Extreme Change

by Gary Beck

  "That should help. Do you want to sit on the curb?"

  "No. It’s too cold…. I’m going to ask Daddy when we can go in." She held him back before he could move away.

  "He doesn’t know yet. He’ll tell us when it’s time."

  "I don’t like it out here," Andy mumbled.

  "Neither do I, but we have to wait," Jen said.

  Firefighter Jones reached the third floor and assessed the damage in the hall. he concluded that the fire hadn’t spread to the rest of the building due to their quick response. He waved to the two firefighters still checking the kitchen and walked into the main bedroom. The side of the room with the night table and clothes closet had been gutted. He looked for the wallet and found some partial remains, but the credit cards were fused into melted plastic. The clothes had been charred beyond recognition and the shoes at the bottom of the closet were unwearable, except for some sneakers that he picked up. He looked around for a few minutes and could only find a few sweaters that might be useful. He went into the children’s rooms and collected some sneakers, pants and sweaters that he bundled into the adults’ sweaters. He couldn’t think of anything else to take, so he left the apartment and went downstairs. He had been through this same situation many times and wasn’t looking forward to giving the family more bad news.

  Peter saw the fireman come out of the building and stirred expectantly. He couldn’t tell from the fireman’s expression whether the news was good or bad, but he nudged Beth and bubbled, "Here he comes. In just an hour or so we’ll be comfortably sprawled in a hotel suite."

  Beth didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, so she waited silently. Jen and Andy moved closer to their parents, hoping that the nightmare would soon be over.

  Gene knew from experience what the family was going through and he also knew there was no way to soften the bad news. "I’m sorry, folks. Your bedroom was burned out. Your wallet was a total loss and the clothes were ruined."

  "All of them?" Peter asked.

  Gene saw his disappointment and said consolingly, "Yeah. Maybe we can find something for you to wear at the firehouse."

  "Thanks," Peter muttered.

  Beth was more concerned about where they’d spend the night. "It’s too bad about our clothes, but we don’t have anyplace to go."

  "Why don’t you talk to that police officer," Gene said, and pointed to officer Corrado. "He’ll try to help you."

  When officer Corrado saw the family approach, he thought they resembled needy reservation Indians in the gray blankets. "I bet you folks are a little warmer now."

  Peter said tensely, "We’re not freezing, but we sure aren’t comfortable."

  Coro nodded sympathetically. "I know that. Did the firefighter find your credit cards?" "No," Peter answered.

  "Well, what are you folks going to do?"

  Peter’s voice rose shrilly, "I told the fireman we didn’t have anywhere to go. I thought you were going to help us?"

  "Take it easy, buddy. I’ll see what I can do. Now you don’t have any money, right?"

  "Right."

  "And you don’t have family or friends where you can spend the night?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure?"

  Beth sensed Peter’s growing tension and interjected,

  "We just moved here from Detroit a month ago. We don’t know anyone yet."

  "Is there anyone there you can call and ask for money? I’ll let you use my cell phone."

  Beth shook her head. "Not really. We borrowed money to come here."

  "What about your family?" Coro asked.

  "My parents are dead and so are Peter’s," Beth replied.

  Coro didn’t know what to do about them. "I’ll ask my partner if he has any ideas."

  They watched the cop walk away and Peter said bitterly, "It’s just like Detroit. When you need help, they can’t do anything."

  "That’s not true, Peter," Beth said. "The fireman just couldn’t save your wallet. The cop is trying to help. I know you’re upset but try to be patient."

  Jen tugged at Beth’s arm. "Are we going upstairs soon, Mommy?"

  "Not yet, honey."

  "I’m tired."

  "I know, honey. We’ll just have to wait." Andy started crying and Beth put her arms around him and whispered reassuringly, "That’s all right. That’s all right, sweetie. Jen. Stay with your brother and take care of him." Jen was alarmed.

  "Are you going away?"

