Exiled,

Ostracized,

Denied by Fate,

Besmirched by Time—

Cast out by whom he could not hate.

Sent out,

Cast down,

Tangled and adrift,

Lost and excruciatingly found—

Damned by a curse too heavy to lift.

-In the Land of Ham

He staggered along the beach, the sand burning his bare feet, the handcuffs cutting his bony wrists, the cops whipping his back. The ocean spray would feel so good on his face, but it seemed out of place—not a wave in sight, the blue horizon vanishing this time, the last time and again, reappearing only to vanish for itself to banish.

He fell times beyond counting.

Oft and again they hauled him up into the unblinking sun that burned his once pale skin. Came a time that they left him lay, left him to sink deep into the soul-drinking sand.

The loneliness of the exile is not the solitude of repose, but the madness of the multitude in silent, suffering song composed. The sleep of the damned is not the sleep of the dead; the solace of the cursed, not of the body in distress, but of a wronged mind seeking redress.

For ages it seemed, thirst laid upon him. Finally, the sand brought relief, sandaled feet, a witch-wood prop, a helping, reaching hand, drawing him up out of the sand and placing in his dread-stolen hand the steel of Time, fallen from a star, worked by wizened hands into The Cane Adamantine…

He mumbled in response to his kindly nurse, feeling the drool touching the corner of his mouth and dabbing at it in the shame of his years. His lids were heavy, just like the last time he fell asleep on a bus and woke up the drooling fool.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled more clearly, the lights of the bus, so Christmas brilliant, still echoing like visions of singing sound behind his weary eyes.

“Think nothing of it, Sir. The weariness of years is a heavy burden to lift. Let my uplift you.”

“Thank you,” he slurred, half choking as a snore caught in his throat.

“No thanks necessary, Sir. I merely do my part and ask only that you pay all that is owed, to one in need. Fate makes no recompense, just as Time waits for no man…”

The bus rocked as gently as it mechanically might over the cratered road, but still his head rolled...

He was jerked awake by his own snore, startled and embarrassed as he came to his senses. A searing shock of pain stabbed down his leg as he sat up too quickly, the bus rocking up to North Avenue on Asquith, already to his stop and the old man was nowhere to be seen, no one held his hand—rather his hand rested on the rounded top of a mahogany globe, with a polished pendent of silver set in it’s perfectly smooth crown.

“What?”

The little dandy-suited man was gone.

The bus was empty.

“This stop!” he blurted as he got to his feet in a frantic—as frantic as he could manage—hurry.

He clamored crookedly down off the bus, creaking and clomping, learning how awkward it was to use a cane to offset a blown hip. Behind the bus shelter was the chicken place, where Slippy never came to eat, but where that girl he couldn’t stay away from worked. She would know where he was, might even have him holed up in her apartment. They stayed open until 2 in the morning so she’d—they were closed?

The sign at Amenhotep’s Happenin’ Chicken was unlit, the lights out, the lot empty—even the bus stop was empty. In fact, as the bus turned off to head down North Avenue, it shut off its running lights and the words "Not In Service" began to wrap around the text panel that banded the exterior rim of the bus all around.

Tom Jones had just stepped off the last bus, in the deep ghetto, further from home than he could every limp, with no one to offer him a clue as to Slippy’s whereabouts.

“On foot and in the shit.” He grumbled to himself.

A shrill, “No!” was voiced across the street, the sound of a female voice cracking with upset, hurt and anger.

On the far side of Asquith—meaning too near to ignore—stood a black woman, African in appearance, with a natural afro and tears running down her cheeks, facing off against three Latino men. As he stopped and turned with a start, unused to the cane, he clanged it on the concrete and all four of them turned to look at him.

The dark eyes of the men narrowed. One was short and wide in overalls, another mid-height and thin in a hoody and jeans. The third was dressed in blue slacks, blue button shirt and hard shoes, where the other two wore boots.

The woman was dressed in medical scrubs and looked to him—God only knew why—as if he were her savior. Her cheeks widened and her eyes pleaded, tears running between her prominent cheeks and nose.

Tom Jones had walked away from dozens—scores even—of elderlies, women and children who had pleaded for his aid against the feral homeless, the Sharia brutes, the predatory BLM militants, the cops and more over his long, ugly life. His resolve never to help a victim of the machine that was designed to eat people was at once a testament to his devotion to Betty and indictment of his cowardice. He had been in this mental place for so long that it was his instinctive response to walk away, to turn his back on this poor woman.

Of a sudden he felt the round, inlaid pommel of his gift cane—for he believed the old pimp had given it to him as a redemptive act—and a chill went up his spine. He knew, right then and there that he was going to cross the street.

The Latino men sensed it and bristled, the well-dressed one waving him off, letting him know he could go on his way if he minded his business.

This brought a pitiful squeal from the astute woman, which was answered by the back of the thick man’s hand, knocking her to the ground in a sobbing heap.

This was his last river to cross in life—known to him in his bones. He wasn’t going out like he’d lived these last three decades, skulking like the old peasant trying to avoid death, his back loaded with the trivia of the wearisome world at the base of that stairway to heaven he would never climb!

It must be rationalized, though.

Tom Jones had been engulfed by the risk-aversion of his age and conducted a brief inquest of the Id:

I will not make it home in any case.

The BLM, the homeless, the yo-punks, the dog packs—one of them will get me. I’m done.

Having satisfied his urge to rationalize the explanation he would never get to deliver to Betty, Tom was free to continue with his eleventh hour resurrection.

Astonishingly, his voice echoed deep and throaty across the four corners of this miserable intersection, carried by the ring of the steel cane on the hard roadbed, every step of his accompanied by a note of his new, dignified ambling device:

“I’m fed up with Dindus, [clank]

Dot-Heads, [cling]

Drones [clang]

Punks, [clink]

Towel-Heads, [ping]

Pigs, [thunk]

—And you greasy bastards!” [pank]

For the first time in fifty mind-fucking years, Tom Jones felt like a badass, and with this mighty pimp cane under his palm, even limped like one.