Hunting in Harlem

by Mat Johnson

  "Yeah, crazy right?" Snowden looked over the last of his platter for a discarded sliver of bass to nibble on.

  "That's insane. You're pulling my leg, right? You're just messing with me." Piper said the last sentence like he'd admitted as much, grabbed the dishes off the table and started piling them for removal.

  "Oh, I'm not lying to you, for real," Snowden pleaded. He wanted the smiling Piper back. He was pretty sure that one would kiss him. "I make a lot of extra cash for those days, so I know."

  "But it seems like there wouldn't be that many accidental deaths in the whole city," Piper blushed back at him, offering innocent amazement. "That's so wild. Just out of curiosity, what were their names?"

  BREAKING STORY

  "SHE'S AN AWFUL . . . awful person," Bobby decided. He was drunk, lost his way after the third word of the sentence, found it again. Snowden agreed with him. Piper seemed all right to him, but for the purpose of this discussion, yes, she was an awful person. To jilt the person who loves her without even giving him the respect of acknowledgment makes her an awful person, in that moment. We are all awful people when we do that. Snowden raised the nearly dry remains of his own jug of malt liquor in salute to the truth of it, was reminded by its lightness that to go further into oblivion he needed more, but his tragedy was that he was too drunk to get up and get some.

  "She was . . . there should be another word for rude. Something like callous, but harsher."

  "Asshole," Snowden offered. Bobby burst out laughing at the joy of it, that the language hadn't failed him, that he wasn't going to have to learn French or create his own collection of syllables to give voice to his emotions. Bobby stumbled across the room to slap the hand of the man who pointed this out to him. They slapped bottles instead. The glass broke. Neither one acknowledged it, or looked down to where the shards had fallen, because neither one felt like being bothered to pick them up.

  "She was an asshole," Bobby continued, getting a little more comfort from taking this woman who'd inexplicably consumed his mind, dumping her in the past tense and leaving her there. The two actually had more than a bit in common, Snowden registered. The passion, the moral certainty, the disastrous attempt at art. To his eye, Piper's work looked like she subjected herself to paint colonies, squatted over the canvas and let go. Snowden burst out giggling at the thought. Emboldened by the sound of laughter, masculated by his protest, Bobby continued.

  "I was lucky! She was an evil whore!" The last word Bobby screamed. Snowden sat with it for a little while and got uncomfortable. There was no form of torture that had been invented yet that would get him to disclose that he'd had dinner with her the night before, that she had in fact chastely escorted him at evening's end to the door, so Snowden protested on more general grounds.

  "Dude, I don't know about that, man. I mean, you can't really say she was a whore, can you? I mean, it doesn't really apply here, does it? If she was a whore, she would have given you some, got you all worked up, then dissed you. This one, she didn't even bother calling you back."

  "Hey man, I'm not talking in a literal sense! I'm talking in the sense that, I don't know, I'm a man and she's a woman and she did me wrong, right? Like, I can use it that way." Registering that the other was clearly unswayed, Bobby tried another vein of reasoning. "Okay, she was a whore in the sense, in the sense that she was nice to me that day, right? Real nice, so in a way she was kind of promiscuous with her . . . her politeness."

  Both of the men became silent. Bobby's last comment sounded so stupid, Snowden felt as if it lessened him just to hear it. He just stared at his feet, watched the alcoholic optical illusion of the ground swaying beneath them. After a few minutes this way, Snowden accepted the fact that the snorting, gasping sound coming from the other man was crying, but he couldn't bring himself to look up and face it. Snowden literally couldn't, he was so drunk he felt like his head had been filled with BB pellets when he wasn't looking.

  "The word piper means 'crackhead' in Philly," Snowden offered, head bowed.

  "There you go!" Bobby pointed across the room, energized. "That's what I'm talking about!"

