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Jonathan Kleinbard
319 South 6th Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106
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Fit ©
1 – His Tribe
They laid Muchie Moore to rest. Not really laid. The undertaker had broken Muchie’s legs so that he could sit in the driver’s seat of his gold-plated El Dorado with its platinum spinners and silver rims. He already was stiff when he was been found lying in his dried blood on the pavement near Olympia Centre, the new glitzy high rise to which he recently had moved, everything cash in advance, just like his funeral. Rigor mortis had set in hours before. How could a body lie there for so long, you ask? Who would bother? Residents of this tony neighborhood, like Muchie at the top of their game, skirted around the spread eagle figure. He was face down. Brains and brawn were dispersed across concrete. They couldn’t mistake him for a sleeping homeless person. They crossed the street until some good soul called the cops.
Today he was dressed in the white tie and tails that hid the body riddled with holes, his head pasted together with wax so that he looked very pale for a wasted black guy, a little lumpy where the sculptor didn’t quite get the shape right, his fu-manchu mustache recreated out of dog hairs. He wasn’t being put to rest in the caves of his ancestors. This was the new world, where life was determined by suitcases of newly minted green stuff, measured by the numbers on the bills and, as in Muchie’s case, terminated by greed and by stepping out of place.
Patrick Flynn stood there with Dancey James, Muchie’s boyhood pal, beside a hole large enough for the basement of a skyscraper. Muchie must have purchased twelve gravesites surrounded by monuments and mausoleums in the cemetery’s high income neighborhood, while in sight and stretching all the way to the street were rows upon rows of small little white rounded tombstones, like the bungalows of the working class neighborhoods where the less fortunate now resided forever.
They waited under a leaden November sky, a damp wind whipping around their legs. Dancey wore his usual gray dress slacks and double breasted navy blue blazer with bright brass buttons. He didn’t wear a topcoat. Patrick had on a raincoat with a threadbare, ratty zipped in wool lining. They were not alone. Jasper Joseph and Calvin Lance had joined Dancey. It was an occasion for a neighborhood reunion. These three guys had grown up with Muchie on the Southside, attended the same high school, but each had taken a different train to adulthood. Calvin was clad in his business duds, the dark suit with pin stripes, blue shirt with white collar, inside an open Burberry raincoat, starchy clean. Above it all, Calvin’s smooth shaven face and the charm that exuded when he opened his mouth to speak, the words released through that engaging smile. Your blood warmed and you wanted to be liked by this guy, to be included in his circle.
“Not me, of course,” Patrick said to Dancey, “I don’t have a circle and being included isn’t part of my pitch. Calvin’s what every white man wants in a black man.”
Dancey didn’t respond. Calvin Lance was becoming very successful, asked in as a limited partner, hatching little real estate deals that quickly matured into larger real estate deals. He was named to the public building commission, the board of a hospital, the boyscout’s volunteer leadership. He was a presence at every dinner in town, although by the time the reception was over and the rubber chicken or vulcanized beef arrived he had disappeared.
For Jasper life had more bumps. He dressed in professorial garb of a boxy sports jacket with patches on the elbows. He served as the minister to a small Pentecostal church he had established at Sin Corner, an intersection of abandoned buildings with the exception of the 24-hour drug store where Jasper had converted the second floor of apartments and storage lockers into a House of God. It was still the old neighborhood’s hub where now addicts, their suppliers and worn out prostitutes walked freely, and people drained by living in poverty and exhausted before they began a day’s work waited in fear to catch a bus or the elevated train that rumbled on the tracks, as though the Lord was coming through the church’s window. “Jasper wants more scope,” Dancey said. “Standing’s the word,” Dancey said, “Jasper wants standing.” Through deft manipulation in the neighborhood, Jasper stepped in when the Reverend Daniel Gaines gave up being Executive Director of the community organization to devote full time to his church. More than a religious institution, Gaines’ church was a community organization in its own right, reaching out to children and families with educational programs and activities that operated from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Jasper’s strategy was to rally 150 persons to protest at building sites, stores, schools or wherever he would claim injustice. It wasn’t difficult to find the sites, since very few black people were being treated fairly, if fairness is measured by how white people were treated. Jasper had a loud voice, not a cathartic speaker, but a speaker who had to be heard since he spoke over everyone else, even the bullhorns of other demonstrators and the police, haranguing his flock of ne’er-do-wells. They mostly were scruffily dressed in ragged coats, pants and skirts, and unlaced shoes. They shuffled in a line at whatever site to which they had been brought in Jasper’s Jalopies, the beat up yellow school buses that came careening to the festering sore of racism, injustice and unfairness he selected. If it hadn’t been festering before, Jasper Joseph lanced the infection.
But back to this bizarre internment.
Beside the friends at the graveside and the large contingent of media, there were the cops lurking nearby, not exactly hiding behind other gravestones, guys like Ernie Wishbone. Ernie came from the same block as the four chums, slightly older and now near the top of the police department. He knew he would never make superintendent, no longer because of his color, but rather his lack of the right political rabbis. When he became a cop, no one in his right mind would have thought a black would make superintendent. It is different today. You have to play the game right politically. Ernie didn’t play any political games. The fact that he was in an exempt position in reach of the top was a fluke. The fluke was Joey Consanto, the Deputy Superintendent, who himself was one big fluke who rewarded competence regardless of the packaging.
Because of Muchie’s assassination and the ceremonial nature of the burial he had requested, legions of reporters, camera crews and photographers were the paid mourners. Pulled up to one side of the gravesite, a large crane with a winch hovered over the El Dorado.
Patrick asked Dancey. “Didn’t he have any family?”
Dancey looked at him and then said, “He had family. They gave him up long ago when he started hustling. We’re waiting for Reverend Gaines. He’s never given up anyone, even after he buries them. He didn’t give up Moses. I don’t want to think I did.”
Dancey looked around at the t.v. types and other reporters. He asked Patrick, “How come all the reporters are white? They’ll go away believing all black boys are buried in their limos.”
The silver Mercedes pulled up beside the crane. The license plate read BELIEF. The driver, a burly black man in a serge suit, limped from the driver’s side to open the rear door to let Reverend Daniel Gaines emerge. Since he was brought back from Europe to be City Editor of the paper, Patrick had followed Gaines’ path. Gaines’ reputation was unblemished, which meant no one in the power structure trusted him and nearly everyone outside his own enormous and growing congregation had some sardonic comment about him. He was physically straight, an arrow aimed directly up. You knew at death that’s where he would go. He wore a cap over his gray hair and, like Dancey, no overcoat, dressed in a gray suit. He carried a Bible in one hand. As he approached the grouping next to the open excavation, the bushy eyebrows and thin mustache that marked his face broke into a smile. He reached out to shake each hand – Dancey, Calvin, Jasper and finally Patrick.
“Praise the Lord,” he said. Calvin, Jasper and Dancey responded.
“We should bring some dignity to Moses now,” he said and stepped to the open pit, placing one hand on the El Dorado and with the other opening the Book. He read the 129th Psalm:
Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice. Let Thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: Lord, who shall stand it?
Reverend Gaines turned to the El Dorado. I am the Resurrection and the Life: He who believes in Me although he be dead, shall live, and everyone who lives, and believes in Me, shall not die forever.
Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
He turned to the others. “Let us pray together silently for our friend, Moses Moore, of whom we knew little. If we had known more of him, would he had lived with Christ? If we had been with him, would he have been with Christ? We must reach out to each other and in doing so to our Lord, Jesus Christ. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.
“Now, together, Our Father who art in heaven, lead us not into temptation.”
The voices softly followed his own: “But deliver us from evil. From the gate of hell. Deliver his soul, O Lord, and May he rest in peace. Amen.”
Reverend Gaines motioned to the crane operator.
The crane lifted the El Dorado. Muchie Moore’s body was held in place by a strap, but his head lolled to one side and back against the head rest as the car tilted up, leveled off and then began its descent into the pit. They waited silently by the graveside.
Reverend Gaines took dirt from the side and gently threw it on the top of the car. If someone had been inside the car with Muchie, they would have thought it was raining. It wasn’t yet, although the skies seemed to be waiting impatiently for a summons.
Each took a handful of dirt to take their turn.
Reverend Gaines looked down and then up at the heavens. “Absolve, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the soul of thy servant, Moses Moore, he who is dead to the world, may live unto Thee: and wipe away by Thy most merciful forgiveness whatever sins he may have committed in life through human frailty. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
“May his soul and the souls of all the departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen.”
Reverend Gaines turned away and began walking toward his Mercedes. He stopped to talk to Ernie Wishbone, just as the reporters and camera crews began to circle him. He said to them, “Praise the Lord,” and then followed his driver to the car, getting in the passenger side instead of the rear seat.
The three friends chatted together. Patrick Flynn stood apart. He knew he was not of their world and had come only because of Dancey. Dancy came over to him, “Puzzled? Believe what you see. That’s my own sense of life.”
Patrick pointed across the grave to a dapper slender young black man who stood apart, elegantly attired in a gray suit that swirled around his legs. “Who’s that Dancey? He looks like the official impresario in the House of the Dead.”
“Omar Brooks Khaled. He’s an associate at the firm. I recruited him. He offered to drive. He wanted to meet Jasper and Calvin and see the Pastor in action, You should get to know him. Does a lot of community organizing. He’s a comer. A very ambitious guy.”
“Where’d he get that name?”
“His father was a black Muslim who fled when Omar was born. His mother had refused to convert from her Apostolic faith. Somehow she met this civil rights attorney, Herschel Brooks, who eventually married her. Omar says his mother was a real looker. Brooks brought up Omar, nothing was too good for him, put him through Princeton and then Yale law. Omar took Brooks as his middle name. The last time I asked him, he said he hasn’t been in touch with his mother and stepfather.”
“Where’s he been organizing? I assume not on the firm’s time.”
“Right. The Projects. He’s a big tenant advocate.”
Patrick snickered, “What’s his idea of advocacy? Keeping them in those hell holes, or finding them better integrated housing?”
“I’ll leave that to you, Patrick. You guys in the media have all the answers.”
“Listen, Patrick,” He said, “I can remember when we decided to get some ice cream. It was a warm summer day. We all knew about Gussie’s. Every kid, black or white, heard about Gussie’s. We’d never been there, since it was in a land forbidden to us, where schools erupted in violence when black children showed up on the first day. Nothing was going to deter the brave musketeers who on a hot summer’s day decided we had to have ice cream from the fabled Gussie’s. There we were, the four of us sitting in the back of a bus, poking each other, acting like little boys on an adventure, making a general nuisance of ourselves. Until, the driver shouted at us, ‘You niggers cut it out or I’m stopping the bus to put you out.’ Calvin pushed me back on the seat. ‘Okay, honkey,’ he said, ‘you white guys always makin trouble.’ All of us laughed. When we got off, we looked around. There was Gussie’s on the corner, its windows stocked with fake banana splits, chocolate sundaes, and teddy bears, big ones and little ones, white ones and brown ones. For us kids looking at those windows was looking at the gateway to wonderland. It’s not much different today, only now it fills half a block, and you can get soup and sandwiches. Today, the displays look dirty. Today, there’re blacks sitting at the tables and standing at the counter. Then, it was vanilla only. We pushed our way into the shop, the door giving off a tingling when it opened on the little tables with their red and white checkered cloths. Older couples were sitting there with plates of ice cream, mothers and fathers with their kids, and a line at the counter, behind which a pimply faced adolescent dished out the real stuff. He was an authority figure to us looking up him even as he bent over to dig out the ice cream for cones and plates in chocolate, strawberry and vanilla, squirting each completed work with an aerosol jet of whipped cream and topping it with nuts and a maraschino cherry. He spied us and shouted, ‘What you guys want?’ ‘Ice cream,’ I said. ‘We all want chocolate sundaes with lots of nuts and marshmallow whip like in the window.’ ‘Not here you don’t,’ he said. There was dead silence in the shop. A soldier in line asked, “What’d you mean?’ Mr. Pimples stood with his hands on his hips, ‘That white boy’s okay, but I ain’t serving them niggers. Get lost,’ he said, ‘before I call the cops.’ I could see the other customers starring at us from their tables. The folks in line at the counter had turned to face us. The soldier said, “Give them some ice cream, for Christ’s sake, and get rid of them.’ He was told, ‘Mind your own business. No burrheads. They don’t belong here.’ He looked directly at me. ‘You want ice cream? You got ice cream, sonny boy.’ I walked out the door with Calvin and Jasper close behind, the bell tingling again. They caught up with me. ‘Why’d we do that?’ Calvin said. ‘Why’d we run away? We should’ve insisted on our sundaes.’ ‘Yeah,’ I told them. ‘Sticks and stones will break your bones. Let’s get out of here.’ As though the shop hadn’t been enough, I remember to this day a lady with her baby carriage trying to avoid us but awkward in her maneuvering on the sidewalk as though she was at the wheel of a tank. She was typical bungalow bulge, making it hard for us to get around her as she moved first in one direction and then the other to avoid us. We tried dancing as kids do, like puppets on strings. She began calling out. We took off down the middle of the street, dodging cars that honked at us and screeched as their drivers applied brakes. Out of breath, we paused by a park. But we didn’t have much of a respite. Three big guys, dressed in green shorts and athletic shirts, who must have been playing ball, came bearing down on us, one of them with a baseball bat over his shoulder. ‘Run,’ Jasper shouted. We did, back into the street. I could see these guys pick up speed. They definitely were chasing us. We darted around the cars into a major intersection. A beat up Ford wagon with wooden paneling pulled around Calvin. ‘What you boys doin here?’ the driver shouted. ‘This ain’t for us. Get in.’ We crammed in among his boxes and took off for home.
“It wasn’t so difficult for me,” Dancey said, “I didn’t suffer from poverty and deprivation. Ruth says I was confused over who I was. What else would a sister say? She still says I’m confused. I wasn’t confused, but everyone else seemed to be. I needed a protector on the street and in school. Moses became our protector. A shield. When necessary, he used his fists. I try not to forget him. I had a real home with most of the supports that middle class children have – regular meals, encouragement, parents who asked about what you did and talked to you, the presence of my mother, loving, caring, and my sister and father. After my mother died,” Dancey paused for a moment, “my father was there, difficult, strict, unbending, but he was there for me. I recognize that now. How different from Calvin. Yet, if you look back, Moses’ parents tried to provide the same experience for him. It was more difficult, I know, for black children to grow up in a white society, since that’s the culture that counted. Calvin and Jasper made it. I appear to be riding high.”
Ruth told Patrick that Dancey didn’t chose white or black. “He left it to you, if you cared. Everyone did, even his friends, Calvin and Jasper. Moses didn’t seem to care,” Ruth said, “which may be why he regretted his murder more than he should. He’ll never know about Moses.”
“It was so odd,” Dancey said, “to be with Calvin and Jasper. Some white guy would slight them, or some white woman make a wide berth around them. Like at Gussies. Not me. I wasn’t slighted. In those days, it must have seemed odd to the whites to see a white guy, me, with two or three black guys.”
“And the friends?” Patrick asked Ruth. “Hoodlums is too strong a word, but that’s how Calvin and Jasper appear to me,” Patrick told her. “I didn’t know Moses, but these two, Calvin and Jasper, always seem ready to cross the line. Calvin never hesitates to remind me, why should their conduct be any different from a white man’s conduct? They’re wrong,” Patrick said to her.
“Yes, they are,” she said. Ruth was a tough cookie, modeled, Parick assumed, after the Judge, her father.
Patrick told her, “I was a liberal white guy before I matured to my current state of adversarial nastiness. I thought blacks who’d made it had an important obligation to be a model for others who’d yet to climb the ladder. Typical white liberal palaver I know now. Why should they behave any differently than everyone else, especially those guys who didn’t have to claw to the top? There’s a high probability white or black you’ll get caught, if you cross the line.”
“You’re right the first time,” Ruth said. “If we want to play in the big leagues, we’d better play by the rules. The first one of us gets caught, it’s curtains for the rest. Just remember. A white guy goes to jail is instantly rehabilitated when he gets out. A black guy’s gone forever. There aren’t that many black guys who get to play in the big leagues. Jackie Robinsons we aren’t.”
It was a puzzle to Patrick Flynn that he had these relationships. It was different with David Mazur, who was a listener. Mazur might as well have been behind the confessional, like the priest may have been awake but said little. Flynn ruminated: “You may ask why’d any of them talk to me, Patrick Flynn, a rummy, a Donkey, a newspaper editor, an observer who never participates and didn’t even try to talk their language. Nope. I don’t like the language the p.c. lefty types use to cuddle up to blacks. You know them, Davey. They inhabit your university. They’re humanists, social scientists, feminists, specialists in subjects without any facts, invented in the backwash of confusion. These creeps are looking for warm fuzziness. Dancey and I became good friends, just because I’m what I am and he’s what he is. Neither of us is comfortable with fuzziness. And you, Davey?”
“Nothing so intellectual,” Mazur said. “I like to be with Dancey. We share some common interests, like the books we read, music, the places we go together. We don’t talk about deconstructionism, postmodernism, or cultural theory. Dancey gets around to colonialism. But his is an historical approach. I’ll leave these big issues to the two of you, Patrick. It’s an unpleasant obligation everyday at the university. No one’s cleansed of the past or of our acts in the present. The bath water’s dirty.”
Patrick said, “Dancey never crossed the line, despite all the excuses he had, either with white intellectuals or his boyhood chums. His father, the Judge, was a strict disciplinarian with his two children, from the bench and in the Reverend Gaines’ church where he was an elder. Dancey and Ruth told me all about their father. There’s quite a bit at the paper.”
The Judge was the grandchild of slaves, his milky brown complexion telling his story. The Judge’s parents had labored for their children, his father from picking up trash to carrying bricks to illegally laying them. Stoop labor was okay, but no blacks allowed in the union. His mother was a day worker who also took in laundry and ironed shirts and linens. They scraped together their pennies to send their sons and daughters to black colleges, and Bigger, named Bigger because he was the second son, the first being Little James, but Bigger a very big baby of whom bigger things were expected -- to law school at Howard where he’d won a scholarship. Dancey’s mother, Esmeralda, was visiting relatives in Washington. She and Bigger met at church. When he graduated from Howard Law, he decided to find Esmeralda. He followed her to Chicago, took the bar and, believe it or not for a black man, passed the first time without paying anyone anything. While he didn’t preach to his children, Dancey and Ruth were taught to believe in God and merit.
In those days, in fact until not too long ago, blacks didn’t have many options where they could live. Covenants excluded them from most areas except enclaves on the south and west sides. The closer their homes to the Jordan River and the forbidden Promised Land the more expensive they became. The blacks never signed any covenant. You had to wonder who’d made the covenants. Regardless, no blacks lived north or east of the invisible lines that had been drawn across the city. That’s the way it was.
The James home was on the bank of a tributary of the Jordan, across from which stretched the university campus. Blacks could work there to clean houses, press clothes, wash windows, mop floors, shovel snow and mow lawns, but couldn’t live there. Bigger began his law practice in the teeming commercial district six blocks away, his name on the window of a storefront, representing anyone who came to his door. The only persons who came in the door in that neighborhood were black. They were poor people, confused about their scrapes in the world into which they had fallen, many of them recent arrivals from the Deep South. They had taken the train north, gotten off at the stop where the conductor, St. Peter at the Gate, would usher them into the new world. Bigger James would take each case, explaining to his clients their circumstances. If he was lucky, he was paid for his troubles. Bigger James was not contesting the system. He didn’t like the system, he didn’t accept it, but he believed then there was nothing he could do about it. He took the facts, as they were related to him and as he would find them out, and then chipped away to get the best deal he could.
He and Esmeralda attended the Pentecostal church led by Reverend Gaines, then a young minister. Gaines in those days cleaned buses between midnight and six a.m. leaving him free during the day and early evenings to provide pastoral comfort and support to his small flock. The Jameses wondered if Rev. Gaines ever slept. The congregation worshipped God first and Gaines second. The respect for Esmeralda and especially Bigger grew in the neighborhood and among the church goers. The Lawyer James didn’t have a string of victories against the front-line power structure of cops, bill collectors, insurance agents, chiselers of all kinds. He dealt up front with everyone and never took a case where the client pushed to win through bribery or chicanery. That wasn’t Bigger’s claim to fame. He would tell his son and daughter, “Perish and go to Heaven rather than sell out and end up in Hell.”
According to Ruth, home economics was passed down generation to generation, daughter to daughter. Emeralda kept the home spotless, clothed the children in department store finery, Ruth in pinafores and Dancey in a clean cotton shirt and shorts. They changed when they came home from school and changed again to join their father and mother for dinner, where, as long as Dancey could remember, they answered his father’s questions about the day. There wasn’t much discussion. Dancey felt he was held to a tougher standard, the questions not menacing but focused and less enthusiastic about Dancey’s friends – Moses, Calvin and Jasper, than the little girls with whom Ruth jumped rope and played little girl games. Esmeralda softened her husband’s tone and often would say of Dancey’s friends, ‘They’re our neighbors and go to our church. Can’t be all that bad.’”
Dancey said to Patrick once, “You can’t imagine how different we were from other kids in our neighborhood, some without fathers, certainly few with a home life like our own. Calvin’s a good example. An empty nester most of the time, his mother was rarely there for him. He’ll tell you she was good to him. She wanted her boy to be educated.”
Bigger’s reputation for righteousness, for integrity seeped out of the ghetto and somehow made it into the mainstream, a sign of yet to be realized change. And that was how he became a judge. The democrats needed a black judge. It began to appear risky to white politicians hoping to win election or reelection that in this city with a burgeoning black population, however kept in check, everyone in power, judges, councilmen, police sergeants and captains, firemen and superintendents looked like everyone else outside the proscribed world. The rumblings came from the pulpits and storefront churches in the ghetto. It wasn’t an issue of justice, of fairness, of equality that was persuasive to the powerful. It was the numbers. The increasing numbers of blacks who made it to the polling places.
Everyone knew that many were signed up by some white ward heeler and paid by them to vote. Those were the living. This was Chicago. The pols came up with one of their own, a ward-heeler who produced voters from the projects. He had his offices in the neighborhood not far from Bigger James. They were very fancy. You wanted a fix? You went to Pops Cannon. Pops Cannon got it done. If you didn’t have any money? Don’t bother coming in the door. Pops didn’t have time and wouldn’t help you. He had more pictures taken with the Mayor and Governor than they had with their wives. Pops was nominated and, in the process, the feds caught up with him. He was indicted on a number of counts of bribery, racketeering, you name it. No one knew what to do. The papers suddenly were becoming race conscious. An influx of young journalists fresh out of college and J schools had been infected by the injustices of the past 100 years. Here you have a prominent black nominated by the party, tantamount to being named to a judgeship, the very first, and he’s on his way to the slammer.
Patrick found out about this incident when he took over as City Editor. His predecessor wanted to splash Pops Cannon and his connections to every politician in the City, the State and some in D.C. Institutional racism, the liberals said. Patrick said, “They couldn’t accept that facts are facts and stories are stories.”
Suddenly, someone in City Hall must have come up with Bigger James’ name. No one imagines the Mayor or the Governor or anyone else in the power structure had ever laid eyes on him. The next thing he was nominated and trotted out to a news conference with the Mayor and Governor. The Governor was long winded and went through James’ entire biography. The Mayor was brief. “A good honest God-fearing man,” is all he said. When Bigger James was introduced, he asked for everyone’s indulgence.
He requested that the Reverend Daniel Gaines join him for a prayer. There was dead silence. Up came this tall imposing young guy, dressed in an ill-fitting suit. Gaines held hands with Bigger and Esmeralda and asked others to hold hands together as a sign of peace and friendship
You can imagine what the reporters and photographers did. They looked at each other with sarcasm, whispering sardonic words. Gaines said a prayer. James lifted his head and thanked everyone. The three of them walked out of the room. The Governor and Mayor looked at each other and then, to avoid any questions from the reporters, beat a hasty retreat.
By then Dancey was an adolescent. His parents had tried to get him into a private school, and then a parochial school. Dancey looked at Patrick with a cynical smile. “Those priests are your guys. The Stations of the Cross were barred. Parishes were changing on the South and West sides. The Church was trying to hold the line against an unstoppable tide of invaders. The school didn’t even want to see me. If they had, would I have gotten in?”
Lucy Wishbone and Ernie moved to the same street later. They had no contact with the others. Ernie was too old to play the kind of games Dancey and his pals played. He was a serious type. He had barely finished high school when he joined the Army. He had wanted the Marines. When he came back, somehow he got in the police force. When you think about it, the U.S. Army was probably the only sector of the society where the bar had been lifted, thanks to President Truman. Life for black guys was brutal in the service until Vietnam. Discrimination was rampant with fights between whites and blacks, harassment by commanding officers and sergeants. Change came when white guys depended for their lives on black squad leaders taking them through the jungle, mines, booby traps, ambushes, and holding steady in the trench when a snake slithered across their lives. Big change came with Nam. Now look who is giving orders.
It was an irony for me, who had worked for years overseas, impoverished by miserable pay compared to my fellow Americans, to be offered a job here as City Editor. I had borrowed the funds to flee to Europe, picking up freelance assignments. Not a penny from my family; they didn’t have any money and they didn’t approve. Jack Murphy, another Donkey I had met in Europe, recruited me for the Chicago job. We shared similar interests – young people and the explosions in their lives both of us believed would shape the future society. It was romantic and naive. He was brought back from Europe to be Managing Editor, and he was looking for someone to be City Editor. I joined up. I was fascinated by the race issue in America, by the power of young people seizing power, righting things, by the changing sexual mores, if that’s what you want to call young people breaking away from the rigidity of Calvinism and Irish-Anglo Catholicism. Jack and I believed our country was changing without us. I wanted to be part of it-- if not part of it, an observer. How much better than to be the City Editor of a major rag in one of the most race contentious cities in America? After a while, observing life in my new hometown, it dawned on me these kids may be taking off their clothes, fucking everyone in sight, obtaining instant gratification, but they weren’t experiencing pleasure, happiness, the joy to be alive. More importantly, and even Jack agreed, there wasn’t a city that isn’t infected with the same condition of racial antipathy. Anywhere, in America, in Europe, in Britain, in Africa, in Asia, in Russia. I was blind. Everyone’s blind. The race disease is a worldwide epidemic, and has been since the beginning of time. If you don’t look like me, I hate you.
Who am I to criticize? Look around the newsroom. When I arrived, there was none of dark skin. Today there’re a few. The HRM people cite the near impossibility of recruiting blacks, claiming they can make more money if they get an MBA and end up in the corporate world. I respond there’s a pool who see journalism as a career. I must confess those that I hired are no Edward R. Morrows. They aren’t among the world’s brightest light bulbs. Jack didn’t care: “Just find some blacks, bring them along with a little remedial work.” I could and I did. I have to say there was one success, at least as far as I’m concerned, a guy by the name of Arnie Gurnsey. Born in the projects, single mother, tiny apartment, he had scraped his way up, a fighter, survived primary school, somehow ended up in a Catholic high school, and then the State University. No, he didn’t take journalism courses or go to J School.
“How come you decided to be a reporter,” I asked him.
“I was lucky,” Arnie said.” I had this English prof. She was an old lady, but she took an interest in me. She said she never had a black guy who’d read all of Charles Dickens. Then she said, ‘Well, in fact, Mr. Gurnsey, I never had a white student who did and I’ve been teaching a long time.’ I told her I wanted to write novels. She kept pushing me, making me write down everything I saw each day and show it to her. She’d talk to me about my writing. I knew Dickens had been a reporter. She said that’s what I should do. I should become a reporter. You learn about things by doing them. Keep writing. Keep your stories short, sharp, to the point. Only put down what you know. I worked for a community newspaper. Then your personnel people recruited me for a trial. You know the craze to hire blacks. You must’ve liked what I did. Here I am.”
I did like this guy. I didn’t go to J school. I started out on a community newspaper in that fucking lousy town where I grew up. I was going to make him good. He didn’t need much help from me. Point him in the right direction. Let him get the experience. Tell him what’s wrong with the story.
Taking Calvin’s admonishment to heart, the white guys and gals need just as much remediation as the blacks. They’re on their own, as far as I’m concerned. The tide is out and the trade’s fallen to a low ebb.
Jack had introduced me around town. Dancey. David Mazur at the university. Reverent Gaines. Ernie Wishbone. I make sure one person leads to another. Jasper Joseph, Calvin Lance.
Dancey was as fair as a white man could be, with reddish hair, freckles across his Milton-preppy exterior, and deep green eyes. Roots were not traceable in this soil, the sturdy trees and their stumps bulldozed and strewn in the deep pits of slavery and deprivation. What would the genes show? Nothing that could be traced, since the Masters and their deacons obliterated whole peoples. There were many peoples ripped from different nations, tribes who in the dismemberment lost their unwritten histories. From the time he reached high school and had begun to figure out the way things were, Dancey had no intention of playing the role of Silky Coleman, that incomparable character Roth created out of real people and a culture not unlike what I found. No siree, passing wasn’t Dancey’s game.
Dancey was a high-priced corporate lawyer, but he still would take an hour to have coffee or a drink with Patrick or David Mazur. These little rendezvous always were at one of his clubs, or some elegant high-class, high-cost restaurant where they would sit in the bar.
Dancey told Patrick, “As a little kid, I was cute. For my teachers, the son of Judge James meant something good. As I grew up, my patrimony counted less than my appearance. There weren’t any white students, just the teachers. At first the teachers favored me. I’m sure they thought I was an odd duck who needed to be protected. I certainly didn’t fit in. It began to be murderous. Moses had stepped in before, always standing beside me. He knew this was going to be war with the bullies, the gangs in the hallways and on the street. For them, that I was the son of Judge James, came from the neighborhood, that under the white paint job I was as black as the rest of them made it worst. I didn’t belong. I looked different. I couldn’t even walk in the school hallway without some dude beating up on me. I remember the first week. I was taking a leak. Some guy grabbed me from behind. ‘Your pecker like my pecker, honkey creep?’ he said, spinning me around, his dick in his hand, large, dark brown, ugly at the end. ‘Suck it,’ he told me. I pushed back. He whacked me hard and then flashed a shiv in his other hand. ‘Suck,’ he said. At that point, Moses appeared from nowhere. I saw him over my attacker’s shoulder. His knee came up fast, hard, crunching my attacker’s balls. He bent over, grabbing his genitals, groaning loudly, his knife careening across the floor. Moses hissed, ‘Tell your pals, asshole, there’s more where that came from.’ Moses spun him around to the door. It wasn’t unusual for Moses to appear, deus ex machina from nowhere to protect me, Calvin or Jasper. I’m sure he wouldn‘t have known the expression.”
Dancey said, “I encountered nothing but gangs, drugs, uncontrolled noise and delinquency in the classrooms and hallways. The johns were especially dirty. You wondered what the janitors did besides paying dues to the union. The urinals smelled, clogged with paper towels, butts, hair, rubbers. The classrooms were just as unkempt. I’d sit in my chair, unable to hear the teacher over the shouting of the other students. A couple of guys would get up and begin to duke it out at the front of the room. The girls would take sides, cursing each other, dancing between the desks, pulling hair, wrestling on the floor. The teacher would summon the disciplinary officer who would silence the room and take a few miscreants with him. As soon as the door closed, the chaos began again. The hallways were just as noisy between classes as the classrooms during class, and wading through them was a safari through a bedlam littered with papers, gum wrappers, pop bottle caps. You needed a protector, if you were so out of kilter like me. You didn’t wonder why so many kids dropped out. This place wasn’t for humans. The teachers and staff thought we were animals. The law said we had to attend until 16. Truth be known, half the students weren’t there day to day. What animal’d survive those conditions? Animals slink into the bush away from whatever spot they’ve dirtied. We couldn’t. Animals. That’s all most of them thought about us. The teachers were worn out by the anarchy. Whatever idealistic fervor had propelled them had dissipated. Moses exercised the most control. He had a lock on running marijuana, finding girls, acting as a lookout when the bulls took a girl into the john, smoked a joint and screwed her. Moses was on the rise, but we didn’t grasp it then. He didn’t have a good relationship with the teachers. ‘Stand in the hall,’ an old Jew would shout at him. ‘Stand in the hall.’ Moses would get up. He didn’t have his Fu Manchu mustache then. Just a big, hulking ugly brute of a black boy, awkward in class and before his betters. His cheeks, where Lee had marched across them, were scared with the pits and crevices of acne, psoriasis and other skin eruptions you saw in older black men protected by beards that covered the tracks the troops left. He would leave the room, tripping over desks and chairs. I knew standing in the hall wasn’t good for anyone. I asked him once, ‘What’d you do out there?’ ‘Biz,’ he said, ‘a little here and a little there.’ ‘You weren’t attacked?’ ‘Nah,’ he shrugged. ‘Let em try. Oh sure, first time some bugger pushed me ‘ganst the wall. Hey Nigger, how cum you so ugly? Ise chopped him across his throat, Ise did. They sent me home. Ise got respect.’”
Dancey paused, “We stopped including Moses. He became separated from our lives.”
Dancey said, “There was another life for me. Even if I went to Reverend Gaines’ church after school or played ball with Calvin or Jasper, I’d end up at home, wash up and join my mother and sister to learn. We’d spend the time before supper on homework, oblivious to the world of poverty and crime around us. If we came home late, we’d wait until the table was cleared and then get started. Our father would join us for a short time. It didn’t matter very much that Ruth was ahead of me in school. Mother was a proficient and engaging one-room school teacher. I remember those times together before mother died. I remember how those times sitting together molded me, made me different than even bi-color made me. Can you understand that?”
Dancey told Patrick, “I did get something, something formative from the public schools. A few teachers figured out who wanted to learn. There weren’t many of us. In my class, me, Calvin, and Jasper. Those teachers that bothered were my heroes,” Dancey paused, “like my father, at least as I look back now. My father is, believe it, for me and hundreds of others he helped, for whom he was the standard,” Dancey said again as though to assure himself, “a hero.”
Of his mother, Dancey said little, and when he did he had to pause, as though a pill caught in his throat. Ruth told me, Patrick Flynn, about her. She had held the line against Bigger on the naming of their son. No Biblical derivation. Dancey would be named for her father. She kept Dancey close as a baby. Ruth recalled him following Esmeralda wherever she went in the house, upstairs or downstairs, or sitting on her lap in the kitchen. She had died suddenly when Dancey was just entering high school. One moment at home, the next at the hospital; she was dead before he could be taken to see her. Ruth said Dancey was so attached to his mother that when she died Reverend Gaines took Dancey to his home to stay for a while. The Judge and Esmeralda had named Ruth for the Biblical character, who had enchanted Boas and from whose line came Jesse and then David. She was unusual for an attractive girl and became a young woman early. Unlike other black girls, the Judge expected her to finish school, go to college, and to begin a professional career. A family, babies were not discussed.
Judge James never talked to his children about their mother. His mourning was deep, internal, without words. He had wept through the funeral, stood by the graveside beside Reverend Gaines, but believed, as he told his children, in redemption and the new world to come. He kept portraits of Esmeralda in the house until he remarried six years later when Dancey and Ruth no longer were at home. Then he put the photographs away. Isabel, the new wife, found them, and she put them around again. She was a devoted member of Reverend Gaines’ Pentecostal church. After the wedding ceremony, she and Bigger James were baptized by the minister right there in the church. “Never too many times,” she told Dancey and Ruth. When Ruth and Dancey came home for visits, Isabel talked to them about their mother. At first, Dancey found it strained, a subject he wished she wouldn’t bring up. But she persisted, pressing them about their memories. It became natural. The two of them loved Isabel for allowing them the grief their father had denied. They were able to remember. For Ruth it became sacred, for Dancey a sadness that some times smoldered in sullenness.
Dancey had come to perceive Calvin and Jasper differently. Of Moses, he had a lingering feeling of guilt, perhaps even remorse. He would put it this way, “We came from families on the make. Our parents were determined their children would break into the main stream of America. Calvin’s mother, it was true, was on the make in a way different than the others to assure her son’s future. The Moores, who failed with Moses, nevertheless had tried very hard, knew the score and didn’t pause for a moment in making possible Moses’ entry. Did we reject Moses, exclude him as we matured, because he didn’t fit our image of white America?”
Jasper’s old man had stashed enough away to pay for college by the time Jasper entered high school. Jasper didn’t have a choice about making it. His father beat him whenever he wavered from the path.
Patrick said to Dancey, “This quest for a holy grail was unusual for blacks at that time. Blacks were not like the immigrants who came here determined to make it. Off the boats, they’d take any job.”
Dancey shot back, “Off the boats we were sold. If that isn’t bad enough, today, generations of blacks have grown up on welfare, a helping hand that’s clutching a hammer, banging us down, perpetuating broken families, destroying them, just as slavers did. The door’s closed. You rot in place to be succeeded by your children and your children’s children. I know Ruth disagrees. She pins it on slavery, the anger buried in our repressed memories of enslavement, of bondage and of humiliation. I don’t.”
Dancey told Patrick, “Our father never measured success by accrued wealth, although he knew little was possible without it. He was different. Our circumstances were different. We’d a real home. We may’ve been denied entry to most of the white world, but we were middle-class, pushing to be designated officially members of a higher and better caste. Jasper’s mother slaved for him. His father was rarely around. The old man runs a small janitor supply business. He works at it day and night. It’s still around. Jasper has a piece of it. His father, Jasper Senior, goes there everyday. I go down to visit him every now and then. He’s parked behind a desk in overalls. A fuller face than Jasper, but his son adopted the same closely trimmed mustache. He says to me, ‘You seen my boy? He’s a chip off the old block, a real piece of work in progress. Course, unlike me he don’t have to scrape and save each penny, hold on for dear life. No sir, he don’t need do any of that. He’s makin’ something bigger.’ Jasper Senior’s very shrewd. A leg up was given MBE and WBE companies when diversity became a requirement, if you wanted to do business with the government, any government, even get a contract, get funding. There were lots of white sharpies with black fronts. Jasper Senior’s was legit MBE.” Dancey said, “I do a lot of litigation on behalf of the real firms, like Japser’s. It’s a necessary but great racket. When you consider the past, change is change. Until then, Jasper’s father was barely eeking out a dollar. Now, the city, university, hospitals order some of their janitorial goods from him. I’m sure the big companies will undercut his pricing so much that he’ll lose private sector customers. He’ll survive. Like the rest of our parents, Jasper’s mother wanted her son educated. She drummed into his skull that he’d have to make it big to make it at all. The old man picked up the mantra and put his muscle behind it. Calvin’s upbringing was typical. He never knew his father and rarely saw his mother. She was busy on the street. Sometimes she’d bring home a john. Often she’d not come home for a couple of days. He was on his own. His mother put food on the table, clothes in the closet, but most of all she made sure he’d get his education. Moses’ parents kept him on a very tight string. He wasn’t allowed out other than to play with us and go to church and church activities. Officially. I’m sure he sneaked out. His father worked in an auto parts factory across town and his mother was a nurse at the black hospital. Neither was home on a regular basis. We formed a close-knit group in school. For other kids, making it in the gang, just getting in, was a big step in the neighborhood. You were blessed. It was going to Communion in the middle of the street. Unlike God, the gang took care of you, if you did what you were told. Confession was forbidden and absolution unnecessary. The rewards were good. You didn’t have to rely on your mother or your father, if you had one. You relied on the gang. Instead, we had Reverend Gaines. Of course, Jasper and I had parents. I thought Moses did.
