Hunting in Harlem

by Mat Johnson

  Finished, Horus stood frozen, eyes skyward, arms behind his back.

  "What? You mean now?"

  "Yeah, that's right, now. Look - I want you to look at it, it's all there. It's all true, see? Except for that servant part, I'm more a junior partner if you want to get real about it."

  Piper spent most of the walk marveling at her judgment's complete inability to overpower her curiosity, even for long enough to say the word no. Horus spent most of their walk talking. A bunch of teenagers passed, at least ten of them, goose-down jackets puffing them up like blowfish, and one yelled out to him, "Who's your tailor? Marcus Garvey?" but Horus was not to be interrupted. Horus was from Chicago. Horus was a legend in that town. As a baby, Horus took Old English with his Enfamil. Finally noticing the lack of response, Horus turned his sentences into the form of questions.

  "So what's that Bobby shit? I thought you were kicking it with my man the Snowball."

  "Robert's a kindred artistic spirit. I'm enamored with his literary skill, that's all." In a wave of practicality, Piper thought to ask if Horus was also going to walk her home but stopped when she couldn't decide if he was really that less scary than anything else she might run into.

  "I like the way you talk, you talk real educational. So you into brothers that write. I write too, you know that? I got me a book, it's going to be printed and everything." Horus snapped his fingers, pointed at her. They were long digits, each joint its own distinct ball. Horus's knuckles looked like he used them to walk on.

  "That's great. What's it about, who's publishing it?" There were moments in conversations that Piper found for whatever reason to be particularly strained or laborious, when she thought, How am I ever going to get through this? How am I ever going to string enough words to get through to the other side}

  "Well, OK, you see it's not really one of those get published kind of books. I'm thinking of getting it photocopied and spiral-bound at Kinko's, though, that's what I'm thinking of. It's called People I'm Gonna Kill When I Get My Gun. It's not actually a story in the traditional sense. More of a list, I guess you could call it. Yeah, it's a list. People who pissed me off, people who tried to fuck me over, play me for a sucker — you get the idea. I started it when I had to take this . . . class-type thing. It felt so good, I just kept working on it after I got out again. See, I do a name, then a strategy, you know, break it down line by line. Don't get the wrong idea, it's more a fantasy thing. I mean, I been had my gun since I started it, I just kept the tide 'cause it sound so good. Man, I get in a zone, you'd be scared how I pump out them pages!"

  "I bet I would," Piper said through clenched and smiling teeth. Don't run, she kept telling herself. Nuts are like rabid dogs, trying to run away from them only makes things worse.

  It was only a conversation like this that could inspire joy at the sight of one Olthidius Cole Sr., as it did when Piper saw him waddling out of the Horizon storefront, pulled forward by his dented aluminum cane. Piper used him as an excuse to break away, yelling, "Hi, boss! Did you get a chance to read my draft?" to drown out everything else that was being said. Cole looked so Started to see her that Piper thought for a moment he might try and whack her with the stick, but instead he rolled his eyes, flapped his cheeks, wagged his head at her impudence, and kept moving.

  "So now you know all three of us, who you think is going to make it all the way? Who you think is going to win?" Horus asked as he unlocked the front door.

  "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." Piper wasn't

  sorry, she wanted to be inside, beyond him.

  "Oh, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, you do," Horus insisted.

  "First let me confess, I'm already a fan. I've been following your byline since your revealing article on the accidental death rate." Cyrus Marks wore a smoking jacket, silk, Asian markings. He seemed to think this jacket made him charming, or at least added to his charm, this Piper gathered from the dramatic ritual he made of repeatedly tying and untying its belt, a gesture she found both absent and vain.

  "The one I got scooped on. Well, I'm glad somebody saw the original piece. The Times ran a very flattering likeness of you, I remember."

  "Yes, well, I have been reading your work with great interest ever since. Olthidius Cole was just in that very seat telling me how thorough your research into the fire at 121st is, I look forward to seeing the final draft. I love your movie reviews as well. Even when they forget to print your initials I know if it's you because you're the only one at the Herald who ever dislikes anything made by another black person."

