Ftrain, by Paul Ford

I went to take pictures of graves for a piece I'm writing and I got lost in Brownsville, which is a very bad neighborhood. The Army sends medics there to train, says Wikipedia. That many gunshot wounds. When I want to examine the map on my phone in places like that I find an empty block where I can crouch over the little screen and pretend to be checking messages. I am one of all sorts of people passing through; this is one of all sorts of neighborhoods. There are so many churches and so many Resource Centers. Resource Centers for parenting, educating, women's health, special needs. The wooden ramps up to the little houses. It's not the beat-to-shit buildings that scare me, or the people, pushing strollers, working on cars. A little, yes, but I'm always scared, a little, in a neighborhood I don't know. Less paranoid than I used to be. No one cares that I am there; no one even notices. But. But you have to look out for that one guy, the slightly crazy guy, who wants to come over and check on you and ask you questions and fuck with you. I saw the sun going down and headed west.