  Just because every metal sidewalk door you've ever walked on has held your weight doesn't mean they all will. Some become concave from years of pedestrians and simply fold beneath that one foot too many. Sometimes there's rust, underneath where you can't see it, making it brittle like metal matzo. Step on the wrong one and you could shred an ankle, a kneecap as you loose the ground beneath you. Step on the wrong one and you can, your whole body, go right through. Who can say how far down it will be before you reach ground again? You can't. You don't even know how long it would be before they found you. It could even be one of those grates you tread over every day without thinking, like it was for Irene Bell of 843 Lenox, #4. One minor step in a day of many, the context changes and it's the final one. They find you two weeks later only because it smells so bad the Con Ed man checking the meter next door to the abandoned building thinks it's worth calling the cops over. Think of how bad that's got to stink, that a man would call the police in response to it. So many ways to die. If you don't choose one, a method will be appointed to you. Life's only guaranteed service.

  Snowden wasn't exactly feeling sorry for Ms. Irene Bell. Part of this was due to the fact that when he opened the trunk she used as a stand for her small black and white TV he saw that it was filled nearly three feet deep in other people's wallets. The collection ranged immensely in size, color, and quality of craftsmanship. The ones at the top of the pile had stubs to recent movies inside them, the ones at the bottom held licenses that had expired years before. She deserved to die, Snowden decided. She deserved to die because everyone deserves to die, so really what was the point, which was Snowden's new attitude to death in general. There didn't seem to be any other way to deal with it.

  There were moments still, like when Lester had him run an envelope down to a buyer on Fifty-first and Madison during the lunch hour, when he saw all those people and thought somebody must have figured out an escape. Staring at the thousands pushing forward, each one a part of the crowd he wished to avoid, Snowden could believe that in the millennial of humanity surely someone had figured out how to avoid mortality. But that mix of optimism and paranoia never lasted long. No matter how many people, no matter how decent they were or how much money they acquired, the odds were still the same. Everyone was going to die. So how could you feel sorry for Ms. Bell, probably miserable in her dirty little apartment, going out into the city to ride the crowded subways in search of someone to lean against and steal from, to plant some of her misery into his or her life?

  Snowden crumpled her designer dresses into balls and shoved them in one more trash bag and this time thought of how many days would be better without her. How many men would pat their inside pockets and women check their purses and see that what they worked for was still there and not even know they had a rusty basement grate and a twenty-foot fall to thank for it. Life has many stories, but one ending. Snowden decided it wasn't always a sad one.

  Ms. Bell's apartment was done by one-thirty P.M. It was small, and Snowden was getting good at what he did. Sometimes Lester didn't even stay around anymore, just let him in and came back around the time everything was ready to be loaded, and Snowden didn't mind. Lester always put the soft rock station on the radio, and with him gone Snowden could listen to whatever he liked. In addition, Snowden had decided that all coinage on the floor (or not already in a purposed container) was his tip money, and isolation made the acquisition that much easier. Also, Snowden sometimes caught Lester staring at him.

  At first Snowden thought it was to make sure he was doing the job right, and when he caught the older man doing it he would ask politely just that, and the answer was always pretty much the same: yes, that's it, good job, that's right. Then Snowden would pass a mirror and Lester would be in it, looking at the back of him like Snowden had a movie projected between his shoulder blades.

  There were so many Lesters, Snowden b
egan to feel, and some times all they seemed to share was a fashion sense. The regular workday version of Lester barely talked, only smiled for the customer, spent his time either off showing properties or showing up late and falling asleep in the back of the cab while the work was getting done. Not just naps, full-fledged sleeps, some going six or eight hours if the time allowed, waking up just before the sun went down again. The classroom Lester was a set persona as well, the interpreter of the real estate portion, the pulpit inferno for the historic and philosophic conclusion. Tuesday's "special project" Lester Snowden found a bit more laid-back, casual clothes that still managed to cover his body completely: turdenecks with elbow-patched sports coats, slacks. On especially hot days, sandals. For some reason, Snowden found the site of Lester's hairy feet particularly disturbing, perhaps because it was the only part of him approaching nudity. This Tuesday Lester had, on more than one occasion, referred to his charge as "Snowball." Even Wendell seemed more informal on their Tuesday encounters, walking over to Snowden's legs and leaning his weight into him as he slowly pushed pass. At night, Snowden's calves reeked of the mutt.

