The New City

by Stephen Amidon

  There was only silence after Wooten spoke. Joel avoided his father’s eye, staring instead at the ceiling. After a while he snorted and turned toward the wall. Wooten spoke his name a few times but there was no reply. He felt the anger rise briefly in him, though it vanished when he remembered Ardelia’s words. The only thing the boy had done wrong was love too much.

  So now, four days later, there was still a talk needed. Wooten walked down the hall and paused at his son’s door. Music drifted through the composite wood. That blind Stevie Wonder again. Something about a golden lady. He knocked.

  “What?”

  Wooten knew that was as close to an invitation as he would get. He pushed the door open. Joel sat up on his bed, reading a page covered by a girl’s florid handwriting. His face registered a shift of emotion when he saw that it was his father. Something hard entered it. Unforgiving, in the way only the young can be.

  “Mind if I pull up a chair?”

  Joel shrugged. Wooten twisted around the desk chair and positioned it a good five feet from the bed. As he sat he could see that Joel was reading an old letter. No doubt from Susan. There were dozens more surrounding him, most loosely packed into unstamped envelopes. Probably written in study hall and passed during lunch hour. Wooten was suddenly struck by the feeling that there were vast landscapes within his son he had no knowledge of at all. Maybe the boy was hurting worse than anyone knew. But there was nothing they could do. The girl’s folks had decided.

  “Joel, I don’t know if your mother told you, but I have to go to Atlanta on family business for a couple days.”

  Joel shrugged. He didn’t care.

  “So how are you doing?” Wooten asked after a few long seconds.

  Joel looked at him incredulously.

  “How do you think?”

  “Well, I think you’re probably still mad at the world. But like I said on Sunday, none of us have any choice here. Especially seeing as how the girl’s a minor.”

  Joel looked up, bitterness in his eyes.

  “That isn’t why you’re saying I can’t see her.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  Foolishly, Wooten took the bait.

  “Then maybe you can tell me why I am.”

  “Because you’re a Tom,” Joel said, his voice matter-of-fact.

  The paternal smile dropped off Wooten’s face like an icicle in the morning sun.

  “What did you say?”

  “You’re a Tom,” Joel said calmly. “Mr. Pale says jump and you say how high. Been that way your whole life.”

  Wooten told himself not to get angry. It was just the boy’s sorrow talking. His shame at getting caught. That’s all. Just sorrow and shame.

  “That’s not true, Joel.”

  “No? Then what is it?”

  “Those people caught you in their house. Do you honestly believe there wouldn’t be any repercussions?”

  Joel had no answer for this. Wooten took a deep breath. Tom. The boy had called him a Tom. Though he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t mean it.

  “If you want to make out that I’m some sort of evil coward then go on and do it. I can ride with that. But the fact is that Susan Truax is a minor. Her parents don’t want you to see her. We have no choice in this matter. Is that clear?”

  Joel shrugged.

  “Think that if you want,” he said.

  Wooten stared at his son for a moment. He was getting so big. So close to being a man. But not yet. Some things still had to happen for that. Some things still had to be understood.

  “Joel, believe it or not, I want you to be happy. But I also have to make sure you’re safe. Sometimes the two things aren’t the same. And when push comes to shove, I’ve got to choose safe.”

  Joel didn’t answer. Instead, he began to rummage through the letters on his bed, as if his father weren’t sitting a body length away. Wooten stared at his son for a moment longer. Not angry now. Not frustrated. Just saddened. He stood and walked wearily from the room, closing the door tight behind him as that blind Wonder continued to sing about a golden lady.

  The word echoed through his mind as he packed his suit bag for the trip. Tom. There was no way the boy could know what it meant, to call him that. All he knew was that it was a way to hurt him. But it had been a long time since anyone called him a Tom. In the old days he used to hear it often. Though it was painful at first, Wooten eventually realized that the only folks using the term were either shiftless bums or people so twisted with rage they didn’t know what they were saying. Of the dozens of people who called him Tom, none had ever owned his love or respect. Until now. But Joel couldn’t really mean it. He knew his father had never tried to curry favor or play a part. Never scuffled or sirred or went cap in hand to Miss Anne’s kitchen. Never let any cracker mouth him off or use his first name without being allowed. There were only two kinds of men in Earl Wooten’s world—his equals, and those who’d let themselves become inferior to him. He would never concede that anyone was his better. Not Swope. Not Savage. Not even Barnaby Vine.

