The New City

by Stephen Amidon

  And then, a few months ago, he’d overheard Susan say something. They were at their usual table in the cafeteria. Teddy had gone to get some Jell-O to quell a lingering uprising of the munchies but turned back after realizing he’d left his money in his ski jacket. Susan was sitting on Joel’s lap. Their backs were to Teddy as he approached the table.

  “So I suppose Mr. Fag-Along will be coming,” she said, referring to their plan to see The Poseidon Adventure that weekend.

  “Shut up, Susan,” Joel said.

  But his voice was free of anger. He spoke the words wearily, as if he’d said them a hundred times before. Teddy froze, staring at the backs of their heads for a moment, a hot pulse of temper running through him. Thoughts of Michael Corleone returning to the table in that Brooklyn restaurant ran through his mind. He quickly regained his composure, returning to his chair as if nothing had happened. But it had. And Teddy wasn’t about to forget it.

  That spring he got into Harvard, Joel to Bucknell. Teddy began making noises about maybe going to Safety School Four to room with his friend but his father had strafed that plan on the runway. Still, Lewisburg and Cambridge were only a few hours apart. Weekends were an option. And they had the summer together. Only, summer was suddenly looking precarious. Without the teen center it was hard to imagine where they could hang. There was the closed pier at the lake, though Susan didn’t like it there. And the mall shut at nine. They had their respective rec rooms, though it was never the same with parents nearby. Teddy yearned for those first days in the city, when it was just him and Joel. Butch and Sundance. The Omega Men. Some nights as he sat in bed smoking and listening to John and Yoko he found himself wishing that they could go house jumping again. Just the two of them, falling into the darkness at the exact same speed.

  He raced into Newton Plaza’s parking lot, skidding to a stop next to the striped curb by the main entrance. The squeal of his tires echoed down to the lake. Heads turned. The shadow of a No Parking sign fell across the Firebird’s hood. Some suit scowled at him. Teddy just nodded back. The first time he’d parked here a security guard had threatened to have him towed. Teddy had casually mentioned his last name. Nobody’d bothered him since.

  He popped a Sucret into his mouth to mask the joint’s reek, then slid out of the car, riding a released cloud of freon and dope toward the building. He glimpsed himself in the mirrored window, looking cool in his shades and khaki jacket. Only the tops of John’s and Yoko’s heads were visible—everybody could relax, there would be no gratuitous parental embarrassment. He pushed through the revolving doors and made his way across the lobby’s marble expanse. It was crowded with EarthWorkers, many of them holding blueprint canisters like relay batons. The air was filled with the hushed scuffle of rubber soles. There was Muzak as well, “The Age of Aquarius.” He waited for an elevator beneath a portrait of Barnaby Vine. Teddy had met the old guy a couple times. He was all right. A genius, supposedly, though lately his plan for the new city didn’t seem quite as hot as it had a few years earlier. He’d had another stroke recently. Not that it mattered. Soon, the Swope would be running things.

  The elevator up was crowded. The little ditty Teddy had made up the other day started playing through his mind. “Bebe Rebozo, can’t blow his nose-oh.” Some of the other passengers started to titter and Teddy realized he was saying it out loud. He smiled. It was fairly fucking funny. He watched the riders in the door’s polished brass, wondering what it must be like to work every day, to take orders and worry about getting fired. Harvard might be like that. Maybe things wouldn’t be so easy up there. Though he doubted it. During his fall visit he’d spent the afternoon with some juniors who didn’t seem all that hot.

  He arrived at his father’s floor, blowing past the receptionists with a nod. People said hello when they recognized him. It was a good feeling, being the boss’s son. He started thinking about what it must feel like to be his father, coming up here every day knowing that you’re the main man. Especially when you’ve pulled yourself out of the quagmire like he did. The last kid of a big, poor Michigan family, too young to be anything but a mistake. His dad a strike-breaking maintenance man at River Rouge, over fifty when little Austin arrived. All those drunk brothers and pregnant nieces. Teddy had seen the house where he grew up in Grand Rapids. An unloaded shotgun shack. He sometimes pictured his dad when he was his age, putting himself through Wayne State and then Michigan Law while his family and friends took jobs on assembly lines. Coming to D.C. because that’s where the juice was. The only way he could have done it was to know that he was different. It was a knowledge that allowed him to see the same special qualities in his son. So even on those occasions when Teddy fucked up—that DWI mix-up down in Cannon City, for instance—he knew that his dad, deep down, understood. Because, deep down, they were the same.

