“Thou shalt not….mumble mumble mumble….”
What the hell is he saying? I quicken my pace out into the street for
social distance. Is this guy muttering the 10 commandments? Who gave those 10 commandments anyway? Was it Jesus?
Or….who? Moses? Yes, I think so. Is Moses wandering round my neighborhood?
Moses is crouching under the only shady
spot for miles, hunkered down on a short garden wall. His dark hoody covers his
head, his baggy camouflage pants do little to camouflage him. I think he may be
the same guy that I saw on my walk last night, giving him wide berth at the
corner of Clinton and 34th street. A tall, muttering man loaded down
with packages. He had the same dark hoody on and the camouflage pants. I tall young
handsome masked man had also walked around Moses. (Though last night I wasn’t
close enough to understand any of what he was muttering. He had just completely
stopped at the corner and was standing there. Motionless)
Young Handsome Man walked a bit ahead of me. Of course, he had on a cool black mask to match his coolness. He had given me a questioning look over his mask. “He’s just standing there,” he had observed.
“Yeah,” I walked ahead of him for a
few steps. “I think there’s a situation going on there.”
Young Handsome just nodded. No clarification
was needed for what the ‘situation’ might be. We both just got the hell out of there.
So, this morning, when Moses spouts
out what sounds like a biblical reference, I hurry by. I don’t want any
interaction with him. Yet, as I march across Esmond, I can feel him following me.
Damn! I don’t turn around. If I look at him it might make things worse. He might
yell at me. Or come after me. Or I don’t know. There is something menacing
about him even though he didn’t really do anything. It’s an energy, you know?
The poor walking wounded. They are here amongst us during this pandemic and I feel
for them. I doubt that he has a mask or any health insurance or any support
system. But what do I know?
These are all just assumptions
based on his general dishevelment, strange proclamations and now, his following
me.
I try to keep the panic down, thinking how he’s pretty out of it. I can certainly walk faster or even run if I have to. I could go and knock on someone’s door if it did get ugly. But would anyone answer in the middle of the morning during a pandemic? I know I don’t answer my door if anyone knocks on it. Not for reasons of virus prevention but mostly so some cute young person doesn’t sell me an alternative energy solution for $79 a month!
A cop car zooms down the middle of
the street, screaming past me now. I think, will he even notice Moses following
me? He’s probably after someone else.
I turn around to see. Yes, the cop
car is stopping. A cop gets out. Strolls over to Moses. Then another cop car screeches
around the corner and parks. Then a cop on a motorcycle zooms in, too.
Man! Moses musta done something really extreme to warrant 3 patrol vehicles to surround him.
As I turn the corner at McBryde, I glance
down the block. Moses is standing on the sidewalk as one of the cops is talking
to him. Part of me feels so relieved. What are the chances that the cops would
be called (and a neighbor must have called them from the way they zeroed in on Moses)
right when I was feeling threatened?
But then when I think about it,
what could Moses have done to warrant the cops being called? Did he attack
someone? Did he verbally abuse someone? Or is he just some poor homeless guy,
crazy and mumbling, that trespassed onto someone’s pretty garden?
I think about the criminalization
of the homeless. About what will happen to Moses now. Will they cart him away
and throw him in jail? And then what? What will they charge him with? How long
will they hold him?
It’s all pretty wrong, but then
again, I am relieved that he’s no longer following me.
Though I’m pretty sure that’s not
against the law—following some little old lady in a turquoise sun hat hurling the 10
commandments at her.
As I walk down 30th street, under the shade of a mighty redwood, I breathe in the hot smoke-filled air. Just another summer’s day in the neighborhood, I think, as I glance up at a murder of crows, perched on the telephone lines, cawing cawing cawing.
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