“Moses maintained alliances with the gangs for self-preservation. None of us joined, perhaps because we spent a lot of time in Reverend Gaines’ church, evenings, weekends, and of course at the Sunday service when Calvin’s mother’d show up with her son. She’d be enveloped in a mink in winter and gussied in the current high fashion in spring and summer. Quite different from the outfit, revealing, cheaply sexy, that she strolled the streets up north where the johns were interested in the unusual. She was beautiful, alluring, looked like a million bucks available for whatever activity you could afford. With those attributes, black was unusual, especially in those neighborhoods. Of course everyone dressed up for church, but she stood out, glamorous, fingers and earlobes flashing diamonds, never risqué, always conservative in her top of the line choice and cut. Calvin wasn’t ashamed of his mother. In those years, he was proud to be part of her parade. The Moore and Joseph families were done up in the best they could afford of suits and dresses off the discount rack. They didn’t sit anywhere near Calvin and his mother. Like my father, I wore a simple dark suit and dark tie, and Ruth was proper in her outfit of dark blue dresses to mid-calf. My father didn’t care whom he sat near. He saw worse in his courtroom. It didn’t make any difference to him and he was sure it wouldn’t to his children.”
At that time, it was unusual for the Danceys of that world to get into Harvard. Smaller colleges recruited in the inner city. Dancey was heads and shoulders the best of his class and received a full scholarship to a small Quaker liberal arts college that he said had assumed the White Man’s burden.
Dancey said, “I kid you not, Patrick, I was very popular, with the guys and the coeds. I didn’t declare my ethnicity – what a word! None of my college mates thought about me as a young black man. I didn’t look it. I hadn’t sent out announcements. Ruth visited one weekend. You couldn’t mistake her. I got a charge of introducing my sister to everyone, roommates, teachers, to anyone we encountered walking around this Midwestern campus made up to look like a college in western Massachusetts. Ruth was boning up on her chemistry and she intended to go to medical school eventually. Ruth has always been outspoken. Even as a little girl, my older sister said whatever she thought at that instant. When we’d meet someone, she’d start talking about the inner city, life in the jungle, and how pleasant it was to be here in the Bantu lands. Did they gulp? I couldn’t believe it later when she became a public health professional heading a large community hospital in a nearly all white suburb.
“By the end of the weekend, there was shock of recognition. They didn’t have a choice. I was black. No questions about it. The original abolitionists had their man. Even the non-Quakers suffered from White Guilt, or they wouldn’t be there. There were a few other blacks on campus, beside the cleaning people, and a black assistant professor of German. The black students beat a wide berth around me. Would it be different for me today when all the blacks hang together? I’m not sure they’d welcome me anymore than they did then. They certainly didn’t then when they found out. There were encounters. Guys would get together and I’d be one of them. But there was tension, distance I didn’t experience with my white roommates. There were no black coeds then. And the girls? They were turned on. I can remember dating the girl who looked most like a prom queen. At a glance, one of the black students came up. ‘Hey, Dancey brother, nothing at home?’ I knew what he meant. I could’ve punched him out. Why bother? ‘You ought to try some,’ I whispered in his ear. He snickered, but I knew he didn’t have the courage to ask. She was a sweet girl, an empty head, sweeter in bed when I was going down on her. They all seemed to want to be fucked by a black guy. Test it out. Was it as big as they heard? I didn’t have to worry about lynching. There were no complaints. They came back for more.”
Dancey wanted to become a lawyer like his father, but he had other more immediate plans. Sometime in his final year, he decided to take a year off to work for the Quakers in Africa. He had considered the Peace Corps. He had a healthy skepticism about the government. He didn’t want to join up. Beside, he thought it would be easier through his college to make contact with the American Friends Service Committee. He didn’t get anywhere. The Judge arranged for Dancey to meet Gaines on a Saturday morning at the church office to talk about his plans. Years had put flesh on Reverend Gaines. He had an aura of powerfulness when he entered a room, or stood on the pulpit, or stood by the bier at the funeral home to say goodbye and send you on your way. His emphasis was on children and families.
Dancey told me he and Gaines sat across from each other at the minister’s conference table. “I know the Pastor would’ve seen me without my father asking. But my father volunteered.” Dancey said, “You couldn’t help but admire Daniel Gaines. All the kids knew about him. His fight for rights. Marching with Martin. Breaking every barrier. Standing up to the university and the city when they tried to urban renew the neighborhood and of course remove the ‘Negroes.’ Once the covenants fell, my father moved across the border. After I married I bought a house right in the university’s golden triangle. The Pastor challenged those who made it to the middle class to come back to his church in the old neighborhood, tiptoeing across the battlefields. Since there was no middle class in the neighborhoods around the church, that meant they lived and worked elsewhere. They returned on Sundays, and, while they freely gave when tithed by the church, had yet to resettle nearby. You could hardly blame them. I didn’t know all of that when I went to see him. I did know the area was worst from when we moved out. My father knew it was going down, torn by gang wars, drugs, arson, rape and murder. Unlike the sacking of Rome or Jerusalem, it was a slow process by ravagers domiciled there.
“Reverend Gaines was dressed in a dark brown suit. His hair was cut very short and he had big bushy eyebrows and a trim mustache, all of which were freckled with white. He was ramrod straight behind his desk, lifting his arms out to me. The Pastor wanted to know why I didn’t work in his community. He said, ‘our community.’ He’d find me plenty of work for any number of organizations, including the church. ‘Your church,’ he said. At first I thought of caving in. Why not? But I’d been romanced by the dreams of going overseas. I think, I told him, ‘I’ve studied for this. I want to do it. I’ll come back in a year or so. I’ll volunteer and work here.’ I knew I sounded weak. He didn’t blink an eye. Reverend Gaines was a quick read of other people and I am sure he saw right through me. He said he’d call a friend of his at the AFSC in Philadelphia. Then he asked me about my friends, Calvin and Moses. About Jasper, he knew a great deal, since Jasper was studying for the ministry. ‘Calvin was going to business school,’ I told him, ‘and Moses, well Moses I haven’t had much to do with. I’m worried about him. None of us seems to have any contact.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I worry about all three of them. About Moses, I wonder whether we cut him off because he’s so different than the rest of us.’ I said I didn’t know what he meant. He shook his head. He said, ‘There’s not much to do now.’ Then he looked straight at me: ‘I don’t worry about you. Strange, isn’t it? I think you’ll be okay. Angry. You’ve got to deal with your anger. You’ve got to overcome it. I’m not asking the impossible.’
“‘Why,’ I asked. I wasn’t angry about anything. Maybe the occasional slight. But I had it made, I thought.
“‘Angry about your mother’s death. Angry about your father’s strictness. You’ve inherited his anger. You may find a way. I hope so.’
“I went home. I forgot what he said about me, at least until I grew up. I didn’t forget what he said about Moses. It still sticks.”
When Dancey and Patrick saw each other again, Patrick was in a mean mood, smarting from a publisher’s holddown, which meant a smaller news hole. He wanted to talk about bigger things, the state of the economy, the labor unions that he claimed were killing the paper, the fact that the newspaper wasn’t selling at the newsboxes in the city, that circulation was heading toward the suburbs, but still south, and that the robber baron owners were sweeping in the dough regardless. “They cried about a drop in the margin,” Patrick crooned, “but going from 27 per cent to 17 per cent isn’t so bad, considering everything else.” Dancey wanted to talk about Moses, and he did it at first by talking about himself, where he had left off some time ago.
Dancey said Alexander Blatchforth, the AFSC Quaker, called from Philadelphia in response to Reverend Gaines. Blatchforth told him there weren’t many positions for which the AFSC paid, even travel expenses, but they should talk. He’d see him when he visited the college on one of his swings through the Midwest. “Anyone Reverend Gaines recommends is high on my list. Ask for the moon. Maybe I’ll bring it.”
Blachforth showed up at the college. Dancey said he walked into the Commons Room to see this silver-haired, pale guy sipping tea at a round table. He spoke softly. The AFSC worked in Central and East Africa. I told him I wanted an assignment in French West Africa. I’m fluent in French. I said I‘d studied French West Africa. I knew they were desperately poor countries. “I wish it was possible,” Blatchford said. “But East Africa’s where we need help. The work’s largely physical. I don’t think there’ll be any teaching. You’ll dig trenches and postholes beside local peoples. Perhaps you’ll help train them. More than likely, you’ll learn from them, if you’re willing, learn how to build health clinics, distribute food, till fields. We always think we can do it better and faster, but what we do often doesn’t fit their needs. You’ve got to learn from them to know their needs. They’re the best teachers.”
I was put off. I knew he was also.
Blatchforth looked at me with curiosity. “You’re a member of Reverend Gaines’ church?”
“Sure. My mother and father were in the original congregation.”
“I see.”
I knew what Blatchford saw. I wasn’t going to undo his confusion. I knew Blatchford had wanted to ask the question when I first came in the room and hadn’t. Let him figure it out. Let him ask Reverend Gaines.
Even if not French toast, I liked the idea of a black man who looked white in Darkest Africa. If I’d end up in Kenya, English was the spoken word. So what? It was overseas. It was Africa. The idea was the Western Idea. I’d learned in school about the Great Civilizations, starting with the Greeks and the Romans, European and American history. I’d savored each moment, each class, the sense of learning. Was it about me?
“Different strokes for my friends. Jasper had gone to bible school, a seminary that he thought would lead to the pulpit, with a stop along the way to learn business administration. Calvin was finishing up his mostly business-related courses at the State University. He didn’t have to worry about whether his studies were about him, his culture. The lesson to be learned was to succeed and success was measured in more trangible terms than those to which I was introduced. There weren’t lots of blacks taking those courses. Calvin did very well. He was admired by his professors. As I told the Pastor, he planned to go to business school. He had a lot of offers, which was unusual since most prominent business schools didn’t give scholarships. Northwestern was desperate for him. Sure, it had a lot to do with his academic achievement at State, but it also had a lot to do with the fact he was black, engaging, a real leader on the way up.”
Patrick interrupted him. “You don’t think, Dancey, it was Calvin’s ability to charm slime off a snake?”
Dancey ignored the sarcasm, “Calvin has charm. But he has ability. Real ability. He began talking about Moses.
“Moses’ goals were immediate. He’d dropped out of high school to pursue his businesses. College wasn’t in the cards. At first, I didn’t know what businesses. I hadn’t stayed in touch, as I had with Calvin and Jasper. I didn’t know much about Moses. Maybe it was Moses’ appearance. His lack of couth. Is that the word? I think of it and wonder about what Reverend Gaines said when we buried Moses. He wasn’t like us. Moses wanted quick rewards. To the despair of his parents, he was hustling. He didn’t care about the making of civilizations. I visited Moses’ parents. They were hard to find, since both worked almost constantly. Neither had much to say about Moses. ‘We’re out of touch with him, Dancey,’ his mother’d tell me. ‘He don’t stop around anymore. We ain’t lookin’ for him.’ Moses’ father said nothing, staring down, a look of pain on his face.
“He saw me on the street one day and offered a ride. I hopped into his Eldorado. Like the one he was buried in, it was very fancy, very comfortable with every convenience, but a john. The radio was Carnegie Hall. The music wasn’t. Moses drove to the old neighborhood. The car smelled of pimp oil and jett. We didn’t say much until we were sitting together in a rubble-strewn little park not far from where we had lived. Moses was dressed better than any of us, tailored in designer jacket and tie, shoes that must’ve cost $500, but still couldn’t diminish his huge feet that stuck out like a duck’s, a silk scarf wound around his neck from his chin to his chest.
“ ‘My god, Moses, what’re you doing?’
“ ‘Just payin my dues, brother.’
“I was taken back. People called each other brother and sister at Rev. Gaines’ church. There it was accompanied by Praise the Lord. I wasn’t hearing that commitment from Moses. He sat beside me, his hair teased straight back, his big nose descending over the Fu Manchu mustache, the same scared cheeks with little hairs now folded over the indentations, his wide lips grinning, his hands caressing the Armani weave that covered his lap, quite a lap.
“ ‘I’se doin’ well, Bro, and ‘bout to do better. Believe me. You know, Calvin’s goin’ to business school. He should come work with me. I’se show him a thing or two. He stops around, does Calvin, but he don’t stay long to talk to the likes of me. Yeah, I’se ain’t stayin’ around here for long either. Believe me. Nothin’ wrong with the place. Just small potats.’
“ ‘And your mom and dad?’
“Moses frowned. ‘What can I’se say? They don’t get it. Won’t take my bucks. Not good ‘nuf for them. Nope. Too bad. Save ‘em from slavery. Yeah. I’se could set ‘em up good. But nothin doin. Don’t want me round.’
“ ‘I can’t believe that.’
“ ‘Things changed here, Dance. Big changes. What’d you think I’se called on the street?’
“I didn’t know. Must’ve shook my head.
“ ‘Muchie. Yeah, me. Muchie Moore. You think I’se resent it? Nope. Fine with me. Some brothers stop me. They say, hey Muchie, what’s doin’? That’s respect.’
“ ‘And Reverend Gaines?’
“ ‘Sure I’se see him. He talks to me when I’se go to the church. He talks to me about mom and dad. Honor your ma and pa, I’se takes it. He’s okay.’
“ ‘I mean does Reverend Gaines call you Muchie?’
“ ‘You kiddin’? Course not. I’se Moses. I’se Moses to my folks. Moses to you, Right? But here on the southside, on the westside, up North, wherever Muchie do business, Muchie’s Muchie Moore. I’se like it.’
“I pointed across the street where Muchie’s gold-plated Eldorado with its platinum wheels was parked. Several spaces down two guys with popeye hats and shades sat in a beat up black Buick.
“ ‘Who’re the goons, Moses?’
“ ‘Them’s my boys. They’s watch over me.’
“ ‘What happens when someone buys them?’
“ ‘That’s tomorrow. Today’s today.’
“ ‘And the cops?’
“ ‘Never worry about em, Dance. They’s gotta make a buy to bust me. I’se knows all em. Listen, Dance, you’d do good with me. Honkeys the bosses. Can you believe it? I’se deal with brothers. But the brothers deal with these ofay guys. They’s Fort Knox. Big time. I’se knows the top guy. Oh yes, finds out. Now, you’re as white as they. Think about it, Dance. We’d move in.’
“He kept on talking. ‘They’s everywhere, collectin’. You buy from em. The price ain’t right, but the price’s right. Then theys deliver. You’d be my banker. We’d clean up.’
“ ‘Right. And disappear forever.’
“ ‘I’se get lots more brothers than those two,’ Moses said, pointing to the Buick.
“At that moment, a car careened around the corner, Moses went down flat on the rubble, and the two goons opened the front doors of the Buick, dropping down behind these shields. I didn’t know what to do – drop to the ground, broken glass, empty cans, nails, probably dog shit, or take a couple of slugs. Indecision. I wasn’t trained for this. The car headed up the street without stopping. Moses sat back up.
“ ‘It’s not a life for me, Moses,’ I said.
“ ‘It ain’t a life. It’s a living. Real good. Best cunt. Best pad. Best booze. Respect. Respect. You know, Dance, no one paid me respect ‘til now.’
“ ‘That’s not true, Moses. All of us, me, Calvin, Jasper, Reverend Gaines.’
“ ‘All you what? You an Oreo boy, Dance, only the chocolate’s inside. Calvin’s a sharpie, and Jasper’s the same, only dressed in drag, a priest’s costume. You seen him?’ He didn’t wait for my response. ‘Gaines? Well, Gaines’ okay. But I’se ain’t goin anywhere in church. Baptised once’s baptized ‘nuf.’
“ ‘You’re going to continue ducking and running?’
“ ‘Ain’t running. I’se taking. It’s good, bro. Real good. Some day these ofay guys’ll bankroll me. Yeah, that’s the day. No middle man. No Nigger takin’ his cut. Me, Muchie Moore, direct to the top. Respect.’
“He gave me that big childish grin again. I loved him. I loved him for taking care of me. I loved him for loving me.
“I knew what Muchie meant on the street. I grieved for my childhood chum and I grieved for Moses’ parents.”
If it wasn’t Dancey, it was David Mazur. Patrick Flynn felt more relaxed with Mazur. He never interrupted and he didn’t want to tell his own story. He would listen to Patrick, hardly ever interrupting. “I’m not asleep,” he would tell Patrick. “I’m paying attention. I just have heavy Levantine eyelids.” Patrick was laid back. He could say anything to Mazur, like setting it down in a diary he could lock up: I’m looking at these events, listening to Dancey over the years, listening to Ruth, and those two incorrigibles, Calvin and Jasper. I’m a white man looking and a white man listening. What am I missing? What do all of us miss when we look at someone else different from us? Are we distracted? Some say nothing, and press ahead, having gazed at photographs of someone else that are interesting to us only for that moment of looking. Some compensate and make matters worse. As for me, I recognize my limitations. I wasn’t trained at some J school, but on the street. I started with a rural daily in farm country too many years ago to count. I’d little or no contact with my home, my parents, my abusive father who used to beat the shit out of me, sock sock, drunkenly whack my mother, even when she said nothing. When she did, the words were mean and laced with bitterness. My brother and sisters seemed to escape his wrath. They avoided me, the eldest, from the time they could speak as though I smelled bad. I can remember their sitting at the table with my mother and me. The old man never showed up for supper. My siblings never looked at me, or talked to me. What had I done? Sure, I read all the time, unless, according to my mother, I was committing some sin. After college, after a few years with the rural daily, picking up a contact here and there, I made my way to Europe, anything to get away, eventually basing myself in London. I picked up story assignments that sent me everywhere, at first meager freelance assignments (agriculture or farm stories, interviews of visiting dignitaries from the homeland, or, on that rare occasion, some horrific act to which I could find local angles.) I padded my expenses so I could eat better than the bastards paid me. I got a good reputation for looking and listening and conveying what I saw and heard. You sourced everything. In other words, you said who saw and said what, where and why. For me the most important of the what, where and why was who. Who is what interests readers and listeners. It’s the same today. If only the new generation got it. Who tells you more than what and where. Who tells you why, or at least asks the question. That’s all a good journalist needs to know. We’re reporters. Not so different from any other trade. Put the parts together properly and then assemble them.
My childhood’s far away. I remember only the negative, but that’s the way I am. The Donkeys in my small Ohio town had their own pasture. We didn’t see any blacks and they didn’t see us. For us, and I suppose everyone else, they were the Niggers. The Jews were just beginning to infiltrate the Presbyterian and Methodist strongholds, but not in my R.C. neighborhood. We were near the bottom. Only the blacks were farther down, a change from when blacks were property and treated of greater value to their American owners than my indentured ancestors. Where the Jews came from, none of us knew, although our parents talked about the Kikes coming over the hill, Christ killers, every last one of them. When I was kicked out of parochial school by the nuns, I began to encounter Jews in public school. Some of them would turn up at the public library where I got my hands on all the books I could. Then two black guys showed up in my class. The Jews tried to make nice nice, but the blacks kept to themselves. They were taunted daily: Eenie, meanie, minie, moe, catch a Nigger by the toe. If he hollers, let him go. I joined the chorus, because I wanted to belong to all the children I looked like, even like the Jewish kids who hid among us. We knew who were the Jews. They seemed to have decided to live with the derision with which we treated them. We few Papists in the public school escaped recognition, although in those years there was the occasional cross burnings at the corner where St. Mary’s rose in faux Gothic gray and behind which in a series of connected buildings the nuns conducted the lessons, rulers and paddles handy.
Every now and then, one of the black guys would lash out and there’d be a horrendous fight, during which he’d be pummeled on the ground by a group of six to ten of us, until an adult, teacher, passerby, or even a cop would intervene. Stood up, he’d get his fill of about such beastly behavior on his part. If it was a teacher, he would be marched off to the principal’s office. I hated the place, and I hated my home where I had no connection with anyone, not my sisters nor my brother. My mother was focused on protecting herself and the younger children. My father was deep in the sauce and by the time he got home he was incapable of fucking my mother. He made up for it by beating her. Maybe that was positive, since no more kids were produced, unlike our neighbors who had six boys and three girls, each a year older than the next in line. I didn’t belong there and I didn’t belong with the kids I grew up with. I got through public school and ended up at Creighton. From Creighton I worked as a reporter until I got my ticket overseas. Any time we had a decent story about sex, scandal, murder, I’d freelance it. The Creighton experience had its impact, not diminished by the new gentleness of the Jesuit culture, coupled with the traditional fondness for learning, for the written word, for language. I was a shy boy. Dancey shares a common language with me to talk about literature, the arts and social history. Surely, that’s part of our relationship. I’m sure it must be the same with you, Davey. The Peloponnesian War, the French Revolution, Balzac and Flaubert, Defoe and Dante. We were seeking a more robust philosophy for a civilized society.
I envied Dancey his familial relationships, the natural affection and relationships you’re supposed to have, although I knew those with his father were difficult. My father and siblings were all infected by the disease of racism and separation, and I gave them up to the illness. I myself was cured by high school. It was a regional high school, serving three counties each with its little population. Unlike grade school, there were black students and they banded together. You didn’t taunt them unless you were prepared for a real dust up. The two guys from grade school, Benny and George, loners then, now could be joiners. I saw them differently and I saw all of us differently. I began going home to our neighborhood with them, first just tailing along and then walking along, first not talking at all. After weeks where we were equally uncomfortable, we began to chat about school. My sisters and brother were better behaved than me. They were going to the school at St. Mary’s, before my sisters went to St. Regina High School for Girls and my brother to Pius. The girls saw me walking home with Benny and George and word got around. “What you doin’ with those niggers,” my father asked, and then cuffed me a couple of times across the back of my head.“Next thing you know they’ll be chasin’ your sisters, lad.”
That didn’t stop me. I got to know Benny and George pretty well. There wasn’t anything blacks guys and white guys could do together. You couldn’t get a soda together. No blacks at the soda fountain. You couldn’t go to the movies together. Blacks and whites didn’t go at the same time. You certainly couldn’t attend the same dances. On Friday night records were played in the public high school gym, parents standing around, the men chatting among themselves, some looking at mothers with rarely if ever wish fulfillment. The moms kept close watch on the dancers, inhibited by the presence of their boys and girls, but comfortable in their homogeneity.
Benny, George and I smoked on the way home. We parted company when they crossed the tracks, and I would wander back to the street that led to Canaryville. I never knew what happened to those guys. They didn’t finish high school. I have a memory of them in baggy pants and big shoes, unbuttoned laces, shirts tucked into their waists where belts were supposed to hold things tight. I know talking to them every afternoon on the way back changed me. You could talk to each other. You could listen and they would listen. You could understand what the other guy felt, or at least that’s what you came to believe. My brain cells softened and the optic nerve disentangled itself from what I’d been brought up to see, like the arms of a man suddenly stretching out in a great inner release to touch the sky. Looking, looking back, they were my secret pals, my first friends.
My first crush in London was an East Indian girl born in Jamaica, not much more than 16 or 17, who worked in a dirty little restaurant with grimy windows, where the perspiration from the steam ran in rivulets through the dirt. She cleared tables, washing up, nicking something here and there to take home to her parents and brothers and sisters in their bedsitter near Kings Cross. It was a two roomer crammed with the parents, Lillie, her two little brothers and her two little sisters. I’d stop in at the dive, a fish and chips house with steaming pots of tea, weak coffee, and scalding milk for both. It offered two incentives - a cheap meal, and I could watch Lillie. There’re many fish and chip houses just like it, but I couldn’t take my eyes from her movements between the tables. She knew I was watching her. I’m sure all the men watched her. She had the sexiness of a young girl growing up in the way she held herself, in the way she moved about the dirty tables. She was skinny, not slender, and her stained white smock hid all the feminine features I dreamed of her having. I thought of her when I made it to my room in the basement of a Paddington rooming house, where I was under the spell of Crown Prince Onan.
I was still shy. Neither college nor working for the rural daily and a year or so in Europe had led to any sophisticating experiences with girls. The few social experiences at Creighton failed to mold me differently from the sullen, thrashed oldest son whose father’s drunken rages queered his ability to move gracefully with others. In London, I was writing for a couple of papers in the States and stringing for a few radio stations. Lillie always made sure to wipe my table when I sat down and take away the dirty dishes. The special treatment excited me, since I could see everywhere else sticky tables, piles of dishes, dirty glasses, crumbles from biscuits, the leftovers from the previous patrons. One evening I got up my courage and asked her when she got off. She told me when the place closed about 10 p.m. I asked her how she got home. “Take the late bus,” she said. “The night bus?” “Yes, night bus,” she said, in a tone of derision about the stupidity of my question. I wanted to hear her talk, the accent, foreign to my ear but pleasing like a lilting birdsong. “What about a jazz club after work,” I asked. She looked at me for a moment. Then she shook her head in the affirmative. I said I’d come by at 10. If she was late, I’d wait outside.
I took her to the club that first time. I was a white guy walking into the club with a brown girl. Typical British, no one said anything. People looked. You could see the men turning from the performers up front to see us sit at a little table to the side. This was a place to get a drink when the pubs closed. I ordered bitters for us. She liked that and sipped away at hers like a real pro. I wasn’t much good with the booze then. Down the hatch and then another. She put her hand on the top of the glass.
“ Patty (she never said Paddy, which I hated, and Patty was worse),” she said, “Patty, you had enough if you want my friend. Listen the music.” We listened in that tense atmosphere. It didn’t get better that night when the drummer, a hulking black guy with dreadlocks, stopped by the table. “Hey, little lady, what’dye doin with this honkey?” “He my man,” she said. The words sounded funny coming from the little mouth on the fine face, a little girl’s face under the dark black rivers of hair, held in place by a brown and gold curved metal strip. She took my hand from the table and held it up in her own. The drummer sat with us, talking about London and how much he hated it. He wanted to go back to New York. Not that everything was right there, he said, but he knew the ropes. He smoked a joint and went back to the band. Lillie picked up the butt, made a roach out of it, and sucked away. I took her to Kings Cross that night, riding with her on the bus. Without her smock, she looked even better, wrapped in a brownish dress that came around her thin shoulders, covered the rest of her body to well below her knees. You could see how thin she was, right to the skinny legs that jutted from the bottom of the dress into the sneakers she wore. I got her to Kings Cross and walked with her through the streets to her door.
The way was littered with trash, shreds of newspapers in Bengali or some other subcontinent script, empty bottles, dog shit, pieces of clothing, the detritus of poverty and wasted lives. It was a sad journey since the road wouldn’t lead any of the inhabitants to a better land. They were marked by indelible color and accent, They wouldn’t escape. I didn’t hold her hand as we walked, but walked instead close beside her, asking her about her family. There was nothing she held back. Her father arrived from Jamaica, taking a job in London Transport, sending for his girl and their daughter, Lillie. “Had they married?” I asked. “Who know,” she said. “Matters not. Lillie a babe in mother’s arms. My sisters and brothers born here.” She placed her hand over her mid-section, fingers spread out. “No stopping. Mother always there. I’m first to school. But school not for long. My mother exhausted. What’s work for her? What’s a tired mother. Four screaming babies. And me. She too tired do anything, even cleaning. When I bleed, time to work. Old enough. Why not work? Men leave tips. Little bit here and there. They like me. Can you imagine skinny dark girl? Wiping up dirt. Just dress, only arm, move by man’s legs and arms. They like girls. Tips. I know that. Should I be fear?”
I asked her if she had gone out with other men.
She said only, “I like you. You be gentle. Are you?” She stood in front of the door where she lived.
I said I’d be gentle with her. She went in. I watched the pitch black hair, the last shred of her, swallowed up behind the door.
One night she told me that the restaurant would start being open to 3 p.m. on Saturdays. “Would I pick her up afterwards? Big change.” She used the words. I’d been going by before closing on week nights and taking her to a movie or the club, or just straight home. With the fact of her agreeing, of her accompanying me I was beginning to gain some confidence in myself. That first Saturday I picked her up. She wanted to walk around the Serpentine. We took a bus to the park and began our walk. Instead of the usual shapeless sack, she wore a dress with sleeves that came to below her shoulders, a waist that drew in above a pleated skirt that dropped to her knees. Her little body fitted tightly into the garment. She looked nice. She probably picked it off a barrow in her neighborhood. You could see it was cheap, but she didn’t look cheap in it. We walked around the lake, sitting for a while on a bench. I held her hand and she put her head on my shoulder.
She said to me, “We be different.”
I didn’t know at first what she meant. Then I understood. Not only were there no mixed couples anywhere to be seen on this Saturday afternoon, there were no dark people.
‘I guess we are,” I told her. “Does it bother you?” She just smiled back at me.
I asked her if she wanted to try one of the little rowboats. She liked the idea and I rented one. We were paddling slowly when the rain came, a typical London rain, not too intense. Nevertheless, you got drenched, and especially if you were out on a boat unprotected, no hat, no umbrella, and nowhere to duck, not even the tube entrance. I made it back to the dock and helped her out. Her teeth were chattering
‘I’ll take you home,” I told her.
She said no, she wanted to go to my flat. I was taken back. She spoke decisively, not giving me an option. I folded her in my arms to try to keep her warm, as wet as I was, and then found a cab. .
My place wasn’t much. A room with a shilling meter and a little alcove in which there was a cooking element that also gobbled my shillings. You kept things cool by putting them in the box outside the window, a risky business in that I lived in the basement. Like every place I ever lived, it was piled with books and magazines, on the floor, on the cot, on the table, on the chair. I’m a big reader about trends. I want to know what people are thinking, what they’re doing, where they’re going, who’s dying, or has, since that’s the ultimate unsought destination. Maybe that’s what made Jack Murphy and me compatriots, sitting in a bar in Paris with a bunch of other reporters. They’re talking about American sports teams, scores, and Jack about a book on racism and revolution. I’d read it.
Besides the books and magazines, what’s there to say about my digs: a cot covered by a red blanket I picked up in Camden Town, pulled near the heating rod, next door to my reading chair, with its busted arms, and a lamp, and the table armed with my typewriter. I had tacked up a few photos and reproductions on the walls with push pins. There was a hunk of carpet on the floor the Irish landlady donated. She liked me, Patrick Flynn, an Irish American, possibly a distant relative. Was I that different from the single men and women who hired rooms from her to perch while they worked at whatever kind of subsistence job they could get, shop girls and clerks, transport workers, apprentices to the professions? For her, I was different. For the other roomers, and I hoped I was not them, it was a stopping off place for a year at most. Some times someone stayed longer; in those cases it meant they’d never make it and in the end would lose their jobs and the room. You asked, Davey, why I rented a room in this grim Paddington basement? The real story is that I couldn’t find a place when I arrived in London. Nope. I bunked with an American working for the AP who was waiting for his wife to come over. I looked in the papers everyday and scouted bulletin boards. All the ads said “Europeans Only.” I had met Jack Murphy already. He called one day from Paris to ask how I was doing. I told him about my problem finding a flat or even a room. He couldn’t stop laughing. “Europeans Only,” he said, “that’s you. Look in a mirror. That’s to keep out the darkies. Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Indians and Pakistanis. You qualify, asshole. Geez, Flynnsky, what a naïf.”
My landlady had her rules, including you couldn’t take a bath after 10 p.m. or before 6 a.m. When I moved in, she knocked on the door and said, No indiscreet behavior, emphasis with lots of ees on the discreet. She liked me enough to stuff the cracks in my windows and doors with pieces of newspapers to stem the cold damp draft that cursed the room and seemed to follow me wherever I went in London.
I had no fear of her bursting into my room at 5 p.m. on that Saturday afternoon, since I knew she wouldn’t be there. She was visiting a friend in Belfast that weekend. I put a shilling in the meter to get the place semi-warm and put another in the heating element in the alcove to make hot water for tea or the dreadful Nescafe everyone drank. When I came back into my room, Lillie was under the blanket, her wet dress draped over the chair with her undergarments. I was alarmed.
“Patty, you come. Keep Lillie warm,” she said. I took off my wet clothes and joined her under the blanket. We fitted together on the narrow cot, her slight figure and my wiry legs and arms. I began to rub her and she moved against my hands and then stretched against me. She was thin, very thin, but she was well formed. Her little breasts hardened under my hands and her whole body began to warm up. I was excited, but fearful, so I turned her on her stomach and continue to rub her gently until she turned over and put her arms around me, nuzzling my ear. “Make warm, Patty. Make Lillie warm,” she told me. It was my first time having sex with a woman, a girl, and I was frightened. What if she became pregnant? What about the clap? But she wasn’t scared. She was caressing me. Her thin arms held me. Her thin legs bent so I fitted between them, and then she wrapped them around my body. She was drawing me to her and dissolving my fear in the hardness of my erection. Sure, she had to be experienced. This wasn’t her first engagement. I mounted her and became so pleasantly aware of her blackness as I entered it, her deep dark color, the heat that generated from her, the sweetness as I came in her and she came against me. We lay alongside each other afterwards. I kept kissing her face and her neck, until she took my hand and drew it against her vagina and moved it into the warm dampness I had created. When I say she was black, I mean that her color was dark brown, the color of mahogany at dusk and her nipples, those little buds, were nearly black. My soft gentle hand made them harden and tighten as buds do in the evening.
When I got up all the hot water had boiled away. I made more and we drank tea and ate the crumpets I kept in the window box, smothering them in butter and jam. She wanted to stay the night but I worried about the other lodgers, the return of my landlady, the obligations I would occur with Lillie if our affair became domestic in nature. Am I so different today in my concerns? Experiences of this sort, however I trundled through them in an earlier life, are beyond conception today. I had to find her dry clothes. I gave her one of my heavy shirts which nearly covered her whole body. I took the belt off her dress and tightened it around her. We laughed about the fitting. She looked very good, very sexy in my design. I worried about her parents and her brothers and sisters when she came home. We went off to a pub, then a movie and then came back and she changed into the damp clothes she had worn. We kissed a lot, but I was intent that evening on getting her back to Kings Cross. I would spend a lot of time with Lillie in my basement. She would move in with me when I took a room in a once elegant but decaying fifth floor walk up apartment on Bentinck Street where we had use of the bath, the kitchen and one of the sitting rooms, as long as the owner and her lover were not using them for entertaining their many friends in boisterous hashish parties. The merry weed had been our key money, since Lillie seemed to have an unlimited supply and had begun a cottage industry of supplying upper class Londoners with their stash. I didn’t witness her schooling nor was privy to her commencement. Lillie had graduated from busing tables to merchandizing.
2 – Appearances
Dancey was preparing for graduation from college. The Judge, Isabel and Ruth planned to attend. His father had never visited the college. They talked on the telephone frequently, however perfunctorily: health. general conditions at home, and at the college. Isabel. Ruth. For the Judge, general conditions meant what was happening in the neighborhoods and the interesting cases he was hearing. Isabel would call on occasion. She would talk to him until he began to respond. If he started to say, well, he’d better get back to work, she would tell him to wait. She had something else to say. He began to have something to say to her. He was surprised at how much he told her, about his schoolwork, about the women he was dating, about his expectations for his work in Africa. Each time she asked him about his friends. He didn’t have any that he considered friends, even now nearing the end of his four years. He hadn’t brought any of his roommates to the new home in the university community. By his senior year, he was on a first name basis with nearly every student on the campus, the white guys and the black guys. He could jostle them and they could jostle him. The black guys now made a joke of his dating white girls. “No one I want to bring home,” he said to Isabel. “You’re not ashamed, are you?” She asked him once. He replied, “I’m not ashamed of us. Maybe of them.”
This time when he picked up the phone, it wasn’t the Judge or Isabel. It was Blatchford. At first, he didn’t place the soft, white voice. Then it resonated in his memory - with the silver hair, the very fair complexion.
“Dancey. I’m sorry but the East Africa posting isn’t possible at this time. No funds for interns. You should come to work with me in Philadelphia. There’s a lot to do. I’m the director now of a settlement house that works with little kids, youths, and the older youngsters in the gangs.”
He was shocked. Hurt. His plans. His dream and all that he had learned about Kenya during the past months was flushed down the drain. He felt anger well up in his mouth. He paused to get control of himself. “North Philadelphia?” He said with confusion. “Think what Reverend Gaines would say. How could I?”
“I talked to Daniel. He thinks it’d be good for you to come here for a spell. See what you can do.”
“I thought it was set.”
“Nothing’s ever set, Dancey. You know that.”
He didn’t really, but what was he to do? He decided to take up Blatchford’s offer.
Dancey was not the class valedictorian, but he might as well have been. Everyone was anxious to greet the Judge and the Judge was gracious, expressing his gratitude for the generous comments about his son, introducing Isabel and Ruth, stopping to chat with Dancey’s professors. At the pre-baccalaureate party given by the president the night before, the Judge was asked if he would say a few words.
He stood in front of them, an O.T. Prophet in a porcelain shop with no ashrams to smash. Dancey wondered what he would say. He knew his father would say what was on his mind. He was proud of his father, angry with him, but not anxious.
The Judge began, “Isabel and I are very grateful for the opportunities afforded my son. As many of you know, he has his own way – he sees what he wants to see and he wants you to see what you want to see. (There was laughter.) I wanted to thank Dancey’s teachers, since teaching is a special and usually thankless vocation, satisfaction coming to the instructor able to observe the progress of students into the fullness of their lives.
“It is about teaching I wish to pause now, the teaching of the Prophet Zechariah who brought forth the word of the Lord that ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit thou shalt become a plain and bring forth the top stone with shoutings of Grace, grace, unto it.’
“It is a famous passage, mistranslated in various ways to justify different causes. It is also a superb lesson for all of us, that our actions to be meaningful, to succeed, must be guided by commitment and belief. We don’t do it to do it, we do it because we believe in something and are committed to these beliefs. It is a lesson for commanders and for their armies to whom they give their orders. Might we may need, but belief we must have.
“For those of us who grew up and still live under the scourge of racism, let me finish by quoting Langston Hughes who gave his own creative beauty to this theme,
My hands!
My dark hands!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun.
My prayer is that Dancey and the other members of this graduating class will seek the sun, guided by a commitment and belief that will break through the darkness of night. The poem, by the way, is entitled, ‘As I Grew Older.’”
Dancey heard those lines again and again through the buzz of the party and on the next day when at 10 a.m. he marched in dazzling sunlight with his classmates to receive his diploma. He wanted to talk to the Judge about his words. He wanted to say the spirit was nice, but the sword was more decisive. Did he pick that passage to appease the Quakers? He knew his father would snatch at the bait. As to Langston Hughes, couldn’t you find a poet like Baraka or Baldwin, if you want old folks to give voice to the black experience? But he didn’t have an opportunity to throw out bait to his father. Immediately after the picnic following his graduation, the Judge and Isabel left for Chicago and Ruth for North Carolina. He packed up for his move to Philadelphia. He promised himself to find a time to talk to his father and to be talked to by his father about The Struggle and his own struggle. He would forget until years after the Judge was dead and he, Dancey, was himself whirling from dream to dream.