  Joel couldn’t believe what he said. He was just saying it because he knew it hurt.

  He left the house an hour later, telling Ardelia that he’d arranged to meet with a Glen Burnie contractor at the airport before his flight. More lies. Lies within lies. He consoled himself with the thought that these would be the last he would tell. To Austin or to Joel or to Ardelia. Especially to her. Today it ended. For nearly a year this thing had been in his life, like some kind of malignancy. The time had come to cut it out. So he could fly to Chicago free and clean.

  It was a fifteen-minute drive to Renaissance Heights. Wooten parked in his usual spot, just beyond the minibus stop on the pike. He locked the car and headed down the bike path, which snaked through landscaped woodland before joining the project. Thankfully, there was no one around, not even at the tot lot. At one point he thought he heard some big dog crashing around in the woods above the path, but when he looked there was nothing.

  A hundred yards from the project’s entrance he saw the backs of the houses of Zeno’s Way. Graffiti and beer cans littered the common land bordering their yards; a condom dangled from a ruined sapling. The sight brought Monday night’s meeting unhappily to mind. Although Austin claimed not to be upset by what happened, Wooten could tell that he’d been sorely aggrieved. But he also knew he was right. Even as he now looked at those people’s damaged property, he knew that once they built the first fence there would be nothing stopping hundreds more from following. He just wished he’d been able to halt the motion in a more diplomatic way. He’d tried without luck to get hold of Austin since then to smooth things over. Though Evelyn always had plausible excuses for her boss’s unavailability, Wooten knew that there was damaged pride involved. Squaring things with his friend would be the first order of business upon his return. All this cloak-and-dagger nonsense would be a thing of the past. As he passed through the colony of Dumpsters at the edge of the complex’s parking lot, Wooten took comfort in the thought that in just a couple of days the misunderstanding with Austin would be water under the bridge.

  The big black button emitted a harsh, industrial buzz, the sort of sound Wooten always thought should be accompanied by an electric shock. It took her an eternity to answer the door. The chain seemed an insoluble puzzle, rattling for a good ten seconds before coming free. She was dressed in the kimono she’d picked up at some secondhand shop, its decorative waterfalls shrouded in a gray detergent fog. Behind her the boy made the faint, plosive sounds that accompanied the endless battles he fought with those two limbless G.I. Joes. Though Wooten had given him newer, better toys, he still preferred the scarred dolls.

  She looked bad, even while she looked so good. Her uncombed hair was matted; the bruise-colored crescents beneath her eyes were darker than ever. She moved with that liquid quality that usually struck him as graceful but today only seemed tired. And yet, bad as she looked, he felt his resolve starting to slip. Before he’d even cro
ssed the threshold. Before a word had been said.

  She moved aside to let him past. Wooten took a few steps into the room and stopped, uncertain what to do. Usually they went straight to the bedroom, crawling beneath the velveteen sheets that were her only luxury. But he would not be doing that today. It was what he’d decided. He could feel her staring at him. Waiting to follow wherever he went.

  The boy was trapped by the catty-cornered coffee table, his attention focused on the two dolls he continued to butt into each other. A half-empty bottle dangled from his mouth, its nipple stretched by the weight of the Kool-Aid inside. Leaking juice gave his periodic noises a gurgling aspect. Small mounds of half-chewed food dotted the carpet around him, like scat.

  “Hey, Mookie,” Wooten said.

  The boy didn’t look up. She moved next to him.

  “He been like that. They got to change his medicines or something. I’m going back to the clinic Saturday morning.”

