by H. M. Mann
I’ve been following Dante’s case since it happened because the dude is so much like me. They called Dante a “diseased man” for what he did over five blocks and five minutes. He was just one pissed-off black man who couldn’t take it anymore. He told his white landlady his door needed to be fixed, and it just took too long for anybody to fix it. A man’s home is his castle, but it ain’t one if your door’s busted. Dante just wanted to be safe, right? So he shot a maintenance worker and set fire to his crib. He could have stopped there, but he couldn’t very well stay home with it all on fire. It’s hard to eat a decent meal with all that smoke. So maybe he was hungry when he went to Burger King and took out a priest, though Dante didn’t know he was a priest when he pulled the trigger of his legally bought gun. Old Dante might have double-tapped him if he knew that, who knows? Then he cruised the drive-through of a McDonald’s because I guess the service was slow inside and snuffed a Romanian student whose family left Romania because of some oppression over there. The Romanian’s mama said she had a couple thousand knives in her stomach when she found out that her son was dead. I know I got more than a thousand in my gut just for living on the Hill for twenty-nine years.
Then when the cops cornered Dante, he told them to kill him or he’d kill himself because he didn’t want his mama to see him in prison for the rest of his life. The man was already dead inside. Why not grant his last request?
And now he’s going to die of lethal injection. Some of us just get the needle and drift around like birds on Centre Avenue, while others of us go out in a blaze of glory to get the needle from a rigged jury. Ten whites and two blacks. So what if Dante wouldn’t cooperate with his white psychiatrist. I wouldn’t have either. What would a white psychiatrist know about being angry and black? They said Dante lived in a “psychotic storm,” yet they found him sane enough to die. That means, at least to me, that he was nuts when he pulled the trigger but sane when he decided to carry a gun.
Or something like that.
And then the rallies, the concert in Schenley Park, the marches, the protests, the “Not in Our Town” folks. White people die, and folks march. If Dante had killed black people, none of that would have happened. He’d be doing life on the inside, maybe even have a book out about himself, probably a best-seller, and no one would have questioned whether he was sane at the time of the killings. You’re only crazy if you kill white folks, but you ain’t crazy enough to be found not guilty by the insanity caused by white folks.
They called Dante a “nice young fellow” and a “brooding loner,” and the judge said, “I hope you suffer greatly while waiting to die.” Too late for that. Dante had already suffered. They said Dante had a crummy home life with his mama waiting in anticipation for his daddy to come home. I felt that deep inside me because my mama did the same thing for a while until—
Oh man, it’s raining.
When I mess things up, I go all the way, and I can’t even self-destruct on a sunny day or a starlit night. Lightning forks the sky, lighting up the Hill like fireworks I saw once from the Duquesne Incline with Mama before … before the world changed.
Before my world changed.
And they say the incline is haunted.
They ought to take a look inside of me.
I stab my little postage stamp of flesh with what I hope will be my last shot and toss the syringe toward the Circle of Heroes. Once I feel the rush, I stumble and fumble like a pinball down the Hill in the general direction of Mary’s house on Dinwiddie as the rain tears my clothes to shreds. That’s one of the problems in Pittsburgh. There’s not a straight road in sight, and when you’re not yet right, you can get lost. I have to tell myself to keep the downtown neon to my left, and I’ll eventually end up at Mary’s.
But when I get there and the door opens, Mary’s mama is standing there looking fiercer than usual.
“What you want?” she says.
“I need to talk to Mary.”
“She don’t want to have nothing to do with you, so get on.”
“We have to talk,” I say in a half-whisper. I’m almost right, but my voice is too sleepy, and my skin is so hot it ought to be steaming in the rain. “Let me see her.”
“No.”
I look past Mary’s mama down the hall to the back stairs where Mary, still barefoot, sits on the bottom step. “Mary, please, we need to talk.”
“You done enough,” Mary’s mama says. She closes the door until it’s just her nose in my field of vision. “Now go on.”
“I have to see her.”
“And I ain’t letting you. You done messed up my baby’s mind so much she still thinks you can be saved.”
