The Book of Harlan

by Bernice L. McFadden

  Above their heads, the bladed fans cycled, shredding the heat into a smooth breeze that swept the fallen tufts of hair across the floor into corners and out onto the sidewalk whenever someone entered or left the shop.

  A tall man pulled the door back, mistook the rolling hair for rodents, and did a hop-shuffle that entangled his ankles. He would have fallen flat on his face if Harlan hadn’t grabbed his arm. The scene was comical—barbers and customers rippled with laughter.

  “You okay, pops?”

  The man barely glanced at Harlan; his eyes were too busy roaming the black-and-white-checkered floor.

  “Herbert?” Lucille called. “Herbert Bolden?”

  The man squinted at Lucille and frowned. “Where the hell is your hair?”

  “Well, hello to you too!”

  Herbert gawked.

  “It ain’t polite to stare,” Lucille admonished. “How you been? How’s Arlene? I ain’t seen y’all in years.”

  He shuffled over and circled Lucille like an exhibit. “Arlene died last fall,” he mumbled, reaching to touch her hair.

  “Sorry to hear that. She lived a long life. What was she, fifteen years old?”

  “Seventeen,” Herbert corrected distractedly.

  Lucille looked at Harlan’s puzzled face. “We talking ’bout his dog, not his wife. He ain’t never married—no woman with any sense would have him,” she clucked.

  Herbert spun around on well-worn shoe heels. “Who you?”

  “See,” Lucille shook her head, “he don’t have any manners. Never did. He’s the man who kept you from falling on your ass, Herbert. It just happened, don’t you remember?”

  Not taking his eyes off Harlan, he fanned his hand in Lucille’s face. “Hush up, woman.”

  Harlan offered his hand. “My name is Harlan.”

  Herbert’s long face stretched longer. He eyed the younger man’s hand with disdain. “I ain’t ask your name, I asked who you are.”

  Harlan moved his hand down to his side. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you ain’t her son, ’cause she don’t have no kids. So who are you? Cousin, nephew . . .” He twisted his neck around to look at Lucille. “Boyfriend?”

  “Oh, Herbert, stop being nasty. You know Harlan. He’s Emma and Sam’s son.”

  “Emma and Sam who?”

  “Elliott.”

  Herbert brought his face close to Harlan’s. “So it is,” he said, pulling back. “Heard ’bout your parents. Terrible.”

  Harlan swallowed.

  Lucille climbed from the chair. “I know you don’t remember this old fool,” Lucille said to Harlan, patting Herbert’s back, “but he used to own Club Lola down on 57th Street.”

  Harlan nodded. “It sounds familiar.”

  Herbert slipped into the chair Lucille had vacated and pulled one long leg over the other.

  The barber drummed Herbert’s shoulder with his metal comb. “You trying to start a riot in here? There are three other people ahead of you, Herbert. Get up.”

  Herbert waved him away. “In a minute. I’m talking.” He returned his attention to Harlan. “I used to have a club right here in Harlem, but when the white people stopped coming uptown, I had to move to Midtown where they were spending money.”

  “Uh-hmm, good times,” Lucille moaned.

  “Do you still have the club?” Harlan asked.

  “Nah, left that life years ago. Now I’m into real estate.”

  “Slumlord,” one of the waiting customers stage-whispered.

  Herbert ignored the insult. “I got a few buildings here in Harlem and two in Brooklyn. Almost had the Theresa, but that crooked L.B. Woods swiped it from under me.”

  Harlan’s face glowed. “The Hotel Theresa?”

  “The very same,” Herbert said before turning to look at the man who had slandered him. “Now, L.B. Woods is the person you should be calling a slumlord. My properties are all well maintained.”

  Lucille pulled a compact from her purse and flipped it open. “Hey, ain’t it up for sale again?”

  Herbert dragged his hand across his mouth. “Sure is, but it don’t make no sense to buy it.”

  “Why’s that?” Harlan asked.

  “’Cause Harlem ain’t the kingdom it once was—all the royalty is dead.” Herbert struggled up from the chair. “So what you doing with yourself?”

  “Looking for work.”