  When Lester came back that afternoon, Ms. Bell's life had become orderly. She had gone to her grave, the clothes worth saving in the bags to the Salvation Army off Third Avenue, electronics in a box to the 135th Street Y, the personal items in a long plastic storage container just like the others, ready to be retrieved by whoever they held meaning for. The furniture was in two piles on opposite sides of the room, the larger of which was headed for the Dumpster, the smaller one to the prop warehouse on Twenty-fifth and Tenth, proceeds going to the rent Ms. Bell had apparently intended to catch up on before her fate caught up with her. The rest, which was most of it, garbage. Wendell immediately located the bag that held the former contents of the refrigerator, took a long snort, and walked away without being told to. When Snowden returned from his first trip down to load the truck, Lester was standing over the pile of wallets that Snowden had dumped in the bathtub pending further instruction. Snowden watched as the older man churned the pile, searching.

  "Crazy, right?" Snowden asked. "She must have been cleaning up for years. You should see some of the Afros in the pictures of the older ones. A lady, too. From what I saw in her pictures, looked perfectly normal, like a schoolteacher or something. Has to be a thousand of them there. Not one credit card in the bunch; she must have sold them. Can you believe that shit?"

  Lester offered nothing in response. He kept shoving his hands in and up the pile like he was tossing a salad. After a minute, Snowden began wondering if he'd actually just said anything at all.

  "I saw her," Lester offered. Snowden replied with a polite affirmative; the woman had framed pictures of herself all over the house.

  "No. In person I saw her. Just a little while ago."

  "You know what, that's funny because I definitely think I saw her too, probably when we moved that guy in on the third floor two doors over a couple weeks past."

  "I saw her then, but before that," Lester said, still looking, still churning. Wendell was pushing up against him, annoyed that the expected hand with scratching fingers didn't come. "I was at the Schomburg, in the reading room. I was at the shelves. I saw her reach right into a man's blazer and remove his billfold from its inside pocket. Right there, in the Schomburg Library of all places. You'd think that all those books, all that history and knowledge, that it would keep the ignorant at bay, wouldn't you? That it would just repel a nigger like a church would a vampire." Wendell, either in agreement or impatience, started barking. The bathroom was small, lined with graying tile, amplifying the sound and sending both men's hands to their ears in unison. "Fucking bitch," Snowden heard Lester say as he reached for Wendell's mouth, but he was pretty sure it wasn't the dog he was talking about.

  When everything was dumped and loaded, Snowden suggested they drop the licenses in the mail, that someone had done that for him once and he was sure the former owners of Ms. Bell's booty would be just as appreciative. Lester loved the idea and took it even further, ordering that Snowden pack up the lot of them, wallet and all, and mail each one to the address listed. Snowden spent the first moment proud that his input was being respected, the next pissed at what the job would entail, and then the next six hours doing it.

  After Lester dropped off the box of envelopes, he left Snowden there in the apartment of the recently departed. All the furniture was gone, so Snowden sat on the toilet as he worked, discovering the mailing address of each bit of stolen property and repeating it on the manila, sealing the package and throwing it in one of the white postal crates. Dizzy from the repetition, Snowden forced himself to speed up as the night approached, feeling increasingly certain he didn't want to be in the dead woman's apartment when it was dark.

  By the time he got out the door and turned the final lock behind him, he was determined to start smoking. Its promise was the only thing that got him through the hours before. He would start smoking, not just an occasional puff, he would buy his own pack and take it up seriously this time. He would not fear the valley of death, he would buy a ticket to it, bring a reclining lawn chair, two towels, a Bo Shareef book.