  Evelyn was at her desk, looking more gargoylian than ever.

  “Hello, Edward,” she said with a sour smile. “He’s expecting you.”

  Teddy felt the usual rush of vertigo as he strode into his father’s office. It was those two glass walls—they always freaked him out. Like stepping out of an elevator straight on top of K2. Other than that, the office was strictly corporate. A conversation pit at one end, sofas and a half dozen chairs. His father’s big desk, catty-cornered where the glass walls met. The two Cross pens angled into a brass holder at the edge of the blotter looked like SAM missiles. His father stood at the model that centered the place, staring down at its toy houses and doll people with a worried expression.

  “The Swope surveys his minions.”

  He turned and grimaced.

  “Morning, Edward,” he said wearily, pointing to a chair by his desk.

  “Morning? I daresay not, padre.”

  Teddy dropped into one of the chairs facing the desk. His father sat in his own leather seat, leaning back into the space where the windows met.

  “So, Teddy—what the hell happened last night?”

  “It was pretty hairy.”

  “So I gather.”

  “Hatfields and McCoys. These guys were out of control.”

  “I’m telling people it was outsiders.”

  Teddy grimaced.

  “Not strictly true.”

  His father shook a Tiparillo from the packet on his desk and lit it. He stared at his son through the resulting cloud of smoke.

  “Go ahead,” he said softly.

  “I recognized lots of them from school. Blacks and whites. Residents of our very own metropolis.”

  His father blew out a thin cloud of smoke.

  “I’m thinking of closing the teen center for the summer.”

  “Well, I’m not going back there. Though I get the feeling …”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s the teen center that’s the problem.”

  “No. But still. It’ll calm jangled nerves.”

  “You know what the problem is, don’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the plan.”

  “Explain.”

  “The projects. They were a bad idea from the start. From before the start.”

  “But they’re integral to Mr. Vine’s thinking,” his father said with zero conviction.

  “Well, just ‘Cause something’s integral doesn’t mean it can’t be wrong. Ever heard of the calculus?”

  “I’m sure he has.”

  “How is the old Vine Man, anyway?”

  “Scuttlebutt is the second stroke was a doozy.”

  “Well, whether he’s integral or not, I think somebody’s going to have to do some rethinking. There are some pretty nervous muchachos out there.”

  “I know.” His father sighed. “You want some lunch?”

  “I’m not really that hungry.”

  “All right.” His dad’s small hands thudded down on his blotter. “Well, I better get back to work.”

  Teddy stood and looked down at his father.

  “Hey, Dad,” he said tenderl
y. “I mean, come the fall, you can handle this how you see fit, right? Vine and all them. It’ll just be you and your infinite wisdom.”

  “I guess you’re right,” his father said wistfully.

  Of course I am, Teddy almost said. But didn’t.

  3

  Earl Wooten was driving fast. On the straightaways he pushed seventy; through turns he never dipped below thirty. Although his Ranchero’s workhorse motor began to sputter and wheeze asthmatically after just a few minutes of this madness, he continued to power down the empty roads, ignoring the just-planted stop signs and freshly posted speed limits. At intersections he barely brushed his brakes. When he cornered, his tools slid across the vehicle’s bed like a team of silent movie comedians. He didn’t bother to check his rearview mirror—the only thing back there was a long cloud of reddish dust.