Philadelphia’s Dodge City was a third world he had hoped to find in Kenya with a few distinctions. Instead of mud hut with access to the bush or a publc latrine, the apartments were without working kitchens or bathrooms, and the fatherless mostly poorly garbed children were running in the street rather than half-naked on dirt paths. While there was plenty of violence to life in Kenya, life on the streets of North Philadelphia was without mercy and no remorse. Youngsters would return to the agency bandaged, bruised, or not return at all because they were in hospital or the juvenile home, or dead.
There were other collegians working at the agency beside Dancey, all much more idealistic than he could pretend to be. They were a blur of white faces, though the work put him inches away from some of them. Among these was a blonde girl whom Dancey vaguely recognized when he first showed up at the Club House. She had arrived there a week before him and, like him, was staying in a rooming house the AFSC had taken for its volunteers and staff. She was introduced with the other volunteers when he arrived. Kristin Dennison. Kristin Dennison? Dancey looked at her, at her blue eyes, at the short blonde hair that came down only as far as her ear lobes, at the nicely proportioned body that her drenched tee shirt and shorts displayed. He liked what he saw. He worried whether her dress was appropriate, if not a tease, in Dodge City.
She said to him, “You don’t recognize me. But I know you, Dancey James. We were in the same class. She turned away and went back to a group of younger children drawing at tables in the basement of the Club House. It was one large room with windows near the ceiling that were protected by bars, the walls surrounded by metal cabinets that held the arts and crafts supplies. Bag lunches were piled on a corner of one of the tables. The younger children gathered there in the morning, came back from activities to eat their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down by a half-pint carton of room temperature milk, before being taken by the staff to their homes. They were never quiet, laughing and pushing against each other, playing hand games and wrestling on the dirty floor. Kristin wiped their faces with a damp cloth, straightened them up, and then headed them out the door to her waiting colleagues. Dancey liked to watch her, liked to see her bend over a child, her lithe form suspended for a moment, then standing up, so that he could see her woman’s body as she turned the child around.
“For me, Patrick,” he once said, “the issue was whether you could transform these children to partake of middle class white culture. If you didn’t, there wasn’t a chance they’d have a chance. The older ones, the ones I worked with, were gone already. Look at me. You couldn’t compare my life with the life and future of one of these children. My parents made sure I was swallowed up by white society. Was it good? Is it good? You judge.”
The older youngsters were matriculating from childhood to adulthood by cruising the streets for trouble. Of the younger children, six to eight, they rarely found anyone at home when they got there and quickly were back on the street with their chums. They didn’t need much in this neighborhood, and they weren’t going to get much. From a distance, before going back to his own group of older children, or the handy work he and the other men performed, he watched Kristin at her tasks and thought a perfect Danish mate, a perfect Danish mother she would make. Was that all he thought? She was Susanna in the garden and he an elder licking his lips.
There wasn’t a safe place in Dodge City for these children, other than in groups, following the older youngsters until they were brushed away or given a task running drugs or standing lookout. He had been there hardly a week and was just inside the Club House when he heard the screams. Kristin ran in with several other young women, the keepers of the smallest children. She was ashen and the others in a state of near hysteria, crying and gasping for breath.
“What’s happening?” He asked.
“Rhonda.” That was all Kristin said. One of the other women pointed to the street.
He ran outside. A block away, four or five police cars and an ambulance with lights flashing had barricaded the street. He ran up. A cop held him back.
“You don’t want to see this, buster. Bastard niggers ought to be castrated. Castrated.” He held his arms out.
Dancey waited. Another cop came up.
“Who you?”
“I work at the Club.”
“You seen anything?”
“Anything? What?”
“Some one pick up a little girl from the Club?”
He didn’t know Rhonda and wouldn’t have recognized her. He wouldn’t have recognized her now in any event.
“I just got here. What happened?”
“Someone dragged her . . .”
“Some nigger.”
“Dragged her into the alley. Pulled her clothes off. Probably raped her and then bashed her head in.”
He turned away.
“You want to see? See what they done?”
“No, he doesn’t want to see, Charlie. Leave him alone. Okay, go back to the Club. Better tell whoever’s in charge the dicks’ll want to talk to everyone.”
Dancey walked back to the Club House. Kristin and the other women were sitting with the younger children. Blatchford was talking to them. He saw Dancey come in.
“The police’ll be here in a few minutes,” Dancey said. “What about her mother?”
“Grandmother,” Blatchford said. “No mother. One of the social workers will go over and bring her here. I doubt she has a telephone.”
At supper at the rooming house, he learned that Blatchford asked each of the women why Rhonda was left alone on the street. Where were the worker bees? Blatchford was calm, non-threatening about it. Blatchford told them, “No one has answers. You can’t chain the children. They’re butterflies when they’re six or eight.” But Dancey could tell Blatchford was deeply affected, the Quaker calmness disturbed with lines that ran down around his month, as though he had introduced Rhonda to her killer.
“It wasn’t,” Dancey said, his first acquaintance with the Third World. He had grown up surrounded by a Third World. He had been shielded. Sure, he went through the hated high school. He had to walk to school and to walk home. He had to walk to Reverend Gaines’ church. But Esmeralda and the Judge constructed a different life around Ruth and him, a life that was closer to the advertisements in Life magazine, to the law school professors and other friends from the university who would stop by for an evening conversation with the Judge. As Dancey, Calvin and Jasper grew up, the language they talked was the corrected language their parents and teachers insisted they use. Calvin’s mother would not tolerate street language and of course neither would the Judge and Esmeralda. After Esmeralda died, the housekeeper the Judge carefully selected to live with them, spoke in the same correct American English without slang. Shortly after the Judge remarried, he moved to an apartment in the university community.
From the AFSC clubhouse Dancey would cross the street after work to wait for a bus outside a grungy bar where none of them dared to go. Pieces of newspaper, discarded trash, cans and broken bottles decorated the pavement, much of which emanated from battered trash cans overflowing with refuse on the corner. On either side, tired red brick buildings with stoops stretched down the street in a monotonous parade, the windows covered with newspaper cataracts through which only a glimmer occasionally could be seen, the stoops, once the center of street communication and activity, abandoned. No one shouted from these stairs at neighbors, or watched who was passing along the street. No one was on the street other than these kids, those like Kristin’s charges too young to be a threat and those who came in and out of Dancey’s programs disappearing for a few days to show up again displaying the medals of their wars – bandages, stitches, crutches, black eyes and bruises. His were all boys. They came to the shop classes, or to play pool, and occasionally to paint or make something with clay. Ron, his co-teacher, was a white paraplegic in his mid-twenties who would start each new group of boys by placing two thick boards together and then smashing them apart in one shattering lightning bolt with the side of his hand.
“When you’re working with me,” Ron would say, “no shit. That means no noise, no funny business. Just make things. I make things. You make things.”
Dancey couldn’t smash boards in half with his hand. He could hardly raise his voice. He was in trouble if he was alone.
Beside Ron, he had some help. John Trooman, dark black, tall and skinny but all muscle, brooked no trouble from these youths. If they acted out, Trooman would grab them around the neck and fling them across the room. When they came back all banged up, he’d stand in front of them to tell them, “Okay, you rumbled. If the cops come after you, there’s no sanctuary here. You’re history.”
He was born in that neighborhood of a day worker mother and an unknown father who had, he told Dancey, spent a night fucking her and then disappeared in the morning leaving behind a delayed gift. Him. He knew that he was all his mother lived for, and knowing that, even as a little boy, affected him. He was unwavering in his loyalty and love for her. From the moment he was weaned, she made him put his nose to the grindstone. Learn. Learn. Learn. He did. She locked him in the three-room apartment when she went to work until she could take him each day to pre-school at a church and then to kindergarten. He was smart. He went to Boys High School and he finished Temple University. Like Dancey, he was determined to be a lawyer. He had spent hours at the AFSC Club House after school. He didn’t join the other kids on the street. His mother wouldn’t let him join anything. School and after school, where ever she could park him where there were books and a strong man or woman to make him keep his nose clean and between a book’s cover. Trooman told Dancey, she checked them out. She would show up, watch from the rear of the little rooms at the Club House. He was embarrassed at first, hiding his head, wishing she would go away. But she wouldn’t listen to his pleading when they were home. She came often to his school. When the principal or the teacher objected to her presence, she would say to them, “Try me. Just try me. He’s mine. I’m makin sure he’s learning.”
John Trooman learned a lot of things. He learned what was in the books. He knew what the other kids did in the hallways and lavatories, on the street, in the alleys. He listened as well as read. Eyes and ears. He had big eyes and very big ears. They probably had nothing to do with his intelligence and his capacity to learn. He was called Mister Eyes and Ears. When he played basketball, and he played good, he was Mr. E&E, or just E&E. “Hey, E&E, Slam Dunk.” He became Dancey’s closest pal at the AFSC Club House, although he did not live in the rooming house. He was still at home, where he expected to live when he went to Temple Law School. He liked being near his mother. He walked with her in the neighborhood. He went shopping with her. He enjoyed her company, what she told him about her menial jobs, what she said about the happenings, as she called them, in the news. He told Dancey, “She’s a unique.”
He and Dancey talked about their aspirations. Dancey still wanted to work in Africa. “I’m going to get that law degree first,” John said. “Then I’ll decide. You do the same. You’ll see. It’ll make all the difference to you and it’ll make all the difference to your father.” “I’m not sure I care,” Dancey threw back. “Oh, I’m sure you do,” Trooman said.
Dancey wanted to remember Kristin quickly so as not to forget her, not to waste a moment. It took some time for him to place her at the college. His first recollection was of her walking the campus paths, then in classes with him, a demur girl, not very active, very intense in her studies. He had avoided her, since intense girls didn’t fit his college life. Dancey had relationships with lots of the coeds. He was very attractive. Once these girls discovered he was black, he became even more magnetic than he was as a campus leader. “New students,” he told Patrick, “were the most libidinous, fresh from high school, alone, homesick, needing release, looking for excitement,” hearing about Dancey from older girls, and then encountering him. He didn’t trade on being black, or of the many roles he played at the college. There he was, striking in appearance with his reddish complexion and dark green eyes, a smart student who excelled without seeming to try, spoke in moderation, but always meant what he said, and who never gave ground. He was described in his yearbook in a series of complementary adjectives, the only one that might have another connotation, “competitive.”
He was not a laggard at the Club House. He pulled his weight, working with the older boys. When they weren’t there, he joined others in maintenance projects at the Club House or working on the barely habitable apartments of the children. These tiny apartments, subdivided larger units, with no floor covering in the bathrooms where the toilet and sink rested on wooden slats over concrete, the room serving as the kitchen with a jerry-rigged sink and two stoves, one with a working range and one with a working oven, both connected, like the refrigerator, by extension cords to a receptacle in the next room. The gray or beige walls, dirty wall paper or chipped paint, sweated regardless of the season, layer after layer of whatever covering, each layer exposed in the unplastered holes or crevices that stretched like wounds from the floors to the ceilings.
John Trooman, Dancey, and Ron would show up. Ron wheeled himself to the door. Dancey and Trooman lifed Ron in, and away they would go through the morning, putting linoleum tile on the floors, patching, cleaning and painting the walls, repairing the electrical outlets and taking a fling at the appliances. The most talented was Ron, who knew just about everything there was to know about repairing and handy work in general, even if he could not stand without his metal crutches. Yet his arms and hands never seemed to stop, a strange insect with a bulbous body and long tentacles attached that were able to reach nearly everything, able to take things apart and put them back together. He would nail in a straight line, back up against wallboard until it was flat where it was supposed to be and screw in the bottom until John and Dancey not as quickly secured the rest of it. John and Dancey were equally untalented. Each worked hard at his tasks, banging the hammer against a thumb, making indentations where there should be none, turning off the head of a screw. Sometimes, the lady of the three rooms would come in to take a look. She would offer them encouragement, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and pass the same can of warm coke to the three of them. Then off she would go, saying she’d be back for the kid. She went out in a swagger, her hair processed or in combs. Her dress peeled off her shoulders and around her large breasts, letting them peer out at them, from which the material dropped over her copious belly and then down to her thick thighs and extensive rear end. They would look at each other with disbelief.
“What about the kid?” Dancey would ask when the door closed.
“What kid?” John Trooman said.
For Trooman, there was no comparison with the three rooms he shared with his mother. His had floor coverings, old but decent furniture from Good Will or the Salvation Army, and appliances that were older than his mother. They might wheeze, fart and click through the night, but were clean and worked, scrubbed and tinkered with by his mother’s determined hands, like the floors, the walls, and the windows.
Dancey returned to the Club House in the late afternoons, when the older boys showed up to play pool, be counseled (a hopeless task) and perhaps allow him to help with school work, or in shaping a piece of clay. He would finish the day at dusk, hot, sweaty, and, he knew, with heavy body odor. He and Trooman usually left together after dark. For reasons he found puzzling at first, the Club was not open in the evenings. After all, he would say to Trooman, “that’s when these kids should be here, rather than rumbling, beating up some other neighborhood kid, stealing hub caps, chasing ass.” Trooman said his list was the list of things the kids did at night. “You could keep the place open. It’d be empty. They’re running.”
Trooman would hoof it home. He’d say to Dancey, “I’d like to invite you to meet mother. But, and I don’t know how to say this, she isn’t keen on whites. I mean she’s worked for them all her life. But other than that, doesn’t want anything else to do with you.”
Dancey would just shake his head.
Dancey waited for a bus to take him to the AFSC rooming house. The women left earlier, always in daylight and with one or two of the older men. Dancey, who stayed late, was leery of the wait on the darkened corner. At any moment, the door of the bar would explode. Chased by the bartender, some Chiemarrhus came careening out, a knife drawn from his belt, cursing and about to vent his drunken range at the white man he saw waiting in the bus stop. A bus would pull up, the driver opening the door without stopping, and Dancey would clamber aboard, his attacker hurling his weapon after him. It was a scene repeated by the Carian pirates of Dodge City in different versions many nights of the week.
If he returned to the rooming house in time for dinner, he would sit near Kristin, listening to the high pitched voice of a complaining jay as she talked about her day with the children. Her skin had browned and the hairs on her arm were golden, since she took the children on trips to the zoo, or the nearby playground or to sit in a park to tell stories to them. In the winter she would marshal them on to a bus to a secure place where they could walk indoors. He learned from their supper conversation that she would enter law school. She was destined for Columbia, while he had been admitted to Chicago, the institution his father admired, near his family’s home. He had listened when law professors and their students would visit to talk to the Judge and was seduced by the serious tone of their conversations, grappling with economic issues and theories and how they effected civil rights, criminal procedure, liability litigation, bankruptcy law, judicial reform, and marriage. Was this the world in which he would make a difference?
There was no familiarity, no warmth between Dancey and Blatchford. He asked Dancey about Reverend Gaines. Dancey said he still attended the church and looked to him for advice. He admired him greatly, but he said to Blatchford he didn’t have to say that, did he? Blatchford nodded his head, and they went their separate ways. This tall Quaker with his white hair and blue eyes, dressed in an open white shirt and dress slacks, would gather all of them together at the Club House once a week to talk to them about their work. He expected you to say what you had to say at the time. That was the Quaker tradition. If motivated, speak up. If not motivated, become motivated. The sessions were not long, since Blatchford did not say much. Dancey thought of Blatchford as a ghost from the past, a silent captain of his ship, calm now on the seas. In a later time, it would be besieged by storms, disruptions that tore apart most cities. Blatchford had a rule about behavior among his volunteers, the interns and the paid staff. You followed the norms. Don’t deny them. Everyone understands what they are. That was all. Very simple.
Dancey and Kristin observed all the rules about the relationships among themselves, even as attracted as he had begun to feel toward her and as he believed she felt toward him. Later, he would say he had heard all of what she had to say in those two years and heard nothing new from her after they were married. Both were practicing attorneys and delayed having children. The longer they were together, the less he wanted to reproduce. Sex without consequences was best. After a fierce argument, to calm her torrent of tears, in a state of utter frustration, he bedded her without a condom, first producing a boy and, two years later in a repeat performance, a little girl. They were late comers, and, as Dancey would say, no cause for renewal in her catalogue of grievances.
As new as she had looked, he would say, there was nothing new about her: “What she’d say she’s said so often in her high pitched voice it’s a loop. Each time she opens her mouth it comes back as a recorded message.” In North Philadelphia, separated by common agreement, they seemed to belong to each other. He went to sleep dreaming what it would be like to hold her, to smother her with love -- and he laughed at himself because he also wanted to smother that voice of hers, the Jay inside her. Had she not seemed to be intellectually akin, so physically attractive, perhaps because she denied him access, he said now, her voice, her continual repetition of everything would have driven him away. They were careful. Was it that she was white, or Susanna, protected by the wall and asleep in the garden?
John Trooman couldn’t take him to his home, but on Friday and Saturday nights introduced him to parties that began in bars in a different part of town with a different clientele. Here young black men and women danced together to loud music. The women came alone or in twos or threes and left with one of the men by the time the evening was wearing down. There were no drunks screaming curses and, while some men would drink over the edge and lots of ladies were tipsy before they left on some dude’s arm, the real stuff was apparent in the sweet heavy stench. They were tipsy on booze but high on whatever substance passed from couple to couple. The women were dressed to party, pleated multi-colored skirts and mini-skirts or dresses that stopped quarter of the way down their thighs. Their blouses or shirts wrapped around their narrow torsos open down to the tops of their bosoms, exuding the life that beat within them. The guys wore jeans and open shirts, a soft fabric or leather jacket, hanging on their shoulders, the cloak of good street taste.
Dancey, for all his self-confidence in his familiar world, moved with some hesitation now with these men and women. These weren’t college coeds. John Trooman was more assured of his steps up the mountain. He’d been struggling on the slopes his entire young life. A little slip here and there did not bother him the way it upset Dancey, a source of some amusement for Trooman. They would sit together in the bar watching the crowd and then Trooman would dance with one of the girls. He’d motion to Dancey and then spin the girl into his arms.
“What’s a white guy doin in a place like this,” she’d asked.
“I’m as black as you,” Dancey said.
“Oh, come on, honkey,” she hissed in his ear. He pinched her rear, and she pulled his ear. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, “if you’ve got it.” By this time, Dancey could see John Trooman heading to the bar, someone else in tow. John Trooman had given him few instructions. Always take Trojans with you and a few tens and twenties.
“You want another drink?” He asked.
“You buyin’?”
“Of course,” Dancey said. “Here or anywhere you want.”
“Yeah, let’s split.” She put her arm in his and they’d bust out the door and headed into the street.
“Now where?” He’d ask.
She’d point across the way to the green-tiled Cosmopolitan Club and Hotel. They’d tank up in the bar, and he would purchase a bottle, highly illegal in Philly. They’d head upstairs to the desk, buy a room key and then take the elevator. He was shocked the first time to learn her age. She was 15. Later editions could be 15 or 18 or somewhere in between. She may have been 15, but she tugged off his clothes and kicked off her own, undoing her skirt so that it unwrapped around her legs. He saw the legs of a black girl. It was the first time for him. The thighs of the co-eds at school had been white in the back of cars, or sneaking behind buildings on the campus, pulling down their white underpants to spread their legs as they climbed on top of him, his erection splitting them apart. They were college girls who had lost their virginity in high school. They didn’t shave their legs in those days, a statement as to who they thought they wanted to be. They wanted Dancey to burrow between their white thighs even though they didn’t find the black dick they expected. Under his clothes, he was just as freckled and white as they were.
He stared at her blackness. Her legs were smooth and silky. She didn’t wear underpants, just the slightly hairy cleft that emitted an attraction, distributed a perfume that seemed to spread around him. She stepped out of the material and grabbed his penis. He was instinctual and reached for her. She began to stroke him standing next to his body. He has his arm around her, was bending her back to fondle her and get her on the bed. She was hot to touch and he was aroused. She pushed back at him until they were both on the dirty rug near the bed, and performed fellatio, the first act to be followed by several more under the sheets, until they would wrap themselves together for a brief sleep. With these girls Dancey became a satyr, staying until the early morning, waking during the night to wander to the bathroom and returning to his partner for another engagement. It seemed to him at the time of coition that they both experienced pleasure, if not joy. But it departed when he returned to the rooming house after these debaucheries. He had second thoughts about the black girls, whose faces dotted his memory, the memory that became nightmares rather than pleasurable dreams of Dionysian revels, nightmares about sisters, about betrayals, about his own emasculation.
When Dancey told Patrick of his escapades at the Cosmopolitan Club and Hotel Patrick thought immediately of his hashish queen, Lillie. “I was a white man having sex with a girl colored black as any of those with you, Dancey. It’s ironic that you’re black having sex with black girls who thought you white. Think how many years ago. Here we’re talking now, two men, me in my early sixties and you on the verge of his forties.’ “Except,” Dancey said, “you know that your East Indian Lillie was Caucasian.” “Her official race wouldn’t have made a difference to either of us or anyone else,” Patrick said. “She may’ve been the Queen of Spades as far as the Brits were concerned. Should the color under the pigment, the true color make a difference? Should the painter’s choice matter at all?” Patrick asked, “How easy is it to say it doesn’t. No one means it.”
John Trooman razzed Dancey about his remorse when he fucked these girls. John told him he was contributing to the local economy. If he was good at the task, and John Trooman assumed no white man was as good as blacks in the saddle, “the girls,” he said, “still wanted to believe White Men were Gods from the Other Side, and tried their best to satisfy. You could imagine, Dancey, their dreaming of catching you forever, a real prize, unzip your flies for a suburban chateau.” Dancey enjoyed the exchange. He didn’t see any reason to correct John Trooman, although he never encouraged him to think he was white. He didn’t say.
Years later he would when they met in Washington at a State Department reception, where John T., no longer Mr. Eyes and Ears, was now an official armed with his law degree and two years at the LSE. He had been named to the delegation in Kenya. “Did we ever talk about it?” Dancey told Patrick. “We talked plenty before he was shipped off and plenty when he came back. Here he is, sent to the mysterious Africa I never set foot on. We’ve spent hours on the phone talking about it, and he keeps telling me I should go and take Kristin and the children. I’ll go someday.”
Dancey invited Patrick to the reception at State and another at the White House, making all the necessary arrangements. Patrick dragged him along to a big party of journalists and congressional staff on the Hill, and another in Georgetown. Dancey liked the glitter.
At State, Dancey and John T. were cornered by Adam Feldstein, a State bureau chief, he told us. He praised John for his work in Africa.
“Among the Africans,” said Trooman.
“Where else? You’ve been there two years. And what do you do, Mr. James?” Feldstein spoke very distinctly, his questions like his demeanor a loaded weapon pointing at you.
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Patrick chimed in, “Dancey’s with Westin Krooker & Cabal. He won the Argosey case.”
“The Times story said the lead attorney was black.”
“I was the lead attorney,” Dancey said.
Patrick watched Trooman look at him in disbelief.
“I didn’t know,” said Feldstein, his big ears reddening. His nose twitched, as though he had fired and missed.
Dancey turned away. Trooman followed him across the room, one of those grand meeting places in State decorated with curtains pulled back on the windows to reveal the Potomac. The wooden furniture were mostly reproductions for the Centennial Celebration, with shiny brass chandeliers overhead, their light bulbs no competition for the sun coming through the windows. Waiters, older men in black jackets and white shirt fronts, tottered among the guests with trays laden with hors d’ouvres and glasses of wine. Their relationship, he knew, was changed. Which way, he wasn’t sure. There was nothing to negotiate. You stated your position. As far as Dancey was concerned, What you saw is what you got.
Patrick received a call from Adlai Hacknott III. Patrick could see Hacknott sitting sideways at his desk, looking out over the city, his feet propped up on a leather hassock, running his freckled hand through his sandy brown hair, one part of his brain focusing on his tennis game and the other on his call to Patrick.
Dancey had introduced Adlai to Patrick. His Roman Numeral pedigree was expressed as a Ph.D. after his name. Like some professors, he made sure it was printed whenever his name was printed. He and Dancey were tennis partners, scrapping it out every weekend at clubs with grass courts. Dancey always lost. What did you expect after generations of playing on grass courts? Patrick commiserated with Dancey. “When you were running with those pals of yours, Adlai was in knee socks and sneakers.” The Hacknotts helped to set the tone for society here since the middle of the 19th century. Like his father and grandfather, Adlai was a Princeton man. His great great grandfather never saw a tennis court. His sweat poured from him toiling in the furnaces that schooled him in iron mongering, supplying the heavy metal for bridges, roads and the tall buildings that dominated the Chicago sky. Such was no longer the case. The company now was owned by an international holding group and Adlai kept his hands clean managing investments – his own, his family’s and those of other society types who brought him their equities, stocks, bonds, pension plans. No one was so unwise or foolishly generous to put all their eggs in his basket. Some portion seemed an obligation if you wanted to join a table of exciting, important people at a dinner in the apartment Adlai and Adriene had turned into a penthouse salon in the most posh high rise along the Lake, or to be invited by Adlai’s dowager mother to one of those sumptuous silver-served dinners at her gentlewoman’s farm. There wasn’t a major charity, important cultural institution, or social service agency that the Hacknotts had not touched with their largesse and influence.
Patrick imagined Adlai was wearing a starched blue shirt with a white collar or a starched white shirt with a blue collar, gold cuff links, now open so that his sleeves were pulled half way up his sun-burned arms to his elbows, and red leather suspenders with gold cross strips.
“I want to try something on you,” he said.
Patrick was suspicious of this approach, whether by politicians or gangsters.
“But you’re to keep the lid on.”
His suspicions were being borne out. He said, “Adlai, I’m a newspaper guy. We pry off the lid. We don’t keep secrets. We print them.”
“Look, Patrick, you’ll be the first call we’ll make if it happens. You’ve got your ear to the community better than anyone else I know. You move easily from the Dancey Jameses of this world to the Ernie Wishbones, from the Jasper Josephs to the Mayor and his buddies, and all of your newspaper and t.v. associates. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“Why not try your little secret on Dancey? He knows more people than Saint Peter.”
“He’s too close. Too committed.”
Puzzled, Patrick hoped it was worth all this gratuitous praise. He told him,
“Go ahead.”
Adlai became very serious, Patrick thought, like all these high class guys do when they think they have something important to convey, something that will change the world:
“You know the Mayor asked me to head a committee of civic leaders to make recommendations regarding the Public Housing Commission.”
“I know. The paper did what we’re supposed to do - blew the lid off the scandals. A sordid mess of contracts and fees. There wasn’t a contractor in the city who made cash contributions to some organization type, some alderman or other small time crook, who hadn’t gotten a piece of the action. Including the banged up and non-functioning refrigerators and stoves that went into the apartments. Only the tenants were shortchanged, and that’s the understatement. Repairs lagged three months. Fix the roof? Oh, sure, we’ll cover the holes with a piece of tarp and squirt some oil on it. Fix the wiring? Why not. Got some electrical tape here. What, there was a fire? Must be those nasty tenants. Shame on them. Fix the plumbing? Yeah, we replaced the pipe with a plastic sleeve. Should work. But these folks stuff everything from baseballs to the garbage in the shitcan. What’s wrong with the elevator? Fell six floors. Killed that old lady? Gee, better speak to Otis. The refrigerator doesn’t work? Hell, we put it in last week. We’ll come back. What? You reported it last month? Let me check. You say it lacks a condenser? How you know? You know what a condenser looks like? Sure, Adlai, I knew about it. I had five reporters living in those hellholes. We had photos, wired conversations, the works. The Executive Director and the Chairman of the Board indicted, and three or four of the alderman may go up the river with them. Let’s hope.”
“You giving a speech or listening?” Adlai said in exasperation.
“Adlai, we ran the story about you and your committee. I even called you. You were interviewed by my team. Remember? So what’s new? Any more indictments?”
“We’re about to make some recommendations to the Mayor. Most important, we’ll urge that Calvin Lance be named Executive Director and Chairman of the Commission’s board.”
Patrick was silent. Then he asked, “Both? Are you crazy? Why Lance? Why both positions? He’s a developer. His firm already manages projects for the Housing Commission. What’s he going to do? Monitor his own firm?”
“I’m not concerned,” Adlai said. “He can handle it.”
“So, why Lance?”
“Most of the tenants are black. The Executive Director has to be black to make the necessary changes. Calvin’s an experienced manager and has a superb record in developing and managing real estate. . .”
Patrick didn’t let him finish, “And acceptable to the White leadership. The Answer.”
“He’s certainly proven himself.”
“How so?”
“I think the facts of his accomplishments are enough. Born in the ghetto. Educated at Northwestern. He’s built a firm that has grown in strength and capacity. He’s wired to the civic community.”
Patrick didn’t say anything.
“Listen, Patrick, we need to make changes, some of them draconian. Only a man like Calvin Lance can take this on and accomplish what has to be done. He’s black, the politicians, bankers, foundations, you name them, love him.”
“Adlai, don’t get me wrong. I like Lance. Who doesn’t. No one would deny he’s black and loveable. I see him with Dancey. They’re very close. Just like you. I’ve had drinks with him. He’s brought along that Creole lady he hangs with. What’s her name? Oh, yes, Marina. A slit in her dress from her ankle to the top of her thigh. You’re setting him up for failure.”
“You don’t deny his ability?”
“No. I don’t deny his ability. I’m asking whether it’s rational to put him in charge of making policy and implementing the same. The PHC’s a complex organization fraught with corruption and incompetence. He’s going to provide oversight in the context of a million years of thievery and worse? At the same time, he’s going to operate what he’s overseeing? You’re right. It’s one white crook after another stickin’ the loot in their own pockets. I’m not saying Lance’ll do the same. I wonder whether in the midst of the fray he’ll be able to tell the difference between right and wrong, or whether it’ll matter to him. Who watches him, who sets him right before he becomes another disaster? You’ve the same concern?”
“I don’t.”
“What about the tenants? Those faceless thousands camped out in these slums created by social engineers?”
“I care as much about the tenants as you say you care.”
“Okay. Good luck. We’ll watch and wait. I’ll be interested in Dancey’s view when he learns of Calvin Lance’s appointment.”
He didn’t have long to wait. Adlai must have passed his committee’s recommendation to the Mayor almost instantaneously. The Mayor was no dummy. He had a list of people to check: Dancey, the ministers and other black leaders, white leaders, aldermen, ward heelers, State and federal officials, the lot of cigar smoking guys hanging around his office. It looked like the Temple before Christ cleaned it out.
“Patrick, what’d you think?” Dancey asked.
“I told your chum,” Adlai.
“Tell me.”
“You play a lot of tennis, Dancey. Can a guy play on both sides of the net at the same time?”
“I don’t catch you, Patrick.”
“They’ve got by the toe some charming, bright, acceptable, acceptable’s the word, black guy and they’re not going to let him go. Let’s hope he doesn’t self-destruct.”
“Patrick, if we weren’t friends I’d say you’re scared of the dark. The big question is how’s the paper going to treat Calvin?”
“For Christ’s sake, we’ll announce his appointment. Get some interviews. Calvin. The Mayor. Adlai. Perhaps Reverend Gaines, his minister. We’ll dredge up some tenants to interview. In a day or two, the Editorial Page will produce a real heart-stirrer. Triumph of the races, I’m sure. Humankind rises to the occasion.”
Dancey hung up.
The story appeared at the top of the Metro Section of the newspaper. Lightning Strikes Housing Commission. Tenants’ Advocate Appointed. High up it quoted Lance pledging to rid the projects of drugs and gangs. If your son was a gangbanger or hustled drugs, you got rid of him or Calvin Lance would get rid of you. If your guests broke Lance’s rules, out you go. Fees and contracts to be reviewed.
The ACLU and the tenant association filed suit in Federal District Court. The Housing Commission received lots of federal bucks. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Horrors had its own rules. You had to be caught selling dope or killing someone to be evicted. The judge ordered the parties to work out a compromise. The negotiation sessions were open to the public. Patrick decided to go with his reporter, Gurnsey. “You’re on your own, Flynnski,” Gurnsey told him as they entered the Municipal Courts building.
The unruly congregation of very large black guys created a hubbub in the hallway outside the meeting room, a disrupted hive with the stinger bees looking very fierce, very angry, jostling each other, moving in and out of the doorway. They were in their teens and twenties dressed in leather jackets, the arms and shoulders studded with spikes that Patrick hoped were only for decoration. Patrick told Gurnsey he had no intention of trying them out, but could imagine a guy flinging his jacket inside out around some enemy and then squeezing. Gurnsey scoffed at him. They maneuvered their way carefully through the crowd, only to find that the warriors had taken over all the chairs except the chairs at the table. The loud jeers and taunts careened off the walls. At one end of the room, a row of these gangbangers stood on the chair seats, their arms folded over their chests. Patrick tried to stake out territory for himself near the door and looked to the table.
There were Calvin, Dancey and poor Adlai on one side of the table parked in between an array of well groomed young people Patrick took to be Calvin’s Housing Commission staff. On the other side he recognized immediately Mattie Rose, the boisterous president of the tenants association, sitting next to a salt and pepper team he took initially to be the ACLU lawyers. Oops. The white man was Harold Hochstein, pit viper of a litigator from Westin Krooker & Cabal, the same firm as Dancey. Bushy haired and moping over the table, he had skyrocketed to partnership at the firm, despite graduating from the state university, for his aggressive, no holds barred courtroom manner on top of an impeccable knowledge of every nuance of the law, including the legislative history, current regulations, precedent decisions (even the dissenting decisions in relevant cases). He was becoming the biggest pro bono attorney in town, representing some kid who had blown away a cop, a destitute mom seeking to regain her baby in an adoption case, class action against the City by physically impaired bus riders. He took the most gruesome cases for the most gruesome types, like Mattie and her delegation of barbarian warriors. Unlike the other pro bono types and legal services lawyers, Hochstein knew his stuff, was unflappable and usually unbeatable. “Some day,” Patrick told Gurnsey, “we gotta ask him, Harold, what about the rest of us?”
Was Dancey there to hold Lance’s hand, looking very white among all the blacks, except of course for Mr. Ivy League Hacknott? Guernsey ignored Patrick.
The room was one of those nondescript chambers on the sixth floor. There was no decoration indicating human presence beside the clock on one wall. The leather jackets bristling with metal work glinted in the sun light from windows you would need a twelve-foot ladder to reach, barring untimely departure or any sight of life in the city below. The yellowish glaze from flourescent tubes increased the sense of the tomblike suspension from the world, rather than a sense of living together, or finding a way to live together. Patrick kept looking up at the hands of the clock to be reminded that human behavior, however outlandish, had its limits, limits beyond the control of the human enterprise around him.
Hochstein whispered to the black man beside him, who in turn whispered to Mattie. Mattie stood up. She didn’t have far to go. She was short, squat, her figure covered with a red Muumuu from which her stumpy arms protruded as she banged both of them up and down on the table, striking with her fists and forearms.
Silence. Titters. Nothing loud, boisterous. Mattie was in charge for that moment.
“Okay. Let’s git this over wit. We know you tryin to improve things Mistuh Lance. But, baby, you gotta be fair. Wit us. Our children. Yessiree, we got rights. Jes like you and all them suits sitting with you, the white ones and the black boobies in their fancy duds. We jes as good as you all.” She shook her head, the drizzled black locks flying around like flies, settling back down again as she sat.
Hochstein’s black associate took over, “You know, Mr. Lance, your rules are illegal. You take money from the government. You got to follow their rules. You can’t make up your own. You want me to cite the regs?”The room burst into shouts of glee and applause.
Dancey leaned over. “It’s really not necessary. Mattie, you know Calvin Lance’s trying to make these buildings better. Help him.”
There were hoots of outrage.
Mattie reared back her head, “Shut you big fuckin mouth, white boy. What about you, Lancerooney? You can’t speak? Cat got your tongue?”
Calvin Lance stood up. Dressed in a dark gray suit, lavender shirt and bright yellow tie, he looked across the table at his adversary. “You want to live in these buildings, Mattie, you obey my rules. That way everyone’s better off. Don’t obey the rules and you’re out.”
The room erupted. The warlords standing on the chairs began beating their breasts, the shouted curses and threats a cacophonous dissonance of grating sounds. The words as they were hurled back and forth across the room were unintelligible in the noise.
Mattie held up her hand. She motioned to Hochstein.
Hochstein poked his head up. He turned to the lawyer next to him.
His colleague got up, “We hear you and we’ll see you in Court. No one, not even you, Mr. Lance, is above the Law. We obey. You obey. Everyone obeys. This is America.”
“Right,”said Lance, “And everyone has a right to live free of threats, murders, rapes, and drug dealers coming through their walls. There isn’t a wholesome family living in the projects who doesn’t feel threatened. There isn’t a child that’s not fearful. They can’t ßΩ ßΩΩ√ç√ go out the door of their own unit without being raped or mugged, blackmailed into giving up the change in their pockets, or, worse, their government checks. Regardless of the time of day or night they’re terrorized by the very thugs you brought to this meeting. We’re going to show a clear and present danger. We’re going to return these buildings to the Rule of Law you cite. To the people who live there. It isn’t America. It’s the jungle. I’m going to change that.”
The guys on the chairs jumped down and began to push their way toward the table, chanting “Get the Mutherfucker. Up Yours Honkey.’
A cordon of cops had appeared and stood arm to arm around Lance and his crew.
Mattie turned to her troops and held up her arms. “That’s enough. Let em go. Nutin but boobies.”
Lance strode from the room through the double line of cops, followed by Dancey, Adlai and the Housing Commission staff. Patrick’s photographer was banging away. Gurnsey went over to interview Mattie. They seemed to know each other. Hochstein didn’t stay around, pulling his trousers up around his waist and tucking his shirt in under his jacket.
Later, Dancey told Patrick, when he got back to his office he asked Harold what would settle the case.
“Reason,” Hochstein responded.
“What’s reasonable?”
“Free access to homes.”
“For whom? Drug dealers? Rapists? Gangbangers?”
“If they’re residents, they’ve every right to be there. If they break the law, the cops’ve every right to arrest them.”
‘Doesn’t make sense, Harold. Doesn’t happen that way.”
“Your pal keeps citing the Rule of Law, Dancey. No one’s above it. Can’t have one set of laws for one group and another for another. One for blacks, one for whites. One for rich, one for poor.”
Dancey said he let it go.
Dancey planned a visit to Mattie. He was committed to Lance’s plans. So were all well-meaning people, the paper found. Get rid of the gangbangers and drug dealers, the guys who prey on 12 year old girls screwing them in vacant apartments and stairwells. Get rid of the schemers who take the aid checks from the mailrooms. Get rid of the squatters who follow the gangs into vacant apartments, then bash through the walls to the next one, creating a suite of vandalized rooms. The editorial page gobbled up Lance’s public commitment to drive out the gangs with the incompetent and corrupt contractors.
Reverend Jasper Joseph stayed out of the controversy, even though there were PHC buildings in the neighborhood where his church was located and where he was executive director of the community organization. Why not let Lance use them as a test case? Neither from the pulpit nor through his network of block clubs, including the tenants, did the Reverend Joseph open his mouth about the issues. He would show up at meetings about the high rises but perch in the back of the room. Dancey wanted him and his followers to support Lance. He went to see Jasper at his church.