She still thinks … I can be saved. “Could you … could you tell her something for me?”
“What?”
“Tell her … tell her I’m going away to get cured. Tell her not to stop praying. Can you tell her that for me?”
Mary’s mama only blinks at me.
“Please?”
Mary’s mama rolls her eyes. “Why should I do anything for you? I didn’t want her to have anything to do with you in the first place.”
“I know.”
“She is still just a child, barely twenty, and now you’ve ruined her. Why’d you have to mess with her?”
I want to tell Mary’s mama that Mary is the only pure thing in my life, that she’s the only person who has stuck by me while I’ve been sticking myself more and more, that she’s the only good thing I have left on this earth, that she’s worth all the candles at St. Benedict’s put together. “I love her.”
“No you don’t.”
“I want to make this right.” I step back. “Please tell her I love her. Just … tell her I’ve gone looking for the cure. I may be gone a while, so …”
“The longer the better,” Mary’s mama says, and she shuts the door.
I stand in the rain a while out on the cracked sidewalk, brown rivers streaming and splashing around my ankles, hoping that Mary comes to a window. When she doesn’t, I turn toward the neon.
Time to go.
The cure is waiting out there in the darkness.
The rain is so thick I can’t see anything but the shadowy hulks of buildings and the round whiteness of the Civic Center as I cross into downtown. About the only thing I can see is St. Benedict the Moor behind me, still shrugging his shoulders in the night. Other than the time sign on Mount Washington, the world is all black and blue. When I walk into a phone booth next to a newspaper dispenser beside a parking meter in front of an empty parking spot, I know I’ve left the Hill. There ain’t none of that on the Hill. I must be going in the right direction.
I look up. The William Penn Hotel. Is this 6th Street or 6th Avenue? Why can’t they have originality in naming roads in this town? I walk on and come to a Starbucks on Penn Avenue. A Starbucks near Liberty, which used to have all the girlie joints. This town has really changed, and it’s a good thing I’m on the way out.
Fuzzy, hazy people, all of them cultured I’m sure, all of them covered in gauze and umbrellas, hurry by me to Heinz Hall or maybe to some club too exclusive for the likes of me. Their very odor of Chanel No. 5 and Moet and money sickens me.
The world comes into focus at the Roberto Clemente Bridge. It used to be named something else, I think, back when Three Rivers Stadium overlooked the three rivers. The bridge is lit up, too, but not as lit up as I am. I’m almost straight, my arms and legs less and less heavy. I look down at the Allegheny River. It doesn’t look so far. But I don’t see any boats or barges. I can’t jump here anyway, I mean, Roberto Clemente was a hero to his people back when Pittsburgh had some bona fide sports heroes who weren’t asking for more money. At least Roberto knew who his people were.
I dart in front of a city bus to the other side.
No barges coming.
I walk on, starting to feel better, walking for miles and miles lost in Pittsburgh through nice neighborhoods like Ben Avon, which still have trees. I bet they don’t cut down tre
es and put up monuments here. No ID, no money, no girl, no place to stay, no job when I don’t show up tomorrow, maybe no chance of ever being a father. And I’m in Ben Avon with its huge trees and huger houses lit up by the lightning that seems to follow me.
I nearly walk into a nice stone mailbox, a mailbox that no baseball bat could ever take out, when a spotlight hits me in the face.
Man, I thought cops only cruised the Hill.
I wait beside the mailbox for the first cop to get out, his hat plastic-wrapped, rain hitting his slicker like so many bullets, his hand on his holster. Like I’m any danger to him, as soaked and thin as I am.
“Got some ID?” he asks.
I see the other cop speaking into the microphone in the patrol car, the windshield wipers flying by his face. I could tell him that I live here and am just checking my mail, but he wouldn’t believe that. “No.”
“None?”
I want to tell him that ID’s are for people who don’t live on the Hill, but I don’t. “None.”
“Come over to the car.”
I walk to the front of the car and put my hands on the hood.
“Looks like you’ve done this before,” he says.