  Wooten was driving fast for one simple reason: he could. These were his roads. Nobody would pull him out here. The law had yet to arrive in this part of the city. Back in the finished villages, in Fogwood and Mystic Hills and Juniper Bend, you had the overworked deputies of Cannon County to worry about, the vigilant eyes of newly arrived parents and even the EarthWorks security guards, lame as they were. Speed there and somebody would call you on it. And beyond the city limits there were state troopers, stone-faced men who didn’t know Earl Wooten, who would only see a shine with a thousand dollars’ worth of Craftsman tools in a late-model Ford. But here, in this no-man’s-land of unpaved streets and unbuilt houses, this between place that was not yet city but no longer country, Wooten had no one to answer to but himself. He could go as fast as he wanted.

  He had to admit—it felt good. After thirty years of driving with a feather between sole and gas pedal, Wooten had finally found a place he could speed. Out here, cops could not pull him over for the unpardonable offense of doing five miles under the limit. They couldn’t stop him for signaling right when he was turning right or coming to a complete stop at flashing red lights. He would never have to hand over license and registration to deputies who took them back to their cars for five, ten, fifteen minutes, only to return them without apology. The white men he worked with sometimes jokingly asked why he drove so fast on sites and so slow in the world. Wooten just smiled. His black colleagues—what few there were—didn’t have to ask.

  So on he sped, cutting across the unpaved parking lot of the soon-to-be-completed Whistler’s Grove Elementary School. His wheels rattled through small ridges and gullies, bouncing Wooten like a baby on a footloose uncle’s knee. At the lot’s far end he jumped a curb, the giddy sensation causing him to whoop reflexively, though the celebration died on landing when the car lurched unexpectedly to the right. For a few seconds Wooten was close to losing control, saved only by the strength of his big hands. He eased off the accelerator after that, letting the car slow to a respectable speed. A solo wreck out here would be hard to explain.

  By the time he reached the Newton Pike he was creeping along. As his car slowed, his mind sped up. There was still a day’s work ahead of him. First came the snap inspection of Underhill. After that, the meeting with Austin to discuss the lake and the teen center. And then, provided there weren’t any more gaslight explosions, home, where he would finally have that talk with Joel. There would be no more speeding today. And certainly no unit 27; no velveteen sheets and crackling fat and daylight slumber.

  He’d had his little fun.

  As if to remind him of this fact, the naked frame of the Underhill project appeared on the eastern side of the pike. At first glance, the site looked abandoned. Wooten felt a brief swell of anger. He wondered if Vota and his men had finally gone too far, knocking off several hours early to visit a Cannon City bar or wherever else those ridge-runners got to when they weren’t working. He hoped so. He’d been itching for an excuse to fire Vota. No union or government agency could protect a man who knocked off early. But then he saw a flash of stainless steel on one of the project’s box girders. Figures began to appear. The Vota crew was still on the job. Doing as little as possible by the look of it. No more than a half dozen of the thirty men were working. The rest had gathered around a lunch truck. Wooten checked his watch. After two. Unbelievable.

  He turned off the pike, his anger gathering as he passed the HUD sign. Vota was a goldbricker of the first order, a glorified ditch digger who’d been getting fat at the federal tit for twenty years. Wooten had been ragging him to get a move on for over a month now. Underhill was seriously behind schedule. But Vota was the most maddening sort of foreman, the kind who would agree to everything you said and then go off and not do it. He was an expert at hiding the sort of hard evidence of incompetence needed to dismiss him. Last week Wooten had spent the best part of a day breathing down his neck just to make sure he put the box girders up straight. And now he could see that next to nothing had been done since. The girders stood bare in the morning sun, the air surrounding them free of the dust that always hovered around a productive site. Vota’s crew had the clean, relaxed look of men getting ready to start the day rather than reaching its end. And the foreman himself was nowhere in sight.

  Wooten skidded to a stop thirty feet from the lunch truck. The workers watched him stonily as he approached. All of them were white. A rarity at EarthWorks. The old wariness made an unsolicited return, further souring Wooten’s mood.

  “Where’s Vota?” he asked before he even reached them.