Dancey walked into the sanctuary. A former auditorium for a labor union, the altar had been created by Joseph where once only a lectern had stood for haranguing the worker troops in bygone years. Joseph used the raised platform for his services and community meetings. Dancey threaded his way through the empty chairs that once held the union members.
Dancey said loudly, “Do I come up or do you come down, Jasper?”
“You want to be baptized?”
“I want to talk about the high rises.”
“The last time, it was about Dubois Parc,” Jasper said. “You claimed the church had to give up Dubois Parc. I built it, why should I give it up? And to whom? Yeah, the Pastor. Give me a break.”
“Listen, Jasper, you did it because the feds were going to foreclose. The foundations that gave you big bucks think there’s malfeasance. That’s why you did it. The game was over. I’m not saying it was justified. I’m saying if you hadn’t made a deal with Reverend Gaines and his new organization the feds would’ve sold the paper. Some guys who had no connection with the neighborhood would’ve controlled it. That’s what would’ve happened and you know it. Now, I’m asking you to stand with Calvin and me on the high rises.”
Joseph was cautious. He spoke slowly. “You know my flock. They fear the gangs. The gangs own the high rises. They own the neighborhood. Fear’s real. It should be. You didn’t walk the street alone when you were a kid. You had Moses. No one has Moses. There’s no protection.”
“What about you? Can’t you get the Mayor to help you?”
“Sure, just like he helped me on Dubois Parc. I keep my nose clean with the Mayor. I get some jobs for my folks. I have to stand up to him every now and then so the folks don’t think I’m bought.” Jasper sat down on one of his folding chairs. He unhooked his clerical collar. “I feel better,” He said, “but I need my uniform.”
“Most soldiers need a gun.”
Jasper ignored the comment, “If you’re a kid, it’s either cash on the barrel head or a mule in service to these lords of the prairie. They not only control the neighborhood but flaunt it. They show up here, a church, slouch in the front row, and make faces. They come to the community meetings, sit silently as reports are made, shifting their bodies, shrugging their shoulders, flexing their muscles. Taunting me. Yeah, silent, but threatening me and the poor people who attend. The same who come to church come to our meetings. They get the message. They don’t have nothing except deprivation and fear. None’s got hope, except everyone of them wants something, like a job. They want me to get it for them. Every minute they’re not drunk, on drugs, being fucked or screwing, someone is occupied with scrapping for eats or to support their other needs. I need the Mayor, I need Representative Herseth, not that black as he is he’s gonna lift a finger for them. The gangbangers ain’t Robin Hood, but they provide a little charity, as long as you’re willing to pay the costs. I ain’t gonna offend anyone. I’m gonna do what’s best for me which is best for those folks who pray with me.”
He went on, ‘You listen, Dancey, I connect my people with jobs from the city or state, jobs requiring little skill, aptitude or dedication. Those jobs got some security through civil service or the unions. Those unions’re controlled by us now.”
“Why not,” Jasper said, “Incompetence and graft in black unions just like white unions and big corporations? The highrises? Why should I back Calvin? Or those folks who want to tear them down? Who is gonna back me?”
Dancey gave up.
Jasper’s neighborhood was part of the territory where Reverend Gaines had established his church and grown it, and thus was cheek to jowl with the university’s campus. Gaines’ was a different congregation from Jasper Joseph, largely working or middle class. He no longer used the university as an organizing tool. Jasper Joseph did, denouncing its land acquisition program, the few blacks in management positions, and just about any action the institution took from expanding its hospital, to building a parking garage, to outsourcing its laundry. This brought him head to head with David Mazur, the university vice president for administration and community affairs.
They would meet at a coffee shop in the university neighborhood. Sitting across from Mazur, his clerical collar a gleaming white, Jasper would demand, “You’ve got to give us some jobs, Mazur.”
“I can’t give anyone anything. You send them to us. They apply. I’ll make sure that happens and I’ll make sure they’re given serious consideration.”
“Serious consideration? Who you kiddin? What a crock. That’s empty. Nothing. I want a certain number of positions. Guaranteed. You tell me how many. I don’t care what they do – scrub shitcans, cut grass, valet parking at the hospital. You name it. You don’t even have to do that. Just guaranteed positions. If they don’t work out, you fire them. They’ll come scurrying to me. I’ll raise holy hell. But that’s the way it’ll be.”
Mazur closed his watery blue eyes. He flicked the dandruff off his jacket. How many times did he have to tell Joseph that the university wasn’t city hall? No patronage. He said, “Look, Jasper, we can’t do business on that basis.”
Jasper’s dealings with David Mazur were different from the other university bureaucrats who had preceded him. Mazur was firm, but less confrontational and highly maneuverable. Then, again, Jasper Joseph had to pause to ask himself who was being maneuvered. Mazur had joined the university ten years before when Avram Gershom was president. With Gershom there was no pretense. You got what Gershom said you would get and wouldn’t what he denied.
Jasper Joseph’s army was smaller then, but Jasper could rally them to picket. They would be joined by students until nearly a thousand people were shouting and chanting outside the university administration building. The Reverend, in his clerical outfit, led the charge with his bull horn. JJ’s brigade, ferried in Jasper Jalopies, was there with orders to make noise and be confrontational. The students were different. They had mixed motives. Some were caught up in the social issues of the times, primarily racial justice. Some hated authority figures, from their parents to Gershom and the university, symbols of oppression to them. Most just wanted to belong. They marched back and forth chanting, tried to bar access to the building, carrying big banners and uncouth effigy figures of Gershom and the President of the United States. Sometimes they donned white sheets and carried crosses mocking the university as a bastion of bigotry. Jasper Joseph let the student leaders plan and carry out these initiatives. Gershom recognized the complexity of the situation. Despite pressure from faculty and parents, he withstood the days of protest without calling the cops. To provide access to university buildings, he sent the university’s own security to form a corridor to the doors for staff and visitors. This was before the student world turned violent. Despite catcalls and curses no one barred the way. Visitors and staff had the disagreeable sense of being threatened as they walked through a corridor of verbal abuse. Unpleasant. Fearful for many. But there was only the occasional student who crossed the line of social control and was collared by the university cops.
Later, Rev.Joseph admitted to Mazur his strategy was to provoke an incident with the police. When the playacting was over, and Gershom had waited it out without any response, the talking began. The students had given up first and then Jasper’s own forces had dwindled, losing interest, especially when it rained for three days without a break.
Mazur arranged for The Reverend to meet with President Gershom. They sat across a table from each other, with Mazur next to Gershom.
“Here’s what we can give and here’s what we can’t. You decide.” Gershom told the minister. He set a timetable for development of the border area next to Jasper Joseph’s community, pledging to build housing with jobs in the non-trades.
“Whatever happens now, let’s make sure we’ve a channel to talk. It’d be good if we could treat each other, your community and the university, with respect. I’m sure we both have adherents, residents, students, faculty who’ll fail this test. I’m committed to it, and I intend to ensure that we exercise self-discipline in keeping our commitment. I’m available whenever you want. In the interim, use David Mazur. He even likes you.”
Mazur wasn’t sure he did, but he was trained by Gershom, proud of it, and would try to fulfill whatever role Gershom had described for him. He was about Jasper Joseph’s own physical size and age, without the mustache. Mazur was a white man. Mazur would hear Jasper out, bending toward him over the café table. Even in the heat of discussion they seemed to have a pact about amiability. Gershom left the presidency and was succeeded by Garda Darwin, who had little interest in the neighborhoods as long as the natives were quiet. She met with Jasper Joseph, as she met on several occasions with Reverend Gaines, reserving for the former a cynical distain and for the latter distanced respect. She left these matters largely to Mazur who had completed the project Gershom had promised.
Jasper Joseph always had a shopping list. If he could, Mazur would respond. Jasper would say, “Why don’t you take it to the lady,” meaning Garda Darwin.
“Sure,” Mazur would respond, “but she’ll ask for my recommendation. I told you what it is.” They hammered out a number of compromises, all of which Mazur labored to see that the university’s different departments kept. Mazur knew Joseph was not in the same position. Though he was the absolute ruler of his organization, the organization was a weakly woven fabric, a worn cloth with tears, frayed ends, threads that dangled from every square inch.
Dancey and Kristin had moved into a galleon, a ship of state, one of the mansions built a century before in the university neighborhood by the city’s wealthy merchants and industrialists. As the sea changed, these great hulls were abandoned, rusted and cut up into tiny compartments filled with families that eventually were forced out as the university reclaimed the waters that surrounded it. The plan was to make a safe harbor for faculty and students and over time one of the few truly integrated communities in the city. Dancey bought his property cheap, and it was Dancey who made it seaworthy again, deconverted the cut up rooms, restored it as an anchor of elegance. It was only blocks from where Dancey grew up and where Jasper Joseph now held sway. Jasper Joseph’s church at Sin Corner remained small by comparison to Reverend Gaines’s, which, unlike any other institution or organization in the remaining ghetto, was growing by leaps and bounds. Drawn by Gaines’ presence, more and more of those who had left the neighborhood returned to pray or volunteer to serve the people left behind, especially the children.
Dancey’s house had been designed for entertaining at the end of the last century, with two large parlors on either side of the front entry hall. The door was open. You could hear the friendly noise of a boisterous crowd. You stepped in to be carried away by the rushing water of sound, of shaking hands, drinks and trays laden with food. Dancey had decorated and furnished his house modern, abandoning the style of the armada that had signaled its beginnings. Whoever was the interior designer had done it at Dancey’s instruction – from the missing blinds and curtains that didn’t encase the long windows to the stainless steel framed chairs and sofas with their minimalist coverings, not a bare ounce of sentiment displayed anywhere. The layout of real food was in the dining room at the end of the hall, a huge space dominated by a long narrow glass table, stretched out over its own upside down stainless steel coat hangers. The circling vultures flapping into each other and picking over the food were saved from cluster phobia by the width of the dining room. It was the breath of the hallway and two parlors, and it was crossed overhead by huge oaken beams. You wondered where were the Vikings in this feasting hall. No Vikings, other than Kristin and her family, she now unhappily taking abuse from Dancey who singled her out in front of guests to ask why she hadn’t remembered to invite someone, what had happened to the wine he had bought, where were the children, why was she always tailing him around the room? “Look after your brothers and sisters. Keep them out of trouble (he meant sight).”
He never raised his voice. But the tone of condescension and contention was unmistakable.
The mixture of guests was unusual for those times. University faculty and staff, Dancey’s partners, including Hochstein and his wife, Miriam Stern, Reverend Gaines and his wife, Carolyn, Patrick Flynn, Calvin showed up later with Marina. Jasper Joseph. Kristin and the children and Kristin’s sisters and brothers and their spouses. Political types in black and white from the Mayor’s staff, aldermen, State legislators, the Governor’s Chicago aides, foundation officials and business leaders from the banks, development firms, insurance companies (not agents, the guys who made deals on skyscrapers), entrepreneurs and traders.
David Mazur was standing in the entrance to the dining room with Harriet Class, a young faculty member in the Humanities with striking looks. Her large frame was not out of proportion and was displayed through the tight sweater that barely stretched over her breasts. Under the tight fabric her braless nipples protruded. The material ended just above her belly button without reaching the slacks that enveloped her long legs so that they did not seem overly thick, but instead strong, well put together, holding up this ripe presence.
“And Ann?” She asked Mazur.
“Ann’s no more,” Mazur said. “At least as far as I’m concerned. He tried not to conjure a picture of his former wife, the golden hair sheltering her head and neck, the image of her svelte body that opened up to him with so much pleasure and, as he came to discover, to nearly every male he knew and many he did not.
“You’ve a problem with sharing,” she said ironically.
“Right. How many was the question. How many did I have to include. And you?”
“I don’t have a problem with sharing.” She went ahead of him into the dining room. He was about to follow her to the table when Jasper Joseph came up to him. He must have been right behind Harriet Class, if not accompanying her.
“You see what Dancey’s got on the buffet?”
“I imagine just about everything.”
“He got a Chinese restaurant to barbecue a pig. There it is, apple in mouth. A later addition, I think. Sumptuous.”
“The pig or Harriet?”
“Both. I like them both.”
“I bet you do.”
“I haven’t seen the pig before. I see a lot of Harriet. And you?”
“I’m very careful. Not in the company inkwell.”
“You’re very careful with everyone, Davey. Even your friends. I don’t think you’ve a close friend under 70. You’re practiced in distance.”
“Come off it, Jasper. Beside you and Dancey, there’s Patrick Flynn here and his pal, Jack Murphy over there. All of you are under 70 by many years.”
“That’s nice to hear. I’m black and you’re white. That’s distance enough. Flynn and Murphy are Catholic and Irish. And you? A Jew boy.”
“Maybe age, but not race.”
“Always, Davey, my boy. Always. Take it from me who grew up a few blocks from here. It makes all the difference in the world. It’ll never change.”
“I hate this, Jasper. I don’t believe a word. You don’t believe a word you’re saying. Maybe you say these things at Sin Corner. It sounds good there. Here, I don’t want to hear it.”
“I’m just telling like it is.”
“Not for me. That’s what you preach on Sunday. And Dancey?”
“Dancey can be both. Dancey’s whoever you see.”
“You and Harriet?”
“Low hanging fruit. You pluck what you can.”
At that point, Dancey and Reverend Gaines came up, Gaines grasping Mazur’s hand, embracing Jasper Joseph.
“Praise the Lord,” Gaines said with a smile. “Jasper, you’re in your enemy’s front yard.”
“All lambs, Pastor. All lambs. Every pasture needs a shepherd.”
“And Mr. Mazur here?”
“He’s a stray. Doesn’t belong here anymore than you or me.”
“Hey,” said Dancey, “I live here.”
“You can live anywhere,” said Jasper, “although I don’t know whether you’d still make it in the old neighborhood. What’d you think, Dancey? No Moses to protect you.”
“I think you’re full of shit, Jasper,” Dancey said, “like you always were. No one wants to live in the hood anymore, except those that can’t get out. I’m not rejecting them. I’ve never turned my back on them. Like my father, I represent many of them, and not for a dime, not for a penny. I’m not bragging about it.”
Gaines turned to Jasper Joseph. “I can live anywhere I chose today. It’s a lot different than yesterday. You couldn’t even deliver the mail here if you were black. I know. I tried. I lived down the street from my church, Jasper, and not far from yours. I have for years. But Carolyn and I’ve taken an apartment here. It’s time. Just like that Mercedes everyone makes fun of. I didn’t buy it on the backs of my parishioners. No sir. They gave it to me.”
Joseph looked at the three of them. “You haven’t said anything, Davey.”
“I wonder about you, Jasper,” Mazur said. “First you Mau Mau the university, then you say you can’t live here, as though you would if you could. I’ll find you a place in the neighborhood. No big deal.”
“Not a chance. For the Pastor it doesn’t matter anymore with his folks. For Dancey, it never mattered. For me, how would my folks see me? What would they say? Would they march with me? Would they pray with me? Think about it.”
“I have,” said Gaines. “I’ve thought about it a lot. And so’ve the people who come pray with me. They join me in the joy of experiencing the Lord. They don’t look at the walls anymore. They’ve climbed over them. It may not be much better on the other side. But believe me, it’s better. Dancey said it right: We can’t forget those left behind. Living with them isn’t enough. They have to have hope they can join America. You’re a big boy in a bigger world.”
“Tell that to them folks at Sin Corner.”
“I tell it to the folks who come to my corner, Jasper. At any corner. I say the same words. I like to think they’re not my words. They’re put there for me to say. What about you? Can you say the same?” Reverend Gaines moved from the dining room toward one of the parlors, caught as he went through the doorway by a tall attractive woman who put her arm in his arm.
Jane Ashmole Connor close up was having trouble leaving middle age. She turned Gaines around until they faced each other. She said, “You don’t like my relationship with Dancey.”
“Dancey’s married. He’s also a grown up. He should accept both conditions.” Gaines looked at her. She parted from him and went toward Dancey, who now stood at one corner of a triangular stainless table, tilted up so that its mirror like glass top reflected everything in the parlor, the bright black Fritz Klein painting, the huge African sculpted warrior and the heads, sides, backs of Dancey’s guests. At another corner of the glass was Calvin Lance and across from both of them at the apex of the triangle, Harold Hochstein.
“If you really wanted to improve everyone’s lot,” Hochstein told them, “you’d pull those buildings down.”
“No, no,” Lance said. “I’ll change them. I’ll prove that mixed occupancy works. I’ll integrate them. Dedensify. Integrate. Race. Class. Age.”
“Never’ll work. Never has.”
“Harold, you’re just an old line liberal, up to your ears in racial fears.” Dancey pointed around the room. “ So’s everyone here.”
“Not me,” Jane Ashmole Connor stood slightly behind him. “Not me. I think Calvin’ll do it, if we let him. It’ll take courage.”
Hochstein looked from one to the other. “It’ll take a change in human nature. All you’re going to do by preserving those buildings is preserve the gangs, the misery, the depravity. Those neighborhoods’ll never change. Sure, some cosmetics, but you’re penalizing those who live there. Consigning their children, the yet unborn, to the horrors of hell. They’ll be stuck there forever. Generation to generation.”
“That’s quite a change for you, Harold. You wanted to keep the doors open,” Dancey said.
“If there’s federal money, the tenants have rights, including access. If there’s no dollars, they still have rights like you and me.”
“We’ll see about the bad guys,” Dancey responded.
“It’s on appeal.” Hochstein said. “If you wanted to do something, you’d scatter the tenants to every suburban community in the area.”
“Sure, race war,” Calvin said.
“Equal access for everyone. The tenants and the suburbanites get their share.”
“Stop kidding yourself, Harold, you know it’ll never happen,” Dancey said.
“We’ll see. The courts’ll have the last say.”
“Not quite. The National Guard. It’ll take tanks.” Calvin Lance walked away, followed by Jane and Dancey.
Reverend Gaines and Mazur were on the other two corners of the triangular stainless table. Gaines had not turned the other cheek on Calvin Lance’s rules and regulations. He spoke out: “Poor people deserve to live in peace and security equal to any of the rest of us.” He emphasized us, lifting his hands and arms to his congregation on Sunday mornings. They’d become homeowners in working class and moderate income neighborhoods in the City and the close-in black suburbs. He knew, he told Calvin and Dancey, his parisoners had little sympathy for the public housing residents, however they may have been there themselves. None at all for the gangbangers.
“Listen, Harold,” Dancey said. “Reverend Gaines’ supporting Calvin’s rules.”
“I know. Everyone is. Jane Ashmole Cooper, the Bar Association President. The Mayor. Every right thinking person.” Hochstein wiped the sweat from his forehead. “I’m not a shyster for these creeps. I’m a shyster for the law. Everyone, including Calvin and his bureaucrats, has to obey the same laws as the rest of us, including people living in public housing.”
“I understand, Mr. Hochstein.” Gaines said. “But you’re quite vocal about dispersal. What you call it, scattered site?”
“I am.”
“So am I,” said Gaines. “So am I. There wasn’t an eighth day of creation for the high rises.”
Dancey pounced with his mantra. “You’ve got to give Calvin a chance to make them work. He’ll create mixed-income, stable communities.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Gaines, putting his hand on Dancey’s shoulder. “I know how you feel about Calvin. I feel the same. He’s like a son to me. He came up through my church. He sat at my knee when his mother was working the streets. I told him Bible stories. You can believe them and find kernels of truth to guide your life. Or, you can regard them as fiction and still find guidance for living.”
“I’m sure he learned a lot,” Dancey said. “Calvin’ll generate rebirth for all these people, for these godforsaken neighborhoods, for this city.”
“Those buildings destroyed every neighborhood where they’re located,” Gaines said, “including the neighborhood around my church. They’re like welfare itself, only bricks and concrete hiding the acid of deprivation. It’s not natural for every person with every problem to be stuffed into these appalling conditions.”
“I’ve told Dancey the same. I’m sure he thinks I’m a racist.” Mazur looked at his friend. “I supported Calvin on ridding the projects of the scum. The only way to deal with the concentrations is to tear down the building. I’m surprised Harold opposes the one and supports the other.”
“I’m totally inconsistent,” said Hochstein.
“You’re a racist, Davey, and so’s Harold,” Dancey wasn’t kidding. “Lance’s the only hope these people have. Lance and these folks share two things. They’re black and not taken seriously by you.”
By now Reverend Gaines found his wife talking to Kristin and maneuvered Carolyn through the posse of newcomers charging through the door seeking drinks and companionship. He said his goodbyes as he and Carolyn left.
In these large rooms bare of drapes and large carpets the noise of voices chorused together reverberated from wall to wall, drowning out attempts by Hochstein, Dancey and Calvin, all three of them soft-spoken, to make themselves understood.
“Look,” Hochstein said, “Mattie Rose’s a case in point. Calvin’s on her shit list. Mattie’d be happy if Calvin built her a house, or put her in an apartment in a nice building, perhaps three stories, clean halls, working appliances. No elevators, no gangs, no shootings, no rapes. A different life. She’d love Calvin. She might even love and trust you, Dancey. That’s a far cry. But be clear. Promises won’t do it. Mattie and her neighbors share a million broken promises. You can’t eat promises. You can’t sleep on them. You can’t use them to wipe your ass. Build her a decent, safe attractive place she can afford. Show it to her. Give her the keys. Then implode the high rises.”
“You’ve got another agenda, Harold?” Dancey said. “Land assemblage?”
“I don’t have any agendas, Dancey, you know that. Beyond decency.”
Miriam came up. “We gotta go, Harold. Bed time.”
“Bed for Harold?” Dancey said.
“Yeah. He needs his rest. Lots of rest.” She stood there gaping at them through her thick glasses, an attractive woman who had made herself up to look plain, straight hair, no make up, a dress that would fit any size. She worked in the Mayor’s office, a female Chiron ferociously guarding the passage to his Eminence, the saintly city leader, although Patrick claimed his visitors returned across the River Styx.
“Don’t argue, Harold. Off we go. It’s rest or the docs. Your choice.”
Hochstein raised his short arms in submission and they trotted off together.
Calvin was chatting with Jane Ashmole Cooper.
Mazur turned to Dancey, “Wouldn’t you prefer to place these people in better neighborhoods and then take down the buildings?”
“Won’t happen. We’ll fight it all the way.”
“What does Gaines think?”
“He probably agrees with you. He won’t oppose Calvin. Calvin’s his people.”
“You know, Dancey. I don’t think it’s a racial issue. For you, it’s Calvin. That’s the crux. Right or wrong. Calvin.”
“Calvin’s black. Blacks live in the projects.”
“That doesn’t mean they want to be there.”
“Calvin’s plan will change that. It’ll change the city.”
Mazur looked at him. “I hope you’re right. I’m just overcome by disbelief.”
“That’s because you’re white.”
“What’s known about the wasting of Muchie Moore,” Patrick screamed into the phone.”Who? Why? This ain’t Chinese. I’m asking you in plain English. Find out.” On the other end of the line, his police reporter sniped that on a scale of one to hundred, it didn’t even show up. Another dealer rubbed out.
“What’ye want? I should ask Joey Consanto?” Patrick screamed into the phone. There was silence. “Okay, okay. It’s just a personal thing for a friend. You tell Consanto I’m going to call him. I’ll ask the chief dick if he wants to be my reporter. We’ll see.”
Patrick called Consanto. “Hey Joey. Remember me. Patrick Flynn.”
“You I know,” the heavy deep voice of the cop came back. “The head flack.”
“Yeah, that’s right. The City Editor. Don’t hang up. You knew I was gonna call about Muchie Moore.” He could see Joey Consanto: Big. Hulking. An unlit cigar in an ashtray. Piles of reports on his desk. Photographs of stiffs displaying man’s inhumanity to man in the most practical and bloody ways possible, all taken by the police photographer or the medical examiner’s technician, bullet holes and knife wounds circled, occasionally the decapitated head, leg or arm lying along side its former partner, or just alone, the ex-bearer still missing from the action. These coppers were all the same. He liked Joey better than most.
“So who did Muchie Moore? It’s a personal thing. He was a friend of a friend. I even went to his burial. Some casket.”
Joey said, “Yeah, I don’t mind. Ernie told me you were at the entombment with your high-class lawyer friend, Jessie James. Your guy said you’d call. We could talk about it. Let’s get together. I’m always interested in the best eats and the latest lies.”
He agreed to meet Patrick at Braccini’s. He’d probably bring Ernie Wishbone. Patrick said he knew Ernie from his first days here. Jack Murphy took him over to police headquarters. Jack told him that bringing Ernie or any other black cop to Braccini’s in the early days of black cops on the force would be met with hostility. Total silence if they walked in the door. That was when blacks didn’t set foot in that part of Wopville. Now black cops patrolled the neighborhood and dropped in for a free cup of coffee or a dish of spumoni.
Patrick got out of a cab outside the West side restaurant. The street and pavement were clean. There wasn’t a scrap anywhere, not even a butt. Nothing was very distinguished about Braccini’s. The name on the window. A bright green and orange awning. It was known for a large plate of spaghetti. Pasta wasn’t part of the cooking vocabulary. It would be smothered in a thick red sauce with meatballs, or a white sauce with a few clams and pounds of garlic. That was Braccini’s. There would be specials, especially the appetizers. It was Joey’s old neighborhood hangout close to his casa, the aluminum sided bungalow decorated with plastic flowers and tiny colored lights. He had graduated to better things in town, but this was cozy for him, Patrick thought.
It was noon. The place was full of light, but few patrons. When Patrick came bouncing in, a lady with a dyed beehive topping her head, stuck full of hairpins and orange and green ribbons tied in little bows on skewers, met him with a stack of soiled menus.
“Seen Joey Consanto?”
“Yeah, he’s over there with that black guy.”
They were sitting toward the back of the cavernous dining room. A huge dish of antipasto dominated the table, grilled red and yellow peppers, zucchini, eggplant and yellow squash, slices of provolone, mortadella and Genoa salami nestled in a bed of lettuce and arugula. Joey, his large figure bent in half over the plate, was picking off the meats one at a time with his fingers, while Ernie Wishbone was leaning back, his hands on his lap. Ernie was Consanto’s main protégé. Joey had many, but Ernie was the standout, not only because he was black, unusual in itself, but because he had performed. Consanto had picked him off a beat, sent him back to the academy for special training, watched as he passed with flying colors the exams that made him a sergeant, eventually a lieutenant and watch commander, still assigned to one of the ghetto districts. It wasn’t long before he became its commander. Then, in a year, in a transfer of district commanders throughout the city, he took over an all white district where he was the only black cop, albeit the top cop, and certainly the only black to get out of his car. None of this was covered in the newspaper. Such social change never surfaces unless there is an incident like a cross burning, shooting or worse. In this case, Wishbone suffered the usual indignities, but nothing worthy of a story. The paint on his own car, parked in the district’s parking lot, was stenciled from stem to stern in his first week by keys or other sharp instruments, lots of blue flu, anonymous threats, constant scratching noises on his radio, and stiff, resentful response to his orders.
Until he was driving through a part of the district and heard a 10-1, he wheeled around to come in on the tail end of a shoot out that wounded two of his patrol officers. He grabbed his shotgun and chased the suspects into a dead end alley and in an exchange of gunfire killed them both, taking a hit in his side. His fearlessness and concern for his coppers put an end to the race business. Joey kept book, eventually taking Wishbone downtown to the Detective Bureau, or as it’s known today, Criminal Investigation Division. When Joey was named Deputy Superintendent, the first for an Italian in this Donkey-dominated department, he made Ernie Commander of CID. A lot of change occurred since then in the Department, perhaps because of Consanto and perhaps because new cops came into the department from the military with attitudes that were beginning to shift. Not to mention new imposed training programs that included what euphemistically was called diversity.
Patrick took a seat at the table.
“You gonna leave anything, Joey?” Ernie asked.
“Ah, you must be Flynn, the hack,” Consanto said.
“Right. Flack, hack. It doesn’t matter.”
“You know Ernie?”
“Sure. We know each other from when I first came to town. We know each other so good we were guests at Muchie Moore’s funeral. Quite a spectacle, right Ernie?”
Wishbone was dapper in his tweed jacket and graying hair. His long fingers now were tapping on the table. “Yeah, it was a spectacle. I grew up down the street from Moses Moore, and those guys you were with. I was older. But you couldn’t mistake them. They hung together then, and I guess they hang together now.”
“I know Dancey pretty well,” Patrick said. “Lance and Jasper Joseph through Dancey. I’m not a big admirer of the chairman and the minister.”
“I know what James does,” Joey leaned back. “He represents Sam Collins and that crew. You asked about Moore. Ernie and I’ll tell you some things. I don’t expect this to be off the record. Nothing is. You’d tell someone else, and someone else’d tell someone else. Soon, not through any fault, somebody’s dead or ruined, or whatever. The information revolution. Nothing’s ever off the record. Right?”
“If you say so.”
“First, let’s order.” Joey motioned to the waitress. “Then we’ll answer your question, Who killed Muchie Moore? The bottom line – Cock Robin. I’ll explain.”He stuck his tongue in one of his jowly cheeks to roll the thought around and then turned his face up to the waitress, who stood by the table, her pad in hand, a blank expression on her face, made up like Mrs. Santa Claus.
“Okay,” said Joey, “the spaghet con vongole. That’s it.”
Ernie ordered a meatball sandwich.
Patrick opted for Joey’s call. “You ought to know what’s worth getting here.”
“Right,” said Consanto. “I do. Let me warn you. This is America. Garlic ain’t a flavor. It’s the meal, regardless. Okay, enough about the eats. Tell him something about yourself, Ernie. You come from Muchie’s block. Give our reporter pal your family history.”
Ernie looked across the table. “We’ve known each other since he came here, right Patrick?”
Patrick said, “As City Editor, I thought I should spend a night riding around with the cops. Ernie was my tour guide. He was a watch commander in that sewer where the captain got caught taking bribes and fingering dudes for destruction. Never sent up. How come? Ernie didn’t show me any of that stuff. Just a night time ridearound.”
Ernie said, “Don’t be so resentful. You saw what I’m supposed to show reporters.” He leaned back in his chair and opened his jacket. “Let me tell you,” he said, “About me, there’s nothing extraordinary.”
Ernie went on, ‘I was born in Mississippi. I think you know that. My father died when I was very young. I don’t remember him. I don’t know how he died. My mother never talked about his death. She always kept a picture of him by her bed and on the piano. It was the same photo. He looked in his dark suit and bow tie like he had been wrapped in his burial clothes with nothing to get tangled in the weeds. When he died, she packed us up and moved here.
“Her church down there sent her to the neighborhood. They were Presbyterians. First Pres has good contacts in the South. There was nothing great about the neighborhood. The house was cheap. It was on the same block as Judge James. Everyone knew the Judge and trusted him. He gave us stability. She picked up her career as a music teacher, church organist and even played the keys in some clubs. She had played in the movie house in our town in Mississippi. If you want to know, that was her ticket here. I’m five or six years older than Dancey James and his pals. I was in the Army when their hormones started flowing. By then the neighborhood was a shamble of gangs, small time drug dealers, pimps and whores. The gangs shot it out on the streets. You’d hear them. Then you’d hear the sirens. Night time you didn’t go outside, and daytime was risky. My mother still marched to her church to play the organ. She still gave music lessons in our home. She kept busy as the world disintegrated around her. It was Rome in a state of decay. Nero wasn’t necessary. Houses were burning down. All the stores three blocks away were first reinforced with steel gates and iron bars and then over time vacated, the thick glass panes behind the gates shattered, the death of what was once the second or third most active commercial stretch in the city. You wonder why those roosting there destroyed their own nests. The gangs did it big time. It’s a desolate wasteland where working people wait in fear for the El and pimps and pushers who can’t make it into the big time deal in nickels, dimes and disease. Jasper Joseph, one of the boyhood chums you hob nob with, has his church at Sin Corner. He’s a real charlatan. Calvin and Dancey moved on. Both went to college. They didn’t come back. The Judge took an apartment in the university neighborhood. Calvin fled to the Northside without his mother. She’s probably dead from Aids. Selling flesh’s a dead end. There’s no upside. I never knew what happened to her.
“My mom’s in her nineties, bedridden most of the time. On a good day she stirs herself to play a little piano. Delores or I lift her up, carry her in, sit her at the bench, and stay beside her. It gives her a lot of pleasure. Can you imagine what it was like for a black woman to play the organ in a whites only movie house in a little town in the Deep South? I can’t. I’d ask her. She’d say, ‘Ernie, I played the music. They couldn’t tell in the dark whether I was colored or white. No one made an announcement before the show began, Some Nigra woman’s playin tonight. Nope. I just came in the back door with the lights down. Went to the organ and played away, slipping out with my money after they all left.’
“She’ll only let Delores bathe her, but she lets me turn the covers, or feed her. When she’s really bad, I turn her over, massage her back with oil, turn her over again and prop up the pillows. I owe her everything, the way she raised me, the love she gave me, insisting I go to night school after the service, and then to law school. Joey, who hates lawyers, helped me when I was working for him. I can hear him saying, ‘You take the time, gumboil, and we’ll see what happens.’ My mom was everything. Today she’s about 90 pounds of flesh and bone, most days barely able to move. I can take her up in my arms. I can hold her close and whisper to her. I’m not sure she hears. Maybe she does on those days when I put her on the piano bench and sit next to her, turning the pages slowly, with my other arm behind her back to steady her.”
Joey perked up. “Yeah, it’s a Wop thing, Ernie and Delores not parking the old lady in some awful sardine can for the aged. Come on, Ernie, what about the four horsemen?”
“I come home on leave. All spiffy. You step out of the cab. Look around. Half the street’s gone. Boarded up houses. Empty shells. Jeeze. Then there’s this white guy going up the walk to Judge James’ house which seems to me to be in great shape, if nothing else is. The Judge moved out a few months later. What’s this white guy doin’ there? After my mom and I catch up and we’re havin a cup of coffee, I ask her. ‘Whose the white guy goin’ in Judge James’ place?’”
“‘White guy? Don’t you remember him? That’s the boy, Dancey. Judge James’ boy. He’s as white as you.’
“I put a number on Dancey James. He didn’t parade around with his nose in the air. In fact, to tell the truth, a white guy in our neighborhood was waving a red flag at the bulls. The bulls were everywhere. There wasn’t a block without gang members, running drugs, extorting change from children, raping little girls. I find out that Moses had a deal with the brothers. He protected his pals, Dancey, Jasper and Calvin in that dreadful school. He was a supplier even before he dropped out. A real operator. His ma and pa worked so hard. At the start of his business career, they had no idea that Moses was no longer in the rushes. No, indeed, he’d started as a mule running smack to the white kids at the university. He graduated to picking up a stash from the suppliers and unloading it on the street, careful to deal only with the gangs. No cops could make a buy from Moses. The gang bulls got it at discount. He cut his margin. They loved little Moses. He’d launched his career. He didn’t last long in high school. Why should he? Who needs a high school diploma at a couple of grand a week for starters, maybe hitting five or ten within a year, and I mean five or ten a week? He kept his pals out of trouble.”
“It must’ve been difficult for Dancey,” Patrick said. “I mean he doesn’t fit.”
Ernie thought for a moment and then said, “Dancey wasn’t impervious, I’m sure, but he never showed it one way or the other. As far as I could tell, he feels he fits anywhere. Let me tell you, I was still working a beat and was assigned to a meeting at the Athenaenium Assembly Hall. A lot of coppers were pulled in for special assignments like this one. I was black so I’d be okay, rather than a provocation. Charlie McGurgle, you remember him? He’s still around of course, but hangs out in New York. McGurgle, the darling of the fanatic black separatists and nutsy liberal whites, was giving a talk, dressed to the nines, shades on in the darkened room, six big guys standing behind him on the stage, their hands clasped behind their backs, but each with his long coat opened, as though ready to draw his Magnum. Each also wearing shades. How could they see anyone, let alone aim their pieces? They were proud as peacocks.
‘The room was packed. There wasn’t a seat anywhere.
“This dime store Frantz Fanon delivers his harangue. ‘We gotta get off the plantation, leave the Bantu district, overrun the colonialists, the oppressors. They’ve stamped out our souls. They’ve bound our hands and legs in chains.’ The usual thing with a few quotes, actually from Fanon and the later Dubois, about cultural dominance. Put an end to Europe. Read the U.S. government. The audience was crazy, standing and stamping every time he finished a sentence. There were about six of us black coppers in the back of the hall, sort of hovering, hoping we were invisible and wishing we weren’t there.
“McGurgle finishes his tirade, his shades still firmly in place, and his accomplices moving up behind him. He says he’ll answer questions. The house lights brighten. I see a white hand shoot up.
“ ‘Okay, I’ll take the Honkey,’ says McGurgle. ‘No statements.’
“Dancy stands up. ‘Mr. McGurgle, Who’re those goons up there with you and why do you need them?’
“The place exploded.
“We coppers move in. We know we’re going to have trouble. I radio for backup. Then I see Moses, Calvin and Jasper pick up Dancey and shove him toward the aisle. Moses is in front. He’s pushing guys down blocking his way, slugging it out as he reaches the aisle. There, at the aisle, were these three monsters from the street. I knew them well. Gang enforcers. They just took those four pals out the door. The end. Not quite. We had quite a ruckus. Total bedlam.
“They were college boys then, except Moses. Calvin was at Northwestern and Jasper Joseph at the Moody Bible Institute. Dancey had balls. He’s never ducked a challenge. When he believes, he believes. He’s like the Judge.”
The waitress brought their order.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Joey said. “You asked about Muchie’s killing. There’s not much to relate. See him getting out of his Eldorado tailed by his two gunsters. They get halfway to the apartment house door. This place has a doorman on duty twenty-four hours. He ain’t there that night. Wonder what happened to him? The one gunster goes to the door and waits and the other follows Muchie. Halfway there. The gunster behind opens up on Muchie blowing half his head away. Muchie falls forward. There’s no struggle. No floppin around. When you’re brain dead, when your brain’s splattered on the pavement, you’re dead. Once Muchie falls, the other comes up and pumps a half dozen slugs into his body.”
“Why?” Patrick asked.
“Why?” Joey said. “Muchie’d big ideas about advancement. He was tired of dealing. Too dangerous. He wanted to be a banker. One of the guys at the top. Too bad for him. There’re lots of black guys who’re big time dealers. None bankers. The hierarchy works like any business. The City’s divided into franchises, and these guys, black, Hispanic, whites each have their territory. The franchisees have to pay their dues to the bankers, and that’s where the money goes to be cleaned up. Made pure, like the bankers themselves who keep themselves far removed from the street action. We’ve our theories. I’m sure you’ve heard them. The bankers have middlemen who’ve businesses all over the city and suburbs. If you’re a dealer and you want your goods, you buy something at one of these businesses. Maybe it’s a newspaper. Film. A can of peanuts. Orange Julius. You fork over 25 or 50 grand. You’re paying in advance for a delivery. We can’t touch the bankers and their bosses. They’ve got offices on the top floors of the tallest buildings. Here. New York. Paris. Rome. Muchie was trying to horn in. He’d quite a chunk of cash he’d squirreled away for his big play.”