  "I'm just honest, but I also try to be fair. There's usually some good even in the worst, when there is I mention that too." It was a small black world. Piper wondered which mediocrity's creator Marks was related to, and why it had taken this long for her call to task. Her last printed review was a dissection of Bo Shareef's new hit, Don't Go There, where she traced the book's three central cliches back to their origins in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Birth of a Nation, and Nigger Heaven, going on to list the book's uncanny plot similarities with episode twenty-three of Malcolm Eddie.

  "Of course you do. I find your reviews very fair. And honest. Blunt, but all true honesty arrives bluntly. I appreciate that. There seems to be a general consensus to avoid self-criticism in our community, doesn't there? Not simply in the arts, but in general. I agree with you. It's a new age, I'm all for calling a spade a spade, if you will. Without addressing our deficiencies, how can we ever hope to improve?"

  "I guess. So why am I here?"

  Marks took the question like a child had slapped him with it, laughed at it, and pushed it away. "You studied at Columbia. They have an excellent yournalism program. So you had Akers, Pavez, Wharton."

  "Pavez was my adviser."

  "I imagine he'd be an excellent one. He's got a good head on his shoulders, albeit a fat one. He had many good things to say about you as well."

  This comment, this was the official alarm. This was the thing that Piper knew made ordinary people pull back yet compelled her to plunge forward. "OK, now this is getting a little bizarre. Why are you calling and asking people about me and why did you invite me here?" Piper made like she was trying to gather her coat from the back of her chair, but Marks must have known she was bluffing. He didn't even attempt to talk until Piper had stopped moving and was looking at him in the face again.

  "I have a job for you. That's the short of it. Let me assure you, though, that I was not trying to pry. It's just, well, you know the black middle class is only but so big, you run into people, topics arise. This whole community, it functions on the network of friends, the currency favors. I'm really not trying to be obtuse, it's just that I feel this is a large proposition, so it takes a bit of buildup."

  "All right, you got me. Talk." Piper felt herself getting very excited and felt equally foolish about that.

  "Right. Well, I just have three questions. Indulge me in those and I'll tell you whatever you like. You went to one of the top journalism schools in the country, you're obviously very intelligent, talented, it's not like you're over the hill in any way. Why are you working at a shameful rag like the New Holland Herald?"

  "That's easy, because it wouldn't be the 'shameful rag' you seem to think it is if more qualified black folks didn't run away to the bigger papers and leave it behind," Piper defended.

  "Exactly. That's what we are trying to do here at Horizon - stop the brain drain in our community, stop the financial drain as well, build something we can all be proud of. I know I don't look it, but I'm old enough to remember what the Herald was like before the white papers would hire our best and brightest. It resounded. It was important. It covered issues the way no other source could."

  "So there's your answer. I want to help bring it back to that point. My goal is to make it something to be proud of again."

  "And how would you do that? That's actually the second question, so feel free to elaborate." Marks leaned back in his chair to provide room for her answer.

>   Piper felt very free to elaborate. There was her plan to dump the tabloid's front-page articles in favor of a full-page illustration cover with teaser lines like the Village Voice, there was her plan to switch from underpaid hacks to clip-hungry interns from New York's top journalism schools who would work for the same peanuts but actually be good, there was her plan to publish short stories and novel excerpts, in exchange offering mere exposure as payment. Piper kept going. There was a wall of self-restraint within her, it was great and wide and as tall as her mind's imagination, but unfortunately it was made of paper and already shredded from all the times she'd plowed right through it. Still, there was a pause for air when she noticed Cyrus Marks's look of amazement and thought that might not be a reaction to the ideas but the fact that she'd just mentioned at least two dozen of them in less than three minutes.

  "Well, the Herald could reach its potential again," Piper tried to conclude. "I mean, I guess with these things you just have to have patience."