  “Looking?” Herbert’s eyes rolled over Harlan. “How you been supporting yourself so far? You pushing drugs?”

  Harlan shook his head. “No sir. My parents left me a little insurance money.”

  “Uh-huh.” Herbert sounded doubtful. “Welp, ain’t much work to be found ’round here. What can you do?”

  “A little bit of everything, I guess.”

  “Are you good with your hands?”

  “Yes sir, my daddy made sure of that.”

  “You know about boilers?”

  “Some.”

  “You got any plumbing skills?”

  “I can get by.”

  “Most important thing is taking care of the garbage and keeping the building clean. Sweeping, mopping, and such.”

  “Important for what?”

  “Yeah, important for what?” Lucille echoed.

  “Can’t you see we mens is talking business?” Herbert snapped.

  Lucille threw up her hands.

  “I have a friend. Ira. Ira Rubin. He’s been on the hunt for a new super . . . superintendent for his building in Brooklyn. The guy he’s got now just ain’t working out. It’s a pretty sweet deal. You work six days, live rent-free. I don’t know what he’s paying, but Ira’s always been fair. You got a wife? Kids?”

  “No.”

  “Good. The super lives in a kitchenette. Perfect for a bachelor like yourself.” Herbert looked Harlan up and down again. “Your father was a good man. Are you a good man?”

  Harlan always believed himself to be good, just a little misguided at times. “Yes sir.”

  Herbert grunted. “Well, are you interested?”

  “Yes sir, I am.”

  “You heard the part about Brooklyn, right?”

  “Uh-huh. I ain’t got no problem with Brooklyn.”

  PART XI

  A Murder in Brooklyn

  Chapter 98

  There was a man, an old vet, his legs shot dead in some long-ago war, who spent his days rolling his rickety wheelchair up and down the avenues and boulevards of that central Brooklyn neighborhood known as Crown Heights. His place of residence was a mystery, as was his name. He appeared and disappeared like the sun in a winter-torn sky.

  He was always attired in army fatigues, highly polished brown shoes, and a dented helmet pushed down low over his eyes. On warm days he unbuttoned his shirt, allowing the panels to flap open, exposing the chain of sparkling dog tags splayed across his clean white undershirt.

  He spoke only to himself—spewing long, rambling monologues that went on for hours. When he wasn’t blathering, he was belting out Italian operas. The authenticity of the compositions were a hotly debated subject amongst the old European residents who swore to God and country that they had heard a variety of mother tongues minced into the arias. Nevertheless, they forgave the mongering because his voice was so achingly beautiful. He performed these musical wonders all over Crown Heights.

  On the morning Harlan moved into 245 Sullivan Place, the former-soldier-turned-troubadour parked his wheelchair in front of 245 and launched into Handel’s “Messiah.”

  * * *

  On that same morning, another old man sat in his apartment watching the street from his third-floor window; he spent most days doing just that: watching.

  At his age, under his circumstances, there was little else to do but sit, watch, and wait for death to find him. He had no family to speak of, nor did he have a significant other. All he had to keep himself company was an ornery, toothless tabby named Meow. On that particular morning, Meow was propped on the windowsill, ignoring the flutter o
f pigeons on the opposite side of the glass, fascinated for the moment by the rope of smoke curling from the hot tip of the old man’s cigarette.

  Besides Harlan and the cripple, the only other people on the sidewalk were a roving band of Jehovah’s Witnesses clutching briefcases and Bibles, casting pitiful looks at the barflies staggering home from a night of drinking.

  The old man stubbed out his cigarette into a nearby ashtray, and glared down at the top of Harlan’s head. “Every day there’s one more than the day before,” he whispered. “Meow, we are so lucky to see another morning, aren’t we?”

  The cat looked at him passively.

  “Yes, yes, of course we are,” he said, stroking the tabby’s back.

  Meow blinked slowly, deliberately, and then yawned.

  “Is it breakfast time?”

  The skin beneath Meow’s fur twitched.

  “Yes, I believe it is.”

  When Meow was done eating, she licked her whiskers and paws clean, jumped to the floor, and sauntered off, leaving the man alone with his thoughts and his saltine crackers. Outside his window, Harlan was gone, as was the cripple, replaced now by an elderly couple seated in matching mint-and-white-striped lawn chairs in the shade of a pin oak.