“Now,” said Joey, “I’ve my theories. I can’t say they’re on the up and up. Muchie wanted to use maybe 20 million bucks to become a banker. He’d a contact in Sam Collins’s organization. The contact was a real rat, a guy named Johnson Garvey Jones, an operator who liked to play with characters like Muchie, just like he rubs shoulders with the university types. Jones’ also very protective of his relationship with Collins. Collins keeps an army of the Johnson Garvey Jones types, each competing to get to be King of the Hill, at least in their relationship with Collins. Jones doesn’t need any competition from a black guy who’s put away enough bucks to enter the game. Maybe more than Jones has. I don’t think Collins had any contact with Moore, but Collins has a fascination of being associated with blacks. He loves being seen with them. Take a guy like Calvin Lance. They’re social buddies. Jones can see how Collins operates. Maybe Jones was worried. I think he decided to have Muchie iced. Not such a big deal. He lets out a little bit of information about Muchie getting more than his share. A little bit of information about how much Muchie dead is worth. I don’t say Collins was involved. I can’t believe he cared what a guy with a few millions does. All the guys down the line would, especially Jones.’
“Sam Collins? You gotta be kidding, Joey.” Patrick said. “You’re right, Collins wouldn’t have anything to do with us. I can see the great civic leader, his waspish pink complexion and freckled face, sandy hair, about mid-height, not as tall as me. Always looking Brooks Brothers, but made by some Frog. He’s in the photos we published from the Urban League Awards dinner, the university civic bash, the Y Volunteer Leadership, the NAACP.”
“Right,” said Consanto. “At the top of his game. You know the story, an international investment firm that he started here, grew until it reached around the globe. Collins has more frequent flyer miles than the CEO of BA. He lives here, a spectacular lakefront mansion in which he parks his wife and five kids. His headquarters’re here, a building filled with MBAs in their Brooks Brother suits, these for sure bought off the rack. He’s on everyone’s list, on everyone’s board, not even the Hacknotts’ve risen to such esteem. Money’s the ticket. Mr. Ivy League. As you say, he’s always in your paper, his mug smiling out at me as he picks up another civic award, kisses the Mayor’s blarney stone, holds hands with Mrs. President of the U.S.A. Makes nice nice with the black leadership council. No one’ll ever nail him. His billions are dry cleaned, pressed by the largest laundry in the world, a few wrinkled bills put to philanthropic uses to ennoble his name in perpetuity.” Consanto swallowed another fork of spaghetti, the noodles flinging in the air, swiping his collar and tie with spots of sauce.
Patrick liked what he heard. He hated Collins. He had done a lot of research. Collins had risen from a young investment counselor extorting funds from old ladies and others by his charm until he didn’t need old ladies or small timers. Like Joey’s depiction of Muchie, he had assembled enough boodle to turn to commercial real estate. He put together the partners for the powerhouse private investment house he founded, eased each of them out for total control, and the rest was rumor about a king pin of international crime, laundering billions in drug money, using the muscle of his troops to take control of businesses from Jakarta to Bombay, New York to Paris, Tel Aviv to Turin.
Consanto said, “Whatever Jones or anyone else thought, Muchie wasn’t anywhere near touching Collins. Wasn’t his type. Wasn’t the polished Calvin Lance. But Jones or some corporal down the line didn’t like what he saw in Muchie. A guy who would fuck up eventually. So goodbye Muchie. Made sense.”
“And the gunsters?”
“Ah, the gunsters. We’ll find them, if we’re lucky. Maybe in the trunk of a car at the airport or some other parking lot. Have no fear of them. They ain’t on the street anymore, and they ain’t breathing. Before, the heavy pimp oil odor. After, eau de Death. Everyone’s perfume.
--3 – Buildings
Patrick couldn’t recall H Gertens ever being interviewed by the newspaper. It hadn’t happened since he had been City Editor. Nothing appeared in the morgue, now located in cyberspace. There was a pile of stuff about H’s firm, the real estate and investment company his father had started in the last century and which he took over in the 1930s. There were many references to him. His real name was Herschel, but only by chance.
He was the product of a mixed marriage. His mother’s family was from beyond the Pale and his father’s from Germany. In those days before the turn of the century, even before World War II, rarely the twain merged. That such a marriage occurred was more unusual since the mother’s family lived in a teeming, hustling working class Chicago neighborhood and H’s paternal family held forth in the high-class Southside streets and boulevards now devastated by gangs harbored in the public housing high rises. In those times it was one of the few areas where well to do Jews lived. The streets were tree-lined and paved, providing comfortable access to the huge stone mansions built by these merchants and industrialists. His mother and father did meet, although H never knew how the union transpired. Whether it was love or rebellion, rare in those times, his mother did not give up her richly Orthodox tradition and his father remained a prominent member of the Reform movement.
Herschel was not the name given to him at birth. Rather, he was circumcised as Eleazar, at his mother’s insistence, to bear his maternal grandfather’s name. In his sixth year a virulent typhoid infection spread throughout the city, knowing no class distinctions. H nearly died. When he returned to health his mother, despite his father’s protests, renamed him Herschel so that the Angel of Death would not find him again, or at least as quickly if he had still been called Eleazar and known to Death from a previous near encounter. H lived with Herschel until high school and then, as he approached college at the university, he decided he wanted to be known as H, not to escape the Angel of Death but his forbearers. He liked H. It was him, simple, without adornment, straight forward, no guttural sounds required. His classmates, his teachers, and finally his mother and father began calling him H.
He was tall, slender, not a piece of loose flesh anywhere on his face or neck or to be seen on his legs or arms when he jogged along the Lake as dawn seeped across the great expanse of water. Athletic in build, he had played varsity basketball, ran cross country and dabbled in gymnastics for all four of the years he studied at the university where David Mazur now was a vice president.
At 80, he had chaired Gertens Inc. for 50 years, quietly making it after the War a major instrument for change in Chicago and other cities, rebuilding the face of neighborhoods from the central business district to the urban limits. He was determined to address, however slowly, the increasingly declining areas of the city with low-rise and high-rise mixed-income housing. He was a Don Quixote figure, never tired of tilting but repulsed by inertia or resistance in his forays to achieve integration from one end of town to the other. Flynn first heard him at a Metropolitan Planning Council meeting, standing before a lectern in a gray suit, uncomfortable at being before a public, staring out at his audience. It was billed as Gertens: Integrated Housing for an Integrated Society. He spoke in the same soft voice he used in his office, on the phone, in a chance encounter on the street, or in his home. You had to try hard to hear him. You wanted to shout, Speak up, speak into the mike. His message was simple, If you wanted an integrated society you started with integrated housing. He looked at his audience. He told them, “There’re a lot of chest thumpers here. Don’t pound your chest. You’ll have a heart attack. You people, the people in this room say you want integrated schools, play areas, shopping. If you really want it, if that value’s important to you, it’ll only be obtained through integrated housing.” There was bored silence. The planners, officials, civic do-gooders, the Adlai Hacknott circle that attended Metropolitan Planning Council meetings had other fish to fry, visionary plans usually displayed in beautifully prepared designs and illustrations mounted on large boards or shown on slides that made them rapt with attention, like Alice in her new Wonderland. Patrick sat there with Miriam Stern. She had come over from the Mayor’s office for H’s talk. She and Harold were great admirers of H. They knew what he had tried to accomplish. Usually, when Patrick saw her at a lecture or seminar, she was loaded for bear, needling the talker or panel without mercy. Listening to H, she shook her head approvingly.
David Mazur never asked H what life had been like as a kid growing up in a neighborhood dominated by the burgher king mansions of German Jews, aristocratic, reform-minded not only about their religion but about life in the city: Pave the streets, build sewers, provide whatever hygienic measures are necessary, build hospitals for the poor, settlement houses for immigrant workers. The remains of the Rococo and Baroque synagogues that had served as community gathering places for the rich stuck out now in the rubble of despair, testaments to a forgotten civilization. Some had become churches for a wide range of Christian sects, or merely shells. Of the ruins, there would be one or two walls standing. Over the door frames, around the windows or at the roofline, you could still see the Hebrew inscriptions and some decorations that hadn’t been thieved. Long ago, the burghers had moved north, away from the advancing slums to some of the city’s most tony sections and to the newly emerging upper middle class suburbs that would open the gates to these Israelites marching to assimilation.
Once in command of his father’s company, H decided to move back to the city from the suburbs where his parents had resettled. With each new development, H would rent or purchase from himself a housing unit. Each development was integrated. It was mixed-income, mixed race. No one put up a sign: Mr. H lives in Unit 3. Of course the agents made it part of the sales pitch – H Gertens lives here.
He was successful and was elected in his 60th year to the university’s board of trustees. He took his role very seriously, never missing a meeting, becoming a burr under the butt of each successive president with his questions about the issues he cared about: the quality and range of athletic programs and facilities, whether the campus design adhered to its original architectural integrity, community stability, and, most important to him, the academic program of the college he loved and could not let go. “Quality,” “standards” were the words on the tip of his tongue.
H made an appointment to see David Mazur. H was formal, even in the most laid back circumstances, such as sitting around a tennis court waiting his turn. Mazur knew him from his own interactions with the Board. H would raise questions about neighborhood programs. Mazur would have to devise an answer. Occasionally, he would get a call from H, the soft firm voice on the other end of the phone asking a follow up question, or making a suggestion, usually too impractical to pursue.
Mazur went out to the reception area to collect him. H was looking at photographs of the university’s sports teams. He wore his usual gray attire with a regimental striped tie.
“Look, that was my team. Pretty funny.” He pointed to himself, the tall skinny kid holding the basketball in the very front. “I should’ve been in the back, the tallest in those days. The others pushed me forward. There I am, Mr. Skin and Bones.”
They walked into Mazur’s office, sitting in chairs across from each other.
“I want your help,” H. said. “I want the neighborhood rebuilt where I grew up. You can almost see it from your window. You’d have to close your eyes to avoid it. It’s a desolate slum on the university’s periphery. It won’t happen without the university’s participation. You’ve always listened to me. Not that I come up with ideas that anyone on this Earth can make happen. High aim. Always aim high.”
He paused. “You’ll probably want to touch base with your leader, if she’s around.”
He was sardonic and smiled as he said it. Mazur knew that for all H’s difficult treatment of Avram Gershom they had admired each other. H had found his relationship prickly at best with Gershom’s successor as president, Garda Darwin. He once said to Mazur, “She doesn’t take to criticism easily.”
During one Board meeting H had asked whether the standards for the college had been diminished to admit more students. He cited scores he had obtained from the admission’s dean. Mrs. Darwin had slammed her papers down. She told H he was being ridiculous and she would have a full report for him, and then stormed out of the meeting. The board buzzed along uncertainly, until she returned shortly thereafter, her steam dissipated, to resume participation as though nothing had occurred. Gertens’ eyebrows remained raised. He said nothing.
“You have to explain,” Mazur said.
“You know I grew up where they built the worse of the high rises. It’s only six or seven blocks from here. Public housing’s bad planning. Wilson, your own urban sociologist, a black man, I might add, has written extensively about the deleterious impact of concentrations. Ruinous. Doesn’t matter whether you concentrate poor blacks or poor whites. Rich whites. I’d say rich blacks, but there aren’t enough for a concentration. If they’re wealthy they’d rather live among rich whites, if we let them. Nothing good can be said about the black suburbs or the white suburbs. They’re fraught with problems and eventual decay. In our cities, we keep packing the aged, the sick, and worse of all the very poor in one sardine can after another. All those we don’t want to see. Your professor’s right. Just look. A plague. This is my last hurrah. I’m over 80. In the time left, I’d like to see my old neighborhood redeveloped as a stable mixed-income community. You’ll know we’re successful when you see a Mercedes parked next to a beat up Buick and a new Ford pick up. I’ve talked to a lot of people living there. The homeowners like the idea. Their kids could walk the streets without fear, play in the park, attend decent schools, and the mothers shop in a nice supermarket. I want that neighborhood to have owner-occupied homes. I’m talking about a real mix of working class types and professionals, teachers and social workers, nurses and lab technicians, electricians and auto repair guys. All with families. I’m not going to be the developer. Not my company. It’ll take a consortium of developers and banks working with the community and the university. It’s your self-interest.”
Mazur stared at him. “You ought to talk to Harold Hochstein.’
“I have. Miriam’s promised a meeting with the Mayor.’
Mazur said. “I don’t disagree. Sure it’s the university’s self-interest to have stable borders. The residents’ll have to invite us. I don’t want a race war. They’re black and this institution’s a big guerrilla, white and elitist. Even if we could overcome the perceptions, which I doubt, there’d have to be a plan. The residents’ agenda has to overlap our own. Ours would be very simple – sustainable stability. I can’t imagine theirs will be much different. It’ll be expressed in different terms, but basically it’ll be the same. The problem will be whether everyone understands each other.”
Gertens had one leg across the other, his hands making a tent. He continued in the same soft voice. “Oh, they’ve a plan. I paid for it. I engaged the best consultants. Physical planners and architects. Experts on education, social services, policing. They’ve been meeting for months to see if they can make music together. It’s ching chang all the time, like a symphony orchestra at an open cash register drawer. Mine.”
“What about Calvin Lance, Dancey James and Adlai Hacknott?”
“What about them?”
“I thought they wanted to convert the high rises to mixed-income buildings.”
“You don’t believe that, do you? Rehabbing those units’ll cost at least $75,000 each. Multiply that times 600. Who pays for it? Not the Federal Government. For starters, what working class family, what middle-income family would consider living in those hell holes? It’s a sham. I’ve been in the housing business for 50 years. It just won’t work.”
“They’ll fight.”
“Sure. I don’t understand Dancey James. He’s got integrity. Adlai’s a fool. Lance is a crapper.”
Mazur said, “Dancey James idolizes Calvin.”
“That’s too bad for Dancey. I hope Calvin’s not a client of Westin, Krooker & Cabal.” Gertens stood up. “Look, I’ll ask Alice Abigale to call you.”
“Charlie’s wife? She’s a homeowner? Lives across from the high rises?”
“Right. Charlie’s nice, but not much upstairs. Alice’s the president for all of the homeowners in every block where there’s an owner-occupied house. She’s a leader.”
“What about Mattie Rose? She can’t like this.”
“The deal is nothing happens until replacement housing’s built. Hochstein crafted it. No promises. Just facts. Buildings.”
“Doesn’t sound obtainable.”
“You talk to Alice. If you want, see Mattie. There seems to be a line at her door -- Dancey James, Lance, Adlai Hacknott. They’ve got to get through the gangbangers.”
Gertens turned to the door. “Thanks for seeing me. Great place this university. I keep telling the Madam she ought to build a new gym with an Olympic size pool. What do you think? Not about the pool. About the university. Is it slipping? It’s all about the faculty. Everyone seems to be leaving. No new stars. Just these names no one knows. Suddenly, the place is big on multi-cultural studies, film, blacks, women, gay and lesbian studies. Sliding into mediocrity. Garda’s like Dancey. Easily influenced by the current fad, here today, gone tomorrow. I’ve been a dried stick all my life. I never regretted doing anything. Hot deals and trends never interested me. I didn’t have any idols. I don’t care whether she or Dancey, or anyone else recognizes my past. It’s my mortality I care about. I’m close to the edge. I want to get a few more things done. I shall.”
He was gone.
Before he talked to Mrs. Darwin, David Mazur wanted to see the two women, Alice Abigale and Mattie Rose. He had met them both, but he couldn’t imagine they would remember him. He didn’t know them. How could he, since their worlds appeared to be so far apart from his own? He couldn’t conceive of their daily lives, however different they might be. Mattie was Queen of the public housing tenants, all of them on some form of aid, barely making it through the day or night; and Alice, the home owners’ parliamentarian, working class folks stuck in the neighborhood since they couldn’t sell and couldn’t afford to move without doing so.
He talked to Patrick about his feelings. “Am I being an elitist snob?”
Patrick told him he was no different than anyone else. “Why should you be? And don’t expect to connect with these ladies. They’re different from you. If you talk to them, don’t forget the differences.”
He called Mattie Rose first. “This is David Mazur. We’ve met. I’m vice president at the university. I want to talk about everyone’s plans for the high rises. I want to know what you want for your home.”
She came right back at him, “Why not? All the boys big on talk about these shithouses. Used to talk ‘bout us. Now theys wants to talk to us. Hookay. Let’s meet. That okay wit you? I come to the store tomorrow at 4. You be there?”
“Which store?”
“Cheap Eats.”
He knew the place four blocks from the projects, although he had never been inside. You couldn’t miss it. Yellow painted iron posts lined the street in front. Drivers parked their cars against the posts until burly men with baseball bats chased them to the parking lot across the street. You drove by the windows and doors, covered with strong metal screens reinforced with steel bars, and plastered with large advertisements for groceries – TP 95c, Carrots 50 c bch, CHIX WGS spec, GRND RD ½ off.
“I’ll be there.”
“Yeah, don’t be scared. Them Greeks don’t take no shit.”
In the meantime, he would see Alice Abigale. He didn’t think he had to call in advance. He had helped Charlie Abigale get a job with one of the contractors who did pick up work for the university. Charlie had fizzled out, as the contractor put it, and stopped showing up. Mazur assumed he was back wandering around the neighborhood chatting with other men hanging out. Not bad guys. They were guys with nothing to do and no inclination to do anything. Alice on the other hand had been the secretary to School Superintendents over the past ten years. She was good at what she did and was passed from one deposed chief to the next. He decided to visit the Abigales in the late afternoon when he knew Alice would be returning home to fix dinner.
The short drive from the university neighborhood to the frame house was dangerous. Charlie told Mazur he never left through his front door across from the high rises. Each time he painted the front of the house, it was redecorated by the next morning with graffiti and sometimes worse, a dead cat or rat nailed to the front. Shit would be smeared across a wall or thrown against the windows. Painted or not, Charles said he would find bullet holes, mostly around Halloween and New Year’s. Alice and he had become indifferent to the nightly sound of shots.
“Why don’t you and Alice leave, Charlie?”
“Alice got the place from her aunt that passed. Alice loved her and had gone down to ‘bama for the funeral with her body on a train. There I was. I was a widowed man. One thing led to another. So I came North with her. That’s about it. It’s been home these five years. Course I long for real home. Maybe Alice’ll come along. We’ll settle in ‘bama.”
His broad face, crossed by a white mustache and topped by a shag of white hair that hung over his forehead, opened in a smile. He shrugged his shoulders.
Mazur decided to take Charlie’s advice and approached the house from the rear, turning off the street into an alley, dodging a trash dumpster on its side decorated with gang insignia, loose garbage and bags of trash vomited from its yawning maw. Sinks, broken toilets and refrigerator doors lined the Apian way, not disgorged by their residents, he knew, but by the fly dumpers who trucked the stuff in and dropped it. He slowed to look at the numbers nailed to the gates. The nearer he got to the Abigale’s home the better the conditions. He pulled against the gate and parked. Charlie told him they installed a bell so that deliveries could be made at the back. He pushed the bell.
He could hear the rear door opening and then heard the footsteps approach. Someone looked through the spyhole in the gate.
She stood facing him. Clearly she had just come in from work. She wore a light lavender dress that covered her ample frame, her hair, streaked with white, dropped to her shoulders, not quite a flip.
“You are?”
“David Mazur. Remember. Charlie met me at a community meeting. He asked for my help. I did with one of our contractors.”
“The university man?”
“Right. Charlie seemed such a decent, unaffected guy.”
“He is. That’s why I married him. Come on in. I just got home. I don’t know where Charlie is. He’ll be around soon enough for dinner.”
“I came to see you. I don’t want to interrupt your dinner.”
“Not a problem. You’ll just have to sit in the kitchen while I try my best.”
They walked into the kitchen, an advertisement straight out of a Sears catalogue, a chamber of comfort and cleanliness. It was small, spotless, every appliance you’d expect in a working person’s home – a four-burner Kenmore electric stove, a sink with disposal, GE dishwasher, the Kenmore refrigerator. The cabinets were white like the appliances. A maple wood butcher block topped an island surrounded by four stools with red plastic helmets. There was a certain serenity if not stolidness about this room for the manufacture of breakfast and supper. Alice Abigale stood by the stove. She had put on an apron to protect the dress she had worn to work.
“Mr. Gertens says you folks want the high rises to come down.”
“We want the neighborhood Mr. Gertens describes, Mr. Mazur. It’s become our rallying cry. Streets where Bimmers’re parked next to pick ups, Chevys next to Cadillacs. Maybe not the current model, but not rusted scrap metal with dangling exhaust pipes and shattered windows. They’ll be cars people care about. You can’t park on the street here. You can’t walk out your door. We want to park on our streets. We want to walk outside our front doors. I don’t want to paint my house one day and find it covered with graffiti and you know what the next. You saw the alley. Charlie and I clean it up every morning. In a real neighborhood none of us’d tolerate guys dumping their trash in our backyard. Not for a minute. Nor would the cops. They’d come when we call. No. City Hall would care. The alderman would be elected by us and not by the gangbangers.”
“Mr. Gertens asked if the university’d participate. Does that make sense to you?”
“If you can help us. Sure. We’ve come a long way in six or eight months. I know we’ve a lot to do. It’s going to be a fight.”
“Make sure a white institution won’t make it worse. You can bet your life that race’ll be the barbed wire.”
“Race? Whose? I’m a black woman. I fought my way up. My mother was a day worker. My daddy worked for the railroad. A porter. I went to secretarial school. At 50, I’m still going to night school. You can’t stop. Daddy keeled over from a heart attack. I got my first job and took in mother. She didn’t have to work again. Yes, white people treated me poorly. Black folk treated me just as badly. Many people treated me right. I’m not going to run. So what if they say we’re hookin’ up with you white racists to drive poor blacks out? That’s what they’re going to say. It doesn’t matter whether they say it about the university or Mr. Gertens. Who else is going to help us?”
“And Charlie?”
“Charlie? Charlie’s okay. He wants to go back to Alabama. He’ll have to decide. I’m going to stay. I’m going to live in a nice community of nice people. Right here.”
“What about the high rises?”
“As long as they’re here, nothing’ll happen. It’s going to be a big fight.”
“And Mattie and her neighbors?”
“Mattie’ll be all right if we treat her right. The gangbangers’ll go when the buildings go. There’s no other place for them to hide. Calvin Lance is another story. He’s determined to save the high rises to prove he’s right. He’s one of those people driven by a direct link to God. He’s going to climb the Mountain. He wants to be at the top. He’ll show he can save the world. Save the world. Some world. It’s not worth saving without big time changing. Yes, we’ll need your help.”
“What about Reverend Gaines?”
“He’s my pastor.”
“He’s Calvin Lance’s pastor.”
“He’s a good man, Daniel Gaines. He’ll have to decide what’s right.”
“Gertens and Gaines? Can they work together?”
Alice laughed. “There’s a long history there. They both championed integration, years before anyone else. They kept at it when everyone else went on to other things.”
“Like separate’s best?”
“Like selfishness. When blacks began to get our due, why should we care? Whites lost interest, or was it commitment. They had other agendas. Living together wasn’t on the list.” She wasn’t bitter, or at least Mazur didn’t detect it in her tone. She said, “Good people have short attention spans.”
Mazur went back to Gertels and Gaines.
“They’re both tall,” Alice Abigale laughed again. “They’re both unbending. Maybe the Pastor’s a little more forgiving. More trusting. They fell out over your university. You know the story. Gertens advocated urban renewal, and Gaines led the fight to stop you.”
She put a handful of wings, drumsticks and thighs into the sizzling pan. There was a crackle and flames, smoke and hot fat shot up in all directions. Mrs. Abigale pulled back and then moved the pieces around with a fork. She pointed to the smoking pan. “It was just like that, the two of them.”
She lifted her head and told Mazur, “Everyone’ll have to decide what’s right. White and black. You’ll see. Let me tell you something. We’ve been more than 40 years in the wilderness. Even so, ‘Neither did thy foot swell.’”
Patrick Flynn arranged to meet Mazur at one of those Johnson Garvey Jones parties Mazur disliked so much. “Let’s drop in, see the sights and then split for dinner,” Patrick had said. The elevator brought them in a whoosh to the 60th floor, where the beat of a band bounced along the hallway. They were drawn, thrust through the half-open door to a loud gush of the band and people, nearly as numerous as insects, swirling in the bright lights of the two-storied atrium living room. “Which circle of Hades?” Mazur asked cryptically to Patrick. “There’s the devil himself.” He stopped to point. Patrick pushed him along.
Johnson Garvey Jones, impeccably groomed, his hair blow dried, a natty brown Armani jacket over a deep blue shirt, bright yellow tie with a blue rose, stem to a blossom perfectly placed in the knot, directed the performance before a million footlights from the City below. Patrick and David Mazur maneuvered through the crowd. They ran into Dancey talking to Jones. Dancey wasn’t with Kristin. He had brought Jane Ashmole Connor, done up like a million bucks, an aging Marie Antoinette, a thousand sparklers in her hair, a face carefully constructed to show no wrinkles, a silken red dress cut to display the inside soft turns of her remade breasts and then descend to part at mid-calf revealing her bare thighs each time she took a step.
“What was Dancey doing here,” Patrick asked Mazur. “He says he cares so much about Muchie Moore and who killed him. Joey wouldn’t have told his suspicions to Dancey, and he wouldn’t have learned anything from Ernie. If he had, would Dancey have believed? Cops are like reporters. A grain of truth becomes a beach, soon to be washed away by the sea. Well, it isn’t much to think about now. The facts will come crashing down on this boy.”
“Hey, Patrick. Good to see you. You know Patrick, don’t you,” Dancey said to Jones.
“Not really,” Jones said icily. “But anyone’s welcome.”
Mazur shook hands with Jones and then hung back.
“Enjoy yourselves.” Jones turned away to other guests.
The band came back from its breather and began another set, three guys on piano, base and drums who seemed able to generate more noise than the 1812 Overture with cannons. The atrium was a maze. Other than the great expanse of windows, each side of the room had its own open doorway leading to the interior of the apartment. Guests gyrated through to find coke or privacy, men with men and women with women, men and women together, or singles who wanted nothing more than getting stoned in such nice surroundings.
“Have you seen the replacement plan?” Mazur asked Dancey.
Instead of answering, Dancey grabbed Omar Brooks Khaled as he walked by. “You remember Omar, Patrick? I introduced you at Muchie’s burial.”
Patrick shook the outstretched hand, turning to Dancey, “Nope, Dancey. You gave me the rundown, but no introduction.” He said to Khaled, “My reporter says you’re thinking of the State Senate.”
Omar smiled back, “It’s a thought.”
Patrick smirked back. “I can’t imagine you sending Hortense Rills a get well card. If she doesn’t get out of the hospital soon, you won’t have much to worry about. A walk in.”
“We can only hope for Senator Rill’s full recovery.”
“I’m sure,” Patrick said.
Dancey interrupted, “Be nice, Patrick. Even David Mazur is being helpful. He’s organized a fund-raiser for Omar.”
“I know. He hit me for a hundred bucks. Me, the impartial newspaper editor. But, listen, Omar, has Dancey given you a piece of Sam Collins’ business? He’s one of the firm’s biggest clients.”
“Don’t answer him, Omar. He’s just envious of Collins’ billions.”
“It’s okay, Dancey. I’ve got lots of business at the firm. Not to worry. Besides, I’m doing what I can to motivate the tenants to improve their lot. They’re going to press the Mayor and Housing Authority.”
Patrick snarled, “You can’t fix those buildings, Omar. You’ve got to find them better housing. Integrated. Right in the middle of the rest of us. Where we can see and smell them.”
Dancey said, “We’ll see. As far as the so-called plan, that’s not going to happen.”
“Dancey’s right,” Omar said. “The power structure has to make changes or be changed.”
Patrick turned away in disgust. “Omar that’s poppycock. You’ve been watching ‘The Battle for Algiers’ too many times.”
Dancey went on, “That plan is what you’d expect from Gertens.”
“Why?”
“Gertens Inc. That’s what. Gertens wants the land. He’s exploiting the homeowners to get it. To him, they’re just a bunch of Shvartzes. I’m sure that’s how he talks about them. He’ll gentrify the place with his own development. It isn’t going to happen.”
Jane Ashmole Connor leaned on Dancey’s arm. “The university taking a stand?” she asked.
“With the homeowners,” Mazur said firmly.
Dancey looked at them. “See, Patrick, that’s what I mean by conspiracy. Gertens gets his university pals to team up with him. Exploits working class blacks. Oppresses poor blacks. It’s urban Amerca in 3-D—Depravity, Developers, the Damned, or, Dogged, Dumb, Doomed.”
“Not unusual,” Patrick said. “What’s the alternative?”
“A stable, dedensified mixed-income community,” Dancey said. “That’s what Calvin’ll create.”
“Dancey, my reporter says Calvin’s plan calls for 100 per cent subsidy. Your plan means by mixed income different levels of subsidy for rentals to very poor people. That’s not what the rest of the world means by mixed-income. Yeah, I know, my paper thinks it’s great. The editorial writers live in the suburbs. What’ll you give it – three years before it remorphs into a slum?”
“That’s a white man’s answer,” Dancey said.
“Gurnsey’s a black journalist.” Patrick said. “He grew up in the projects. He spends more time there than you and Lance. You should read his stuff.”
Adlai Hacknott loped in with his wife, the somewhat droopy Adriena, a Weimaraner suffering from too much inbreeding, He turned to Dancey, “How’s Kristin?”
“She’s visiting her mother in Duluth with the children.” Dancey told him. “Jane came along for the fun.”
“Yeah,” Flynn said, “She’s a fun expert. Saving Disney Land on the side. Just like Calvin and Dancey.”
Adlai asked, “Still talking about the high rises? Why don’t you guys give it a rest? They’re not going anywhere. Especially down. The Mayor wouldn’t take the risk. Believe me.”
“You wanna bet?” Patrick shot back.
“It’d be political suicide for him,” Jane Ashmole Cooper said.
“She’s right,” said Hacknott. “Even your paper’d crucify him.”
“My paper crucifies the Mayor every day. Like everyone else, he hates us. That’s why they pay 50 cents. It’s good for our circulation and theirs to get hot and bothered at breakfast every morning.”
Mazur said to Dancey, “The Mayor makes up his own mind. He listens. He tests the water. When he thinks something’s right, he’s unstoppable.”
“Calvin and I’ve talked to him,” Dancey said with assurance. “I don’t sense any disagreement.”
“Did he say anything?”
Dancey looked at Mazur. “The Mayor didn’t have to,” Dancey said as he took Jane Ashmole Conner’s arm and moved through one of the doorways.
“How does an old whore like her pick up Dancey?” Patrick asked.
“Pick up? They’re here on a lark,” Hacknott said, “like everyone else. Anyhow, she’s one of the city’s top litigators and president of the bar association.”
“I guess that answers it,” Patrick said. “Power attracts power.”
Mazur began to head toward the elevators, while the Hacknotts went to meet Johnson Garvey Jones.
“You’re not leaving, Davey? We just got here.” Patrick said. “Let’s take a walk through. You’ll probably run into a lot of university types. Jones likes their company. He boozes and dines with them in town, goes to their parties at the university, invites them to these wing dings. He’s on the make. The professors’re just like everyone else. Snorting coke, getting a little yaayaa on the side. Gender free. You’ll see.”
Flynn pushed Mazur through a doorway. Even in the subdued light they could see the designer-created opulence of the surroundings, like a high-class hotel, heavy drapes covered the windows, oriental carpets thick on the floors under the ornate wooden furniture, upholstered materials and leathers on the chairs and sofas, all in lush reds and deep, rich browns. Unlike a high-class hotel, this parlor was peopled by couples in states of suspended frenetic activity around the tables with silver bowls loaded with cocaine. The band’s brashness was barely audible over the jabbering back and forth, the high stepping movements of the men and women, their brains heated up, unhinging their limbs, unleashing their talk in a torrent that also carried the sweet odor of immediate gratification.
Mazur walked ahead of Patrick. “Why”, he said, turning, “do we want to see this? I dislike myself for coming. There’s nothing societal about these people. We can’t talk to any of these people. There’s nothing to say. Nothing you want to say. It’s only about you, getting yourself on. When it’s over, you’re empty. Nothing gained from being here. Nothing you’d want to remember. You’re left with yourself. The self’s missing. Gone. Patrick, you and I are too old for masturbation.”
He grabbed Patrick’s shoulder. “Look at this. What does Jones do to make all his money? Who’s he hurt? Jones is Sam Collins’ pal. That says everything. You’re the City Editor. You told me to join you. Just for a moment, you said, then we’d head to the Greeks. You want to meet someone here? I hate this. It’s between purgatory and hell, and these folks aren’t going to make it.”
“Who cares about them?” Patrick said. “I’ve no one to meet. Just one turn and we’ll take off. Cool your jets. Stop being so exasperated. For a mild mannered man, you’re getting pretty upset. I’m fascinated by these partygoers, the doers and near doers. This is their way of sustaining themselves without exchanging a substantive word, without having a thought, an idea in their noggins. It’s like you say, Davey, but I contrast them to the kids I admire. These folks have no physical energy. The kids I admire may be sniffin’ glue or snorting coke. Thoughts’re rumbling through their whole beings. Think about it, Davey. You’re only here cause I insisted. Dancey’s here cause it’s like the links. Meet important people. Future clients. Me? I’m here to stay away from the fire but to watch the stove, all the pots cooking on the range.”
“The kids I admire, Patrick, don’t use synthetic fuel.”
Patrick pushed him on.
They came around a corner to enter another parlor-like room, more like a bedroom. A woman lay across a sofa, her legs dangling off the side, her dress pulled up to her stomach, revealing the thong covering the dark vee, her eyes rolled back, the whites reflecting up in the light of a table lamp. She vomited on herself, then turned her head to retch again on the carpet next to the sofa. A couple of men smoking reefers standing next to her didn’t turn to watch or assist. She might have been a mannequin. A group of five or six men and women hovered around the coffee table with its huge urn of quick release. The band in the atrium entrance must have changed from soft jazz to hard rock. Its beat bounced into the room.
In the shadows Patrick could make out a couple pressed against the wall of an alcove, a tract light’s pink low glow illuminating the figures in outline. He wanted to say something to Mazur, but hesitated. He’d have to see for himself. It was Dancey’s shape. The lady’s bare legs were pinned up around his waist by his one arm, the other clutching her to him. He was pressing hard against her and the struggle was audible, the thump against the wall as he thrust into her and their gasps for air. The physical exersion, Patrick thought, of Charles Atlas and the Queen of the Amazons. This was no David of the Jews, seducing his neighbor’s wife, instead brought to bed by the odor of heat, the scent of her prominence and power, a perfume she had packaged in the sexual allure of a vampish girl hiding the gray hairs, sagging teats and dried roughness of her sex. If it was Dancey, aroused and unable to stop, if it was Jane, a woman at least 15 years older, standing up in an alcove of a strange apartment, witnessed by passerbys. Is there pleasure? Excitement? Discomfort overwhelmed by a sense of mastery? Power? Achievement? Victory? What does she feel? Dry at her age, the sensation of roughness without lubrication? How difficult it must be for her. Mazur had looked away and now was moving quickly from the room. No doubt, Patrick thought, a reminder of the escapades of his former wife.
They began to beat a retreat, crossing again into the large atrium, bumping into Jasper Joseph and Calvin Lance who had just arrived separately. Calvin was with his long-legged Marina and Jasper with Harriet Class who avoided Mazur’s greeting. Mazur was at the elevator, having muttered to Patrick that the descent would be better than the ascent.
Calvin was triumphant. He exclaimed, “Patrick, you’ll read about it tomorrow in your newspaper. All about it. Good old Johnson G. Jones arranged it.” He held Marina’s hand up in the air. “Yeah, Dancey put me in touch, and Jones made it happen.”
“And that is?” Flynn asked. “I can’t wait. And I ain’t going back in the office to find out.”
“That is Sam Collins. He’s agreed to finance my shopping center. Big stuff. A quarter million square feet of retail.”
“I can see the photograph, Calvin, The Blackman, shaking hands, embracing the white grimacing figure of Sam Collins,” Patrick said, his words dripping with sarcasm. “I never thought you’d put it together, Calvin. No one with any disposable income lives nearby. I mean what kind of feasibility did Collins do? I guess I might be wrong. Thousands of teenagers surround the place. Low-income kids who’ll pillage through the neighborhoods and come to spend their booty in your stores before they close from lack of bona fide patrons. The patrons you want will be scared away by these hyperactive customers with their boom boxes, jaunty mischief, loud voices, menacing body language, dressed for a vampire flick. I just don’t see it, Calvin. Your customers’ll be angry kids.”
“All black kids the same? Baby black panthers?”
“Black or white, doesn’t matter. Adolescents are poison to shopping malls. Not even their moms want to shop anywhere near them.”
“Bet you don’t think blacks can make this happen.”
“I do, I do. But I don’t think yours will survive. It needs good paying customers to get good paying tenants.”
“Only whites?” Calvin snapped angrily.
“Green’s the color,” Patrick responded.
H had summoned David Mazur to a meeting at Reverend Gaines’ church. Davey was surprised. First that Gaines hadn’t called him. Second that H was acting for Gaines. Mazur knew that H and Gaines kept their distance, however much they seemed to respect each other. Alice Abigail had given David Mazur an accurate description. The tension between the two had historical roots. Gaines vigorously had opposed a plan by the university 20 years ago to demolish and rebuild the neighborhood on its southern flank where his church was located, enlarging the institutional borders by removing the underserved community across the invisible river. Opposed was the understatement. Flynn told Davey using the search engine on his computer he had retrieved columns of copy. Marches. Denunciations. Pickets at the university led by Gaines, long before Jasper Joseph even put on long pants. Catholics, Jews, Protestants stood up angrily against the university. The socially conscious, as they called themselves, somewhat mushy, as Patrick described them, united against the established order – university, city, and the federal government.
The plan resulted from a precipitant drop in enrollment and flight of faculty during a time when the gangs swept through the neighorhoods, invading the university community to extort money from school children, rape a faculty member, and, it only took several, murder students and staff members. Gaines had sought to intervene with salubrious programs many university faculty and staff participated in providing. The university administration remained aloof and, as Mazur knew, cynical. H was outspoken, giving shelter and solace to killers was not going to stop crime, nor allay the fear that had caused many families to flee and faculty and students not to come. The university obtained a national reputation for hazardous duty. H was the strongest voice outside the administration for insisting on rigid police enforcement. Gaines knew this, since Gaines participated in the same city forums, and in recent years appeared at the same meetings in the Mayor’s Office as H and his friends from the university.
Gaines did not ally himself with the Reverend Ralph Darden, the white minister at First Pres, who provided a safe haven for the gang leadership. Darden let them use his church for their meetings. He tried to coop them, getting grants for gang members to repair buildings, clean up alleys, work with younger kids. They did and they didn’t. But they took the money. Darden’s pitch was to capture the potential of these “leaders”. The only problem was that they weren’t interested in their “human” potential. The potentials they calculated were cash and control. The police waited in the wings and, eventually, with federal agents raided Darden’s church in a hail of gunfire and a bloodbath of dead young black males. Patrick Flynn told Mazur he and Jack Murphy, his boss, saw the gangs like Darden, as a powerful force that could be channeled.