  "Oh, no I don't. I don't need patience," was Marks's response. Piper wasn't surprised at the statement because Cyrus Marks looked to her like a man who believed he didn't need patience. "We, as a people, have had too much patience too long for our own silliness. No, what I need is you. In charge of the Herald, raising the standard, doing all those ideas you just said. So I might as well continue on to my third question. If Olthidius Cole chose to retire in the next year which he has - if he didn't want his son to assume full control of the mantle — which he doesn't, apparently - and if it was within my power, would you consider becoming the new editor in chief of the New Holland Herald}"

  "You know, that's a lot of ifs." J/'this was a joke and Snowden was behind it, if this was some sort of passive-aggressive revenge for any past grievance Piper might have cost him, Piper would hurt him. Physically and with great vigor.

  "There are no ifs. I've been an investor in the Herald for years now. As of an hour ago, I just upped the percentage a bit. Called in a favor from a friend, you could say."

  " I . . . I really don't believe this. But say I did, say I did believe this. Say I believe you're going to call me out of the blue, someone you don't even know, and give me a job that I might on paper seem barely qualified for. Say I don't think this is a sick, sick prank, then what's the price? What do you want from me in return?" Piper wouldn't sleep with him, Piper wouldn't put one cell of his body near her own. When you want something so bad sometimes you ask yourself what you'd do for it, but it turned out that no, she wouldn't do that. But where was the line? Piper asked herself, because there was one and it probably wasn't that far away from there.

  "You are qualified. Pavez said you did a lovely job editing the Columbia Spectator, and this really isn't that different, is it? Everyone I spoke with attested to your character. So to the 'price.' Just a little project I'd like you to get off the ground. Of course it will involve dropping what you're working on and cutting back on your Herald hours in general, but I assure you you'll find this worth the sacrifice. It deals directly with creating the next generation of black journalists, a talent pool that ten years down the road the Herald can pull from. So, Ms. Goines, I actually have one extra question for you: How good are you with children?"

  SLIPPERY

  SNOWDEN WAS A new man. Unfortunately, that man was a paranoid, guilt-ridden wreck of one. Don't kill people and think you can remain the same. This new guy, he was completely sober, had stayed so since the morning he'd awoken in clothes that reeked of smoke and it had taken till late afternoon to remember why. The new one didn't watch television, either, not out of any social purist motivation, it was just that even the most escapist of shows ran ads for the news he was trying so hard to avoid in the first place. Snowden was a new man. He didn't like the one he'd become, but the more Snowden thought about it the more he realized he didn't care for the one he'd been before, either.

  As a reward for his loyal service, Lester was assigning Snowden the best properties, throwing him the best clients at the day job, happy-face customers with seven years of clean credit, 30 percent down, and low consumer debt. Snowden spent every encounter with these fine happy-face buyers petrified they would spin around with badges and cuffs instead of checkbooks and pens. Be a good realtor and just keep walking through the empty rooms smiling, Snowden kept telling himself. Say stuff like, "The thing that's really wonderful about this," and point at something.

  Solace was sought from Bobby Finley but not found. This was because Bobby Finley was not found, either. Eventually Snowden remembered clips of a conversation they'd had when they ran into each other outside the Mumia Abu-Jamal fire, but his state during the encounter had left the images and audio distorted. Since Bobby refused to answer his door when Snowden came around, or even return his calls, it was a safe assumption that his behavior was in response to some forgotten slight Snowden may or may not have intended. It was only when Bobby didn't show up for work for days that Snowden decided not to take the silence personally.

  Further concern was somewhat banished when Lester said he'd seen Bobby Finley, that Bobby was just adjusting to the strain of the job and would be out of the office during regular hours indefinitely. Snowden just didn't like the way Lester said it. The mounting fear that Bobby was in fact dead, however, was shown to be groundless, irrational even, as Bobby Finley was seen exiting a property only doors away from the one Snowden was showing. Very much alive, with his own set of prospective buyers in tow, shaking his own set of hands.

  "Yo nig, where you been?" Snowden asked. Bobby walked down the townhouse steps, put his clients back into their taxi-hack downtown. Snowden's own were deciding on whether to see the three-bedroom condo two blocks south or take this Uptown opportunity to walk over to the Studio Museum instead. Snowden ceased pretending to care either way and ran from them toward his coworker.

