Sources of gloom

No Mom yesterday, and I'll probably stay away today, too. I left work early in the afternoon, drove halfway downtown and walked in, about three miles. It was cold, but not the biting cold of the day before, and I worked up a sweat in my heavy clothes, listening to "Deep Down Dark," about the Chilean mining disaster, a claustrophobic book.

I stopped at the gas station at 12th and Highland to use the bathroom, wending through the crowd lined up to pay. When I came back outside, people were ringed around a little pushing match -- two thuggish kids pushing at a tall white guy. It seemed, at first, like it was just good fun, even the white guy flashing a quick smile -- but then suddenly it wasn't fun. The thugs took his hat, and were pulling at his coat, and he started squirming and pushing and people started shouting, "Leave him alone," and "Back off, back off!" I got my phone out, fumbled with it, thinking to call the cops, but then the scufflers banged into a car in the gas bay, knocking an antenna off the trunk right in front of me.

Now the driver of the car comes out of the store and says, "OK, now you're messing with me." He's a well-built black guy, and knows what he's doing. In two quick strides he's there, grabs the thugs by the neck, both at the same time, and throws them to the ground. He and the white guy kneel onto them and go to work, punching their faces, blow after blow. After a handful of swings the white guy stands and lands a soccer kick to the face of one of the kids, and the driver does the same to the other -- both of them kicking and kicking, blood and, probably, teeth flying.

The tables have turned, and finally the two kids get up and scurry away from the gas station, to the sidewalk, both sides yelling at each other, till the driver hears something he doesn't like and takes off after the them, his girlfriend leaning out her door, crying "No! Nooo!" When the driver comes back, the kids return, standing a distance off, threatening they'll be back, they ain't done with his yet.

There will be a gun before this is over, I think, and trot away, watching as the white guy gives a kind of soul handshake to the driver, thanks him for his help, and walks off, trying to look anonymous

All this, followed by a sophisticated evening with Ms. V at Port of Call. We had the seafood Cobb salad, then attended "The Amish Project," a one-woman show about the killing of 10 Amish girls in Pennsylvania in 1996. It was impressionistic, not quite a story, and I wanted more actors in it. But it was the perfect downbeat cap to a downbeat afternoon.