Gurnsey would sit on the corner of Flynn’s desk, his gladiator-sized legs kicking against the metal, “You crazy, Flynnsky. I grew up in this hellhole with these bastards. These buzzards’re murderers. No Christians here. No guilt. No remorse. None about to be baptized. Just killers. Nope, where I grew up we hoped they’d fry.”
“Yeah, I changed.” Flynn said. “It was like Gurnsey was sent to deliver a message to me and Murphy. Just like Reverend Darden, Murphy didn’t want to hear. Arnie said the kids he grew up with went to Sunday school to learn to kill, graduated when they did, were confirmed and then could join the barbarian hordes led by the Visigoths. Not a single redeeming act in their battle plan. Instant depravity.”
H told Davey, “I recognize that Gaines has stayed in that neighborhood. He could’ve moved farther south. He could have gone to the suburbs. He didn’t and he’s got the biggest church and the biggest following. The area won’t change without him. So, I told him I’d come. We agreed we wouldn’t talk about the high rises at this meeting. Later.”
Mazur was surprised, perhaps he thought to himself, hurt that Gaines hadn’t called him. In the last few years, they had worked together on a number of projects. Mazur often went to Gaines’ church for meetings or services, some times with his pal, Dancey, who was a member of the congregation. Gaines had married Dancey and Kristin in a university chapel, which Mazur had arranged.
Gaines did call the afternoon before the meeting. Davey told him that H had invited him. Gaines responded he was sorry he had been tardy, but he wanted to line up key community members first. He knew there was no sense in going ahead without the university.
“Are you sure you want the university there? Remember the past. A lot of people in the community don’t trust us. They’re suspicious at best and most outright hostile.”
“I don’t forget the past, Gaines said. Those days of provocation and confrontation are over. We want to build. We need help.”
At the last minute, H decided not to attend. He told Davey that, until the issue of the high rises was decided, he didn’t see what could be accomplished. He told him Dancey and Calvin would be there. He was despondent over Gaines’ announcement that a new organization would be formed, that the big low-rise subsidized housing project in the community, formally controlled by Jasper Joseph’s church and on the verge of foreclosure, would be refinanced by the new organization. Calvin’s company would be hired to manage the 300 units.
“It’d be one thing,” H said in their telephone conversation, “to let the fox into the hencoop for the night. So many dead chickens. It’s quite another to give him the hencoop, chickens and all.”
Mazur told him, “Dancey, Jasper and Calvin are the Pastor’s boys. He sheltered them, he taught them, and he trusts them.”
“Like I said, Lance is a fox in disguise. His is a poor disguise at that, heading the public housing agency and selling the services of his own company. I told Gaines I’ll contribute the plan I’ve paid for, and another $10,000. They can have advice free from my firm. If they really build new, viable market-rate housing, we can talk about financing. My company does a lot of private mortgage banking. But nothing without a deal on the high rises. You couldn’t sell beans, let alone homes, if those buildings are there.” H chanted his litany again: “Harboring gangbangers, whores, drug dealers. No working class person’s a dummy. Who’d buy in the shadow of those monstrosities. Investments in their homes would be worthless. Who’d give them financing? Can you imagine the loan appraisals?”
David Mazur went to the meeting, driving from the university to the church, passing by the vacant, ruble strewn lots, fire gutted houses and buildings without roofs or windows, where the homeless camped out. Gang members used these derelicts as bunkers from which to target practice on the few surviving windows, pinging loudly against battered trash cans or the sides of cars. He crossed the once flourishing commercial street where in the near dusk he could see prostitutes and druggies slinking around the rusting pylons that held the tracks of the abandoned elevated line, or leaning against the boarded up bombed out storefronts. The church was a block off the commercial street, no European cathedral but probably attended on Sundays by three times High Mass at Notre Dame. No soaring buttresses, it was a low brick building with two long wings, joined in the middle by a spire that topped the sanctuary. Gaines had rebuilt it three times, as his flock increased over more than a quarter century. He was preparing an even larger edifice. Mazur had encouraged one of the bank presidents on the university’s board to provide a loan, noting that the vast majority of the congregation now lived in working class neighborhoods on the edge of the city or in middle class black suburbs. There was no question that the loan would be paid off through tithing, probably before dedication, as each of the prior buildings had.
He parked the car. At the door, he was met by a well-attired black man, perhaps in his thirties, who shook his hand and said, “Praise the Lord.” He knew Curtis Grone, a subway train engineer, injured on the job in a freak accident that broke his back: (“Yeah, I between the cars and then it, you know, jacked around, whammo. Next thing woke up in cement and there I lay for months. Hurt. Man, it awful. Like gears grindin together. Not so bad. City pays everything. I gets lots of cash. The Pastor says the Good Lord saved me. I help’n him help the Good Lord. Not that my legs works real good. But I drive the Pastor. I opens the doors.”) Grone, limping beside him, escorted Mazur down the hallway, past the sanctuary. Noisy but well-behaved children and older youngsters moved around them heading toward the classrooms in the two wings. A group of heavy-set swaying women in their choir gowns paraded to their practice room. His escort showed him to Gaines’ study.
It was large, oblong, very plain, dominated at one end by the Pastor’s desk, a kidney shaped piece of mahogany topped with tens of photograph frames in metal, wood, fabric, all pointing toward where the Pastor would sit, photographs of his family, of friends, of meritorious occasions, one or two scenes of his wife, Carolyn, and him in Paris, his second favorite place aside from his neighborhood. Dancey, Kristin and the two children would join them for a day or two, and you would find a photograph with the six of them, standing in a crowd of people in front of Brasserie Balzar. Behind the desk and along one wall were bookcases tightly packed with Bibles, prayer books, hymnals, books of exegesis and commentary, the holy books of an array of other religions and interpretations of other beliefs, bound in black, brown, red, leather, buckram or paper, often with gold lettering. To one side was a huge television screen next to a table on which the coffee urn, sodas and plates of cookies had been placed with a stack of white paper napkins. Behind the desk was a high-back walnut desk chair on wheels with a dark brown leather back. David Mazur could see Reverend Gaines sitting in it, erect, as he had for their many meetings together in this room, meetings that began with Reverend Gaines pulled up tightly behind his desk and ended at the table across from each other, the rest of the seats empty, seeming to recede into infinity as the two of them talked.
There was nothing surprising about the room. Davey could feel the tenseness when he came in, providing a baroque decoration to the occupants. Gaines hadn’t arrived. Across the table sat Dancey with Calvin and Jasper. Dancey got up to shake Mazur’s hand and then went back to chatting with Calvin. They were dressed in their uniforms, Dancey in his blazer, Calvin in his dark blue Oxxford pinstriped suit, and Jasper a sports jacket with patches at the elbows.
Miriam Stern in her thick glasses in their pink plastic frame, pushed by her forefinger against her forehead, leaned over her bookbag, and Ernie Wishbone, the chief of detectives, next to her in a real uniform, the police suit he wore on parade - very unusual, since Wishbone was seen mainly in tweedy jackets and gray pants. Ernie, Mazur knew, still lived in the neighborhood and was a member of the church. Wishbone stayed out of controversies, except when it came to crime, especially the gangs and drug dealers, where he was fierce about drawing the line. Catch them by whatever means. Flatten them against the car. Cuffs. Push their heads down and load them in the wagon. Let the State’s Attorney decide. Alice and Charlie Abigale sat next to him. Mazur didn’t know the four or five other persons.
Curtis Grone came back, dragging one foot after the other, to say that Reverend Gaines would be joining them soon. The Pastor was returning from a wake. Grone pointed to the table with its coffee urn, sodas, pitcher of water and plate of cookies.
“Them’s by the ladies,” he said. Curtis left again.
Dancey leaned over to Ernie, “You ever catch Muchie’s killers?”
“No. You know it was a hit. The Deputy (Mazur knew he meant Joey Consanto, the First Deputy) thinks they’ll turn up, probably in a car trunk at the airport. Maybe not here. Maybe another city. But somewhere. I know how you feel, Dancey. You were close.”
“Right. I abandoned Muchie. All of us abandoned him.”
“Not me, Dancey,” Calvin Lance said. “You should talk to the Pastor. None of us could’ve saved Muchie. He chose. Like the rest of us, he decided.”
Ernie said, “If we could, our narcs would’ve busted him. Can’t blame us. Can’t blame society. You know that.”
“I don’t.” Dancey didn’t make it clear what he meant, but Mazur knew it wasn’t absolution.
At that moment, Reverend Gaines walked in. “Sorry to be late. The dead’ve no sense of time. I’m glad all of you came.” He paused for a moment, and then standing at the head of the table, “Let’s begin with prayer: O Lord, allow us, as imperfect as we are, to bring healing to our neighbors and to build anew our homes. We cannot do this alone, Lord, so we turn to You for help. We know, as You have told us, that ‘Through wisdom is a house builded, And by understanding it is established; And by knowledge are the chambers filled.’ Let us have wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Praise the Lord. Amen.”
He looked down the table. “For the 30 years I’ve been pastor here there’ve been countless plans to rebuild the neighborhood. They sit on the shelves in this office. They’re on the shelves in City Hall. I’m sure they’re on the shelves at the university. They’ve gathered dust. Nothing else. People suffer. It’s night here. Never ending night. We need light. All the plans say the same things: Got to solve the crime problem. Got to have good schools. I’m saying something different. We’ve got to start by building homes. We must build now. Everything else will follow.”
He moved his hand powerfully across the wood in front of him: “We’re not going to talk about the high rises. Each of us has very strong feelings about the high rises. Like Jerusalem, we’ll put that issue off to be resolved later.”
Calvin motioned as though he was going to speak. Gaines didn’t pause, “In the past, plans were derailed each time by an insistence that we had to fix the schools and provide a sense of personal security. I don’t disagree with the commitment to end the pervasive victimization of innocent people.
“I’m proposing a different approach. Alone we can’t fix the schools. They’re broken. Nor alone can we end crime. We need allies. We must build homes for those allies. They’ve got to have a stake to fight with us. There’s so much vacant land here. Ms. Stern says the City’s prepared to make a deal. This time we’ll begin by building homes. I’m not talking about homes that are subsidized rental units. I’m talking about owner-occupied homes. Sure, we’ll renovate housing for the underserved. I know them all, the good people left out. They’re living in the most adverse circumstances. We must provide for them. It’s an obligation. We can’t immerse them in another slum. We’ll never rebuild this community unless the highest proportion of new housing is owner-occupied. Like any other market rate development, the homes must be attractive to folks, families, who’ll have a stake in our future. Our success will be measured by how the neighborhood looks 50 years from now. It’ll be measured by whether the children of today’s owners are living here with their children and grandchildren. Yes, our success will be determined after we’re dead. After the Lord takes us, He’ll find other good souls, rich and poor, living here. That’s our challenge.”
Gaines paused and looked right at Calvin Lance, “I’ve talked to Mr. Gertens. I asked if his company would be our developer. He won’t. He’s done most of the planning with the homeowners. If Mrs. Abigale agrees, he’ll let us have the plans. Mr. Gertens said it’d be better for all of us if we find a minority developer.”
Gaines said quietly, “Of course, I’d prefer a black developer. Most of all I want a developer who’ll perform. At the end of the day, we want homes filled with people who own them. What about you, Calvin?”
“My group can do it.” Lance said. “You supply the land and I’ll build the units. But subsidies’re the only way it’ll work. You have to have a mix of affordable houses and deeply subsidized apartments. We can build and manage them.”
Gaines didn’t respond. He looked at Jasper Joseph. “And you, Jasper? You with us? We saved Dubois Parc from foreclosure and your church from insolvency. You ought to be playing a big role.”
Jasper smiled. “Of course, Pastor.”
Gaines said, “I asked Dancey to draft incorporation papers for a non-profit. We’ll need some gifts to start off. My church’ll put in $10,000. What about the rest of you? Dancey, your firm? Calvin, your company? What about you, Jasper?”
Mazur spoke up. “I’m sure the university’ll pledge an initial $10,000 and guarantee loans both front end and closing. I’ll be asked for a business plan. I’m sure Dancey and Calvin can put one together.”
“Mr. Gertens’ll put in his plan and $10,000,” said Gaines.
“It’s more than his plan,” Alice Abigale said. “All the homeowners have participated.”
“He made that very clear,” Gaines said.
Alice stood up, her solid form, an immoveable object, “I’m for going ahead. I know Charlie and the other homeowners’ll agree. It won’t work until we decide the fate of Jerusalem. The high rises are the nightmare I’ve lived with since my auntie left me our home. I said a nightmare. They’re a daytime horror show. I’m told call the cops when there’s a problem. Like when I’m shot at. I call 911. You know what they say? ‘Across from 4142? What the hell you doin there, lady?’ An hour later the cops show up. They tell me to move. You know all this, Officer Wishbone.”
She went on, her hands on her hips: “I know if we build homes, people’ll vote with their feet. You can put an army on every corner, but it won’t help. You need wholesome families on every corner. Not cops. You won’t get police protection and good schools with those monster, gang-filled buildings there. They’re across the street from where I live and down the street from the vacant land where market-rate homes could be built. The best land. Those buildings’re a few blocks from your university, Mr. Mazur. Those vultures flap to the land of opportunity. Right, Mr. Mazur? Robbing and stealing. So, I don’t see how it can work ‘til we solve the issue of Jerusalem. Get rid of the high rises. Pastor, we can’t postpone the fight. We must resolve the issue of the high rises. They have to go, if we’re going to be successful.”
“No secret how you feel, Mrs. Abigail,” Gaines said calmly. “Let’s take it one step at a time. The next step’s for Dancey to draw up the papers to incorporate our Neighborhood Fund for New Life. Constitute everyone in the room as a board member. I believe we should pursue the Gertens plan. I’m sure it’ll need modification. We’ll need to know, Ms. Stern, where the Mayor stands? How much help can we get from the City? He’ll have to designate a Commissioner to work with us. Dancey, why don’t you bring around your friend, Adlai Hacknott? He’s very influential with the giving community. He and his family’re plugged into all the foundations. All of them ought to support the Neighborhood Fund for New Life.”
Mazur stood up. “Look, Reverend Gaines, let me repeat what I said to you before the meeting. The university’s regarded with such suspicion in the black community. I don’t think I should have an official position here. It’ll taint the entire process.”
“Better part of the process in public,” Gaines said, “than people saying you’re behind the scene manipulating me. You should be here with us, David. I’m telling you and everyone else, that the community, me, we’re the General Partner, and the rest of you, the university, Dancey’s firm, Calvin’s company, anyone else is a Limited Partner.”
“Mister Gertens won’t go ahead unless he has his way.” Calvin Lance said, stressing Mister, and then adding, “No limited partner him.”
Mazur thought what a collection – here are working class stiffs like the Abigales, Wishbone, Curtis outside the door, and then those who made it like Dancey, Calvin and Jasper. Units of power like the university, the church, the city. Could they function together to create a future, or would it be a repeat of the past, the ruins of indecision and inaction?
Gaines raised his hand, “Understanding means each understands our own limitations, and the other’s agenda. If there’s a point of self-interest where all of us meet, then the Lord‘ll make it happen.”
“Listen, Pastor,” Ernie Wishbone said. I’m out here every night. I’m not just a cop. I’m one of the few homeowners. There’s a lot of cleaning up first – gangs, druggies, prostitutes. Mrs. Abigale knows this. We can handle it. Believe me, no one’s going to buy a house with a guy urinating in the front yard or shots fired down the street. I’ve lived here 20 years. I walk the streets. I make collars right there. It’s you or them. Yeah, we shoot it out right on the street. It’s not pretty. I’m here. I know.”
‘But you haven’t found out who killed Muchie?” Dancey said.
Wishbone paused. He brought his hands to his face in a cathedral clasp, “Muchie Moore was a dealer,”he said, “like any other dealer. Except he tried to take over someone else’s turf. White guy’s turf. He went down, like anyone like him. Wasted. The Deputy’s his own theory. It’s only a theory. Listen, Dancey, you and I know police work’s imperfect. More crimes than arrests. Punks everywhere but jail.”
“I’m not talking about the gunsters. I’m talking about who ordered it.”
“The Deputy thinks someone connected with Jones. He’s your pal, Johnson Garvey Jones. I can’t imagine we’ll find a connection. All those Sam Collins types use high powered Tide on their linen.”
Dancey got up from the table. “I don’t believe you. You know Collins’ a client and Jones is helpful to black businessmen, like Calvin. If Muchie was white, it’d be different. You’d have real suspects. Not this kind of speculation. Police gossip.”
“You know that’s not true, Dancey. That’s a piece of shit.” Ernie turned to Reverend Gaines. “I’m sorry, Pastor.”
“Okay. We’re done here.” Reverend Gaines got up. “Dancey, see what you can do quickly. Ms. Stern, if you think my seeing the Mayor would help, I’ll do it. Any time.”
Mazur shook hands with Reverend Gaines, gestured to Dancey and Calvin and touched Jasper on his shoulder.
When he called H afterwards, H replied, “What do I think? I think nothing’ll happen until the high rises disappear. Who’d ever purchase a new home in their shadow? If they’re razed, sure, with enough vision, perseverance, courage, will power and big bucks. I wish I thought prayer would do it. Maybe Gaines can.” He paused. “You know my parentage. You cleaned your palate of sin by praying. You could be forgiven only the transgressions of the Edicts, sins against the Supreme Being. Praying doesn’t do anything to cure the transgressions against the little wigs - your neighbors, your wife. your brother or sister, your friend, your enemy. That’s between you and them. You’ve got to handle those yourself. You’re responsible.”
Reverend Gaines reported at their next meeting that H sent copies of the plan he had financed with a check for $10,000. It was the first contribution to establish the Neighborhood Fund for New Life.
Ruth James called Patrick Flynn. He was surprised. Sure, he knew her. He had spoken to the staff at her hospital as a favor to Dancey. He had told Dancey he didn’t make the rounds, the newspaper editor giving the inside scoop. Ruth’s monthly meeting of her staff began with an interesting person, as Dancey had put it, talking about some aspect of his or her work. “You can talk about crime, race, whatever you want, Patrick,” Dancey said. “Make it interesting, which means none of the theories you and Murphy promulgate about the revolution, of youth taking over our sullied world. You have them opening the door to a new era of transmigrating souls, at the same time blaming us for the exiting state of nature. You and Jack are making a career of excuses for adolescent excesses.”
Flynn described his presentation to Dancey as a modest success. “You ought to ask Ruth for the real scoop. I talked about the media. They loved it ‘cause, like everyone else, they hate the media almost as much as they hate politicians. Why not? We used to think we delivered reports of the facts as we found them. Ever since Vietnam, in our self-assurance we’ve become more than delivery boys. We know everything. Used to be, you were good if you were good at assembling the facts, like putting together a drainpipe or the carburator on a Ford. Today, it’s not a trade. All the editors and reporters think journalism is a profession, with a capital J. The worst are those ladies and gents on t.v. First, they don’t know nouns from verbs. Second, they primp on camera without an ounce of humility. Humility about what? Humble before the events they didn’t make happen? Could be anything they report: bombings, assassinations, wars, murders, robberies, failing schools, you name it. They know all about it. They smile with their self-knowledge. No wonder everyone hates us. I didn’t talk about that to your sister’s staff. Instead, I chose to pontificate about the promise of the media as an instrument for community stability, for building relationships, bridges to communities we’re supposed to serve. We fail. Like everything else, the medium’s insular. Take kids. The media loves to make them the little bastards their parents think they are. I remembered your warning, Dancey. So I dropped it there and generalized. We foster divisions, fractures, or just don’t have any impact at all. I gave them a few concrete examples, from zoning the paper’s distribution to the segmenting of audiences by cable. I told a few crime stories. Why some appear in the paper or on television and why some don’t. Chapter and verse of my version of race relations in this town. You take the public schools. I told them, they fail because the teachers can’t read, write, or speak English. That’s because the education schools that turn them out can’t. Why isn’t this a scandal? For one thing, the city public schools are black. They’ve been captured by the black professional class. They wouldn’t send their kids to the neighborhood school. Who’ll take that on? Not the white politicians nor the white civic leadership, nor the white newspapers, nor, for that matter, the black newspapers or radio stations. They let it pass. It’s like black on black crime. You won’t find two paragraphs in the Metro Section. Lots of space for black guy shoots white guy, white guy shoots white guy. Sometimes the story’s so good, so hot, so unusual, like the Lorimar murder. White athlete kills black coed girlfriend. It’s front page. Affirmative action. Then I asked them, Ruth’s worker bees, what they would do about the high rises. I gave a brief history and some recent facts of deprivation and demises. What should the newspaper report? What should it editorialize? Some had no ideas at all, or didn’t care. Most of those who did thought they should be preserved and rehabbed. Hooray for Calvin Lance. That’s what those suburbanites think. When it was over, I got applause.”
Ruth told Patrick she wanted to talk about Dancey. She’d buy lunch. It would take her nearly an hour to drive in from the hospital. “Let’s try the Greeks,” Patrick said, “it wouldn’t be crowded by the time they got there.”
When Nicky, the owner, brought Ruth to the table, Patrick was nursing a cup of coffee, the real American type, he told her, not the Greek mud. The place was nearly empty. Sunlight glinted through the front windows, making the fishing nets that hung from the ceilings look like so many brown cobwebs.
Ruth was not matronly, but she had spread out, a large not unattractive woman, somewhat stern as she looked at you through her rose tinted glasses. She was still wearing a uniform, only now it was a fashionable dark blue dress with white stripping around the neck, sleeves and where the material extended over her knees. Unlike her brother, her complexion was very dark. When you looked at her, you focused immediately on the large eyebrows, white on their black page. Patrick knew her early career had not been easy. She sped through Wellesley and then Duke, where her professors used a network of their former students to find her a position. But blacks didn’t advance quickly, if at all, and she stalled and became frustrated, working in urban hospitals in administrative positions until a Duke classmate and hospital CEO, tired of diversity sessions, decided to recruit her as chief operating officer. As determined as he was to make it work, everyone else seemed just as determined to sabotage her. Dancey said she hunkered down. She gave up whatever personal life she could have had. “Professional black women really don’t have many male options,” Dancey told him. “Look at the selection out there. Who could they find? Who would find them? Some mean overmedicated pervert? A hopeless unemployed parasite? A few guys like me marry white women. Ruth devoted herself to her hospital, reorganized the administrative staff and cut out money-losing services. She was a take-no-hostages type and she made a lot of enemies. Nonetheless, when her mentor decided to leave, she was asked by the board to replace him.”
Patrick watched Ruth across the table: She was a professional woman, a business always person, alone but confident in her singularity; and that’s how she appeared now.
The Greeks wasn’t that far from the newspaper. Patrick ate there many evenings when only bite-size pieces of conversation could be heard over the din of the crowded dining room, Menelaus’s dining hall, waiters dancing between the tables, boys noisily bussing away the dirty dishes. The clatter from the open grills and steam tables not quite drowning out the recorded sounds of the bazouki and oed and the songs of Mikis Theodorakis. At 2:30 p.m., it was a different place, the celebrators of the night before engulfed in a sea of daily commitments and activities, the minor key of the instruments framing the conversation without interrupting the words. They travel across the table from mouths to ears in the near stillness from the grills, just the soft chatter of the grillmen in the language of the islands neither of them could understand.
Ruth had told Patrick long ago of the troubled times for the Judge, Dancey and herself when Esmeralda died. The Judge was a stern father before his wife’s death. “For a while,” Ruth said, “he was subdued.” She became the house frau. Strange to hear from her mouth. “Reverend Gaines came by often,” she said. “He’d sit with father, in silence in the beginning, gradually over the weeks talking about us, the children. Dancey was still living with Reverend Gaines and Carolyn.” “My father,” she had told Patrick, “wanted Dancey to come home, but the Pastor thought he should stay with them a while longer.”
“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” she said as she brought her chair to the table. She took off those large rose-tinted glasses but put them back on as the waiter handed her a menu.
Patrick told the waiter, “You know what I want.”
“I worry about Dancey,” Ruth said. “I worried about Dancey as children. Our father was pretty strict. I think you know. When mother died, father retreated. So did Dancey. I fluttered around them. I didn’t feel any less grief, but I believed I could act like mother, draw father out, and comfort Dancey. I was a young girl and had that girlish belief in my powers. I’m telling you this now because I’m as concerned today about Dancey as I was then. I thought about talking to Calvin and Jasper. They grew up together. Of course there was Moses. But Moses’s dead. About Moses, I know Dancey feels deeply hurt, and I sense his conscience is damaged for not in some impossible way rescuing Moses from the life he chose for himself. Why doesn’t Dancey give him up? Moses’ dead. Wishful thinking won’t bring him back. If it did, he’d still be a hoodlum. Dancey’s usually such a realist. Things fall where they fall. That’s Dancey. Usually, as I said. But he gets hung up on personal relationships, attachments he has trouble sorting out. A man as mature as Dancey needs these attachments to connect him. To what I don’t know. How could anyone’ve redirected Moses Moore? Redirected him where? I’ve got a whole ward filled with crack babies. They’re all white. White crack babies bringing pain and misery to a hospital in the suburbs.”
“What about Calvin,” Patrick asked. “Dancey idolizes him.”
“What about Calvin? There’re docs in the hospital who believe they’re infallible. Gods. Gods don’t have any friends. Divine right and Apostles. Calvin’d fit in. That’s part of the problem. And Jasper Joseph? He and Dancey’re so competitive I couldn’t imagine saying anything personal to Joseph about Dancey. He’d use it. He pretends to be a good churchman. He’s never fooled me. That leaves John Trooman and you of Dancey’s friends. I’m not sure there’re others. David Mazur is distanced. He keeps himself distanced from Dancey and probably everyone else. John’s perfect. He can handle Dancey better than anyone. He’s steadfast in knowing who he is and where it’s at. I think Dancey has a deep connection with him. Deeper than any other I know. But John Trooman’s never around. He’s either posted to Africa or hanging out in D.C. He’ll show up here once in a blue moon. I decided it was you.”
“Dancey and me are friends,” Patrick said. “But I have to be careful. If he thinks I’m wearing white, he becomes black.”
“I know. Dancey’s been challenging everyone to prove him since he first looked in the mirror.”
“Prove him?”
The waiter carefully put a plate of calamari and lemons in front of Patrick. With his other hand, he presented Ruth with a large Greek Hillbilly salad, topped with feta cheese. Patrick got his beer and she her iced tea.
“I didn’t say seeking approval. I meant: Could he succeed as a black boy? Could he make it as a white guy? Who is to say? He wants us to say. Each of us. That’s what he’s always asking us and asking himself. To be proved up.”
She continued, “Listen, when Dancey came home after living with Reverend Gaines, my father didn’t acknowledge he had returned, or that he’d been away. Dancey was sullen. He was angry. As far as he was concerned, the house was empty. It wasn’t any different for me, but I’d decided I’d make home as cheerful as it’d been with mother. Don’t think it was easy for me, a young girl growing up. Like father, like Dancey, I harbored in my heart a deep, abiding grief. I still do. I miss her presence, her arms that embraced me, lifted me to kiss, her hands which stroked my head at night when I lay abed, dispelling my anxieties, my childhood fears. As a little girl, I treasured advice that only a mother can give little girls as they begin to grow up. Yes, I can’t tell you how much I missed her, and miss her today. I didn’t replace my grief with anger. I buried it in my heart and determined to bring a sense of goodness and joy in this life to my father and my brother.”
She looked at Patrick. “You never met our father? No, of course not. But you knew about him. Your paper wrote about him. You saw photographs of him. He was an imposing figure. He was not a bower or scraper. He stood straight.
“I can remember my coming into the living room, not being seen at first by father or Dancey. The Judge was towering over Dancey. Mother’d been gone for several years. He was in adolescence, but in many ways Dancey was still a boy just as determined to win as he is now.
“‘You can’t have everything,’ father said to him. ‘You can’t be everything. You’ve got to chose.’
“Dancey looked at him in silence.
“I hung back.
“Father said, ‘You’re a black man. Not a black boy. Not a white boy. You’re a black man. You think the evidence’s different. You look in the mirror. You’re a white boy. That’s what you think. It isn’t the right life for you, Dancey. Living a lie never is.’
“Dancey didn’t say anything at first. Then he said something I believe he still thinks: ‘Why should I choose? I don’t care. If you want me to be black, that’s okay. If some dude thinks I’m white, so be it. Doesn’t make a difference to me.’
“ ‘You’re making trouble.’”
Ruth had picked at her salad, moving the white lumps of feta to one side with the cucumbers and onions, slowly lifting on her fork the slices of green peppers, little tomatoes and Kalamata olives. She put down the fork.
“Father’s voice was raised, filled with anger, demanding retribution, as though Dancey’d been caught with the Golden Calf. I’d never heard father raise his voice in that way. Yes, he’d speak slowly, tensely, holding his anger inside so that only the sharp edges escaped his lips. The tension was so thick that I was tightly grasping my arms. They were wrapped around me like a vise, so tight I found marks on them later.
“ ‘I can’t be like you,’ Dancey said to our father. He was still not up to the Judge’s shoulders. ‘I want to be me. I want you and everyone else to decide for yourselves who I am.’
“ ‘Who you are?’ The Judge, and he was judge, towered over Dancey, his hands on his hips.
“ ‘You tell me. Didn’t you make me? Or was it some white guy?’ Dancey was defiant. He knew all about slavery, the probable horrific history of his derivation and thus tinting.
“I could see our father’s arm go back and then slam against Dancey’s face sending him reeling onto the sofa. I was shocked, surprised, afraid. My father was afraid and shocked at himself. His eyes didn’t look at me – or at Dancey. He was unlike himself. He was for a moment not the father I knew. He always looked directly at you. He never avoided your eyes when he spoke to you. He hadn’t spoken to Dancey. He hadn’t spoken to me. He’d done something he’d never done before. There was a startled look on his face, a look, as I said, in which even as a young girl I saw fear.
“Dancey was a boy looking up at our father from the edge of the sofa, the clear imprint of father’s hand on his white face, his flesh reddened by the blow. For an instant, I expected to see a black hand on Dancey’s cheek. I’ve that expectation today.”
Patrick asked her, “Did the Judge repair the damage?”
“There were years and miles to go. Dancey was an adolescent. Each kept bottled up a lot of anger. Our father must’ve felt deeply Dancey’s words and the fuse they lighted to his memories of our mother. Dancey’s anger must be rooted in part in mother’s death and that single act of punishment, the Judge’s sentence, the outrage, perhaps his own outrage over his racial ambivalence. Our father’s way of dealing with his anger was to eschew emotion. Except for that one instance, I never knew emotion from him, other than the quiet if not stern ways he showed he loved us, and his grieving for our mother. His striking Dancey was out of character, larger to us, an indelible line that rived me and, I’m sure, Dancey.”
She drew back from the table, “You wonder about black kids today. Deep below the many layers of other emotional challenges lies the bitterness about slavery, the ultimate humiliation of a human being. You belong to someone else, a lump of coal, property without heart or soul. Did it also reside in father? In Dancey? In all of us? Hiding behind the cloak of self-depreciation, depression, self-hate. You go to talks at the university, Mr. Flynn. I’ve seen you there.”
“I go to many different places to hear interesting things. Even here at the Greeks,” Patrick said.
She kept on. “I once heard the French historian and philosopher Francois Furet describe his American experience. He’s something of a Toqueville. Or could have been if he hadn’t died. He talked about this psychosis among blacks. It’d take several more generations, perhaps even more, he said, before it would disappear from the black subconscious. A black man in the audience raised his hand. ‘What about whites?’ He asked. ‘How many generations before their hatred of blacks disappears?’ I remember the silence in the room. Furet didn’t answer immediately. Then he said, ‘Perhaps never. You don’t look like us.’ ”
Patrick interrupted her, “And the Zulu Kings, the Yombe Princes, the Ashanti chiefs who sold you to the Arab traders?”
“You’re Irish. Do you remember the British sea captains who sent thousands of your kinsmen into indentured servitude?”
“Not really. It wasn’t the same. We weren’t property. We were of less value. That may’ve saved us, that and the Church.”
“You weren’t torn from your families, mothers and fathers, children, brothers and sisters. Brutal disaggregating of families, kinships, tribal relationships.”
“I guess not.”
“We don’t remember those who sold us. We’re no longer affected by the particulars. Our lives and our culture are shaped by the hidden infection of humiliation, the acts of squashing our humanity.”
“Is this what makes Dancey who he is?”
“Dancey would deny it. We all do when we become more like all of you. But who’s to say whether he and the rest of us aren’t driven by that inner animus?”
Time was marching on, Patrick told her. He felt pressured to get back to the paper. He said, “We didn’t come here to discuss Dancey’s inner animus.”
She laughed. “No. But I wanted to give you a broader picture, just like when you talked to my staff. You’re a model of articulation. I’m trying to articulate for you Dancey’s struggle. His battles.”
“And the battles are?” Patrick asked.
“He’s on the verge of leaving Kristin and his two children. He has this sick relationship with that female lawyer, a hardened shrew of a careerist, who is 15 years older than him. He’s supporting Lance’s cynical game plan for instant fame and wealth. His idolatry of Calvin’s blinded him. I don’t want Dancey to go down with Lance. Lance will go down. He’s a challenge to the white establishment. Believe me, they’ll kick the stool out. If I challenge Dancey, I’m like all the other black Mamas. I’ve chosen up with the white devils.”
“You’ve joined the club.”
“I’ve always been a member. Remember I knew Calvin, Jasper and Moses when they were boys playing with Dancey. They aren’t much different today than they were then. Except Moses. He didn’t push us girls, the way Calvin and Jasper did. I keep thinking that he had his mores, despite all the evil things he did. Calvin and Jasper matured from pushing to touching girls. They were on the make. Even with me, Dancey’s sister. Jasper was the worse. What would you expect today with a wife housed in a nice apartment up north. No one knows she’s there. He’s a mistress or two in the university neighborhood. Even as a girl of 13, just budding out, Jasper would find a way to put his hands where they didn’t belong, to run after me and push me down, pull up my skirt, and run away. I’m sure he hasn’t changed a bit. Moses had his girls, but they weren’t from the families that went to church with us. I was a very proper girl. I took their hands away. I could be stern, like my father. They got nowhere playing with me. There was no way they could pretend to be the doctor with me as the patient. I don’t know whether Calvin’s any different today. I would guess, like Jasper, trying to get what he can. Dancey was curious. He still is. I don’t understand how someone who’s always asking questions can be taken in by Calvin, or by that virago who uses her historical sex.”
“Historical sex?”
“Surely. She’s as old as Jezabel and her sex just as corrupting. What fascinates him about her? About Calvin? I don’t know if I’m describing my fears so you can understand them. Fears for Dancey, my brother.”
“Listen, Ruth,” Patrick said, “I don’t know what task you’re assigning. I’m just a reporter. I can’t change people.”
“Just make him see,” she said. “See himself in the attachments, the connections he seems to need. That’s what you do, Patrick. You try to make people see.”
“See what?” Patrick asked. “You couldn’t have described your brother better. He’s lazy in that way. He’s curious. He doesn’t look at himself. He wants to know what others see.”
There was silence between them. The music tinkled, drawing a curtain on a chorus of hefty dancers, fleshy, the silken scrims of their garments seductively moving about their bodies as they caroused across the restaurant dining room, dissolving in the late afternoon rays.
“I’ll do what I can,” he offered.
“Thanks,” she said, and pushed back her chair. Patrick held it for her and they parted. He watched her walk resolutely from the restaurant, a determination in her gait to get to the next destination.
Mazur walked with H and Patrick from a dinner meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Council. The rain was relentless, a Niagara Falls cascading from H’s canvas fishing hat. The meeting was a bust. The City’s Planning Director, a sour woman of about six three, gave a report on current projects and future plans, as though her large frame, esophagus to intestines were constipated by government jargon and bureaucratic phrasemaking. She stood in front of the microphone which came to where her breasts should have been and dryly spouted her lines. Like: “We’re providing housing for the elderly in two Federal 202 projects just South of the River. The CDC’s approved the plan. The PHC will operate the buildings. This will be an expanding redevelopment area for the City. It’s not an Empowerment Zone. More like an Enterprise Node. Six hundred units in two quality high rises for the elderly, each occupant supported with separate federal assistance. (She listed all the programs.)” H turned to Patrick: “Well, that’ll kill any private investment. 202 means HUD construction standards. 1940s refrigerators stacked on top of each other. Filled with poor elderly people, arriving in carecabs and departing in bodybags one step ahead of me. Your newspaper’ll probably applaud.”
She went on about housing for the underserved, relishing each word: “We’re going to work with Calvin Lance to renovate the public housing high rises on the City’s southside. He will rid them of gangs. They’ll be for families. Those buildings are unique resources for our City,” she said, “havens for the underserved, who’ve nowhere else. The Public Housing Commission, under Mr. Lance’s leadership, will create mixed-income communities there, reducing the density, enabling each building to become a thriving neighborhood.” H said softy, “Seems like the City and the Feds are planning bankruptcy – financially and socially. These lucky folks will get repainted penal colonies where the incarcerated hatch rebellions. Poor people afraid of each other. Generation after generation mired in muck. Thank goodness for the planners who make it possible for the developers to become rich.”
“Take it easy,” Patrick whispered. “Her tenure’s limited. The Mayor’s very unhappy with humorless do-gooders left over from the prior administration.”
H just shook his head. “I don’t expect much,” he muttered, “from her or the Mayor.”
Outside, they quickly were soaked to the skin and had to talk in loud voices to be heard over the traffic and the rain. Mazur reported getting into Cheap Eats was easier than getting out. While the checkout in most food stores was near the door, here it was pulled back, a wide space between the checkers and the exit aisles, but divided narrowly to permit only a cart and a person, one at a time, to trundle to the door, watched by young white men in yellow jump suits with CHEAP EATS emblazoned across their chests. Mazur said, “When I looked up, over aisles crammed with customers taking down boxes, cartons, packages of grocery items, I saw a glass wall cantilevered across the entire width of the store. You couldn’t see into the glass but you knew Cheap Eats wardens manned the other side to observe the activity below, ready to rush down the stairs, spin out across the floor, smack some child pocketing a piece of candy or fruit, grab a lady sticking a bag of rice in her already overstuffed bra. I saw a teenager trying to rifle one of the cash drawers. He got his head in a hammer lock, a sawed off shot gun pressed against his belly. The place reeked of rotting vegetables and fruits.”
Mazur had it right. They were cheap because they were picked up at the end of the day in the wholesale fruit and vegetable market, sold there by the stall men at less than cost before the remnants were left for the garbage trucks that pushed through the narrow streets, omnivorous monsters with unappeasable appetites.
No meat or poultry was cut to order by the Cheap Eats butchers for their patrons. Instead, plastic packages and plastic bags were stacked in open freezer units that lined one wall, labels at top identifying what lay within.
Mazur said, “I walked to the vending machines. Mattie Rose was sipping a coke.
