Hunting in Harlem

by Mat Johnson

  "I am on top of all my appointments, sir. I know I missed half a day last week but I had a really rough time hunting the night before and I called the Armstrong family and apologized profusely and they said they understood and I'm showing them a new property tomorrow and I think it's an offer they can't refuse, I really do."

  "Mr. Snowden, I'm sure you're doing fine with your daytime duties. I'm not calling to bother you about that. I'm calling to compliment you on your handling of your nighttime ones."

  "Sir, we shouldn't be talking on the phone." Snowden wondered if cordless phones could be traced. Apparently mobile ones could be very easily, a guy in the joint who'd been busted for selling stolen ones told him that, but as far as cordless ones he didn't know.

  "No one's listening. No one cares enough to. What you did, that was a big deal. The problem you solved was a major one. The man was a menace. Strategically, this greatly reduces the amount of resistance our efforts will encounter in the year ahead. It puts us far ahead of schedule. I want to thank you. I'd like to apologize to you as well. To be honest, I didn't think you had it in you. I was wrong."

  "No, no, no, no apologies. I don't want your apologies. Keep them to yourself," Snowden told the congressman.

  "Look, I'm trying to be contrite here. I'm being a very big man by admitting I was wrong, and you're going to be gracious and accept that from me," Marks insisted.

  "No, no. I owe you the apology. I owe you, sir, because I been thinking a lot about this lately, trying to not let my emotions or preconceived notions get in the way and now I know what the problem was: I was wrong. You see I been thinking that we are people, right, and the reason we're not just animals is that we have civilization, decency, morality, consideration, right? We have society, that's what makes us people and not just bald apes. But then you think about it, some people are human, but they don't have decency, they aren't civilized, because that's learned behavior and they never got educated. So then I was thinking about the folks. I think - and don't tell any white people I said this because you know they already think we're all this way - that during slavery, when they were trying to turn us into animals, that on a tiny bit of us they succeeded, and these beast folks been running around for a hundred and fifty years breeding like crazy because that's what beasts do. The responsible people, they have little families, do you see where I'm going? So with every generation the ratio gets more out of whack. So I get it, the whole Little Leaders thing, now. I really do. You're saving them and their descendants from a life of inhumanity, right? And really by killing the parents we set the offspring free, which in a way is a blessing to the victim since . . ."

  Snowden kept talking. The thing about sitting in the closet all the time, about just going to work and wearing a face that you took on and off like a blazer, was that you never had someone to really talk to. Snowden felt very lucky he had someone. Even if he got to the point when he'd been talking so long he couldn't remember who that someone was. Pausing to focus on the receiver, Snowden listened for a change. As seconds passed Snowden became sure no one was even there, until a voice said back to him, "exactly."

  The new novel started with a character named Robert M. Finley slipping a package under a woman named Piper Goines's Harlem door. Even the weather conditions were the same: clouds in "white streaks, softly smeared on a lazy sky" and "the boastful warmth of an immature spring." The day of the week, the date, the time of day all were identical. What he was wearing, what she was, it was maddening. The only thing that kept Piper from getting completely freaked out and throwing the pages away was the same thing that stopped her fictional self from doing so: the artistry of the prose and the innate curiosity on the part of the reader, pages that kept turning fast enough for her to be captivated.

  There were several assumptions within The Orphean Daze that Piper took critical exception to, if this speculative story was going to be as true to known fact as it purported. First of all, Robert Finley could not be accurately described, Piper felt, as "an upright assemblage of bones, charred and dusky, grinding dryly forward." Regardless of how skinny he seemed there was some muscle to him, and the whole burnt theme applied to him throughout the work just didn't fit, didn't acknowledge the fiery passion Piper felt was the character and man's most prominent feature. Second, when you compared this description of the Robert Finley character with that of the Piper Goines one, "lush lines curved from the pressure of her bounty," the narrative played into the whole Beauty and the Beast myth, which besides being an extremely overused cliche was a pretty pathetic male fantasy to begin with. "Ugly guy wins beautiful girl," the fraternal twin to the equally vapid "poor girl wins rich guy" Cinderella idiocy.

  Piper read, looking for more faults to distance herself from the work, but didn't find many. On the page were two people struggling to make a life together. Not a perfect one, just a life, compiled as it was from the building blocks of minutia. Piper recognized the sorrow at the core of all living, the unexpected blessings that resonated because of it. Bargaining with eyes that managed to feel dry and watery at the same time, Piper's mind kept making the promise that after the next chapter she would close her lids and go to bed, but she never did. It was as if Fate had dropped its notebook and Piper had to finish as much as possible before he noticed it was missing and came looking for it. Piper kept reading because she couldn't bring herself not to, out of control and hell yes resenting that, but her only defensive action was to read faster.

  In the last chapter, decades in the fictional future, after one widowed lover has buried the other and had months of mourning, The Orphean Daze follows them moment by moment as they visit their safety-deposit box. The way it proceeds, it gives the impression it's for some official papers, possibly insurance documents. Inside the box, however, its papers oxidized yellow by time, is the fictional version of the book Piper couldn't stop herself from reading. The character takes it home, and the last paragraph is about them reading it. How none of the facts are true but everything else is. It wasn't until she finished the last sentence, at four fifty-four in the morning, that Piper realized she didn't even know which of the couple was dead and which was the survivor. That the point was they'd come so far that even to the reader it didn't matter anymore.

  Bobby Finley, ladies and gentlemen! Bobby Finley, Creator of Worlds!

  Piper had fallen in love with writers just by reading their work before. Ugly ones. Dead ones. There'd been times when she'd read the beauty of their work and felt like their souls must be the same, looked to the back jacket picture, and pined for someone she felt was no longer a stranger. Piper was a lover of books, writers wrote to entice readers, it was an understandable weakness. So how the hell was she supposed to defend her heart against a book intentionally written to seduce her?

  Demanding to know just that, Piper found Bobby's number and started calling. I will not be manipulated, she was going to say as soon as he groggily said hello, but he didn't. After two rings, the voice mail service did instead, and Piper had not prepared a statement for recording so slammed the phone down again, only to keep hitting Redial for the next half hour in an effort to get him to answer, which he didn't.

  Not a damn thing you can do if you stay up until four fifty-four in the morning. If you have to be somewhere three hours later, as Piper had to be at the Herald, it was best to stay awake, not torture yourself by nodding off and then having to rise from the deepest valley of your sleep cycle, Piper told herself. There was only one rational thing to do. So Piper put on her coat and shoes and set out into the cold morning darkness to go wake Bobby's black ass up.

  Coat lapels gripped around her neck to hide it from the nocturnal breeze, baseball hat pulled down over her head to obscure her gentler to any sexual predator, Piper stomped down Lenox and saw the Horizon office across the street, light on inside and its security grate still up. The company truck Bobby said he'd be using was parked right there in front of it and Piper was surprised at her wave of disappointment at having found him away from home
and awake. The element of surprised will be diminished, was how she explained her reaction to herself, but that rational voice was drowned out by another, shriller one that sounded eerily similar as the one belonging to Mrs. Abigail Goines. You were going over there to screw that young man, weren't you? it said. All that righteousness, and this was just a booty call. You're just disappointed that his body won't be hot from sleep, that you won't be able to throw your own on top of it.

  Piper rang the bell, but the Horizon door was open. She called out his name, several times, walked inside reluctantly when no voice answered it. See, this is how people get shot, Piper told herself. They show up unannounced in the middle of the night, just start walking around private property, and then bang, that's it. Piper kept walking, anyway. The only light on besides the lobby's was in Lester's office. Piper, unable to locate another wall switch among the tiles of framed photos of Congressman Marks standing next to major and minor celebrities, moved toward it.

  Lester's office was big enough to fit a full couch, several rows of file drawers, and a desk that seem bigger than most kitchen tables. Regardless of how much space the desk offered, every inch of it was still completely covered in paperwork, specifically file folders. It was the photos attached to them that attracted Piper. Some were actual police mug shots, originals it looked like. Others were random streets shots, always taken from a distance, always with the subject staring off in another direction as if they didn't even know they were being photographed. How can I be expected not to open these up and read them? Piper asked no one. How could someone like me manage not to do that?

  Horus wasn't following her. He lied, he wasn't following her. He just happened to be there when she came in. "Boss, I said to myself, something suspicious. From the get-go I was like, there's something ain't right about that one. Better keep an eye on her." This was bullshit. The only thing Horus had been following at the time was the swollen nose on his face. Horus had been in the office trying to pick his next special project, something to top Snowden's coup de grace, something to regain his lead. It was because Horus had been so excited he'd come down there in the middle of the night and laid those files out that Piper saw what she did in the first place. "Boss, I said to myself, better watch that bitch." Horus wasn't watching Piper as she went through the files in the office, not for most of that time. Horus was too busy sitting on the crapper, reading auto magazines, the fan too loud to even notice her arrival. He came out the bathroom without flushing or washing his hands, heard the sounds coming from Lester's office and thought it was a ghost in there. He sure did. "I'm on top of things, boss. I'm your man, I think that's pretty clear after these eleven months, ain't it?"

  GOING DOWN

  CONSIDERING HE'D MISSED the chance to get the truck's keys from Lester and was instead reduced to delivering them on his bicycle, Bobby Finley was fairly impressed with the amount of Great Works he'd been able to disperse in one night's shift. One milk crate load each run, fifty copies a milk crate, three newspaper boxes a run on a total of eight trips. By nine A.M. every Harlem Outcry box was filled to the brim. Bobby's legs were sore about the abuse, but in a couple of days they would forgive him. The exhaustion became evident as the adrenaline ebbed, but Bobby knew that even if he'd stayed in bed he wouldn't have slept in it. With her out there reading it. It was best to keep focusing on releasing The Great Work back to the world again and be thankful for a monumental task at a time like this.

  What was obvious already was that in order to find a home for every copy, more direct measures would be in order. It would have been nice to stick with newspaper boxes, guaranteeing that The Great Work went to homes that at least made a habit of reading, but the feasibility of this plan was questionable, as well as the exclusivity of it. Pedaling around in the morning hours of Harlem, sticking to the center of the street to avoid the muggers and rats that populated the sidewalk, Bobby had decided that to truly make restitution for his artistic arrogance, The Great Work should be dispensed indiscriminately for all, with no care to whether they appreciated, despised, or were utterly indifferent to this most sacred of texts. I am repenting, Bobby kept reminding himself. Just hand them out at the 125th Street A train. Do it right: Reserve the truck in advance, get Snowden and some of the Little Leaders to pack it up the night before, then go down by the turnstiles during rush hour and hand them out like loaves of bread. At least that way, if someone didn't like it, he or she could leave it on the seat for a commuter with better taste.

  This was the plan Bobby was prepared to pitch when he found Lester in his office after ten. "I need to ask a favor" was the sentence Bobby never got to utter after Lester motioned him urgently through his office door, closing it behind them.

  "A very serious problem has arisen," Lester said, but he didn't have to. The nervousness he exhibited, the uncharacteristic bulging of the eyes, the thumbnail getting chewed off like there was a bomb attached to it.

  "It's about the fire, isn't it?" That was Bobby's fear talking. It was his mouth, but it was his fear that was using it because the real Bobby didn't even want to say the F-word aloud anymore, and least of all with this man with whom he intended on seeing out these last weeks before the end of the program in joint denial, as if their shared crime was nothing more than an episode of regrettable sex.

  "Well, in part, yes. It does deal with the fire, actually. You see, someone broke into my office. Somebody read my files and knows all about it. Worse, it's a reporter. That's how deep we're in the shit, if you'll pardon me."

  Bobby thought, If only I'd given away all my books sooner, if only I'd sat the bottom row of the funerals and offered more direct solace, maybe I just might have karmicly avoided this.

  "It gets messier, unfortunately. The good news is we know who the person is and it's doubtful she's had a chance to move on the situation, so this can still be handled neatly. The bad news is, this person touches a little too close to Horizon than is comfortable, even worse is that she's also connected personally to one of our own. Have you had the chance to meet Snowden's lover, Piper Goines, since she's been working with the kids?" Lester asked him.

  "Yes," Bobby whispered, the rest of him screaming firmly in the negative. Lester could clearly read his intern's pained reluctance and wagged his head in solemn sympathy as he opened his desk drawer, pulled out a gun, and handed it handle first to him.

  "I know this is a very difficult thing to ask of you. I'd prefer it to look like an accident, but I understand we're under a time limitation. I know this is not your style, Robert M. Finley, so let me add that at review time this act will not be taken for granted."

  Bobby had never held a gun before. Even pointing away from him, it scared him. I was wrong. Bobby realized now that he had one in his hand. I'm not a killer, it dawned on him. If I was a killer I would just point this forward and shoot Lester in the head.

  "It's for the best, coming from you," Lester kept talking. "I'm sure Snowden would appreciate that if it had to be done, it was done by a friend."

  Bobby started running as soon as he was out of sight of the lodge's windows. The first pay phone he found he seized, Piper's number still imprinted from all those calls so long ago. When she refused to pick up, Bobby settled for a frantic message and immediately after disconnecting checked his own machine.

  That Bobby had seventeen messages was a complete shock to him. The first fifteen were the repetitive the sound of a phone hanging up again. Number sixteen was her blessed voice accusing him of creating "a damn Trojan horse for my heart" and declaring defiantly that she was on her way over to break in. Number seventeen was Piper's voice too. The words were almost identical to the ones Bobby had just left on her machine. Slightly different phrases, but the same basic warning of danger. The same person to avoid. The same promise of relentless search, the same rushed parting, "I love you, be careful."

  Snowden was pretty damn sure it was Piper even before he opened his door. He'd met other people in his life relentless and stubborn enough to ring someone
's bell for twelve straight minutes, but none of them lived in New York.

  "Where is Bobby? Did you help him with his books? I need to talk to him. If he's at work, I need you to find him and get him." Snowden's apartment was so dirty that he decided it would seem insincere to offer an excuse for this. Instead, Snowden offered Piper a drink, which she declined with such annoyance that he got offended.

  "Oh so you laying up with him now? That's fine, I'm cool with that. You're a good person, showing pity on that cat. Don't go breaking his heart when you get bored, though, all right?" Snowden requested. The light was still hurting his eyes and he was tempted to invite her back into the closet.

  "Snowden, this is some serious shit. I need to talk to him. I need to talk to you too, you're both in it. I'm not joking, I'm talking real danger."

  "Oh fuck," Snowden managed. He had begun to recognize mortal fear, and this wasn't an act. Snowden seated himself in shock, left her standing. "Jesus Christ, you're about to tell me you're HIV positive, aren't you?"

  "No! Could you at least pretend not to be an idiot for one second?" Piper asked. Snowden shrugged a maybe, went looking through his pockets for cigarettes. "Look, there's something going on at Horizon. I was in Lester's office and I found folders — "

  "What the hell were you doing snooping around Lester's office?" Snowden asked her. "Damn, woman! I told you about that shit, I told you not to enter that world! What's wrong with you?"

  "I . . . found," Piper continued louder, rolled her eyes, and punched out the words to knock his own back once more, "I found folders on the people who died, Snowden. The accident victims. All of them, right there in Lester's drawers, every name I could remember."