“A few times.”
I don’t flinch while he frisks me, mainly because he’s wasting his time going through my empty pockets, but partially because I’m so used to having white men’s hands searching through my empty pockets. Rain and even a little hail bounce off the hood into my face.
“You have any weapons, drugs, anything I should know about?”
I could tell him about Kazula, I could tell him about my mama, I could tell him about my angel who’s going to have my baby this coming Christmas, but I don’t. “No.”
“Turn around.”
I turn. Rain drips off his hat in two heavy trickles.
“Name?”
“Emmanuel Malik Mann.” I was supposed to be Mama’s “God is with us.” I was supposed to be a prophet like Malachi. Yet here I am, Manny Mann from the Hill, about to get popped for bumping into someone’s expensive mailbox on a rainy night in Pittsburgh. I look around the houses and see a few drapes moving. Yeah, the neighborhood watch is looking at me.
“Manny Mann?”
I nod.
“Manny Mann. I haven’t heard that name in a while. I used to work the Hill a few years back. What are you doing over here?”
I want to tell them that this is still America, I want to tell him that it’s none of his business, I want to tell him he’s a racist for thinking I shouldn’t be in Ben Avon, but I don’t. “Going for a walk.”
“Uh-huh. Address?”
Good question. None, I guess. “I’m between addresses.”
“Last address?”
I want to tell him “the armpit of the earth,” but I don’t. “Centre Avenue.”
He has his partner run my name while I soak up some more cold rain. We could be doing all this in the patrol car, but then they’d have to clean up after me.
“He’s on probation,” his partner calls out the window.
“That true?”
“Yeah.” Though after almost a year, I should be done.
“Who’s your PO?”
I’ve skipped every meeting except for that first one. What was his name? Something Italian. “Mr. Pasquale.”
“Pasquale?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s new.”
“Uh-huh. Not trying to skip town, are you?”
“No.” Just life.
“So you’re just out for a walk.”
“Yeah.” The air seems fresher over here in Ben Avon. It must be the trees. The rain’s still as heavy though.
“You headed anyplace special?”
What’s up ahead? Oh yeah. “Going to Neville Island.” I smile. “I want to see the new hockey place I heard about.” Yeah, right. “I remember going skating there back in the day.” Which is sort of true. I met a tall white girl there once who thought I had a great tan. “Oh yeah, and didn’t the President come there for a visit once?” Not many politicians ever come to the Hill.
“Manny, are you by any chance high right now?”
I’m definitely getting more oxygen and cleaner air. They say rainwater is good for your hair, too. “Did a little drinking about four hours ago.”
The cop slides up the sleeve of my shirt, whistling at my old scars, those scars like whip marks. He checks the other arm, most of the scars covered by a snake tattoo I had put on in County. “You sure you’re straight?”
I want to tell him that I get high to get straight, but I don’t. “Yeah.” But in about twelve hours, I will be hurting. Or dead. Or maybe they’re the same thing and I just haven’t figured it out yet.
The other cop flashes his lights and rolls down his window. “Gotta call,” he says. “Let’s go.”
“Get to where you’re going,” the first cop says.
“I will.”
I just wish I knew where that might be.
I walk on Ohio River Boulevard past big, expensive boats, rusty railroad tracks, empty mills, and unmoving oil derricks until I come to the McKees Rocks Bridge. I think a boxer comes from McKees Rocks. Spadafora. Yeah. A little Italian guy. Everything’s Italian here, it seems, and if it isn’t, Pittburghers will make it Italian. I mean, Franco Harris was black, but he had an Italian Army back in the day. Oh yeah, he was mixed all right, but he was about as Italian as the pizza they served us in school on that thick bread with all that Heinz ketchup. And August Wilson, a true Pittsburgher, he’s black even though he was mixed. Guess Pittsburgh doesn’t claim the white in him.
I look back at the lights of downtown Pittsburgh.
“And you never claimed me either,” I say.