  Bobby Finley didn't run from him, he just didn't acknowledge Snowden's calls or cease walking in the opposite direction, Snowden's hand on his arm the only thing that stopped him. He'd lost weight. Snowden would have never guessed that Bobby had any weight he could misplace, but now saw that both the padding under Bobby's eyes that kept him from looking haunted and the thin layer of flesh that kept every single vein in Bobby's throat from showing had both gone missing.

  In response to the earnest concern of, "Yo man, where you been?" Bobby Finley had only a shrug and a drained smile to give. When more was demanded, Bobby gave the weak excuse, "I'm sorry, I've been busy. I'm writing."

  "I thought that shit was supposed to make you happy. You don't look happy. You look like a burnt scarecrow."

  Giving up on trying to smile, Bobby Finley started walking away instead. Snowden yelled his apologies behind him, but they were like wind in Bobby's sail.

  In the absence of fraternal comfort, there were new vices to be had, sober ones that didn't lead to memory lapse, the will to perform self-sacrificial acts, or any form of confession in general. For instance, the new Snowden was an ardent smoker. At least a pack a day, never the same brand twice, as life was short and he wanted to keep the entire nicotine world available to him. The packs he didn't like Snowden smoked even faster, eager to get to the next one. They made him feel calm. Their death-bringing gifts gave him a new, rather ordinary mortal fear to occupy his mind and replace more flamboyant ones.

  The other vice, Snowden found even more addictive, was pretending that what he and Lester were doing was morally right.

  Dangerous, yes, Snowden knew that, could feel its seduction, that it was just the easy way to deal with what was happening. Yet there it was. Going away but never for too long. The only thing that made all the chaos grow fat and heavy and fall stilled to the ground was to imagine it. Lester was right. Therefore those deaths were no tragedy. Therefore Snowden had done nothing wrong. Minutes could go by when Snowden could sustain this reasoning. Snowden went back to the Lenox Lounge and saw that woman Maisy still waiting tables and her face had healed and Snowden'd felt that reasoning take over him, sipped his soda,
and had his delusion reaffirmed every time he saw Maisy smile so easily. Felt the same thing in ecstatic pangs as he stood at the lodge's third-floor window and watched Jifar run screaming with child joy in the backyard along with so many other uniformed kids. No matter the free fall Snowden felt when guilt finally crushed the pillars of this logic, those moments before were his most peaceful. Ever. The fantasy was not just that he'd done nothing wrong, but that that he'd done something right, daring, and bold. That the universe had a discernible order of negative and positive and that he'd been blessed with the purpose of contributing to the good of it.

  The strategy necessary for successful urban renewal was rather simple, or at least appeared so, having been repeated with nearly every Wednesday class of the Horizon Second Chance Program.

  First, urban renewal must happen as a mass movement, entire ghetto blocks must be seized simultaneously by decent people, taken over and converted to outposts of hardworking, taxpaying folk. The problem with attempts to reintegrate the middle class back into Harlem in the past was that they came as lone pioneers and were invariably mugged and otherwise discouraged into moving by the lumpen without making a dent in the local culture of poverty. Take heed from Roanoke, colonization works only when settlers arrive in droves.

  Second, decent residents must have pedestrian access to the subway system that is the city's lifeline without having to pass through ghetto staging areas (otherwise known as "bad blocks"). They must be able to commute to work and New York City's amenities without risk of personal safety. Otherwise they were virtually trapped in their homes, small islands surrounded by a hostile ocean.

  Third, designated areas should be dead-ended. A basic strategic consideration, this not only ensured there was only a finite territory to convert but also took care of the larger issue of "walkthroughs." There was no point converting an entire block to decency if random thugs roamed up and down it, if burglars could pass unnoticed, staring up through residence windows to glean the contents inside. This is what made Mount Morris such a prime location to begin the terraforming of Harlem: It was back-ended by the park, behind that was just the hospital and then nothing but industrial ruins and raised lots till Park Avenue's train tracks.