  "No, honey. I may have to talk to the policeman and I want you to watch Andy, like a big girl."

  Beth turned to Peter, who was clutching at her other arm and he asked urgently, “What are we going to do? We can’t spend the night on the street."

  "Let’s wait for the cop. Maybe he can find out where we can borrow some money for the night, and you can repay it with an advance on your salary."

  "You’ll see. He won’t do anything."

  "Don’t be negative," Beth said. "We’ll work things out."

  Coro told his partner, Kareem Warren, a much more experienced officer, that the family didn’t have any money, or a place to stay.

  "If they don’t have any other place to stay, they could always go to an emergency shelter," Kareem answered.

  "I heard of it, but never dealt with it. How does it work?"

  "Once things are settled here, we’ll take them to an E.A.U," Kareem explained.

  "What’s that?"

  "An Emergency Assistance Unit. There’s one in the Bronx that’ll arrange temporary shelter for them."

  "Some kind of homeless shelter?"

  "Yeah. What do you expect, man, the Ritz?"

  "I’ve heard those places are pretty rough."

  "Didn’t you ever respond to a call from one of those welfare hotels?"

  "No. I don’t know if those kinds of folks can handle it."

  Kareem asked in annoyance, "What kind of folks are we talking about?"

  "You know, sort of middle class, not used to the streets."

  "Do you want to bring them home with you?"

  "No, man."

  "Then take some advice, man. Do your job. Help them as best you can, then forget them."

  "They had some bad luck tonight."

  "Coro, there’s a lotta bad shit out there."

  Peter and Beth saw the cop get out of the patrol car and beckon to them. They were already getting used to bad news and they could tell from his expression that more was coming.

  They herded the children in front of them and as they approached, Peter asked the cop

  apprehensively, "Did you find out how to help us?"

  Coro was a little embarrassed, "Officer Warren and I’ll take you to an Emergency Assistance Unit."

  Peter was confused. "What’s that?"

  "It’s a temporary shelter and they’ll take care of you until you make other arrangements."

  "Where is it?" Beth asked.

  "The Bronx."

  "The Bronx? I don’t want to go there," Peter blurted. "I’ve heard that it’s full of drug dealers and gangs. That’s why we left Detroit, to get away from that element."

  "There are a lot of nice places in the Bronx. You’ll be all right," Coro said.

  Peter was getting desperate. "There’s got to be another way. Is there any kind of emergency fund that could help us?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Can the police department lend us a few hundred dollars?"

  "I don’t think so."

  Jen interrupted plaintively, "We’re tired, Daddy."

  "Why don’t you sit in the back of our patrol car," Coro said. "It’s warm and you can relax until we settle things here,"

  Peter stood there helplessly, a battered survivor of an unexpected disaster, uncertain of what to do. When he didn’t react to the cop’s suggestion, Beth gently nudged him towards the patrol car, towing the children with her.

  Coro opened the back door, then introduced them to his partner, "This is Officer Warren. What’s your name, folks?"

  Peter s
at there numbly, so Beth answered, "Harmon. Peter and Beth Harmon. This is Jen and Andy." Jen managed a weak hello, but Andy huddled against Beth and didn’t look up.

  Officer Warren greeted them courteously, "Sorry to meet you in these kinds of circumstances. Why don’t you folks just relax, and we’ll get going as soon as things wind down here."

  "I don’t want to go to the Bronx," Peter mumbled.

  Officer Warren asked patiently, "Where do you want to go?"

  Peter shrugged. "I don’t know."

  "Unless you’ve got some other place to go, that’s all we can do," Officer Warren said. "Now, do you want to go or not?"

  Before Peter could answer, Beth said, "We’ll go to the Bronx."

  "Good. Now take it easy. We’ll leave soon."

  They sat there silently and waited. Peter stared straight ahead at nothing, with Jen curled in his lap. Beth watched the fire engines drive off, as their fellow tenants straggled back into the building.