“ ‘What’s you want, college boy?’ She asked me.
“I told her, ‘It’s what you want, Mattie.’
“ ‘All youse guys fightin over my home.’ She shook back her hair. ‘I wants a home for me and my kids. Understand?’
“ ‘You think that’s possible in the high rises?’
“ ‘I got em. Don’t got nuthin else.’
“ ‘If you had something else, what would it be?’
“She looked at me, her mouth turned up in a little smile. ‘Dat’s what Jewboy Hockbone says. Seein’s believin’.’
“ ‘Fair enough. What about Lance?’
“ ‘Give me a break. He a smart black ass in spats. Some white guy’s got his digit up Lancerooney. Seein’s believin.’
“A burly yellow-suited warden approached us, baseball bat dangling from his right hand. ‘You gonna buy something?’
“We ignored him and headed for the exit, navigating the maze of barriers and passing through the check out line.”
“Did she mention Dancey?” Patrick asked him.
“No, and I didn’t ask her,” Mazur responded.
H turned into the entrance of his building. He hadn’t bent once to avoid the watery onslaught. “Dancey’s okay and, intellectually acute,” he said. “If you knew the Judge, and I did, you’d guess that Dancey needs a father. Right now, Calvin qualifies. Some day Dancey’ll discover the genes don’t match and there’ll be an awakening. You’ll see. I suspect it’ll be over ethical conduct. Ask Reverend Gaines. I don’t especially like him, but he knows all about conduct. I know David here likes him. He’s Lance’s pastor. Gaines is what they call a straight arrow. When it comes to his flock, he’s more like a bow. Tough, but pliable.”
He took off his hat, shaking it, and then went through the glass doors into the huge marble lobby that reached up 12 of the building’s 43 floors that his company built and managed. The bright lights in pendulum fixtures that hung from the top did nothing to warm the space, as though you had opened an empty upright freezer and stepped inside.
“Dancey called me the other day,” Mazur said as H disappeared. He and Patrick stood in the rain under the overhang. “His pal, John Trooman, plans to visit him. He asked if Trooman could lead a university seminar or workshop. Dancey’s an alum. He knows the culture of the place. He knows how the faculty’ll react to some administrator trying to interfere with the academic polity, trying to get a pal an appointment.”
“Come on, Davey,” Patrick said. “Trooman’s a respected diplomat. He’s been to nearly every country South of the Sahara. He speaks at colleges and universities all the time. You’re too timid. I know all about the anal retentive faculty, but you ought to give it a try. You know senior people in Political Science and History. They’ll really get it off having a respected black man, recently returned from serving his country in the jungles of Africa. Hey, who could be better?”
“W. E. DuBois.”
“Very funny.”
“You hang around the kids. I hang around with faculty, You’ve got the best deal. Mediocrity’s yet to set in.”
“Davey, you’re such a dour guy.” Patrick said. He was going to say something about Anne, Mazur’s nymphomaniac wife, fucking everyone from students to bi-sexual professors. There was nothing secret about her escapades. Instead, he asked, “So how’s your boss? Throw anything at you recently? At the paper, we call her Attila the Hun. I don’t know how the education reporter knows, but he says Darwin hurls ashtrays and other university fixtures across the room, careful not to hit anyone. Just make em jump. Do you?”
Mazur said nothing
Patrick, thinking about his meeting with Ruth James, pressed on, “Listen, Trooman has this special relationship with Dancey. When they worked together in the North Philly slums, Trooman became as close to him as any black man could, even Calvin. They’re more like brothers, than idol and idolater. Maybe he can turn Dancey around on the high rises. Try to get Trooman an engagement.”
Davey said, “I know all about their relationship.”
“So?” Patrick said, “You have to suffer first, then the rest of us? Listen, it’ll be interesting. I’ve followed Trooman’s career since my first encounter at a State Department reception with Dancey. Adam Feldstein’s an alum. Right? A pal of your’s. You want to school together? Maybe they’ll both visit. Trooman and Feldstein seem inseparable these days. They even get posted together. Very unusual. But then again so’s our foreign policy. Dancey told me Trooman learned to survive when he first wore diapers surrounded by gangs, drug dealers, and prostitutes. For Trooman to get through, to get out, he had to learn to navigate. Trooman’s mother was the skipper. At an early age he picked up all she knew about the shoals, floating mines, and the narrow crevices. She maneuvered him through with energy and forbearance. On the other hand, Dancey says Trooman got him into bed with luscious girls in the Philadelphia ghettos.”
“Bravado, I think,” Mazur said. “I doubt Trooman had much to do with girls, at least from what I know from Adam Feldstein.”
“I can only tell you what Dancey says. Trooman doesn’t have the same pedigree as his State Department colleagues. Princeton, Harvard, Yale, scions of prominent Wasp families. His law degree’s from Temple University. He wrangled a first-class certificate from the LSE.”
“Adam’s very proud of John,” Davey said. “He rode in on the wave of diversity. His work stood out from the start. He quickly rose in the Department, at least as far as a non-pedigreed black guy could go. He shared an office with Feldstein. Adam’d been mucking about for a few years, a Midwesterner who had gone here and ended up at Hopkins for an advanced degree. It was a fluke, at least for a Jew, selected for a special program at State. But he’d six languages and area studies from Africa to Asia. I saw him a few times in D.C. before he was posted overseas. Both he and Trooman came back at the same time and ended up sharing a cubbyhole. It couldn’t have been easy. Adam likes to talk, to argue. He puts forth outrageous propositions to get a reaction. You didn’t sleep at night if Adam was your roommate. Everyone asked for a transfer to another roommate. Trooman doesn’t gush. At least that’s what Adam says. I think when they were frozen out, a minority of two, Feldstein quieted down and Trooman began to respond to him. Trooman moved in with Feldstein in a little pied-a-terre near American University. They’re the odd couple. Look at them, Patrick. John is smoothly black, tall, slender, his ears large but seem to fit full face. Those intense brown irises nestled in their large almond-shaped canoes peer back at you, so that your own drop to his long fingers that seemed always at rest against each other.”
“You sound like a lover,” Patrick said.
“Not me. John’s a listener. Adam isn’t. He’s the other brother, maybe the twin, large, bulky, a face dominated by a hulking nose and bulging eyes covered by thick lenses perched in wire on top of nearly always dilated nostrils, ears just as big but ready to flap in any gust of wind, and hands that are moving with the fervid irrationality of Saint Vitus’s dance. He’s a twin, all right, but white.”
“There you are,” Patrick said. “You’re going to make it happen.”
4 – Negotiations
Patrick decided to go, when he received the invitation from the Committee on African and Asian Studies. He wondered who would attend Trooman’s lecture and whether Feldstein would accompany him. The small lecture hall was packed with black and white students, and several professors he recognized. Feldstein wasn’t there. Then there were some folks who didn’t look like university types. They didn’t wear the student dress of cut offs, washed jeans, tees or open shirts. They were mostly white guys with a few blacks, outfitted in more rugged attire of lumberman shirts under short leather jackets, scruffy, bristly faces rather than beards or mustaches, guys who had been long on the range and were mean-looking. They sat together in a block of seats in the back third of the room. Because of its intimacy, you could ask a question sitting in the last row and be heard up front.
Timothy Feebes went to the lectern. He was an American historian, and, Patrick knew, a good friend of Mazur. Feebes had spent considerable time in Africa, teaching at universities in Addis Ababa, Kampala, and Accra. He could spend an evening regaling a dinner party with his experiences, never repeating from one night to the next the same story. His Fulbrights paid him to teach American studies in those foreign countries, one of the few scholars to take assignment again and again in countries many regarded as an exile from civilization governed by the social contract. Rumpled in heavy blue serge with a red tie, Feebes stood in front, his hands in his pockets. The noise in the hall quieted down. Patrick turned around. The TransAfrica bloc was silent. They had expectations. About 50 persons stood in the back of the room and under the leaded windows that arched along one side. Trooman, Mazur and Dancey James were in the front row. Patrick did not see Dancey’s chums Calvin Lance and Jasper Joseph. There would be no Moses Moore, no Muchie, to get them out if there was trouble in this genteel environment.
The Professor took his hands from his pockets to rake back his thinning gray hair with one hand and grasp the lectern with the other. In his high pitched voice, he began:
“When I first alighted in Accra, I was met by the U.S. Cultural Attache. He was a big, burly sweating white man. Fatter than me. He had in one hand a list of things I shouldn’t do. What I shouldn’t eat. Whores I shouldn’t use. People I shouldn’t try to see. Customs I shouldn’t break. The rules of the game. The problem was that it wasn’t for Ghana. It was for East Africa. I’ve never been sure he knew the mistake, or cared. So, there I was without an official guidebook. Mr. State Department quickly abandoned me. Left to my own devices, I’d a wonderful time. I learned a lot, even the things I shouldn’t do. I did most of all the things you should do. As some of you know, it’s not unusual for my African students to come here for further studies. They arrive from Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia, all the places I taught.
“One rule I learned: Don’t impose my own culture on my hosts. That’s a rule we should’ve learned from our predecessors, the colonial powers, since they failed by insisting on their demands. But we haven’t learned very much, either from the failures of our predecessors or by observing and listening to our hosts.”
Warmed up, Feebes began his introduction of Trooman, ending by acknowledging Dancey James.
He stood back: “If I were getting off the plane tomorrow, would I be met by John Trooman? If so, I don’t think there’d be a list of things I shouldn’t do in East Africa, nor in Accra, where the plane landed. Mr. Trooman would explain the different tribes and cultures. He’d say there’re a lot of things you should do. He’d offer to take me to dinner. We’d have dinner at the home of friends he’d made during his posting there. We’d eat the food our hosts serve. A damn good feast it would be, however impoverished or rich the household. We’d talk about the wonderful arts and crafts of this richly diverse country, diverse in its cultures and rich in history that predates the arrival of any of the Western powers. I’d learn a lot, and I hope you’ll learn a lot tonight from Mr. Trooman. We have Dancey James, a prominent attorney here and an alumnus of our law school, to thank for bringing his friend. Mr. Trooman.”
There was a smattering of applause.
Trooman gauged his audience. It took but a moment before his voice reached out with authority, as though the words had been tested before they were allowed to emerge. He thanked Professor Feebes and he spoke about Dancey. He talked about their long relationship starting in the North Philadelphia ghetto. He grew up there, he said, in tiny rooms in a decrepit slum property, and he worked there with Dancey James in a Quaker Club, trying to help children. He was an alum of the Club. It had saved him from the street. “What Dancey James and I did for those kids had been done for me.” Then, he began:
“Let’s agree on some facts. There’re no true nation states South of the Sahara. There’re many tribes and, as in so many other places in the world, the tribe is the way of life, the way of government, the way of belief, the way of the countless determining characteristics of the cultures – from child-rearing to marriage or what passes for it, sex, sustenance, subsistence, and for war. I’m using our words, our language, our culture, and, as Dr. Feebes said, that’s a mistake. But for you, that’s all I have. I can’t impose their cultures on you as we tried on them. For hundreds of years we in the West’ve imposed our own views of what these millions of Africans should do. We’ve upset the balances, we’ve torn them apart, we’ve made a terrible mess of ways of life that existed, however imperfectly but accepted by these peoples as their own. Ours is no model for perfection judged by the thousands of years before we showed up on the African shores.
“The damage is done. Having participated in the destruction of their ways of living, of their cultures, we should ask them how they wish to go forward from here, and what role the West, and, most specifically the United States can play.”
An uproar from the back: “None! None! Free Africa Now!” Louder each of the five or six times the chants were repeated. The hecklers didn’t have enough bodies to bring down the house. They could interrupt, be unpleasant, but not much more. They knew it.
He waited until they quieted down. “You could ignore history. The facts. As David Lamb cited long ago in his excellent book, the fact is that the African misery has many sources, not the least of which is Tribalism, the sweep of Islam through the continent, colonialists of an earlier time as destructive as their successors, and the arrogant, cannibalistic and cruel occupation by the Western powers and their Christian spear carriers.
“Was it that the Africans were seen to be defenseless? Was it that they were seen to be in a state of nature and had to civilized, Christianized, or simply that they were perceived to be inferior? Of course, the driving force was greed, personal and nationalistic. There was a lot to be gained by exploitation.”
With cold precision, Trooman took an historical tour from the late 19th century to the present, pausing to outline the rise and despotic acts of the continent’s most brutal dictators.
“Where does America go now with its African policies?” He asked.
“Home! Go home!” Came the shouts.
“I’m afraid it is too late and, the damage that would be done - not very helpful,” he responded. “Sure, we could pack up and head for home. Just like here in this City. Keep the poor and underserved in public housing complexes. (Dancey looked around the room, turning his head uncomfortably, his face expressing his feelings). Isolated. Insulated from us. We’re insulated from them. You don’t see them. You don’t know them. Let them suffocate in their own stink, in their poverty and their wastes. Disease will take them whether here or in Africa. Wars in Africa. Gang wars here. Kill the neighbors. Burn the nests.
“For those of us without self interest, Africa’s the forgotten continent.” He lifted his hand and pointed to his audience: “Who of you, beside Professor Feebes, has gone there, knows where it is, where each country and the confederations and conglomerations, knocked together by non-Africans, exists? Resulting in what? Tribal genocide. Greed by Western companies and East bloc politicians. The generals and dictators are trained in the West or the East to murder systematically. They’re supported by corporate conspirators, whether capitalists or socialists. Perhaps supported is too weak. They’re sponsored. Do I sound like the State Department of the United States of America? Of course I sound like any commonsensical person who’s survived the ghettos of America and who’s lived with Africans in Africa.
“We can go home and abandon the Africa bent out of shape by non-Africans. Instead, I’d like to propose several alternatives before we pick up our marbles.”
The last half of Trooman’s talk outlined his views, as a good State Department person representing the African desk, a strategy for determining friends, investing in them, building alliances through economic programs. These programs would be founded on capitalistic principles. There was a hefty dose of do-goodism – foods, medicines, investments in local industry. The audience was becoming restless. But Patrick doubted Trooman would have any troubles with this group. The message was complex and required concentration.
When Professor Feebes asked if there were questions, Dancey’s hand shot up.
“I don’t get the connection between your African experience and poverty here, especially the analogy with public housing. I understand what you’re saying about colonialism and capitalism. I hear you when you say we regard Africans as inferior, just as we regard impoverished blacks here as inferior. I’m not following you into public housing, the issues or the buildings.”
Trooman looked directly at him, “I didn’t mean to imply sameness. My point is that in a class struggle between rich and poor, the rich prefer the poor to be invisible. We want total separation. We want them poor depraved folks to disappear. NIMBY. Not in my back yard. What could be a better answer than public housing, built to be its own isolated community where the working class and middle class, not to mention the rich, don’t have to encounter the occupants. Our policies toward Africa have one significant difference. That is Africa is a target for economic potential and exploitation. There isn’t any economic potential in Cabrini, Robert Taylor Homes or Stateway Gardens. No natural resources, other than the real estate on which they’re built. No slave labor. No one works and there are many disincentives to work. Maybe that’s why we like the African situation so much. Out of sight out of mind, whether tribal slaughters, epidemics of dread diseases, and malnutrition. We quickly turn the page from a few photographs of the big eyes of a little boy mounted on top of a ribcage. It’s not different from down the street from this university, where we can avoid the poor living in public housing enclaves. It’s true we’re close enough that the gangs and drugs can be a drag on our lives, unlike our separation from the disease and disasters of the villages and shanty towns of Africa. In both, however, a terrible price is paid by neglect. If you’re brave enough to drive south from this very spot and through the streets surrounding your public housing, you can tell by looking at the doors to the buildings that no rich person will ever knock or fumble with his key in the lock. Thus we have our attitudes toward the dark continent.”
There was laughter from the audience.
Patrick thought if Trooman didn’t have a difficult time with his audience, he would with Dancey after the lecture.
From the back of the room: “So, you’re gonna light up Africa for us. What about Africans? Who gives them light? Good Capitalists from Amerika? (He made a big point about the K), Like all Good Samaritans?”
“Some form of the capitalist system, adopted to particular conditions, may help. . .” Trooman didn’t get a chance to finish before being hooted down. He waited. Feebes stood there with his hands at his side. Trooman stepped back to the lectern. “Capitalism may help, but the cultures are so different that the kind of economic development we bring may not work. There has to be adaptation to each particular culture and each way of life, and that comes only from knowledge of what’s productive in the culture, judged by their own standards, rather than our own.”
Another hand shot up. Feebes motioned to it.
A young white man with a very short hair stood up, “Why? Why won’t Adam Smith work in Africa?”
“Might over time. If, and it’s a big if, they want that approach to be a productive society. But the cultures – and there’re many of them, as I tried to explain – are fundamentally different from our own. East and West have forced their own respective ways of doing things for more than a century. Before that, Islam tried to impose its will on Africa. None of us has achieved societal change, although many became rich. At the same time, the peoples in the villages and towns became their own worst enemies.”
As Feebes moved to end the questions, the back rows stood up and began chanting, “Free Africa Now! Free Africa!” The rest of the audience began clapping.
In the hubbub, Trooman shook Feebes’s hand, and, with Dancey in tow, they walked toward the exit. Mazur followed. They would all go to dinner together at one of Dancey’s fancy restaurants, and Dancey, gentleman, good friend, urbane, warm and engaging, would hide his wounds, if any, from Trooman’s remarks. No poor folks would join them from Chicago’s public housing or from the shanty towns of Africa.
I had returned home from London for my father’s wake and funeral. I didn’t expect my brother and sisters to be surprised to see me, since my brother had sent me a telegram, a Dear Patrick. Dad is Dead. Perhaps a little more emotion, like that of love, would have been nice. But I had done nothing in all these years to be worthy of expressions of such sentiments. The funeral parlor was an old frame house you approached on a gravel driveway, parked the rental car in the rear, and walked around in the rain to the open front door. There was nothing fancy about the room where he was laid out. It may once have been the living room of the house, permitting only one funeral at a time. My father was exhibited in a cheap wooden casket, his face, I remembered as reddened or flushed, now pale in absolute retirement, propped up on silken pillows, his hooked bill poking out.
They were standing around when I waltzed in, bussing my sisters on their cheeks, embracing my mother gently. I shook hands with my brother. I thought it was a little strange, but not out of line considering who I was at home and who I had become, and the total lack of contact in between. I didn’t feel as though I had anything on them. Did I appear to them as the high and mighty cosmopolitan journalist, flying in from London? It wasn’t how I felt. I felt very tired, the end of a 15 hour excursion, and another 15 hours to face going back after they put my old man in the soil. The priest couldn’t remember me. My name. Patrick. Patron Saint of the old Sod. Why should he? He was a duffer now. I could remember him, standing on the pulpit of the church, me an older child sitting with my parents and young siblings in our pew. He was mumbling through his puffy cheeks, probably couldn’t wait for the sacramental wine, about the sanctity of life, of God’s children, of obligations to Rome and the Church, but not a word I could recall about the people across the tracks. He was a lot different roaming around the school from which I had been ejected, a ruler in his hand, pouncing on kids like me who didn’t sit quietly and listen to the Sisters.
Years later, the scene was different, in a different place, Chicago, although I guess death makes it all the same, at a wake for a young girl, a coed at the university, slain in her youth, her promise already acknowledged, lovely at her entrance, the rest of the way denied. All wakes and funerals bring up the past, recall each other, as they portend the final one you’ll attend. I decided to go to Carrie Lorimar’s wake because the newspaper had covered her murder from the grotesque to the sordid to the carnal. Story after story. Page after page. The mother. The father. The nine other children. The murderer. His family. The cops. The States Attorney. It’s what we do best, when we have a hot item. We is me, the City Editor. What could be better? A college sophomore at the university chopped up by another student? Interviews with her teachers and her classmates. Her pictures show an attractive young African-American woman. Her boyfriend’s pictures show an good looking, young athletic white man. Sure. Murder happens many times a day. The world’s awash in innocent blood. Outside the purview of the City editor, there are wars, civil actions and whatever euphemisms are used to describe mass forms of barbarity and butchery.
Unlike my father’s final launching, Carrie Lorimar’s funeral parlor was built for that purpose, a non-descript one-story building, a yellow brick façade that ranged around a corner, lined with windows that had little arches at the top, windows which probably never had a shade lifted, but through which day or night lights glowed softly. There was plenty of parking on the asphalt in front. Peeking out from the rear of the building, probably along side a dock, you could see the hearse, no doubt followed bumper to bumper by the cortege of flower car and the formal stretch limos. You went in the front door and saw that there was a series of rooms off the central corridor, each with a sign, made to slide into a groove over each door indicating the occupant. I headed for the sign that said Lorimar.
The casket was closed. Only a ghoul would have ordered it open. Hettie, Carrie’s mother, may be crazy but wasn’t into horror flicks. She had home schooled Carrie. Carrie was the first to go to college. She had picked the university. She could have gone anywhere, but, as our stories said, she was a good girl who wanted to help with her brothers and sister who also were being home schooled by Hettie. Hettie’s belief in God knew no boundaries, however expressed in her version of the Afro-Caribbean ritual she practiced and preached. She stood at the head of the casket, her dreadlocks swept back under a white veil. She was large, a powerful presence, something churning around her, making me focus on her, rather than Joseph, her husband. Joseph, a co-minister in her church, stood at the foot of the casket, dressed in a simple black suit with a shoelace black tie, his face adorned with a little goatee. Carrie’s younger brothers and sisters huddled with their mother, the youngest tended by another child holding a hand. The older children stood next to Joseph. The lights in the room were not dimmed and reflected off the blond wood trim and blond chairs arranged facing each other on either side of the casket. Young people, I assumed Carrie’s classmates, sat quietly on the chairs, occasionally getting up, one at a time, to walk to the casket, say something to Hettie and then return to their chairs.
David Mazur stood hesitantly to one side. He must be the putative representative of the university. I went up to him.
“Patrick, here to claim victory?”
“Sorry?” I responded.
“Relentless slime.”
“Ah, you refer to the extraordinary reportage.”
“Right.”
“Just doing our job. Come on, Davey, you know the game. You want sensitivity and restraint. Not in the rules.”
We walked over to Hettie. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Dancey behind me.
“Dancey? What’re you doing here?”
He smiled at both of us. “I know Davey’s here in his official capacity. He’s the university’s official celebrant at all funerals and weddings. And you, Patrick, to see the spoils. Right?”
“You sound like Davey. The public’s always resentful, however much you read with glee the prurient rubbish we publish.”
“Mrs. Lorimar’s asked me to represent the boy.”
“The boy?”
“Arthur Burns who sliced up her daughter.”
Davey was as dumbstruck as I. I made an instantaneous recovery. “Doesn’t she hate him? He killed her baby. He turned himself in. Confessed. Look, Dancey, the casket’s closed. You know why? He stabbed her fifty times at least. Sliced off a breast, carved out her heart, and cut her face to ribbons.”
“Stop it, Patrick. I know all of it. I’ve even seen the photos. The ones your rag didn’t publish. They were too gruesome even for you.”
“I saw her at the hospital,” Davey said. “I was there with Mrs. Lorimar. The horror was unbearable. Carrie had worked part time for my office. She was a sweet, caring young woman.”
“And Arthur? Did you know Burns?” Dancey asked.
“Sort of.” Mazur said. “He was a BMOC type. He hung around with the heavy-handed guys, the jocks, until he met up with Carrie. From what I learned, he remade his life around her. He gave up everything else. His friends. His team. His family. Even his schoolwork. He’s a very bright kid.”
I put my hand on the head of the youngest little boy, who hung on his mother’s gown, his sister still holding his other hand. I saw Davey put his arm around Hettie. I could imagine he had tears in his eyes. She did not. She had her brown eyes fixed on the wooden casket in front of her.
“It’s the Devil.” She spoke shrilly. “That poor boy ain’t done nuthin’ the Devil didn’t make him do. That’s what I told Mr. James here.” She loosened herself from Mazur and raised her arms over the casket. “God took Carrie ‘for the Devil steal her. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord for savin’ my child.”
The children raised their arms heavenward.
“Thanks the Lord.” She said.
They echoed her in unison, “Thanks the Lord.”
I glanced at the students sitting in the chairs. They had their heads down avoiding the heavenly appeal. Like young people everywhere, they’re embarrassed by God and God’s enthusiasts. I could be wrong. Jack Murphy keeps pointing out, don’t discount youth yearning for belief.
I looked at Dancey. He returned my grimace.
We walked toward the back of the room with Mazur.
“I didn’t think you took criminal cases, Dancey,” I said to him.
I asked Dancey, “Why didn’t you let your pal Omar Brooks Khaled handle this case? Just the sort of thing for a junior man in the firm.”
Dancey said, “Several reasons. Almost the entire time he’s been with us he’s been writing a book about being born a black man with a Muslim father and then raised by a Jew. I’ve read parts. He has a mastery of expression. The writing is compelling. But he doesn’t have the legal experience for this case. For another, I raised the prospect with Bishop Gaines. He wasn’t enthusiastic. He told me that if Omar is going to run for the State Senate he shouldn’t and probably wouldn’t touch this case.”
“That’s strange from Gaines, a mouthpiece for responsibility.”
“All of us want Omar to succeed,” Dancey said. “This is the first step. He’ll galvanize the black community. Hortense Rills, like others of her generation, have put us asleep. Every white liberal in town will rush to his side.”
“But to win this case?”
“It would take a lot of hard work. That’s not in Omar’s treasure chest. Plus which, as the Bishop realizes, it could leave a mark. I’m beyond that sort of thing. I’m not into politics, at least the elected kind.”
“Mrs. Lorimar asked Reverend Gaines to recommend a lawyer, a black lawyer, to represent Burns.”
“Was she surprise when your face became the lawyer’s?”
“I suppose so when she actually met me, but the Pastor must’ve told her what to expect. She showed up at our office, standing in front of the receptionist, her hands on her hips. You know what the reception area’s like, Patrick. Oriental carpets on hardwood floors. Luxuriant sofas and chairs. Tables with the daily newspaper, yours, the Times, Journal, Barons, Fin Times, business magazines, a telephone here and there. I’m almost embarrassed by the place. My father’s office was a storefront. His chambers were nice, but not like the other jurists. He didn’t think it should matter. The receptionist summoned me. I sent my secretary. I needed this like a hole in the head. But here they come back to my office. Hettie Lorimar is formidable. Take a look. My poor secretary was forced to follow. What is she, a nice white college graduate, looking around for a nice white mate? All she could do was shout directions from the rear. Hettie marched ahead right into my inner sanctum.
She addressed me, “Reverend Gaines sent me. You know him, Right? I’m Hettie Lorimar. I want you to help me.”
I learned all the details. She stood there in front of my desk, never taking the seat I offered her, talking at me in that high shrill voice. Hers the voice of my destiny. I heard about Carrie and Arthur, how they met, that Carrie let him stay with her, which was Hettie’s way of saying without acknowledging they had sex. The Evil One already was afoot. Then she told me how Carrie broke it off, or tried time after time. Time after time Arthur came back, in a rage, wild, until Carrie calmed him down, comforting him, taking him back. Then Carrie changed the locks. She put an end to it. Or so she thought. He broke in. She asked him to leave. You know the rest. Hettie said it was the Devil. The Devil used poor Arthur to deliver Carrie to him. God intervened. God saved her. Arthur, touched by the Almighty, was His instrument too, another man torn between the Almighty and the Evil One. The Lord won. The Lord took Carrie back. Mrs. Lorimar dropped to her knees. She prayed. That was enough for me. I didn’t want to take the case. I couldn’t get her out of the office. Then, I thought, how could I help this kid anyhow?
‘How could you win?” Mazur asked.
“Yes, some of that. There always is. If you don’t want to win, you won’t. Anyhow, no one else is going to help him. My father would help anyone who needed help and couldn’t get it from anyone else.”
“Isn’t it better for him to cop a plea?” Mazur asked. “End up institutionalized?”
“That’s the strategy. But Mrs. Lorimar says he’s innocent. The Devil did it. You heard her. She’s his only visitor in the suicide-watch cell of the holding pen. His parents won’t help. Worse. Don’t want to know he exists. For them it’s not Arthur’s savagery. But the fact that he was fucking a black girl and wanted to marry her. He had thrown up everything for this Negress (Dancey played with the word, pushing it against his teeth), his studies, his sports, his family. Hettie Lorimar sees him at least daily in jail. She’s the only one. They pray together. She’s convinced him he’s guiltless.”
“The Devil?” Mazur asked.
“I doubt he believes that. Arthur’s not that mixed up. Anyhow, what do white Protestants know about the Devil? He believes he didn’t do it. She’s convinced him that he’s innocent, Devil or not.”
We watched as the students began to leave in two or threes, stopping to bid goodbye to Mrs. Lorimar, the girls making a fuss over the younger children, and some of them walking to the other end of the casket to shake hands with Joseph Lorimar.
Mazur said, “We’ve provided a lot of counseling for Carrie’s friends. I guess it helps. They hold group sessions. Carrie was liked by everyone. She had lots of close friends.”
“And Burns?” I asked.
“Burns had buddies. Since he started seeing Carrie, he divorced himself from everyone. Everyone. They broke with him. Your paper interviewed some of his pals.”
The paper reported she had finally broken off with Arthur Burns. She had let him move into her two-room apartment. We made a lot about the sex in our sly insinuating way, although there wasn’t much to tell. She was concerned about his disconnection from the rest of his life. She had asked him to leave. It had become too much for her. She told her friends that Arthur was obsessed. At first, he did quietly. He kept coming back, breaking in, throwing things around her rooms, striking her once. Why didn’t she go to the police? The university officials? She had a sense of herself and a belief in Burns’ goodness. She had a belief if not in herself in the victory of goodness, and she thought she could handle him with care – care about him, and firmness about the end of their relationship.
Later, Dancey would say in court that Arthur Burns blew up, became crazed, and that there was an inherent imbalance in him, an imbalance Dancey brought forward expert witnesses from the psychological and psychiatric crafts to describe. He had a hard time convincing Mrs. Lorimar not to take the stand.
I remember what Dancey told me of Mrs. Lorimar’s response, and knew it would be fitting only as an antidote for reality. “ No jury,” he told her, “would believe her without seeing the Devil.” “ Oh,” Hettie Lorimar said, “I sees him. I sees him in Joseph. Joseph gets mad. He beats me. It’s the Devil. Then the Devil throws me down. You know what the Devil does with his tail? His long pointed tail?”
Dancey said he grimaced. “Leave it to me, Mrs. Lorimar,” he told her. “ I’ll do the best I can.”
Gurnsey did not want to do it. He didn’t know Dancey or Mazur, but he knew of Dancey and had a reporter’s cynical opinion of this prominent black lawyer who, as he said to Patrick, wants it both ways. Patrick let Gurnsey rant and then told him that John Trooman would be going along.
“John who?” Gurnsey asked.
“Arnie, you know damn well. Trooman’s the diplomat. Dancey’s pal.”
“Another Buppie?”
“Like you, a slum child. Only North Philly.”
Gurnsey didn’t say anything else, other than to agree to meet the three of them at 4142, the most notorious of the public housing high rises. He had spent the prior week covering the murder of a child there and still was depressed about it.
“Look,” Patrick told him, “we don’t solve crimes. We just tell people about them.”
“Great,” Gurnsey replied. “How many times I gotta write about the high rises before they disappear.”
“And the people in them?”
“I ain’t forgettin them, Flynnski. You know that. I grew up there. But what’s the answer?”
“What’s the question?” Patrick shot back.
Gurnsey shook his head and gave Flynn the finger.
“Noon, Flynnski. See if your friends can be on time.” Gurnsey took his big body out of the news room. He was a chunky guy. All of the chunk was muscle. Once in a great while, at the end of a particularly abusive shift of mayhem and disorder in the city, like the shooting of a little boy in the projects, he and Patrick would trip over to a place like Bilsoms. He didn’t like the Greeks. “Food was too precious,” Gurnsey said. Patrick told him, “Okay, I’ll treat you to a hunk of meat, like only Bilsoms kills. It’ll be your style, a steak three inches thick and eight to ten inches long. Brought to us for a handshake prior to being cooked, blood pooling in the plate.”
Gurnsey would smile at him and Patrick would wave the waiter away before he could stick the raw meat under his nose.
“I like to watch your expression, Flynnski, when they bring out the carcass. You wouldn’t last standing up at the morgue.”
Back it would come seared. Gurnesey would set to the steak and in a matter of minutes devour most of it. “Slow down, Arnie,” Patrick would tell him, “or you’ll become like everyone else in the trade, hiccups, indigestion, ulcers.” Nothing deterred Gurnsey, a quick eater. The meat would be gone and then would disappear the pile of crisp heavily salted fries, cut thick, soaked in animal drippings and parmesan cheese, fired at very intense temperatures.
Gurnsey looked up, “We never ate like this at home. We picked over parts of chicken, pig, whatever was cheap, and lots of junk. If it weren’t for them food stamps, where’d I be? Thin.”
When Gurnsey got back to the office from his tour of 4142, Patrick snagged him. “Tell me what happened,” Patrick asked him. “Just the facts. Like you’re writing a story. I’m not going to edit you. I’m not interested in Dancey’s version, or Mazur’s. Rashomon I don’t need. Just the facts, Arnie.”
Gurnsey said he arrived at 4142 at the appointed time and couldn’t find his tourists. Maybe they decided it was too risky, or maybe they had other things to do, he thought at first, and then saw a car parked on the street. Not such a smart thing to do in this neighborhood, but perhaps they were lost, or white, and probably both. Alice Abigale liked to testify about the witless vandalism – holes shot in the tin, windows bashed out, scratches from stem to stern, everything ripped out, from the dashboard to the seats. Gurnsey looked more closely and saw these two white guys peering out at him, and a dark figure slouched in the back seat. He waltzed over and knocked on the roof. The window rolled down and Dancey asked,
“That you, Mr. Gurnsey?”
“That’s me. Arnie’s fine. Or Gurnsey. You Dancey James? David Mazur?”
‘Can’t you tell?” It was a challenge to Gurnsey, but then Dancey went on, “I’m Dancey and this is Davey Mazur. John Trooman’s in the back seat.”
They got out of the car and went with Gurnsey to the front door.
“I don’t think they realized ‘til that instance the door they saw from the street was the front door,” Gurnsey told Patrick. “Sure it was street side. But for a 13-story building filled with people? It’s a standard sized door, no window, the metal surface painted the same industrial green as the metal frame, the kind of doorway you‘d expect to find leading to the basement. Through this orifice, you thought those folks must carry their trash to the alley dumpster when the chute’s clogged, which usually’s the case at 4142. This rear door put at the front is the pearly gate through which inhabitants of 4142 enter their paradise.”
Gurnsey interrupted his story, “I thought what a waste of time when you recommended me to Howard Simons. But you sent me to see Howie at the Post. He was terrific, a real mentor, just like you. Not an Irishman. A different tribe. Sardonic. What a relief, unlike you and Murphy, he didn’t take fantasy trips with kids. He wasn’t the stiff type, but he wasn’t about to let some smart ass blackie slip away, especially sent by you, Flynnski. ‘I’ll get you an Atlantic Foundation Fellowship to Holland,’ he said. ‘You take it. Try it out. Do you some good. Never been to Europe? You may even learn something.’ He wrote on my behalf. Made the right calls. Sure, he was one of those left-thinking Jews, determined to make the world right, but ironic about his own and everyone else’s efforts. We African types were very much on his conscience. Too bad Mrs. Graham gave him the short end. Anyhow, I got to Rotterdam, then Amsterdam and finally the Hague, where Howie arranged for me to meet up with Hendrik Herkailie, the Dutch head of Housing and Social Services. The Nazis carpet-bombed the Dutch cities. The Germans were thorough. They did it with a vengeance. Herkailie was as sardonic as Howie about how the Dutch loved the Germans for making way for new housing, the world’s most efficient urban renewal program. Could use a few Germans to fix our public housing buildings here. Herkailie needled me about the difference between our housing. ‘It’s a difference in the philosophy about human souls,’ he said. ‘Since the end of the war all the Dutch housing was new, new for the rich and new for the poor.’ He’d visited the U.S. many times. He couldn’t get over the fact that the doors in America told you right away whether the tenant was rich or poor. Just as Trooman said at his lecture. Remember? In the Netherlands, you couldn’t tell a person’s class by the doorway he entered. All doors were attractive, aesthetically pleasing. The front of the houses looked the same, regardless of who lived inside. He pushed my American buttons, this Dutchman about stigmatizing poor people. What do we have against the poor? What did they do to us? I knew what he meant. I gave it back to him. I was nice, but I asked him why his countrymen abandoned neighborhoods and schools as soon as the Turks and Moluccans moved in. He responded. ‘No, we haven’t cured racism here, nor have you. Look at you, a big black man. Do you belong?’ ‘No, I don’t belong,’ I told him.’Just like I wouldn’t belong here, except with the dope sucking crowd and the ravenous little girls.’ He shook his head.
“My door when I was a kid, I kept telling him, was a little green door without a window. No one wanted to go in. No one wants to go in today. When I entered as a little boy I didn’t see any white folks. You saw only dirt. No father followed me in, and none took me outside to play ball. Nope. Not mine. Not my brothers. Not my sisters. I can’t say my mother was raped. She didn’t bring home the guys who knocked her up time after time. Behind that little door was nothing but destitution. It hasn’t changed. It’s still a puke green door. You ordered me to take your pals, Flynnski, through one of those doors. I gathered them in front of the door to 4142. Take a look, this guide told my tour group, and I pointed to the door.”
Gurnsey went on, “Government bureaucrats wrote the regs with the help of the contractors. They decided it’d be a little green door. They decided the apartments would be little concrete shit houses one on top of another. Yeah, the stuff was solid. Take dynamite, an atom bomb to knock those buildings down. The regs made the contractors rich, very rich, and the bureaucrats happy. As for the poor, who cared? Who cares now? Herkailie had it right. He knew.”
Gurnsey said, “I’d picked the right time for the tour. There wasn’t a person in sight. After last week’s horror show, maybe the bulls were coolin’ it.”
“With Lance’s new security precautions, I’d arranged our visit in advance. I knew the security officer who guarded the door looked at your i.d. and checked you against the tenant roster. This is a big change from the past. Then he’d buzz you through the inner door to the elevators. Trooman was a last minute add on. I had to finesse it. I guessed $10’d do it. This bearded New World Muslim with his cloth hat pulled down to his eyes sat in a cage behind thick bullet proof glass and wire. You slid your i.d. under the window. As he looked them over, my three guests glanced around in the dimness, one light bulb hanging over the cage and one over where we stood. The place needed steel wool, Janitor in the Drum, and lye to remove endless years of decrepitude. You’d have to start with sweeping away the candy wrappers and cigarette butts and picking up the half-empty cans of soda and beer lying there.
“ ‘My mother would’ve been on her hands and knees cleaning this place,’ Trooman said with disgust.
“I tell you, Flynnski, our Secretary of State graduated to where he wouldn’t touch anything. Maybe dark and dirty Africa made him leery of parasites and disease. I can’t say there were animal and human feces decomposing into layers of darkness on the jungle floor. I guess I’m the same, although I don’t wear the designer pinstripes Trooman trots around.
