They got it when the green bats took to flight as the Sun rose and the streamliners whistled out of the stations. It was a workday, well, for those of us who had work. Germany sucked the Allied world dry like the pickle-helmed vampires they are, and the good ole US of A went from ripe grapes to stale raisins. Ladies in swishy skirts pushed baby strollers, guys in twilight suits and stained fedoras hit the streets. Shoeshine boys begged broke folks for work alongside equally busted newsies.

This was 1932, back when two slices of bread was considered a luxury commodity, even downright spoiled rotten if you had something in between them like a sliver of meat or two grapes you could mash into a basic jam.

Heat. Hot dang, August of that year must have been mad at us what with the blaze it unleashed. But pennies needed to be scraped up, laundry done, kids will play in the road regardless of good times or bad. Everybody was up and at 'em.

In other words, the joint was jumping when the mood struck.

Olde Street rarely got any action back then. Cars came and went. Ladies played bridge on folding tables and talked about their neighbors, their hair in curlers, babies squiggling around their ankles. But there was this guy, see, a real crank. He had a New York accent, and I coulda swore all of them went to Purgatory after the Huns blew up Manhattan, but there he was. Radiator in his car popped and white steam caught everybody's attention, mine included. So he stops but don't pull over, yelling at the car, the world, who knew. People start mumbling. 

Drivers behind him got to using, let's call them inspirational phrases, to get this guy out of the way. He ignored them. Only his trauma held his interest. 

So he's kicking the frame and jawing, cussing out anybody who tells him to move, no matter how nice they were doing so. He ripped the fedora off his head to wipe away sweat, and that's when the little girl went tugging on the guy's trousers.

"Mister are you okay?" She had the sweetness of empathy pouring out of her. Poor thing.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just leave me alone."

"Would you like an ice tea? It helps."

"What? No! I don't! I wanna get outta here! Scram!"

Meanwhile, those drivers were beeping their horns, a couple got out to confront this guy. Neighbors came out to absorb all the drama. People love to stir the pot, especially once the water is boiling.

Everybody formed an opinion. The guy at the heart of the matter is telling the little girl to shove off, drivers are wanting to fight--

Passenger hit the roof of a '31 Packard.

Now I'm not talking about the passenger of an airplane who fell out of the sky. I mean the real deal Passenger, the Mask guy. Named after pigeons? Yeah, him. The one that hit the streets just three months earlier, the guy who saved the busload of people from those ugly bubbling frogfolk, you know the ones. That guy. The Union and Confederate colors on like he tried to split the difference. The white ring around the neckline, the cape, or wings, hard to tell which. Anyway, there he was out of the blue, costume so tight and strange looking as if it was his skin, feathers and all. I admit the domino mask with the white glowing lenses freaked me out, unnatural. Front teeth knocked out. Nose rearranged. Hair sopping from all the blood. Clean as a whistle save for the blood splatter. He gasped his last breath, did a half roll on the crushed roof, and passed away.

Funny thing is, there was a hum. Like, an electronic hum coming out of his body that made people feel funny. It gave me thoughts, strange ones, of warfare and bad memories, birds falling from the sky in the thousands.

Well, Olde Street got good and quiet right then and there, let me tell you. All you heard were a few gasps once the spotlight shone down from a Civil Patrol aerocar. The Civvies landed and right off the bat started shoving folks aside to get to the body. They whipped out a nifty, curved ergometer, read the energy level in the stiff. One of them got on the caller and asked an operator for an ambulance. 

They were in and out, with the body, in less than five minutes. Nobody questioned Mister Broken Radiator. Nobody dispersed the crowd. heck, it was as if they wanted to act like Passenger never struck that car and all was well. But brother was we ever speechless.

A ton of things happen in the Rail. Every day it's a new standard set for strangeness. But I gotta tell you, that day, that moment, stands out in my mind all these years later.

Nothing of it ever showed in the Chronicle that afternoon or the following day. I asked around. Nobody knew nothing. Even the gig he got popular for seemed to be hard to find in print. Three years later I talked to a Civvie in Burke's Bar about the Mask and he advised me, after I pushed a bit, to not play reporter. For days after I swear I was being followed, and the fear it put in me shut me up for a long, long time.

There ain't no grave for the Passenger in the Heroes Cemetery near Business Park.

It's like he never existed. A bona fide hero. Poof! Eliminated.

I wonder what in the world it was all about.