There’s no one around and this car is stopping and I’m going to have to deal with whoever it is and I’m tired and hungry and scared.
Shit!
————————————-
“Where you going son?”
My fear disappears immediately as I approach the car window and the man’s welcoming smile. Now, I’m just cold and hungry.
“Midtown sir. A few blocks north of thirtieth and Cuming.”
“Dang! What’s a nice-looking white boy like you gone and moved into a neighborhood like that for?”
“I dunno.” I sigh, “It’s where I live now I guess.”
“And what the f… ahem, ok so what are you doing in THIS neighborhood?”
I say nothing, shift my weight and shiver. Shuffling my feet. I’m not about to tell him why I’m there so if he don’t like it, he can just leave me to walking. I’m cold and hungry but I can still walk.
“Well get in, I’ll get you home but I got a few things to say to you on the way. I hope you’re willing to hear em.”
“Yes sir.”
I go round and get in the car. As I do, there’s one split second in which I hesitate. There’s a gun on the seat next to the man. Again, I’m getting into the car of a stranger and he’s got a gun. This time however, the man sees my look and puts the gun away. He gives me another look that somehow puts me at ease again.
“Easy son, I’m a cop. I just got off duty and I’m going home. You got nothing to worry about.”
The man then shows me the badge, also on the seat next to him. By where the gun had just been.
With no traffic on the freeway at this hour, it does not take long before we’re near my neighborhood. But from a direction I have never seen before. I’m a bit disoriented when I finally turn my attention from our conversation to where we are.
“Where are we?”
“This is why I’m surprised you live in this area Brian.”
My new friend and I had had a nice (albeit short) conversation and I am now completely at ease with him. I trust him. He’s a fairly young police officer, perhaps in his mid thirties. A black man (I can’t remember his name now) from this practically all black neighborhood, who works in a practically all white suburb somewhere south of where he’d picked me up.
“Well, I know that where you live a few blocks from here, it’s on the white side so it’s not really unusual or bad that you to live there. But right here… get down a bit by the way.” He gestures for me to duck as we round a corner. I do as I’m told. “Right here, and this is why I took you this way. You need to see this.”
My friend gestures for me to get up a bit more so I can see. As I do and look around, I see a scene that’s hard to believe. I have no frame of reference.
What I see are dozens, scores of black men and woman. On the corner, in the street. They’re laughing and talking and smoking. Looking mean and looking sexy. Dressed like I never seen anyone dress before. Going in and out of what look like very busy nightclubs on each corner of the intersection. It’s like something out of a movie I have yet to see.
“Hookers and Pimps” Says my friend. “Hookers and Pimps… and they’d eat a nice young white boy from Minnesota like you for breakfast.”
And then my new friend, my guide in this strange place I’m seeing for the first and only time… the experienced black cop who grew up in this neighborhood. He pulls over after we’re well passed the crowd of “Hookers and Pimps” and looks me straight in the face. I see the seriousness in his eyes and show him that I’m paying close attention.
“Don’t I EVER see the likes of you round here at night, you hear me son?”
“Yes sir. I hear you.”
And I do, hear him.
I am still a good boy after all. I’m just a long LONG way from home.
It’ll be a while before I get back too.
More on that soon.