I stroll to the middle of the bridge and see no easy way to get lower. There are no easy cures. I wonder if gravity is working tonight. With my luck, gravity will keep me glued to this spot, the sun will come up, and I’ll still be here, maybe dead from pneumonia. I check up and down the river but see no barges yet, which gives me a little time to replay my life.
My first thoughts, and maybe even my last, should be for my mama and her black satin hands, red fingernails, jangling gold bracelets, red lips, and painted eyebrows. I only have memories of her musky scent tinged with sweat and the metallic twinge of rain. I have only memories of her songs sung sadly to soothe me to sleep. I have only memories of the early morning when rough blue-cuffed white hands had rushed me out of a dark apartment in Terrace Village, a blanket covering all but one eye that saw my mother’s feet, stockings torn, her toenails flaming redder than the shag carpet under her legs, flashbulbs turning her gray skin white.
Of my father, I have no memories. “You’re as Cajun as your daddy,” Auntie June told me after all my eye had seen that day, “but you put him right on out of your mind because he’s way down in New Orleans.” And from that moment on, my father became the Cajun, a mythical man in a far-off land, the man my mother waited for, became a heroin addict for, cried for, and died for.
Maybe I’ll think of Mary when I jump. Her hands, so warm, so tender, so caring. Yeah, I’ll think of Mary. She’s strong, alive, kind. She told me she fell in love with me by watching me work on the brownstone across the street from her house, said I was so serious, so strong. That first day she came over with a cold can of soda while I was sitting and sweating on the edge of a bathtub I had just dragged to the curb. She was barefoot and plain. Hair pulled back, no makeup, no rings, no jewelry of any kind, no fingernail polish, no fancy clothes, no tight clothes either. Just plain Mary with bright eyes and bright smile and soft laugh and—
I hear the sound of a loud horn and look up the river toward Pittsburgh. It looks as if a dark football field is moving my way, its four corners lighted. A barge that big, I can’t possibly miss. Should I jump off this side or the other? I want to land in the front, right? I should have asked Flake more about this part. If I jump too soon, I’ll hit the water and get run over by a football field of coal. No, it’s
probably better to wait until it comes out on the other side.
I wait for a few cars to go by, a few folks turning necks and staring.
Yeah, I’m about to jump, and no, you can’t stop me.
I wave at a white girl in a little sports car, probably on her way to a party. Yeah, I’m just another black man on a bridge, so get to stepping.
When I get to the other side, I find it hard to breathe. My mind’s still right, but I can’t breathe fast enough. This must be what dying is like. It ain’t slow at all. A fragment of some poem from my childhood rolls into my head, something about crusts of bread and corners and seconds to smile and moans coming double. Who wrote that? And why does a poem hit me now?
The horn sounds and jolts me again.
It’s almost time, almost time.
I roll up my sleeves, exposing my whip marks to the rain. It’s been a beautiful infection, my addiction, a child I haven’t whipped to chase now. And my child has almost arrived, and me, a father? I can’t be a father with a brain of sponge. I’m nobody’s father yet. I may never be anybody’s father. It’s hard to be a father when your future is painted with fog. I lift my arms into the night. They aren’t black like me at all. My scars, a little crimson, a little purple, a little black, a little bronze. Maybe they’ll become rainbows and wash off in this rain.
Or in the river. Yeah, they’ll be sure to wash off in the river. Maybe I’ll float down south with a couple dead dogs.
And it’s raining harder now, like a deluge, like a flood. Water bubbles up from the street, and the sewers at the end of the bridge have become fountains. Cigarette butts and lottery tickets float by, and I can barely open my eyes. If I open my mouth, I’ll drown, right here in the middle of the McKees Rocks Bridge. The lights of the city flicker and go out then come back on all around me as lightning so fine, like spider webs trying to trap me, a fly on a bridge, sparks the night, the water below roaring and foaming and—
There’s a little bird, a sparrow, less than thirty feet away from me. On a night like this? It hops back and forth on the ledge, and it’s crying? What is it, two, three in the morning? What’s it doing out here? Why isn’t it in a cozy nest somewhere? I don’t need an audience for this!