  His voice came out louder than he’d intended. The few men working up on the girders stilled their tools and looked down. The goldbrickers by the truck exchanged glances. Wooten waited. Finally, one of them, a scrawny man with hair down to the middle of his back, gestured toward a Johnny-on-the-Spot with his Mountain Dew can, sloshing some of its coolant-green fluid onto the trammeled clay. Wooten stared at the portable toilet, uncertain how to proceed. There was no way he was going to call Vota out. That would be too much of a direct challenge. He was tempted to order the men back to work himself, but that would open the door for defiance. He realized with a sinking heart that there was nothing to do but suffer thirty cold stares as he waited for the man to finish crapping.

  He looked around. Underhill was a nice site, shaded by the three surrounding hills that provided its name. In fact, all the city’s HUD complexes were prime spots. It was how Barnaby thought. Streetscaping. The nicer the location, the better people who lived there would act. It was one of the few things about Vine’s thinking Wooten found dubious. He’d spent enough time in picturesque Ozark countryside to know that it took a lot more than pretty scenery to stop people acting nasty.

  Vota finally emerged from the plastic tank, a rolled magazine in his hand. He was a short, fat man whose already ample cheeks were further distended by a large plug of chaw. He waddled casually toward the truck, whacking his thick thigh with the scroll. The tools on his belt flapped like the wings of a flightless bird. His stride didn’t break when he saw Woo-ten, though the magazine froze. A bland smile twisted lips that were flecked with tobacco.

  “Earl, what can I do for you today,” he said.

  Wooten was about to correct him about the uninvited use of his first name, but decided to let it ride. That’s just how men like Vota worked. Got you looking at the small stuff so you’d forget the important things. There was movement in the corner of Wooten’s eye. He marked it instinctively. But it was just the lunch truck driver, a wizened geezer with a paper catering hat, closing down his dimpled metal hatches, like some bit actor in a bad Western clearing the streets before the final showdown.

  “You can put some fire walls on those girders, for starters,” Wooten said flatly. “You can do the job you’re being paid for.”

  The smile on Vota’s face was the sort you’d give a small child.

  “Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he said, his voice shot through with studied forbearance.

  “I don’t think it is, Mr. Vota.”

  “Well,” Vota said, still smiling. “You’re mistaken.”

  “No,�
�� Wooten said evenly. “There’s only one mistake around here and you’re one more word away from making it.”

  The smile finally disappeared. Vota held Wooten’s eye for a moment. Then, with great deliberation, he turned and spat out a stream of rusty liquid. Wooten felt the anger move through him. Though directed away from him, that spit might just as well have caught him squarely in the face. Men like Vota knew what spitting in front of a black man meant. A few more glances were shared among the crew. No one spoke for several seconds. Even the lunch man had stopped moving.

  And then it ended. A split second before Wooten threw caution to the wind and fired a man who didn’t technically work for him, Vota pulled back from the brink. He shrugged, that smile returning to his stained lips.

  “Well, boys, looks like the break is over.”

  The men responded sluggishly, finishing off their drinks before tossing them toward the plastic bag hanging from the truck’s flank. A few missed. They simply left them there, more trash on an already un-derpoliced site.

  “I want those fire walls up by the end of business tomorrow,” Woo-ten commanded. “Understand?”

  Vota sighed and let his eyes wander across the wooded hills. After five seconds passed he nodded vaguely. Wooten knew that he wasn’t going to get any more satisfaction from this man unless he spent the next two hours bird-dogging his sorry ass. And he didn’t have the time for that. Not with the lake and the teen center and his own son to deal with. Besides, he didn’t trust his response if one more drop of spit passed through that man’s lips.

  He was halfway to the Ranchero when he heard the laughter. A reedy, mirthless sound—the chatter of gorging scavengers. Vota’s low growl was chief among them. Wooten was tempted to turn and ask if there was something he’d like to say. But he knew that was exactly what the man wanted—a futile show of temper that would either escalate out of control or leave him looking like some toothless fool. So Earl Wooten did what his mother had taught him nearly forty years earlier when faced with a battle you could not win.