  “Are you working tomorrow?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Wooten nodded. She worked in the cafeteria at Newton Plaza. They met when he started going there for the food he couldn’t get at home. He’d see her a couple times a week, standing behind the chipped ice. They’d joke about him breaking his diet. She began preparing things especially for him, disappearing when he walked into the cafeteria, returning with a covered dish. And then she started cooking for him at her apartment. It was his idea. So nobody would go blabbing to Ardelia. Biscuits with gravy. Chicken-fried steak. Crab cakes. She was good, having studied it for a while before her trouble. Ardelia could never understand why he wasn’t losing weight, why his blood pressure stayed high.

  “I ain’t got no food here,” she said.

  He usually brought her a couple bags from A & P. For his meals but mostly for the two of them. The checkout ladies thought it was sweet that a man in his position found time to shop for the family. It wasn’t where Ardelia shopped. She preferred the Giant down in Juniper Bend. The food there was better quality.

  He looked around the room, telling himself that he was seeing it for the last time. The durable beige carpet. The walls painted a cracking eggshell white. The galley kitchen with its small inbuilt appliances. Outside light was nullified by a blanket draped over the back window. The furniture was minimal—a sprung sofa and that tipped coffee table. A bean bag chair that had begun to rupture tiny Styrofoam balls. The kitchen sink was clotted with dishes. There was a table that listed badly to port, surrounded by three chairs with splintered ribs. Small detonations of clothes covered everything.

  “That’s all right. I can’t stay long.”

  “How come?”

  “I have to go to Chicago later.”

  “Chicago?” she asked listlessly. “What you gonna do there?”

  “Work.”

  She moved in front of him then, commanding his attention.

  “So how come you ain’t been by, baby?”

  “Busy.”

  In this light he could see her beauty. It hadn’t been there when she opened the door but now it was. It wasn’t like Ardelia’s beauty. There was nothing in it you wanted to preserve. Just use up. She put her skinny hands on his chest. Their eyes held for a moment. The boy continued to make his sounds. It didn’t matter what they did in front of him.

  “Too busy for me?”

  “I didn’t come for this.”

  “I know.”

  “I came to tell you we have to stop.”

  “I know.”

  He felt her hands at his shirt’s buttons. He closed his eyes. She hadn’t been beautiful at the door and she hadn’t been beautiful in his mind these last few days. But now she was. The last time, he thought. You’ll do this and then you’ll go to Chicago. Things will be different after that.

  He must have slept because the song was almost done when he first heard it. “Let’s Get It On.” He knew it from his son’s collection. It seeped through walls that were no thicker than HUD demanded. Four inches, the width of the support beams. Add to that a couple three-quarter-inch slabs of drywall. Five and a half inches, loosely packed with cut-rate fiberglass. Not much protection. The song stopped and then started again, those three slinky notes like a barker’s obscene call.

  She was staring at him, her head swallowed by a deflated pillow.

  “You shouldn’t let me sleep,” he said.

  “You look so tired, Earl. Your eyes.”

  “Work,” he said.

  “You best take it slow or you’re going to end up like my Andre.”

  “You’re not telling me that he worked too hard, I hope.”

  “No. The police shot him at a CITGO station ‘Cause they thought he was some other nigger. What I meant is dead.”

  Wooten looked up at the ceiling. The watermark was getting bigger. It was the size of his hand now. He’d asked her to call Building Services to check it out. He’d do it himself, though somebody might wonder what he was doing looking at this woman’s ceiling. Wooten felt a short spell of disgust—the building was not even a year old. Far too young for structural problems. This was a man-made mess. He tried to imagine what the people in 3-E were up to. There had recently been reports of strange goings-on in these apartments. A fully operational bootlegger’s still. A gaggle of abandoned kids, their mother tracked down three days later to an Anacostia shooting gallery. The first signs of systemic roach infestation.