  Lester insisted that Snowden deliver the packages to a post office downtown. He did not want the reputation of Harlem to be sullied when the recipients saw the 10027 zip code, and Snowden agreed. Snowden pulled the lumbering truck onto the narrowness of the FDR, driving as slowly as he safely could in the newborn fear he would die with this cargo and be posthumously blamed for each of Ms. Bell's crimes, getting off at the first exit he could in midtown. After the job was done, Snowden double-parked in front of a kiosk on Fifty-seventh, still enamored with the idea of his new hobby. What better way was there to be rid of one's fear of death than to just embrace it and be done with the matter? Snowden stared solemnly at the packs lined topside out behind the attendant, understanding that the first pack would probably solidify a lifetime of brand loyalty and addiction. Momentarily overwhelmed with the feeling of incompetence, Snowden banished the fear with the firm declaration, "A pack of True Greens."

  The statement came from memory, in which it was accompanied by himself barely as tall as the counter at the corner store, a dollar and a quarter hot in the tight grip of his little fist. It was a later time, and these cigarettes cost more than those did, but when the guy handed the pack over to him, Snowden recognized them as his father's brand. He knew he'd asked for them, he knew that the guy inside the wooden box was not his dad but just another fathead man, but for a moment it was like he had asked for a smoke and his father had reached out and given these to him. A gift, or revenge. Snowden asked for matches.

  Imitating the ghost, Snowden slapped the little box's ass four times before taking his teeth to the cellophane and folding the lid back. Looking off for a distraction from the meaning of his actions, he found one in the newly arrived edition of the New Holland Herald. The stack still had its white packing strips lying loose around it where they'd been cut. Snowden was looking at it, trying to discern what it was that made the front page look odd, and realized that the letter from the editor, the consistently well-written and intensely insane column that was one of his favorites, was missing, the absence of its always boltled text giving the tabloid a naked quality. Then he saw her name, and he thought, I shouldn't have tried to kiss her. They'd been at the door downstairs, and even though Piper Goines seemed a bit distant at the end, he'd gone for lips during the parting gesture, she to his cheek, both landing at an awkward place in the middle. Snowden scratched that spot like it itched him, saw the tide ACCIDENTS HAPPEN? above Piper's byline, and that same hand shot out to bring it closer, HISTORIC HARLEM EXPERIENCES DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF ACCIDENTAL DEATHS.

  Snowden would never find a better time to begin his new hobby. Back in the truck, he was through his second cigarette and on to his third when he got the strength to pick up the paper from his lap, shake off the ash, and turn it over.

  The first skim was just a hunt for a name, his
own, a blissfully unsuccessful one. The facts that presented themselves on the second read were actually less painful than the dread with which Snowden anticipated every word. It made the damaging point that life was a little shorter above 110th Street, the coroner's office was quoted as saying on examination that the number of accidental deaths in the last year in Harlem were almost as much as the number of similar fatalities in the rest of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island combined, but the commentary that he sounded "surprised" was provided by the author herself, not the source, and the piece didn't depict the anomaly as anything more than what it was. It was certainly nothing to promote the real estate renaissance of Harlem, but it didn't seem to be anything to destroy the fragile boom either. It wasn't like they were muggings, rapes, drive-by shootings, or any of the other man-made calamities that would fuel the imagination of the outside world that Harlem was the hellish ghetto they feared it to be. The people there were just clumsy.

  Inching back up the FDR with the rest of the late rush-hour traffic, Snowden felt relief replace the hollow flash of anxiety. By the Seventy-second Street exit, he was glad that this was all he had shared with Piper, that he hadn't had any more sensitive information for her to expose. By the time he'd reached the Ninety-sixth Street exit, Snowden was overwhelmed by a feeling of betrayal, all of Bobby's drunken admonishments flooding back to him. He was sure he had given Piper Goines his number, and even if days had gone by without him calling her, he wasn't the one with the reason to. Turning left onto the exit for 125th Street, it was this that stuck with him, that she'd used information from their private conversation, information given in an informal and confidential setting, and had used it to further her own career, her own ambition at getting a front-page story, and hadn't even bothered to give him notice of her actions. Snowden wasn't the type of person to feel justified indulging in self-righteousness that often, so as such relished the novelty of it, drove straight to Piper's home instead of dropping the truck off.