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2001-06-25 | 4:03 p.m.

The last time I saw my brother, I was driving down Broadway, about five or six blocks from my house. Diane was with me. Up ahead, we saw a homeless guy stomping down the middle of the street, arms rigid, goosestepping. Crazy. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen anybody acting that nutty since I moved back here from Oakland. In Berkeley, we had called them 'street people.' This guy had a gray beard down past his breastbone. He looked like a mountain man. Cars swerved to go around him. As we drew up closer, I could see that he was staring at a fixed point in the distance. His eyes were dark and furious, like Rasputin's.

"Is that Marty?" I asked, surprised.

"Yep," Diane said grimly.

I'm ashamed to say that I cringed, hoping he wouldn't notice us, though we were only about two feet away when we passed him. We drove at a funereal pace. People up and down the street were watching. I wasn't prepared to have a family reunion right there in the middle of the street. But he never looked at us; he just kept marching.

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