  Just as the old man was about to retire to the cool darkness of his bedroom, his neighbor Eudora Penny marched into view. Tall and robust, sporting a pageboy wig the color of coffee grounds, she strode along with her battered navy-blue purse slung over her shoulder. That purse was as much a weapon as it was a receptacle for house keys, chewing gum, and compact face-powder.

  He knew this because one late winter night back in 1962, when the streets were silent and empty, and the sky cloaked in a spooky deep blue, a would-be thief lunged at Eudora from the shadowy entrance of the playground. The two scuffled, falling against parked cars, until Eudora gained an upper hand and caught the goon by the throat. She shoved him against a tree and used her purse as a mallet, whacking it repeatedly across the mugger’s face until he fell to his knees, pleading for mercy. Not once did Eudora Penny cry out for help. When she was done beating him, she calmly turned and walked away.

  The old man had witnessed the entire assault from the window of his darkened bedroom. The savagery of it conjured memories, stoked a fire deep in the pit of his stomach. He’d returned to bed and spent the remainder of that night reliving the assault in a lucid dream. At daybreak, the old man had thrown his wool coat over his bathrobe and hastened outside in his slippers to check the sidewalk for blood. He was rewarded with a trail of burgundy droplets that led all the way to the gas station.

  He suspected Eudora Penny wasn’t who she claimed to be, and that excited him because neither was he.

  Chapter 99

  Brooklyn had been good for Harlan. The air there was different from Harlem. Less polluted. Fresh. Or maybe he just imagined it that way.

  The work was even better for him. And there was plenty of it—more than enough to keep his mind from lingering on the past or lamenting the future. His days were consumed with fixing leaky faucets, unclogging toilets and drains, tightening doorknobs, replacing lightbulbs, mopping, polishing, and repainting. Every few days he fired up the incinerator and fed trash into the flames. Later, he shoveled the cool ashes into metal trash cans and set them out on the sidewalk for the sanitation trucks.

  Most of the tenants had been welcoming and pleasant toward Harlan, although there were the odd few who couldn’t seem to spare a kind word or smile. Within nine months, Harlan had been summoned to all of the apartments for one broken thing or another—all except 3C and 2E.

  According to the talk swirling amongst the tenants, the occupant in 2E, Rose Talbot, was an old recluse who hadn’t been out of her apartment in twenty years. She had a son who brought a week’s worth of groceries over on Friday evenings.

  The loon—their word, not Harlan’s—in 3C was one Andrew Mailer.

  “He only comes out in the evening.”

  “Or early in the morning. Very early.”

  “His clothes are too big.”

  “Baggy, like a clown.”

  “And he don’t talk.”

  “Oh, he talks plenty! I can hear him through the wall.”

  “You can? He lives alone, doesn’t he?”

  “On the phone, maybe?”

  “Never heard a phone ringing in that apartment.”

  “He has a cat. Orange and white, I think.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It got out into the hall once.”

  “So he’s talking to the gosh darn cat?”

  “May I never get that lonely.”

  On his days off, Harlan explored the Botanic Garden, read at the library, or strolled through echoing rooms at the Brooklyn Museum. Sometimes he’d go to Prospect Park, sit on a bench, and strum his guitar or watch the children go round and round on the colorful carousel horses.

  Once a month he went uptown to spend the day with Lucille. Occasionally she’d prepare a meal, but mostly they went out to eat. Herbert often joined them.

  “Aww, he ain’t all bad,” Lucille huffed when Harlan questioned their relationship. “He’s alone, I’m alone, we both old as dirt—it just make sense. Don’t you worry about me, what about yourself? You still a young man and easy on the eyes. You can get you a woman willing to give you some babies. Make me a god-grandmother. I’d like that.”

  “I’m sure you would.” Harlan planted a kiss on her forehead. “Perhaps in my next life.”

  Chapter 100

  One Tuesday morning, as Harlan fed garbage into the incinerator, the store manager of the neighborhood A&P was patrolling the grocery aisles—straightening boxes of cereal, fluffing loaves of bread, and thumping cantaloupes—in preparation for the onslaught of the day’s shoppers.