  A neighbor on the floor above them, who Beth had never spoken to, stopped at the patrol car, knocked on the glass and shouted, "You bastard. You could have burned us in our beds. Too bad you didn’t fry."

  Peter cowered and Officer Warren shooed the man away. Beth didn’t understand why he was blaming them, but she dismissed him without much concern. She had bigger problems to worry about than an upset neighbor. She noticed that the crowd had mostly dissipated, and the curiosity seekers had drifted back to their beds. The ghouls, deprived of blood and lamentation, had evaporated to wherever they lurked, until dreadful events materialized them again to feast on the suffering of strangers. The flashing lights and screeching sirens were extinguished, and the indifferent street now was silent.

  Beth watched the nice cop come back to the car with his gruff partner and open the door. "The fire marshal sealed your apartment, until the investigation into the cause of the fire is completed," Officer Corrado told them. "He gave me a telephone number that you can call in a few days to find out when you can get back in there."

  Peter repeated hollowly, "A few days."

  "What do we do until then?" Beth asked.

  "I guess you’ll have to stay at the shelter," Coro replied.

  "Isn’t there anything else we can do?" Peter asked desperately. "We don’t want to go there."

  Before Corrado could answer, Officer Warren broke in harshly, "You ain’t got no money. You ain’t got no friends. So whadda ya want to do? It’s either the shelter, or the street. It’s your choice."

  Coro tried to moderate his partner’s harshness, "Be cool, Kareem. You know what they’ve been through tonight."

  "Yeah, man, but it’s decision time."

  Beth ended the discussion, "Let’s go to the shelter."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The drive to the Bronx through the now tranquil night was a vivid contrast to the earlier commotion. They turned onto Avenue D and the normally bustling street was deserted. Not even the ghosts of immigrants past lingered in remembrance of their struggles to escape the crushing burden of poverty. They took Houston Street to the East River Drive and the lights from across the river in Queens flickered tauntingly, another mouth of the cruel urban giant, slumbering until dawn aroused its appetite to devour its citizens. There was almost no traffic and it only took a few minutes to drive uptown to the Willis Avenue Bridge. The occupants of the police car were too distracted to notice the decay of the relic of nineteenth century style bridge construction that was now out of favor with a people who had become immersed in impersonal sleekness. The hum of the tires on the rusting metal roadbed sang them across the bridge to an unknown land.

  Peter had lapsed into a listless state, oblivious to where he was. When they came off the bridge Beth looked out the window, curious to see why Peter was so apprehensive about the Bronx. The streets didn’t seem more uncivilized than parts of Manhattan. There were a lot of run-down tenements and public housing, but they looked a lot better than much of Detroit. They drove a few blocks and turned onto a two-way street that reminded her of Detroit. They turned again onto a broad avenue, but she couldn’t read the street sign. The avenue got wider, and they passed a park that seemed peaceful in the concealing darkness. They stopped at a red light and she saw a massive stone monstrosity of the type that government once erected to impress its people with the myth of its enduring power. The granite giant, modeled after a characterless cube for architectural style, reminded a nation that just completed a world war that they had substance and were here to stay.

  Beth thought that most government structures were dated without being old, obsolete without being antique and formal without being splendid. She remembered from her art history course at M.S.U. that one of the defining characteristics of a culture was its buildings. She idly wondered why governments didn’t build pyramids, since that was one of the most imposing forms that man created. Then she concluded that they would take too much space at the bottom and not provide enough at the top. She wondered if they could be built inverted and suddenly realized that after being burned out of her home and heading towards a homeless shelter, she was sitting in the back seat of a cop car, thinking about pyramids. The weirdness of the situation made her giggle.

  Peter didn’t react, but Officers Corrado and Warren turned and regarded her strangely. "I’m glad you still have your sense of humor," Coro said. Officer Warren’s glance was suspicious, as if he expected her to become hysterical and burst into tears at any moment.

