now with a stern anger, a hard-set grimace of palpable disdain, as I checked the time on my flip phone. As I walked by her she maintained her dignity with a silent look of scorn past me.

I walked on into an empty night, this street now months without prey traversing its sidewalks, the hunters apparently grown weary of finding nothing but this old creep and the big, insane, beer-bellied Mexican that staggers through on occasion barking, belching, screaming Spanish obscenities into the night sky and beating his chest.

In 15 minutes I will be crossing Middle River Bridge, hoping to see the giant egret who often fishes there.