Afternoon Clouds

The streets are empty, but a car, door open, left abandoned in the middle of the street. The stray fire hydrant made it about two feet into the front end of the car slowing an errant driver the night before. Through fogged vision, he must have driven a few moments before his transport surrendered to the crushed engine. The car is facing downhill, so the driver may have been coasting, thinking he was still in control. The assumption is that it was a man, just because, well, men tend to be more idiotic than women in that regard. The local police barracks is only two blocks away. It is the early afternoon. No one has reported it, nor moved it. The engine is cold. I think one of the credos at the police barracks is vigilance, but, then again, there are much worse things happening in Bushwick. At least that is what the Daily News would try to tell me.
“I should take a picture of that.”
“Nah, there will be another one like it soon enough.”
“True.”
We continue walking down the street, late summer storm clouds fill the sky over the baseball field opposite the police station. Our conversation veers toward cops, corruption and nepotism. We make no moves to curb or quiet our chat as we pass a policeman taking a belated coffee break. He pauses, looks up at us with an indifferent expression then returns back to his own thoughts.
Beyond the park, the streets are lined with barren shells of industrial buildings, brick or cement, covered in various layers of graffiti. Block after block, we walk the mile toward Williamsburg. The industrial buildings give way to vinyl sided, dilapidated row homes with caged windows and cable wires running between the windows. With each block the décor improves. Fresh planted saplings line the streets, and then grow incrementally with each passing block.