Several years ago I was walking down Capitol Avenue in Little Rock during a lunch hour when two unsettling sights occurred right before me. First, this late-model red sports car with tinted windows came roaring up to a little Chinese restaurant and settled down on the curb at an angle, its radio even louder than its engine. Two young men jumped out. This electronic assault on every life form in the block proceeded while they both went inside to pick up their take-out. It was like the spirit of time itself.
Life is a dream, at least in recollection.
I couldn't have written this stuff. It was a sign and a wonder. I don't think I'd seen anyone like that since my childhood Saturdays on Texas Avenue in Shreveport, Louisiana, when the sharecroppers would come into town to buy their provisions and do their business and maybe get their shoes fixed at a shop like my father's. Now this old woman was bearing down on me like a prophet, wielding that stick, coming not just down the sidewalk, but out of a different era. She kept saying something over and over.