Rested well and energized for a walk, I shoulder my pack and head home from Baltimore County.

A young paleface couple, washing their cars on Pin Oak Road, banter back and forth, drawing my attention from the bars on the door behind them, which usually catches my eye on the late hours I tend to walk their street.

A timid Latina or Asian woman at six o'clock on upper Oakleigh Road, shadows me like a frightened ghost, stopping and holding herself tight when I exercise my nocturnal, urban habit and turn to check my rear approach.

A hypnotized dinduess on lower Oakleigh Road, 120 pounds of curvaceous milk chocolate in almost nothing, walks towards me enchanted by her smartphone, only to startled and squeal, "Oh shoot," as I walk past her.

An African boy walking towards me with his basketball behind the Marine Reserve Armory, regards me with some nervousness until I begin to walk on one side of the walk. He takes the other and waves a greeting to me tentatively as I say good morning and nod.

An exhausted black boy dragging himself along in heavy clothes up Old Harford Road, his skin almost worthy of his racial designation, his frown even darker, obviously limping and swollen in the face from a recent beating, regards me with some trepidation, starting nervously at my heavy cane. As he steps off the walk to let me pass, limping in the grass I say, "Good morning," and he mumbles something confusedly inaudible, caught off guard by the greeting, as if never having heard it.

Two English-speaking black women walk cheerfully along White Avenue, towards me. I tense, having had so many pairs of black women and/or men phallanx out to drive me off the walk in these past two years. Taking the tone of the beautiful day into consideration, I look down at the curb as I pass them on the outside and they greet me cheerfully, "Oh, good morning, sir!" and I say, "Good morning, ladies," and return to my toxic tree house, wondering at what a difference 12 hours makes. For at 11 tonight I will walk these same streets as a hunted animal, an aging bull sought by packs of hostile bucks and the hunters in cars who stalk us all.

And I wonder again at the scarcity as well as the courtesy of these people, abroad at the best hour of the day, between 10 and 11:10. Over a little more than four miles, in just over one hour, in the 25th largest city in America, I have encountered only 8 souls, perhaps glimpsing ten times their number behind the wheels of various vehicles. Two days ago, one street over, I passed two packs of hostile hoodrats, 12 souls on one block, brimming with menace, at 1:15 in the afternoon.

What a young witching hour we have here, in the fallen city, at the end of Arуan Time.