  Andrew Mailer arrived at the store just as the manager unlocked the door. He shuffled in, head bowed, black cap low over his flabby face, grunting at the manager’s cheery greeting. Usually, he strode swiftly down the aisles, filled his cart with a week’s worth of necessities, paid for the items without meeting the gentle smile of the cashier, and then hurried straight back to the safety and solace of his apartment.

  That had been his routine week after week for two decades. But on Tuesday, June 19, 1973, things unfolded a bit differently.

  * * *

  At the door of his apartment, Harlan slipped out of his boots, dropped his work gloves on the floor, and went into his kitchen to prepare a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. He was standing over the sink, gulping down a tall glass of orange juice, when his doorbell rang.

  Wrapped in a bathrobe and trembling with anger was Gabe Flores, the tenant in 2C. From the look of his bloodshot eyes and scattered hair, Gabe had probably just rolled out of bed.

  “Mr. Flores, how can I help you this morning?”

  Gabe was barely five feet tall. He took two backward steps so he didn’t have to crane his neck up to meet Harlan’s questioning gaze. “Look, I got Niagara Falls happening up in my apartment. Christ, my wife is having a fit. The crazy above us must have left the sink running or something! Christ, Harlan, the goddamn ceiling looks like it’s gonna fall in . . . What are you waiting for, an invitation? Let’s go already.” Gabe sped off with his bathrobe flapping behind him.

  With a sigh, Harlan shoved his feet back into his boots, picked up his gloves, and followed the man to his apartment.

  When they entered, Gabe jabbed his finger at the kitchen ceiling. “Do you see this, Harlan? It’s a fucking mess. What are you going to do about it?”

  “Let me go upstairs and see what the problem is.”

  Gabe threw his hands into the air. “Bastardo negro estúpido. Él va a ver cuál es el problema. Puedo ver cuál es el problema.”

  “Mr. Flores—”

  “Are you kidding me? You don’t have to go see what the problem is. I can see what the problem is and so can you. I don’t need you to see what the problem is, I need you to fix the fucking problem!”

>   * * *

  Harlan rang Andrew Mailer’s doorbell several times and knocked as loudly as he dared at that time of the morning until he was left with no other choice but to use his master key.

  “Hello? Mr. Mailer? Are you here? It’s the super, Harlan Elliott. Hello?”

  The air in the apartment reeked of cigarette smoke and a putrid litter box. Closing the door behind him, Harlan surveyed the cluttered living room with its matching sofas covered in aged plastic. On each of the two side tables stood lamps capped with embroidered shades, the stitching nearly invisible beneath years of dust.

  “Mr. Mailer? It’s Harlan Elliott, the super. Are you here?” He gingerly navigated the narrow artery that wound through the molehills and drifts of periodicals. In the kitchen, he sloshed through three inches of water, knelt down in the pool, and investigated the goings-on beneath the kitchen sink.

  On the crumbling floor beneath the corroded pipes bandaged in moldy strips of cloth sat a quartet of mismatched bowls, placed there to catch the leaking water.

  “Why didn’t he just report this to me or the previous super?” Harlan grumbled to himself as he wrenched the valve until it stopped the flow of water.

  Back in the living room, the legs of his overalls dripping wet, Harlan called out again, just to make sure: “Mr. Mailer!” Some of the old tenants were hard of hearing. He wouldn’t want to startle the man to death. “I’m going to get the mop and bucket!” he continued to shout. “I’ll be right back!”

  Harlan’s finger brushed the doorknob and he froze.

  What if the man was dead?

  Two tenants had passed away in the nine months he’d been on the job. One went in his sleep, another as he sat slurping Campbell’s tomato soup. Both men were well into their eighties.

  Harlan had no idea how old this Andrew Mailer fellow was because he had never seen him. He did know that whenever the other tenants talked about the guy, the operative word was always old.

  Old coot.

  Crazy old nut.

  Harlan pulled his hand back and started toward the bedroom. “Mr. Mailer? Mr. Mailer?”

  He was halfway through the living room when he spotted an object that nearly sent him screaming from the apartment.