  She commented placidly, "I was thinking about pyramids." Coro looked at Kareem, who arched his eyebrows, as if to say, ‘she’s losing it.’ Beth guessed they assumed she was freaking out and said reassuringly, "This is the first time I’ve been to the Bronx, and when I saw that huge government building I wondered why they didn’t build pyramids instead."

  "How do you know it’s a government building?" Coro asked.

  "It’s too big to be a bank and no one else would put up a monument to corruption like that, so it has to be a government building."

  "Why do you say corruption?"

  "Those palaces of power were built at the expense of the people and everybody involved profited from it."

  "I didn’t know that," Coro said.

  Beth turned to Officer Warren. "What street is this?"

  "I’m not a tour guide, lady," he growled.

  "I just wanted to learn more about where we’re going."

  "Next time, book a trip with a travel agent." She decided not to ask any more questions and tried to read the street signs. They stopped for a red light and she saw that they were on the Grand Concourse. It was a broad, almost elegant roadway that must certainly have caused the destruction of acres of woodland to allow Bronx citizens to motor from one end of the borough to the other.

  Officer Warren checked the street sign and cursed, "Shit. I came too far. That’s 165th Street. We’re going to 151st Street." He made a U-turn at the corner and headed back the way they came. Before she could see much more of the Concourse, they turned onto 151st street. It was too dark to see anything clearly in the faint glow from the streetlights. They pulled up in front of a peeling brick building that was as grim as a jailhouse. Vagrant light peeked from cracks in the fading black paint on the windows. The door was a mottled, metal portal that hinted of squalor within.

  Officer Warren shifted into park, then said not insincerely, "Here we are folks. I’m sorry for your troubles. They’ll take care of you inside."

  "Are you coming in with us?" Beth asked.

  "There’s no need, ma’am. They know what to do."

  Beth clutched Coro’s shoulder. "Will you wait for us, in case there’s a problem?"

  Coro took his cue from his partner. "Don’t worry, ma’am. They’ll help you. That’s why they’re here, for emergencies."

  "I understand that, but we’d feel a lot better if you were outside, just in case they don’t have room for us."

  Coro didn’t know what more he could do, so he said, "Why don’t you take your family in now.
You’ll see, it’ll be all right." He reached back and opened the door. Peter got out mechanically, carrying Jen. Beth carried Andy. They stood bewildered, uncertain of what to do. As the car drove off, Coro waved and gestured for them to go in. He said to Kareem, "I feel sorry for them. They lost everything."

  "I’ve seen worse."

  "Do you think they’ll make it?" Coro asked.

  Kareem shrugged, "You can’t be soft and survive in this world. Despite all the security that money buys, disaster is always nearby." Coro looked back and saw them still standing there forlornly wrapped in their blankets, until he couldn’t see them anymore.

  Peter didn’t seem inclined to move, so Beth headed for the door and he followed. She opened it and walked into a dimly lit room. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw bundles of what must have been people sleeping on the floor. There was a battered metal desk near the door and a man was hunched over it, snoring away. She said, "Sir. Can you help us?" When he didn’t stir she shook his shoulder. "Sir. Can you help us?" He still didn’t respond, so she shook him again, harder.

  He straightened up and said groggily, "What do you want?"

  "We were burned out of our apartment. We need a place to sleep." He was an older black man with mottled skin and inflamed eyes. A sign on the desk said he was Mr. Givens.

  He pointed to an empty corner and said grumpily, "You can park there."

  Beth was shocked. "We can’t sleep on the floor."

  "Take it or leave it. You can sleep on the street for all I care."

  Beth was taken aback by his indifference and turned to Peter for support, but he just stood there passively. She realized that it was up to her and asked politely, "Don’t you have any beds?"

  "This ain’t a shelter," The clerk snarled.

  "The police officers told us they were bringing us to a shelter."

  "I don’t care what they told you. This ain’t a shelter."