A
few Saturday nights ago I was coming back from the grocery store and was
crossing the street, when I see a guy hunched on the sidewalk beneath a
brightly white painted granny bike, and he’s moaning.
As
I'm walking up from a bit of a distance, he gets up like he’s sore, stops moaning, gets back on the bike, and
begins to pedal it across the street away from me, only very slowly and with
great difficulty, since he didn’t seem all right and the front fender seemed to
be scraping against the frame and the tire and making the bike turn a bit left.
He
then stopped across the street, and he just stood there staring towards some
garbage cans in an alley.
I reached where he had been and continued walking on the opposite side of the street, but I seriously wondered
if he had been hit by a car and was disoriented or whatever.
So,
I stopped and stood there with my groceries and looked across the street at
him.
“ARE
YOU ALL RIGHT?” I called out.
There
was no reply, and he just stood there looking at the garbage cans in the alley,
and then he just arched his back and threw his head back and gave a wordless
howl.
I
quickened my pace and hurried home up the block, and every once in a while I
heard a howl, and I glanced back to make sure he was still standing there and
not following me, though it now seemed like he had turned himself in my general
direction, though he was still standing in the same spot.
When
I got in, I closed all the blinds, turned on my lights, and called the cops to
come check that guy out.
I
wonder if he stole the bike, and I’m almost certain he was on some really
effed-up mind-altering drug like PCP or something.
There’s
a lot of kids and a decent amount of older people in the neighborhood, and I’d
hate someone to bump into him or come out onto their porch or stoop and find
him there.
The
woman on the phone said they’d alert the cops to come check him out.
I
specified his appearance as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s with
dreadlocked brown hair, and on a bright white bike.
No comments:
Post a Comment