  The music stopped for good and was replaced by the rude music of daytime poverty. The tinny bleat of cheap TVs, the echo of slammed fire doors, arguments that flared up and died in a matter of seconds. When they’d first started moving people in, there was an eerie, daylong silence about the place. Now, the racket started in midafternoon and ran without interruption until nearly dawn. And it wasn’t just the noise. Sharp odors of boiled vegetables and recent urine hung in concrete stairwells that were lit so murkily that the air looked like an unflushed toilet. The parking lot had filled with pickups carrying questionable cargoes and big sedans whose undercarriages rained rust. He thought for a moment about those people on Zeno’s Way and their fence. Maybe Austin had been right. Maybe it had been a mistake to oppose him.

  “You hungry?”

  “No.”

  “ ‘Cause I can make you some eggs. And I can get some Canadian bacon from that Russian lady downstairs long as you give me some money to pay her back.”

  Wooten sat up. The boy was making falling noises now.

  “No,” he said, his voice sharper than he intended. He smiled weakly at her. “I got a plane to catch.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I don’t know why you come here if it pains you so much,” she said. “I only like it. That’s all I’m doin’. I ain’t asking you to put me in a townhouse down at the lake or be nobody’s mack daddy. I only like it.”

  He reached down and touched her cheek.

  “I know,” he said. “I like it, too.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “There’s money in my wallet,” he said softly. “For the bacon.”

  He took a quick shower, standing forlornly beneath the weak stream of slightly foul water, soaping his scrotum with particular care. The water was cold. Hot ran out by ten in the morning and didn’t replenish itself until evening. The boilers were too weak for the amount these people wanted. They made instant coffee with it. So Wooten suffered a cold dousing, fancying it a kind of cheap penance.

  Eleven months now. Things weren’t supposed to have worked out this way. It was only supposed to be for food. It had been a joke, almost. A challenge. It was strangely thrilling at first, to do something innocent that looked so bad. By the time they started going to her room he was adept at deception. In fact, that initial fry had felt more dangerous than the first sweaty tussle on her creaking bed. None of this would have happened if the doctor hadn’t ordered him to lose twenty pounds. One for every point his pressure was high. Telling Ardelia was his mistake. He should have just told her everything was fine. One little lie to avoid th
e bigger ones to come. She set about managing his diet like it was some kind of mission. Placing broiled fish, skinned chicken and butterless vegetables in front of him every night. No eggs or bacon or steak. Nothing fried and nothing with sauce on it. For years she had been after him about his weight and his appetite. Given license to stop him, she wasn’t about to let the opportunity slide.

  Only, there was one thing she didn’t understand. Wooten could not go on a diet. Because he could not be hungry. Plain and simple. The mere thought of it drove him into a state of panic that made it impossible to think straight, much less work. It wasn’t merely that he didn’t like being hungry, just as another man might not like exercise or getting out of bed in the morning. He could not endure it. Hunger made him crazy and weak. It was like too much sun or extreme cold. The panic started with even the vaguest pangs.

  The reason was simple. He had once been hungry. For two months, when he was seven. Truly, deeply famished. A hunger that almost killed him. This was just after his father died, struck by lightning while digging sand traps for a country club up near Chicago. The men had wanted to come in but the straw boss was behind schedule. Wooten knew exactly how that would have gone. The mutinous mutters, the eyes on a darkening horizon. Outright rebellion forestalled by thoughts of all those mouths to feed downstate. And then the sudden flash, followed by a crack of thunder too late for anybody to hear. Two men had died in that ditch, three more left drooling and worthless.

  Wooten’s mother had gone crazy for a time after that. Took to bed and wouldn’t get out. Wooten and his four sisters had been shipped to whichever relatives would have them. He went down to stay with his great-aunt Mary in the Ozarks, a kindly if eccentric widow who lived in a rural isolation that suited her just fine. Only, bad luck seemed epidemic that summer—the day after he arrived she had a bad stroke. She’d been shopping for the two of them at the time, leaving him to rest at her isolated house after his long journey down on a series of shuddering buses. Speechless and paralyzed, she’d spent seven maddening weeks trying to make the nurses understand that there was a little one back at her place. Of the few people she’d told about her nephew’s visit, none remembered that it was supposed to have started yet. And nobody seemed inclined to make the long trip up to check on the hermit lady’s home. Times were hard. People had their own problems.