A Sunday Stroll

He walked. It was late fall; the last few laggard leaves drifted downward, joining their deceased brethren on the lawns. The leaves always seemed to take longest to fall in the city; something to do with trapped heat, or wind resistance from structures, or something. It was cool, but not yet cold, at least to him; all those years working in the freezer at Bil Mar had permanently altered his body chemistry. He would break into a sweat on a fifty-degree day. He sauntered down the sidewalk, swinging his hands semi-consciously in time with the music playing in his giant ridiculous headphones: late-period They Might Be Giants. Hey Nyquil driver, it's Nyquil drivin' time.

He'd parked at the corner of Logan and Paris, in Heritage Hill, a neighborhood of grandiloquent centenary manses, about half of which were subdivided, because who could handle that much house? The preservation commission dictated colors, trims, repairs all within acceptable norms, as bad as any penny-ante condo association in its way. But you couldn't argue that it helped: when he crossed James, and left the district, the houses went to hell immediately. Cheap aluminum siding, windows that still bore their "Anderson" sticker after twenty years, broken concrete steps, garbage in the yards. These were the homes of people who'd lost hope. There were a few churches along this street; high fences and gates fortified them, kept them safe from their own neighbors, made it acceptable for the suburbanites to jet in, say their Hail Marys, and jet out again, tut-tutting about the state of the old borough.

He truly believed he didn't have a racist bone in his body. So he had to worry about what made his throat tighten, his pace quicken, as he passed a few young black men sitting on a stoop, laughing and smoking. They spotted him coming, stopped talking, watched him pass. He thought he saw hostility in their eyes; was that just paranoia? He told himself he just didn't trust groups of men, whatever their color, which was certainly true from what he remembered of frat boys. He tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, flailed a moment but didn't go down; he could hear laughter behind him. He didn't look behind but kept going, cheeks hot.

The character of the street kept changing every half mile or so. The "hood" gradually became a middle class black district, then a mixed working class area, then a middle class white neighborhood, then, crossing Gladstone, he entered East Grand Rapids, Home Of The Man. Wide tree-lined boulevards, half million dollar homes, lawn service crews deployed strategically for maximum leaf removal. He felt as unwelcome here as he had a mile back. But, hey, they built the sidewalks; it was his right to walk them. ALL of them. But then, back to the trailer park with you, Schmuck-Boy. He flipped the tape in the Walkman, went up two blocks to Sherman, and headed back across the socioeconomic strata to his car.

Would he ever have a home? A love? A life? Or was he doomed to just walk through other people's lives every Sunday?