There's the bus. Ah! wait bus! Nope, not gonna catch it, tried and failed. Bested by a diesel engine. Not much to do now but walk. East. No hurry, anyway. Bisecting the inner city on foot. The air is crisp, tingling my skin. On my right a burned out house. Truly gutted by flames. What the fire didn't consume is heaped in the front yard: a printer, what is left of a bed, computer monitor, a wooden Old Glory placard: PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN. Written on the porch, in white, homespun-elegant, curvy print:
Save Our Children
From Abuse of Power by Child Services
Protect Parents Rights
The porch is intact, making it hard to discern which arrived first, this cry for help or the fire department. In any event it doesn't look like either arrived in time. Walking onward. Cross streets: Hamlet, Frances, Oxford, Clara. The dawn comes as a ribbon of salmon before me. A man asks me for a cigarette. I produce my pouch. We walk as I roll. His name is Otis and I tell him mine. We part, neither the worse for the experience. Trash is everywhere, refuse. Colorful murals applied to brick faces, beds of tulips between the trenches. Under a railroad pass to the otherside. Certainly another side of the tracks, right or wrong I can't say at this point. A change in zoning. America's urban threshold. Business wholesale, contracting, computer services, industrial bakery. The Ohio State Fairgrounds. Memories on this side of the tracks. A senior center -- closed now. A funding issue, declining revenues, an imbalance, fiscally speaking. The interstate slashes across the coming of today.
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