I had a hard time staying awake on the empty bus.

Since coming back into town and spending a week on jury duty and barely sleeping, I had caught a bad cold, which just exasperated the year round reservoir of puss between my deadening ears and the 40% closed nose.

On Sunday the cold I caught from the filthy air in the Harm City Courthouse cleared, and as if in cue, all that puss in my head drained into my lungs while I slept.

Instant squeaking, wheezing bronchitis, rising like the dead in the city of speds.

I have slept 10-16 hours a day since Sunday—perpetually groggy, drinking tea and trying to cough all this shit up with out breaking rib.

So, as I hobbled out Old Eastern Avenue I was half asleep, caught between my two most probably ends, drowning on the puss in my lungs or being stomped out by oppressed youths recovering the sacred reparations due their much-wounded slave race...

But that sooty kid in the green and white polo shirt is behind me, is by himself, nervous about me, terrified of the night, hiding behind the bus shelter and looking urgently for oncoming bus lights to whisk him away...

Not an enemy in sight.

Good, I have chosen the green umbrella as I saw clouds overhead when I looked out my window—the only cloud in Maryland it seems—and I am caneless, carrying the bent bad-luck umbrella.

Ahead, a quarter mile up the hill from the foggy depression I walk into, a paleface youth, perhaps 18, perhaps 20, rides a push scooter down the sidewalk, the echo of the small wheels hitting the cracks between the concrete slabs that make up the sidewalk, lolling me back into my stupor. I do take the outside of the walk so he can pass.

As I hit the bottom of the depression he stops, yanks up his scooter and looks at me.

He is holding it in such a way that he might poleaxe me with it, so I keep an eye out and hunch my shoulders.

I think he says something as I near, but I am not sure.

He says something as we are two paces off, but I cannot make it out.

He says something again and I think he is asking if the buses are running, but am not sure. I stop and say, "Yeah, the buses are still runnin.'"

He is blonde, five foot ten, 155 pounds, muscular in a wiry way with a rough complexion, as if he spends too much time in the sun. His hair is short and unstyled. he wears beltless blue jeans, sneakers and a long sleeved pull over shirt.

I am wearing tattered backpack over a 35 year old unlined coat that is fraying, the cuffs falling off the sleeves, a drooping bush hat of the same olive drab color on my head.

He carries his scooter by me, glaring angrily as I slink by, ready to duck the swing at my head, which does not come.

As I pick up my pace he stops and yells, "All you had to do!"

I stop and half turn and see he has set down the scooter and is pulling up his pants.

He then growls loudly, "All you had to do is answer me, not disrespect me!"

He says this as he rolls up his sleeves.

He is apparently hoping I will backtalk him so that I can be beaten for their old peasant I am. he looks quite able.

"All, you, had, to, do, was answer me!!!" he snarled fanatically clenching his jaw as he turned his head to regard me in the peripheral vision of his left eye.

I said nothing, waiting for him to turn as he beat his fist right into his left palm.

I am overwhelmed by a hateful need to gore him with the bent umbrella, to stab, and stab, and stand, and scream, and stab harder, and roar, and stab harder still! My mind is swimming with an orgy of hate, wanting nothing but to have this punk turn and advance so I can stab until my lungs fail.

He looked up at the westering moon and snarled, "All I asked for was some respect!"

I turn and continue on my way, praying for the next ten minutes that the most vile, painful and demeaning fate awaits him at the bus stop. Visions of him being dragged off by negroes, tortured by their women, eaten by their dogs, picked over by the rats that infest this city he so rightly deserves, calm me as I make my wheezing way out to Middle River under the bright light of the moon, toting this ridiculous green umbrella, more afraid of the rain than any savage degenerate this vile place coughs up out of its muddy lungs.

Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival