Philadelphia Fire

by John Edgar Wideman

  Cudjoe had arrived late. Timbo later. The restaurant Timbo’s choice. His treat. On the mayor, you unnerstand. After all, my friend, you are a writer, ain’t you? Distinguished Negro Intellectual. Sure. Shit yeah. We gots a budget for that. Ain’t that many of youall. We can afford it.

  Cudjoe had showered, then flopped across the bed for a few minutes to catch his breath, soothe his pounding head, sneak up on the long morning. Body hung over from hoop, beer, trudging cross half the city, no sleep. Weary to his bones. But his mind wouldn’t stay still. Caroline. Sam. Rachel. Cassy. Shit. He had closed his eyes, exhausted. The nap lasted three hours. Sleep at last. Sleep at last. He bolts up. Checks his watch. Time, but none to spare. He figured Timbo for at least a half hour late. Turned out to be more like forty-five minutes so Cudjoe has time to check out the joint. No way he’s going to pay this tab. Three flunkies already had performed little flunky services just getting him inside the door good. Price of the ticket would include all that. Waiters, cocktail waitress, busboy, dessert tray still to come. A steep ticket. Don’t let Timbo jive his way out of paying.

  My man. Cudjoe, my man. How long’s it been, brother? How long? Too long. Don’t shake my hand, nigger. Come round here and hug me. Men’s is lowed to hug and squeeze each other these days. Mmmmm. Yessir. Huggin’s hip as Perrier and white wine. Gimme some skin now. Cudjoe, you scarce mothafucker.

  You’re looking good, Timbo.

  Was you expecting otherwise, bro?

  Timbo, elegant, skinny, strikes a pose, lead tenor of the Dells Why do you have to go, arms to the sides, away from his body, palms faced outward to the audience, shoulder cocked, front knee slightly bent, a curtsy almost, but too much held back, too much power in reserve, he’s offering an emblem of himself held just so, sleek lines of his outfit displayed to advantage, a gray, double-breasted, laser-striped suit you don’t buy off a rack, tailored so it appears comfortable as a T-shirt, the bad motherfucker he could be reined in, stylized, anticipated and satirized by this little halfway playful bow. He’s really not giving a damn thing away, but yeah, he knows the game, he can do them little dances, them soft-shoe forms exchanged before you get down to business, so you can get down to business.

  I appreciate you meeting me on short notice, man.

  Anything for a brother. We go back, way back, don’t we, brother man? Damn. To those thrilling days of yesteryear and shit.

  Lemme say this up-front before we even sit down. I understand your official position. What you say to me doesn’t go any further than me without your permission.

  Whoa. You ain’t the National Enquirer is you? Sit down, man. Here we are together after all these years. I know who you are. And you know Timbo. I’ma get to the fire, man. Know that’s what you want to rap about and we’ll get to it by and by. But relax, bro. Tell me bout you. Is the novel finished? Heard about you breaking up with your old lady. But that was long ago, wasn’t it? If she swung wit you, she musta been fine. Always cruised with a fox on your arm. You’re the baddest. Bet you still are, you devil. Needs to catch up with you, bro. Ain’t too many niggers like us left in the world.

  Not changed. Not one bit.

  Mr. Maurice. Like you to meet my main man here. Mr. Maurice owns this joint. We, the mayor, myself and our very special guests, dine here regularly. Mr. Maurice knows how to set a table. Anything you fancy. Anythang. Mr. Maurice can see to it.

  Pleased to meet you, sir.

  Cudjoe. Just call me Cudjoe.

  My man’s a democrat, Maurice. One the people. Not like some these uppity niggers come in here.

  Mr. Cudjoe. Welcome to my humble establishment.

  Pumps hand. Avoids eyes. He’s busy panning the huge room, missing nothing. Lots of Liberace hair, shining, every strand in place.

  Humble, my ass. Pulls in a fortune daily. Each and every day. More on weekends. This dago like rust. He don’t never sleep. If he ain’t racking it in, he’s counting it, investing it. Ain’t that right, Mr. Maurice. But the man’s good. Serves nothing but the best to the best. Day in, day out.

  You’re too kind, Mr. Timbo, too kind.

  Cudjoe doesn’t know what to make of the exchange. Who’s zooming who. A new language. New license. Niggers and dagos. Cityspeak. No secrets, no history, what you see is what you say. Things have changed since he’s been away. Never used to be more than a few black faces in a five-star restaurant like this. Now every third chair occupied by a brother or sister dressed back. Make their white companions look like poor relatives from the country. Clearly the place to be at lunchtime. Even the help swaggers. In his K mart blazer and chinos Cudjoe is one of the country cousins. Timbo at home in these waters as a shark. Things change. Not Timbo though, not blessed Timbo.

  Two Absoluts on the rocks. Doubles, babe. You still drink vodka, don’t you, home?

  Cudjoe orders crab cocktail. Timbo a sampler of pâtés. Gets better from there. Timbo urging him try this, try that. C’mon have some this good life. Election’s coming. Goodies might all be gone tomorrow. Get it while it’s hot.

  The old days. Sure I remember them. And some of them were good. None of us had a dime but we was living good, better than we knew at the time. Academic welfare. Way I look at it now they was testing us. Put a handful of niggers in this test tube and shook it up and watched it bubble. Was we gon blow up or blow up the school or die or was some weird green shit gon start to foaming in the tube? Or maybe the whole idea was to see if we’d come out white. Nobody really knew the answers so they decided to experiment. We were guinea pigs. How many of us in our class at the University? No more than nine, ten total. Set us down in the middle of a place Negroes never been before, wasn’t ever spozed to be. Then shook up the tube.

  Trouble was they couldn’t keep things straight. What was experiment and what was real life. And if they couldn’t keep it straight, how the fuck was we spozed to? I’d think I was walking down the street with this cute little white coed, thinking we’re minding our business, strolling to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee, and blam. Run right dead into the glass wall. Wait a minute, boy. This pussy you trying to scheme up on is real. It ain’t part of the goddamned experiment. You still in the tube, nigger, and don’t you forget it. Oh yeah. Those was good old days. Sometimes. But the bad days tore up a whole lot of sisters and brothers. Beaucoup casualties. Bump into some of them downtown every day. Walking round like ghosts of they own goddamned selves.

  So what’s different now? Maybe nothing, Cudjoe. I wonder why we ever believed it was spozed to get better. Who fed us that lie? Why’d we swallow it? What’s different? Something ought to be, shouldn’t it? Well, to begin with, take the two of us, here, today. We survived. We’re eating higher off the hog. That ain’t all bad, is it? Food tastes pretty good, don’t it? I ain’t real sure after that. This city gon be Camelot, right? Our black Camelot. We’re in the driver’s seat, watch us go, world. Ain’t a black city cause whites still outnumber us, and ain’t a dead city cause still plenty money here, so wasn’t like some these other burgs where they stick in a black mayor cause nobody else want the job. Different situation here. Possibilities here. This an old city with old money. Seemed like we might have half a chance to do our thing here, do it our way. Show everybody. A showcase city. Everybody grinning, shaking hands, making money. But shit, man. I been on the inside two years and you know what I think? I think they experimenting again.

  * * *

  All this area in through here. Remember what it looked like?

  Timbo drives like he dresses. The black sedan with the mayor’s seal on the door graces the streets, the route it follows synchronized to Timbo’s voice-over as they zip along, changing lanes, pace, direction, pausing, whipping through superfluous terrain as if the cityscape had been tailored to accommodate this quick sketch Timbo is drawing.

  This used to be stone slum. Raggedy row houses and vacant lots. Stone ghetto, baby. Now every square foot is solid gold. City underwrote the project. Bought up those tobacco-road shacks for next to
nothing. Leased the land to private developers and they put up dorms, apartments, town houses, condos. Hard to believe it’s the same place, ain’t it? I mean if you was a roach and been away on vacation and come back to the old hood, you’d say, Shit. This ain’t home. Where my brother roach and cousin rat? Some body done messed up my good thing.

  See, down here, paralleling the railroad tracks we’re laying a new street. Direct access off and on the expressway. All this mess around in here, warehouses, garages, shanties, all these eyesores got to go. When redevelopment’s finished, a nice, uncluttered view of the art museum. That’s the idea. Open up the view. With universities just a hop skip down the way what we’re trying to create here is our little version of Athens, you dig? Museum’s the Acropolis up on the hill. Cross by way of bridges and tunnels to the brainpower and computer power of the universities. Modern urban living in the midst of certified culture. College boys and girls running around on the set looking good and smart and prosperous like ain’t nothing wrong with the world. It’s gonna work, too. You wouldn’t believe the price of real estate. People standing in line to buy. Fortunes being made, brother. And this time round there’s some black fingers in the till. Not too black, you dig, don’t want to smudge the cookie jar. Gon be some big-time bucks generated by this action.

  The folks used to live here. Yeah. Well, you know the answer before you asked that one. S.O.S. Same ole shit. Some went north. A lot got pushed west. Landlords getting fat off that end too. Shortage of housing so they cramming three, four families in one-family houses. Hell. If I owned a house in West Philly I’d rent it and move down here. A damned good investment. Figure it out. Borrow the down payment. Three families each paying to rent your old crib so you can meet your condo note and your loan note. Maybe have change. Nobody would have to burn old Timbo out. I’da been right here, man. In my shiny new pad. Right here where it’s happening.

  It ain’t all a bed of roses, though. Parts of the city, like this, man, are cooking. A new day. The right ingredients in place. Big money making bigger money. They love the mayor here. Black and white. Call him Sambo behind his back but they be grinning in his face. On the other hand, let’s just say he ain’t universally loved. We still got sections of this great metropolis where nobody don’t love nobody. Too ugly. Too mean. No time for love. Niggers scuffling and scheming twenty-four hours a day to survive. That shit ain’t changed. In fact since dope been king it’s worse. Much worse. Some of us, a few really, are doing better, moving up. A handful doing damned well. But them that ain’t got and never had, they worse off than ever. S.O.S., man. Rich richer and poor poorer. Some these pitiful bloods off the map, bro. And they know it. And they ain’t too pleased about it. That’s the rub cause you know who they blame. Bloods voted for the mayor and he won but they ain’t won shit. Same ole. So the natives is restless. Mayor’s trying to keep a lid on but, tell the truth, it’s driving the cat crazy. Doing everything he can to make the city a better place to live and you can see progress, real progress. Area like this University City wasn’t nothing but a gleam in a planner’s eye a few years ago. Look at it now. Look at what it’s gonna be. Can’t argue with progress. At the same time over in the north and in the west where people from here forced to move, what’s growing is garbage dumps.

  Like in the Third World, man. I was down in Rio for Carnival, dig? Having me a natural ball. This dude down there, does business with the city, he invited me out to his villa. Stone fairy-tale palace out in the boonies. Swimming pools. Stables. A disco. More servants than I got cousins. On the way the limousine had to pass through this slum. Miles of it. Talk bout tent city. These folks lucky if they got a rag to pull over they heads. Most of them just plain-ass living on the ground. The ground, man. Stinks like bad meat. Don’t matter all the car windows closed. Stink sneaks in. You feel dirty, like stink’s painting you a nasty color. Acres and acres of it, man. A garbage dump. A people dump.

  I’m thinking to myself, this is poor. Back in the good ole U.S. of A., we ain’t got real poor people. This is poor. Living in boxes and holes. Hard ground and evil sky. When the sun’s hot you bake. If it rains, you rained on. People jammed up so tight they shitting and pissing on top one another. Kids playing in open sewers. Couldn’t believe it, man, and I seen some bad shit in my day.

  I say to myself, Never. Couldn’t never get this bad back home in the land of opportunity and the bitch wit the torch. Not so sure now. Already people in this city live off garbage. And I’m not talking about just bums. I’m talking about families, about gangs of kids roving the streets, sleeping outdoors. And plenty people sleeping indoors in rattraps bad as the streets. Everyday people sinking deeper in the hole. Losing people every day. Enough of them go down the tube they gon start climbing back out. Walk up each other’s backs and climb out the hole. What we gon say then? What’s the mayor gon do when the city starts to cracking and pieces break off the edges and disappear. It’s thin ice, man. Damn thin ice and we all dancing on it. We all gon fall through if the shit starts to go.

  So what’s the mayor intend to do?

  Do? What a mayor always does. Grin and lie and shake hands and cut ribbons on new shopping centers. What else he spozed to do? This mess been here long before he was elected and he’ll be dead and in his grave before it changes. If it ever changes. You and me. We happened to come along at a time when it seemed things might change. We thought we was big and bad enough to make the world different. That’s our problem, believing things spozed to change for the better. Mayor’s not like that. He’s older, wiser. Not dewy-eyed like we was, but not bent down like our daddies, neither. He’s in between. Korea’s his war. A police action. He’s realistic about power and politics and deals and compromise and doing his jig inside the system. He ain’t about change. He’s about hanging on long enough so some who ain’t never tasted pie can have a bite before the whole shebang turns rotten. A simple, devious, practical man. A nice guy. Hey. He’s my boss. Love the nigger. Treats me better than any white boy would.

  If the city’s coming apart at the seams, nobody’s going to be eating cake very long.

  Right. But that ain’t the mayor’s fault. No more than it’s my fault or yours, Mr. Cudjoe. Where you been hiding all this time? Could have used a few more good shoulders at the wheel. You copped the education and ran, man. Maybe you know something none the rest of us bureaucrats know. Maybe you holding some answers. The mayor will listen. Maybe you should have stayed home. You could have told the mayor what to do with the King and his bunch of loonies.

  Why did anyone have to do anything with them?

  They were embarrassing, man. Embarrassing. Trying to turn back the clock. Didn’t want no kind of city, no kind of government. Wanted to live like people live in the woods. Now how’s that sound? A Garden of Eden up in West Philly. Mayor breaking his butt to haul the city into the twenty-first century and them fools on Osage want their block to the jungle. How the mayor spozed to stand up and talk to white folks when he can’t control his own people? The press ate it up. Nonsense in the papers every day. King’s people demanding this and demanding that. Letting their kids run around naked, sassing the police and getting their heads busted, cussing out the neighborhood on loudspeakers, dumping shit in their backyard, demanding the release of their so-called brothers and sisters from the slam. Sooner or later those nuts had to go. Mayor got tired of them mocking everything he was promising. Talk about a thorn in his side. King and them were a natural thorn halfway up his behind. A whole brier patch growing up in the mayor’s chest. Sooner or later, one way or another, them and their dreadlocks had to go.

  The fire.

  The fire.

  * * *

  Timbo cuts the engine. They’ve parked at the edge of new construction. Beyond a barrier of striped sawhorses dead-ending the street, oatmeal-colored guts of the city have been exposed. Huge chunks of asphalt are stacked, waiting to be hauled away. Heavy equipment. Humming generators. Rows of man-high cement cylinders, coiled snakes of plastic tu
bing. Cudjoe thinks of veins, arteries, nerves, organs, high-tech replacements for old, worn-out parts. To the east, windows of tall buildings are bronzed by late-afternoon sun. The skyline hovers pale, indistinct through heat haze. Early summer but already heat has begun to reshape the city. By August the city would be a sure-enough patient laid out on a table. Hot sand scalds his bare feet. He steps from shadow to shadow when he can find one, following a path that twists forever up the side of the cliff dividing town from beach. Dark caves. Rotten teeth. Skinny kids stare through him as he passes, a faraway look dulls their eyes. He’s a fly on the other side of the glass.

  Timbo. Why did we believe we could turn this country around?

  Cause we wanted more than we had and that seemed the way.

  I’m writing about the fire.

  Oh yeah.

  About the fire, but about us too. About believing we could take over. Build a better world.

  We did take over, didn’t we? I mean, shit. We had the whole world in our hands and we blew it. Dropped it like a hot potato. Whew. I don’t want it you can have it. Tossed it back to Daddy and exited for goddamn parts unknown. Kathmandu. Wyoming. You know what I mean.

  We had them on their knees, man. Begging and pulling out their hair. Tried everything to put us down but we were strong. We were righteous. Couldn’t nothing stop us. But our own damn selves. They let us strut around like we owned the Johnson. We was superbad. On the tube. In the movies. They just let us be for a while. Let us boogie around till we got bored with our ownselves and wasn’t nothing to do but creep in the back door and tiptoe up the stairs into our old rooms and give up the keys. Please let us back in the house. Youall grown-ups go on and take care the grown-up business. We just want to play and have a good time. They said OK. You can come back. And here’s some shit to play with. Here’s a war in Asia. You can take your music and dope and go fight it. Take the niggers with you. And here’s some more dope for when you get back. You can fuck each other’s brains out. Fuck till your crotches rot. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? A party. Share a little of the goodies with the niggers. Keep them out our hair. We got business to tend to. Grown-up business of running the world.