“The guard didn’t say a word. When I heard the buzzer, I pushed the three of them through the inner door.
“In front of us were the elevators. ‘It’s a game,’ I told them, ‘to see if either work. You push the buttons and wait. Sometimes a cab comes hurtling down and crashes into the bottom of the shaft. Or a body. Other times, nothing happens with either elevator. Then it’s the stairs, climbing 13 stories in total darkness. All the bulbs’re broken or shot out. You guys’re lucky. I brought a flashlight.’
“ ‘Where’re we going?’ Dancey asked. He shifted his weight. I could see him draw his Princetonian blazer around his body.
“ ‘To the top. Flynn wanted you to see the works. I picked noon because the bad guys usually’re gone, at least those not so fucked up they can’t move.’
“Mazur looked at Dancey. ‘How’s Calvin going to avoid the regs?’
“ ‘The regs?’
“ ‘Take the door. You think working class people’re going to want to come through a front door that looks like a pisshole?’ Mazur waited for Dancey to respond. He didn’t.”
Guernsey said, “I asked Dancey, ‘What’s Lance going to do about income caps? If he puts working class folks in here, Dancey, they’ll evict you once your income hits the cap. Lance knows that, and he knows there isn’t a fucking bureaucrat who’ll change the rules. You can’t build a stable tenancy in the buildings. If you camped out here generation after generation in this housing of last resort, would you risk losing your roof? Why work?’
“Dancey ignored Mazur. He told me, ‘We got a deal with the feds. They’ll lift the cap to encouage working class folks to move in. They won’t be evicted if they begin earning more money.’
“Dancey seemed better for answering me. Who knows? Despite his claims to you, Flynnski, I doubt he’d ever been in the projects.
“Me, the cynical journalist, I didn’t say anything since I knew the feds wouldn’t keep their word. I’m just like you, Flynnski. G men never do. It’s generation to generation we’re talking about in these hell holes. When I was a kid, my neighbor’s mom was born in the projects, her mom likewise, the moms, the grandmoms, the aunties. No daddies. Little girls with babies. Aunties with lots of kids. Those kids, those little girls, they’re next. They don’t grow up worrying about income caps.
“Trooman didn’t say anything, except to rap on the elevator door. Suddenly, we heard the creak of the chains.
“I won’t describe the cab. You’ve read my stories. For some reason, no one rang for the elevator and it hyperventilated to the 13th floor. Mazur and James kept up a friendly enough chatter of comfort talk. Trooman was silent. Maybe he was remembering his beginnings, or maybe he was worried about staining his clothes.
“I knew every floor was the same. Not much light in the dirty hallways painted the same nauseous color as the front door. A light bulb here and there screwed to a socket in the ceiling cast a sheen against the sweating discolor of the plaster. Long ago real fixtures were shattered for the umpteenth time and not replaced. When you looked toward your shoes you wanted to raise both at the same time from a carpet so worn you could see the concrete flooring through the offal. Lift each foot to keep clean.
“You could hear the noises in this tower of Babel, cries of babies mixed with the laughter and shouts of playing boys and girls, the screams of mothers, aunts, grandmothers telling them to shut up, stop it, and the exclamations of threats coupled with expletives, so jumbled together it was impossible to distinguish them. It wasn’t that the walls were thin. Far from it, the contractors had followed the government’s specs. It was that the voices were shrill and that doors were open. Every now and then, a kid would come charging down the hallway, bumping into us, wheel around, running back to an open doorway, where, as we marched along, heads began to appear. I didn’t want to pause. I wanted these characters to see a vacated apartment. Listen, Flynnski, there’s nothing new about what I was showing them. Trooman told me afterwards he’d had his fill in North Philly. Once he got out, once he was able to get his mother out, that was it. Never again. He hadn’t grown up like me in penthouse public housing. His was three stories, rooms in a walkup that had many of the same characteristics – outside his door. He said his mother made sure he was safe and the rooms were clean. It made him ill to see the hallways again.
“As to Dancey, I’m sure this blackie who looks white wanted to look black as we sauntered down the halls.
“I led them to an open door.
“ ‘This here’s not occupied, hasn’t been for months,’ I told them. ‘That’s not to say there aren’t squatters or druggies camping out. We’ll have to be careful.’
“It was one of many that had been burned out. If you were driving by and looked up at 4142, you would see countless window frames blackened by smoke. Sometimes the window would be boarded up, but the boards were removed as quickly as they were nailed up. You’d look at the blind eyes, darkened without hope of seeing again.
“ ‘How many units like this?’ I asked Dancey rhetorically. I answered for him. I knew. I’d followed the Public Housing Commission. The numbers change day by day. ‘On the average,’ I told him, ‘in the whole city 35 to 45 per cent of the public housing units are vacant and hopelessly unusable.’
“He didn’t respond. He shifted his weight again, looking at his cuffs, drawing in his breath, getting ready for the real ordeal, I thought.
“I was the scout armed with the flashlight. I went ahead. Old home week it wasn’t. The usual layout: inside the front door, kitchen without windows on the left. It was a great design feature to put the kitchen by the front door. All the fixtures had been ripped from the wall long ago. Then around the corner, light pouring in from the fire shattered windows, you saw a few heavily stained mattresses on the floor and papers strewn around knee deep, empty cereal cartons, beer and wine bottles, brackish banana peels, molding pieces of bread, McDonald wrappers hiding decaying burgers, and cigarette butts. Those were the civilized world’s artifacts that decorated the living room floor, while nature had covered its windowsill with pigeon shit.
“The three guys were silent. Trooman hung back at the door.
“ ‘I didn’t bring my overshoes,’ he said slyly.
“Such an elegant man.
“We laughed.
“Dancey went to the window. He poked his head out. ‘Can you imagine how attractive this could be? A view of the city. A view of the lake. Calvin’s right. This’ll go fast.’
“Calvin’s full of shit, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I didn’t have to.
“ ‘Jesus would have a hard time living here,’ Mazur said.
“Trooman laughed from the doorway. ‘You got that right. I can remember a USAID program in Kenya to relocate peasant farmers in little brick houses. They built them beside a stream bed. The stream bed, unbeknownst to the AID folks, was the local sewer. Here, everyone in this City must know beforehand. This is the sewer.’
“Trooman asked Dancey, ‘Whatever happened to your politically ambitious young lawyer with the three names?’
“ ‘How’d you heaar about him?’ Dancey asked.
“ ‘He created quite a stir when he came to D.C. and made the rounds of black politicians and bureaucrats, like me. He must have practiced with marbles in his mouth. Time for change, he told everyone he encountered, and you got to start at the local level. Plant your acorns now. Or something like that.’
“ ‘I’m surprised,’ Dancey said. ‘But I shouldn’t be. His opponent finally was released from the hospital and he attacked her for missing a dozen votes in the State Senate. When some reporter asked what was she supposed to do? Have herself carried from the hospital to the Capitol? Omar expressed his sympathy for her and then his sympathy for the people who were not represented in her absence. It went over big.’
“Trooman said, ‘One of his big issues was racial profiling. My mother would’ve loved him. Cops gotta cease stopping every young dark-skinned man who has shaved his head and smells of rose water. I asked him what are the cops supposed to do. He said, The authorities need concrete reasons. I said,What about the granny who was stopped in front of me at La Guardia? A white-haired white lady who had a bag they emptied on the counter. They poked around and then left the contents for her to reassemble. They have to appear fair, Your pal Omar responded. I asked him, But did they have concrete reasons to search this granny? He ignored me. Everyone loved him.’
“‘And you?’ Dancey asked his friend.
“ ‘Dancey,’ Trooman asked whimsically, ‘is Omar running for State Senator or President?’
“Trooman pointed to the one wall that looked as though a truck had tried to drive through. ‘You want to rehab this? Dancey?’ The studs were there, but something, some persons had bashed an entrance to the vacant adjacent apartment, the wires hanging between the ceiling and the baseboard, jagged pieces of wallboard jutting out where it had been unable to withstand a heavy object.
“I didn’t hear Dancey’s response to Trooman. I had walked through to the bedroom. Past the bathroom. The stench was unbearable. For a moment, Flynnski, I could see myself as a child standing outside our bathroom door, unable to go in because of the smell, knowing that the toilet was stopped up and overflowing. There was nothing I could do but surrender to my body’s need, going in, taking a shit right there. What was I to do? What could any of us do, my mother, my brothers and sisters? We’d no where else to go. We couldn’t go to another place. Outside? There was no plumber. No janitor who’d come. We were stuck there in the project. Let the shit pour over the floor. Let it seep to the apartment below. Let them raise hell and pound on our door. Let them try to find the super. Let all of them shit in their pants, shit on the stairs, shit in the hallway, the elevator shaft. Who cared?
“Trooman had followed us. ‘It’s eerie,’ he said softly. ‘You look out the window. There’re swings and a jungle gym down there. You can see it’s bent out of shape. But it’s for playing. We didn’t have anything for playing when I was a kid. But there it is. If there’re been one near our home, every kid in a dozen blocks be fighting over it. Down there’s a little playground. I mean it’s all broke up, but there it is. But where’re the kids? It’s daytime. Not a child in sight.’
“ ‘You don’t read the papers?’ I told him. ‘Of course you don’t. You just arrived from D.C. Last week there was a gang shoot out. Someone from one of the windows in 4144 began blasting away with an AK-47. One 5-year-old was blown apart. He was on the swing. His mother, barely 15, when she came out of the building to see what was happening, was hit in the abdomen. When we go down, I’ll show you the spot. I was there 30 minutes afterwards. The desk picked it up off the pox radio. Cops all over the place. Yellow ribbons keeping everyone out. Bits of human flesh from a little kid scattered helter-skelter within the ribbons. His mother had come out to see what the commotion was about. Another shot, this time a 22, hit her in the abdomen. ‘Came from 4142,’ a cop said. ‘Must’ve been the other side. You know these assholes, fightin’ it out. She’s in the wagon. Sure she’ll make it. For what? Why she’d let that kid alone down here? Probably snorting with some cat.’ Pools of little boy’s blood. The medical examiner techs picking up the pieces. When it’s all over, someone would dump sand on the stains.
“ ‘No, you won’t see anyone in the playlot. Nor anywhere between the buildings.’
“ ‘And the cops?’
“ ‘Whose going to talk? Dancey’s priest, the Reverend Gaines, been telling his flock they gotta come forward. But God’s up against fear.’
“ ‘Is that all he says?’
“Dancey stood there, his hands in the pockets of his gray slacks, his dark blue blazer open, ‘You mean Gaines? Gaines is pretty good. Jasper Joseph and the other black ministers’ve been attacking White Society, with a capital W. Gaines says it’s up to black folks. Mothers, married or not, you take care of your child. If you’ve got a kid, that kid’s your responsibility. You watch him. Don’t let him out of your sight. You teach him. Don’t blame anyone else. Like, you spread your legs for three minutes of pleasure. I don’t think it was an easy lesson for the Pastor to deliver. He told us, You’ve got a lifetime of owing. He’s your kid. Everyone of us owns him. You own something, you don’t let someone steal it. We gotta find those who stole him. They’re us. That’s Gaines’ message. Pretty good.’
“I had peered into the bedroom. I didn’t like what I saw. On the mattress on the floor the bare ass of a big black guy stuck up. My flashlight picked up the girl beside him. She didn’t have much on either, her butt backed up against his pulsing body. Beside the mattress was all the paraphernalia: the band to tighten the arm, the paraffin lamp, the little spoon. Strewn around were their clothes.
“ ‘Hey man, turn off the brights. We busy.’ His voice, loud, was slurred.
“I turned around. I shouted at your pals: ‘Occupied. Let’s go. Avanti.’
“Dancey led the way, with Trooman following and Mazur and me in the rear.
“From behind us came: ‘Shitfuck, you motherfuckers. Youse deadmeat.’
“I knew he wouldn’t get up, if he could, filled with H, giving it to her in the ass.
“I was wrong. There was a roar. A bullet crashed into the wall as we ran out the door. Another hit the door frame and ricocheted into the ceiling. The sound echoed after us.
“All the doors in the hallway slammed shut.
“ ‘Elevator?’ Dancey asked.
“ ‘You kiddin. Hit the stairs,’ I shouted at them. What a crew. We’d be still standing there when he came out with his bazooka banging away, so blind with dope he wouldn’t be able to tell us from his hallucinations. And the girl? Probably comatose. Before we could duck down the stairs, Mattie Rose stood in front of us, her hands on her hips, her short, stolid frame blocking the way, her broad face wrapped in the hair she must’ve recently frizzled.
“ ‘What the hell you doin’ here, Gurnsey, with these dudes?’
“ ‘Givin them a tour, Mattie.’
“ ‘Git in here,” she shouted, and we turned the corner of the corridor and entered her lair.
“She locked the door behind us. ‘You crazy, Gurnsey?’
“ ‘I wanted them to see.’
“ ‘See what, mutha? Sit down and take a look.’
“The t.v. was blaring away.
“The living room was spotless, a few illustrations from magazines along with a big map of the world tacked up on the walls, two youngsters lying on the floor watching the box, another two playing quietly on the sofa and another camped out in an overstuffed chair. She did all right, Mattie Rose, with everyone wanting her vote, her support. The furniture and the prints were perks of her leadership of the tenant’s association. The stuff wasn’t much, but it’s more than most. A few bags of chips and pretzels were in the care of the kids. I could see in a basket a dozen or so Twinky wrappers. What was so odd was the quiet, other than the t.v. with its senseless sound. She had the kids under control. I’d no idea how many were her own and how many she had taken in.
“ ‘Where’s the beanpole and that Jewboy?’ She said loudly over the t.v. babble.
“ ‘Who?’ I asked.
“Dancey volunteered, ‘She means Gertens and Hochstein.’
“ ‘Hey, honkey, you finally showed up. Thems been here a couple times. I meets Dippy here (pointing to Mazur) at Cheap Eats.’ She turned back to Dancey, ‘You kept saying you’d come to see Mattie. Where you hidin’? With your pal, Lance? Never see him at 4142. Yeah, I know. He too tired from them midnight basketball games over at the park field house. Thems games for the big guys. Lots of t.v. You all forget about the little guys. You muthas don’t pay attention to the little guys. Thems that get wasted. Nopes. It’s the big guys, the guys with the guns. Yeah, that’s the great Lancerooney. Basketball for Killers. Look at these kids here. Whose helping em?’
“ ‘You know, Mattie, Calvin Lance wants to make things better. Get rid of the gang bangers.’ Dancey’s voice had a shrillness to it, not the modulated resonance of the world’s leading black attorney, son of Judge Bigger James. Just a guy on floor 13 of 4142.
“ ‘Cut the shit,’ she shouted. “Bar the door to my brother, his boys. Thems my nephews. If they live with auntie, she’s kicked out. Ain’t right.’
“ ‘Can’t have it both ways. The bad guys gotta go,’ Dancey tried.
“ ‘Listen, white boy, who decides bad and good? Who gets in and who doesn’t. You? Lance?’
‘Dancey threw up his hands in playful surrender. I bet anything, Flynnski, he wished he’d declared his racial purity.
“ ‘Listen,’ Mazur said, ‘Gertens and Hochstein are saying that before anything else you and everyone else in 4142 gets better housing. If you move in, take down these hellholes. I agree.’
“ ‘That’s what they say. Yeah, they’ve been around. They ain’t tourists, like youse. They called up. Hello. Sure come ahead, unless you scared. They came. But, nothin’s happening. Another kid’s blood and guts. I gotta keep these inside. Those folks, like the Abigails, gonna make sure we’re no where near ‘em. Not in my backyard.’ Mattie was grrring. ‘They should move. Out. Like they want us. So, white boy, I heard from this one (pointing to Mazur). What you gotta say?’ She swung her finger around to Dancey.
“ ‘Davey, you and Gertens’re racist,’ Dancey spit out.
“I watched Mazur step back, as though struck. I wanted to say, Dancey James’ you’ve declared yourself. But not as to color. No sir. You’re hip to the jargon of the times.
“ ‘They just want blacks moved away from the university, let rich people build big houses here. You’ll see. The university and Gertens are partners in crime.’
“ ‘Maybe,’ Mattie said. She sat down on the sofa. One of the little girls put her head on her lap. ‘I believes what I see. Lancerooney’s made promises. He gonna keep ‘em? Let’s see what he do. Let’s see what youse racists do.’ A boy of about 10 brought her a story book. ‘Not now, Teddy. Later.’ Mattie looked up at us. ‘Betcha you don’t believe I read? I tell you, there’s few can.’
“She stood up again. ‘Okay, you can go.’ She looked at Trooman. ‘And whose you?’
“ ‘John Trooman. I’m a friend of Dancey James.’
“ ‘Seein the sights?’
“ ‘I’ve seen them. I know them well. I’m grateful you took us in. I’m impressed with your home. It ain’t easy. You’ve done it.’
“ ‘Yeah, buster, I done it. It’s done me. Look at me. 35 with five kiddies. Two bedrooms. Only supposed be one. But I the chief. The head guy here. I shows you where the gang bangers tried to bust in. Those spades never got ‘nuf space. Yeah, should’ve let them. Then killed ‘em. We’d see about space. Space ‘tween their ears. But I ain’t lettin’ them, I ain’t lettin’ anyone tear down my house. No sir. It ain’t worth shit, but its all wes got. The Book says, good tree brings good fruit, corrupt tree evil fruit. No mutha’s bringin evil fruit here.’
“The door closed after us. The hallway was quiet.
“Trooman said to us, really to Dancey, ‘You know they’ve no rolling hills, a lovely bucolic college setting to remember. Even an invisible man has memories, however mixed, however horrific. Some picture from the past that burns inside you, keeps you warm when you turn it on. Even when you’re in your cave, deep below the city, exhausted from a life of trials. What memories for Mattie and her children, Dancey? Like Gurnsey here says, generation to generation.’
“I don’t know what Dancey was thinking, Flynnski. Had he seen enough? Here his pal, the Secretary of State, was negotiating the obvious for him.
“I decided to take them down the stairway. Let them see things as they are. I had my flashlight. There were no lights in the stairway. I grabbed Dancey’s arm. He pulled away from me. ‘Hey, man,’ I told him, ‘you grab my arm and make sure the others grab on to each other and you. This is gonna be like going down the mountain at night.’
“ ‘Never done it,’ he gasped.
“I could hear the other two gasping for breath.
“ ‘Stay together,’ I shouted. ‘Stay together. Keep hold of each other.’
“It’s a long way down in the dark. 12 flights of stairs. You gotta make sure you don’t trip over things you can’t identify. Some solid. Some not so. I’d hit an empty soda can and it would take off, klanking against the stairs, the noise echoing back up, against the narrow walls, a hollow laughter that came to an end on a landing. I grasped the handrail going down, just like I used to when I was a kid. It all came back, Flynnski. The big guys, they’d grab you, ‘okay kid,’ god knows for what. Scared shitless, you’d wrest yourself free and dive into the stairwell. Just like now. No lights. Not even this flashlight. You’d be scared, but you knew it was better than those guys. You knew the bulls wouldn’t follow. No sir. Every now and then they’d pop someone, drop them down the stairs, or the elevator shaft. But they themselves? Never. Yellow.
“I stopped the tourists before we got to the first floor. ‘Dancey,’ I said, ‘tell me about the Lorimar case. You know, Artie the Ripper.’
“We stood in the darkness, the single ray from my light washing against the stairs leading out.
“ ‘Very funny. There’s nothing to say. I couldn’t say a word to the media.’
“ ‘You don’t think it’s strange for a guy like you to represent this pervert? I mean, what’s in it for you?’
“ ‘You want an answer? I guess you do. Justice. For Arthur Burns. For the dead girl. For her mother. For all of us. Someone has to do it.’
“ ‘Someone has to take these fuckin’ buildings down. That’s Justice,’ I told him, Flynnski.
“We reached the first floor. I opened the door. I could see the cage with the Mad Muslim in front of us.
Trooman pushed past Mazur and Dancey.
“ ‘I don’t need any more childhood reminders,’ he said. ‘It’s a past I want to forget. I made sure my mother’ll never see this degradation again. Not ever. And you?’
“ ‘Well, my mom’s dead. O’D,’ I told him. ‘Every now and then I run into my brother. He comes to me desperate for some cash. I haven’t the vaguest in which of the buildings he squats. He may even be livin’ here. I keep telling him he ought to get out of the projects. I’ll stake him. He doesn’t want permanence. He’s comfortable with depravity. As for me, I’ve no intention of ever going back. I don’t forget. I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget those who’re still imprisoned, like Mattie and her kids, like my brother, like the children, like the kid who was murdered. His mother’s still in hospital. I went to see her. I told you she’s 15 and she’s pregnant again. She was. The bullet performed the abortion. She was lying there on her hospital bed. Her face’s covered with pimples. She looked sweet. She looked lost with nowhere else to go. She’ll be back in the projects when she gets out. If not yet, she’s sure to be dosed up on AIDs, still producing little girls and boys, infected and carrying on the tradition.’
“Trooman shook his head and headed for the exit.
“Mazur and Dancey followed, neither talking to the other, Dancey arranging his shirt under his belt where it had pulled free in the descent. Mazur looked his usual weepy eyed self, his hands stuck in his jacket pocket. I thought maybe he was praying. These are your pals?
“The Muslim checked us out. I paused for a moment and slipped him another ten. I didn’t think I had to tell him about the smack addicts on 13. I’m sure he knew all about their domestic activities.”
Patrick Flynn was leaving the newspaper on one of those cold wet evenings when Ernie Wishbone passed by in his Crown Victoria. Flynn thought of needling him next time they met about the top cops getting the biggest bozos on wheels. Ernie wheeled around to pick him up. “Hey,” said Patrick, “I only live five blocks from here.”
“Giving you a break,” Ernie said, “Who’d refuse a lift in this weather? Even to that ugly concrete and glass Bauhaus where you camp?”
“Yeah, in a city limo.”
Unlike other cops, there were no napkins from greasy quick burgers or fried chicken, discarded cardboard cups of coffee, stirrers, packets of sugar and creamers. It was clean, as clean as Ernie, a space ship, heading for the outer limits, guided by an assortment of electronic gadgetry, humming radios with their disembodied voices talking to each other, numbers, addresses, descriptions of people on the lam who could be anybody just about (male black, mid-build, average height, dark complected), telephones that rang on and off, all the time blinking red and yellow lights indicating somewhere else someone was listening.
“What’re you cops up to?” Patrick asked Ernie. “You haven’t made a good bust since you put away that crazed carver Artie Burns. Not so difficult since he called to say he was waiting for you, knife in hand. Don’t forget, Dancey still thinks you left Muchie Moore to bleed to death.”
Ernie smiled at him.
“You’re a cool character, even for a black man,” Patrick said.
“You always got an angle, Patrick. Muchie Moore had his brains blown away. He got his deserts. Joey thinks his killers’re rotting somewhere. Who ordered it? Joey wants to link the gunsters to Sam Collins. Not a chance. But maybe someone like Johnson Garvey Jones. That’s the theory. Anyhow he’s disappeared.”
“Jones’ gone?”
Ernie described the scene: “Gone. We had warrants. We were working with the FBI. We split up. One squad of cops and agents went to his office. My crew went to his apartment. I told the coppers, ‘We’re going in with the feds. It’s all proper.’ Five of us took the front. Three in the rear of the building. We had a squad blocking the alley cutting off access to the garage. He lived in a very fancy place.”
“Yeah,” Patrick said, “Know it well. Ostentatious greed, embellished with hubris. The barbarians tried to mimic the Romans. Nothing left to taste.”
“Right,” Ernie said. “We march into the lobby. Marble up and down, big brass gates behind the uniformed security officer at his desk. They call them concierges here.
“ ‘You gotta check in,’ he says to us through his large red face with his short clipped white mustache and the cap of a commander of the guard carefully arranged on his noggin.
“Police. F.B.I. See. We put badges under his nose.
“ ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let me call up, but I don’t think anyone’s there.’
“I put my hand on his.
“ ‘Jones hasn’t been here for a few days,’ he says. He shook his head. One of those mink-clad purple haired ladies with a little poodle trotted into the lobby from the elevators. She was ready for the grave, but held together for another few years by the surgeons. She stared at us and then, because the dog had other things on its mind, tossed her locks and skedaddled out the door.
“I told the concierge. ‘Just stay away from the phones, okay?’
“ ‘Don’t worry. No one seen ‘em leave. Renters.’
“ ‘Renters?’
“ ‘Yeah, Jones didn’t own it. He got a sublet. It’s against the building’s rules, but someone made an exception. It’s who you know. Rules for the rest of us.’
“I found out later that the Collins Group owns a piece of the building.
“The captain concierge buzzed us through the gates. I left a sergeant and two coppers in the lobby near the elevators. Os Leggins and I went up in the elevator. The elevator was paneled in mahogany with brass rails fencing mirrors on three sides. When the doors opened, the F.B.I. dudes rushed out. They’re anxious to be out front and first. Okay by me.
“His door was dark. I push the expert in front of the agents. Os slides a shimmy between the door and the jam.”
Patrick interrupted. “Why Jones? I know he’s a sleazebag, but why now?”
“He’s got the franchise on all those news stands at the airport. I put a couple of wog cops fresh out of the academy in soft clothes. They were hired by Jones’ guys. Guess what? Candy and newspapers aren’t the business. Bingo. So much cash going in and out it’s like Fort Knox. You buy something that costs five dollars and pay with five thousand. Probably more. You’re set for your next delivery of smack. You put your $5 purchase in your pocket. Off you go. Next thing a cell phone call telling you when and where. If nothing else, the feds would’ve gotten him on tax evasion.”
“You tell Calvin or Dancey?”
“Nothing to tell. Beside, you know what they’ll say. Me a black guy, pickin’ on Jones ‘cause he arranged for Collins to finance Lance’s shopping mall. You seen the plans? El Cheapo Mondo. If Lance ever finishes developing it, I give it a year or two before it’s vacant, boarded up and an eyesore.”
They pulled into the parking lot for the Greeks.
“You want a bite?” Ernie asked.
“An undeniable privilege,” Patrick said. “I want to hear the rest of the story.”
At nearly 11 p.m. on a weekday night, the Greeks had emptied out. The slight strains of the bouzouki music were barely distinguishable outside the door. The waiters were hanging around under the fish netting. Nicky was not there to give Patrick his usual greeting. Without the crush, you could see all the way to the open kitchen, the grills, steam tables, mounds of ice covered with sightless reddish fish, octopi and squid, a pile of silver bait, waiting to be flash fried and gulped down. In the rear of the grills, the three turning poles of gyros were manned by a pair of dervishes in high white caps sharpening their steels on stones and then slicing away with their flashing blades as the rotisserie’s red light reflected off their sweating foreheads.
They settled into a table near the grills.
“Hey, Texas,” Ernie called to one of the grillmen, “let’s have some lamb choppers.”
Texas leaned over the counter, his stubbly face split into a wide smile. “Whats else, El Capitain?” He asked.
“Two Greek beers and a dish of Okra,” Ernie said. He turned back to Patrick, “We went into Jones’ place. Oz pushed the door open. The feds flung themselves in, guns out, paper in hand. We followed. Silence. Not a sound. You shoulda seen it. The place looked like one of those high end hotels in bankruptcy. It had been cleaned out. There wasn’t even a piece of paper. Not a sign of life anywhere. Even the trash was gone. Telephones were stacked on tables. The tables were pushed against each other. The plush chairs, like turtles turned upside down, their legs in the air. The cabinet drawers were pulled out. Rugs rolled back. Real Orientals.”
“I know it well, Ernie. I’ve been to a few parties. Dazzling young ladies and young man. It was a pleasure dome. Very upscale. You could smell the dope when you came through the door. . .”
“No pleasure dome now. We found nothing. Every door was open and every closet empty. There were no girls and no men. No evidence of their presence. No dope. It was clean as a whistle.”
“Someone tipped him off?”
“Could be. He probably figured the game was over. There were too many questions being asked. Maybe they got wind of our undercover guys. We went room to room. The walls were bare of photographs, prints, or paintings, except here and there some cheap reproduction. Jones made out like he was a pretty cultured guy. He sucked up to the university types, but he hadn’t left behind a shred of refinement. Through those big windows in his two-story atrium you got a breathless view, south, west and The Lake. The atrium, surrounded by doors, was like one of those cuckoo clocks. Coppers or agents would go in one door and come out another. I kept expecting Cinderella to appear, go back in and her wicked stepmother and stepsisters to toddle out another doorway. The farther back you went in the apartment, the less you found. Bedrooms with mattresses and box springs on bedsteads with no linens. Desks with nothing on them or in them. You went back to the wonderful view in the atrium. I hung around with the G men. A techie came up to dust the place. I can’t imagine what he’d find. We stood in front of the windows. Great place for a party. But no one to make goo-goo. Not a soul, not a sound.”
“I’ve been there. You could say it’s a lot like 4142 which has wonderful views and nothing in the apartments. Not so clean.”
“4142?”
“The high rises, Ernie. Gurnsey, my reporter, says Dancey James poked his head out a window and exclaimed it’d be a hot property. Yeah, some millionaire, like Sam Collins, ‘ll take the top floor. Where do you stand, Ernie, on the projects?”
At that moment, the waiter gave each a plate and a sharp knife and placed an oblong dish of six lamp chops in front of them and a bowl of okra. Ernie asked for yogurt, lemons and a dish of oregano. He told Patrick, “They don’t grill the chops. First, they marinate them, then they’re seared under the broiler in a very hot, intense heat. Here they are.” He picked up one of the chops with his fork, sprinkled it with lemon and oregano and spooned some of the thick white yogurt on his plate, cutting a piece of meat and wiping it through.
He looked up at Patrick. “I’ve tried to stay out of the high rise debate. My neighborhood’s beset with horrors. To be honest, those buildings are the worst. You can’t reclaim them. It’s like the homeowners say. The neighborhood’s dead until they go. The gangs own the buildings. They take tribute from the drug dealers, whores, anyone who lives there. Lance tried to ban them. We knew that didn’t have a chance. Your aunt lets you in. You hole up in her place. Then you break through the wall to the next unit. Your pals move in. That’s it. I don’t want to bust up the Pastor’s meetings, but someone’s got to put it on the table.”
He went on, “Take the Neighborhood Fund’s project, Dubois Parc. It has a slim chance. Not a high rise, just 300 units of badly built low rise. Jasper Joseph’s done a deplorable job running them. Maybe the Fund can save Dubois Parc. It’s got a chance only if we evict the druggies and whores, deadbeats and gangbangers. The Fund’s got the muscle to make it happen. But the high rises, with the vertical concentration? You can’t clean it. You can’t police it. Plus, it’s all public housing governed by federal rules and regs, administered by the Public Housing Commission. I wouldn’t put the PHC in charge of carrying out my garbage, even if Lance himself volunteered.”
He paused over his plate with its half-eaten chop, “Beside, there’s a disincentive in public housing for people to work. Earn a few dollars and you’re evicted. That’s government policy. At least the people living in Dubois Parc don’t have those tight caps. It’s not part of the Public Housing Commission buildings. They can work. Working class families’ll save Dubois Parc, if we help them. I’m not pleased with the way Calvin’s managing Dubois Parc. According to my coppers, his security’s lax, if not bought off by the dealers. I’m trying to decide whether to say anything. I spoke privately with Gaines. He was sympathetic, but he doesn’t like controversy. Calvin’s one of his boys.”
“You’re on the fence?”
“Not really. Just trying to figure it out. I want to do the right thing. I don’t want to be disruptive, especially as the Pastor tries to rebuild the neighborhood. Still, when you know what’s right, my mother taught me, you do it, regardless. At some point, and maybe it’s now, you’ve got to draw a line. You’ve got to act.”
“Is that why everyone went after Jones?”
“Jeesh. You can’t stick with one topic. Listen, Patrick, that cocksucker. . .pardon me. . .that cocksucker was making drugs, murder, prostitution, you name it, happen. Sure, he stayed in his burrow, never getting his hands dirty, directly I mean, but that money funneling through his newsstands, the other deals he made, I hope he burns in hell. The dealers need a bank and the bankers finance the deliveries. The Collins Organization, and I don’t mean the one on LaSalle Street, will find others.”
Ernie paused for breath. He bent over his chops again. “I’m not an optimist, like Joey. We’ll have a momentary reprieve before some other ghoul moves in. We’ll never get Jones. Police work isn’t replete with successes. More murderers get away than caught. The big guys never get nailed. Jones is in South America, or some place were we can’t extradite him, if anyone ever lays a glove on him. So be it. Joey, on the other hand, believes we’ll find Muchie’s killers, we’ll connect them to Jones, and we’ll reel him in.”
“Sam Collins?”
“The Protestant King? Just hope he doesn’t pull the plug on Calvin. Nailing him? That’s Joey’s wet dream. Forget it. Eat your chops.”
Ernie’s always got somewhere to go, and so do I. Like late night gigs in the blues bars= or whatever’s still going on at the jazz clubs. It’s the same everywhere I’ve hung out, London, Paris, here. Murphy and I keep running into each other at some smoky bar in the ghetto or up north where the kids congregate on the outskirts of youthful virility. We’re crashing tender-aged get-togethers all over town, sitting in the back, watching the performances on stage and off – kids who smoke reefers, a few snorting coke or worse, and guys holding on to their girls. Here and there little girls from the wealthiest suburbs working hard to get it on, uncomfortable but unwilling to pull away from an adolescent who has reached his nirvana with his hand wandering up her crotch. In the biggest crowds, at those raucous concerts, boys and girls on their knees, not able to stand up, or held up by pals, zonked by the dreadful weed. Those were the few, but highly noticeable to us old guys. Most of these kids, I have to say, were there for the music and to be part of the crowd. Then there’s the new older crowd who hang out at the jazz and blues bars. You’d think they’d be mostly black. If it was true once, it ain’t now. They’re mostly white, there for the music and mostly not stoned. Sure, there’s some booze, everyone nursing a beer or a glass of wine, and maybe some grass, or a little coke. The music’s the real story of why they’re there. They leave at a decent hour, about midnight most times, when the band moves on.
Now for us, Jack Murphy and me, we crawl the next day to work without our beauty rest, fatigued, hardly able to put one foot in front of the other. I’ve never heard Jack bitch about his circumstances, and no one’s heard me do likewise. Nor do you hear these kids moaning. For them, at least those I see, it’s great. Hip. They’re up and at them next time, anytime and anywhere. The others, the blues and jazz types, it’s back to normal without even an expletive.
Like other donkeys who’ve made it, both Jack and me fought from birth to suck at the family teat, pushing our way among brothers and sisters. I remember when we met in Paris, Jack talking about his childhood. I didn’t have much to relate, other than the fact that I left my childhood as soon as I could. You tire of the bashing and the low level discourse, or no discourse. If you were like me, you found something else. You read great books that you couldn’t forget and were all you had to think about. Great Expectations. Gulliver’s Travels. Pilgrim’s Progress. Moby Dick, Huck Finn. Otherwise, it was grunts. A whack across the face or head. The old man’s drunk as a skunk and you’re going to pay for it. We weren’t deaf and blind. When you’re in pants, hiding what you’ve got to hide behind your zipper, you realize this ain’t the life for you. You struck out on your own. Take guys like Dancey and David Mazur. Not a silver spoon, I’m sure, but they didn’t come back to tell us anything we didn’t know.
How come David Mazur seemed so maudlin ever since the tour of 4142? Gurnsey thought it was his relationship with Dancey. Insightful. Who wants to be called a racist again and again by a guy you’ve known for hundreds of years? You start believing he means it, a guy you think is your friend, whom you’ve helped find a house near your own, you’ve recommended for membership on a university special committee, tantamount to a step to Board election – once he gets some gray in his reddish hair. Not to mention the many dinner parties they shared together, conniving about their spouses, Dancey complaining about Kristin’s disputatious relationship with him and David Mazur about Anne. He wasn’t so vulgar to describe her well-known capacity for sex with every male who knocked on the door.
Perhaps neither was prepared for their relationship. They didn’t have childhoods like me and Murphy, or Gurnsey or Trooman. I knew Mazur didn’t want to be pressed all the time to decide whether Dancey was black or white, whether he was acting black and being white, or playing white and being black.
Then there’s the cop. Ernie told me that he never lived in Dancey’s world, although he lived most of his life in the neighborhood where Dancey grew up. “There’s a difference,” he said. Before Delores, Ernie had two wives and lots of ladies. Cop life wasn’t conducive to wedded bliss. Anyhow, Ernie wanted something other than a house filled with kids, nor was he about to skim narcotics or booty to live in a grander style than his cop’s salary permitted. He told me, “I’m reduced to a fairly simple uncomplicated life. Still live in the neighborhood, take care of Delores and my mother, and don’t go to fancy dinner parties. I’ve accepted the fact I’m never gonna be superintendent. It used to be because I’m a black guy. A black guy’s superintendent. It’s because I don’t play the game.”
I wondered about John Trooman. He was a mystery to me, perhaps because of distance, or because of my image of him in pinstripes. I could see him carrying a leather briefcase filled with important diplomatic papers. He was a counter to Calvin Lance in my estimation of Dancey. But I couldn’t figure out the relationship. He was not someone Dancey talked about with any emotion, unlike his undying loyalty to Lance. Trooman was too self-contained. He had made his decisions. He knew what he was about. He didn’t need anyone to do anything for him. Maybe Dancey kept Trooman in his backroom. But for what?
The aftermath of the visit to 4142 was played out in a series of meetings of the Neighborhood Fund for New Life’s executive committee that Reverend Gaines scheduled each week. He was a powerful presence, Reverend Gaines, sitting at one end of his conference table, straight in his chair, his head back, hands folded in front of him, listening to Calvin Lance report on the management of Dubois Parc.
Ernie, Mazur, Dancey James, Calvin and Jasper, Alice Abigale who often brought Charlie, and Miriam Stern were on the executive committee with a number of neighborhood residents. The controversy over the high rises was a big deal, and none of the principals could leave the controversy behind. Patrick would encounter them, Mazur for a drink or a bite to eat, Dancey for dinner, or Miriam Stern at a lecture or workshop. They had to grind their axes for him and he enjoyed egging them on.
Whatever might be said out of Reverend Gaines’ presence, angry, bitter words were usually not said at his table.
Despite Isaiah’s harsh instructions to an entire tribe, the words contained in the bookcases that lined the walls were of faith, belief, commitment, seeking and finding. They set the tone, replacing the lack of décor with a palpable sense of a being beyond being, defeating confrontation and irrationality. You might conclude there was something irrational in belief, especially if you’re a doubter and believed, if nothing else, those words were at war with each other.
It was at one of these executive committee meetings in Reverend Gaines’ presence that Ernie Wishbone, from whom aggravation was least expected, put his hand up to speak, as Dancey was complimenting Lance’s management of Dubois Parc. Nothing was easy about these apartments inherited from Jasper Joseph. They were poorly built, the mortar cracking, the plumbing separating, the drains and sewers clogged. No prior manager had checked the tenants as to their criminal records, credit risk, how many children and pets. They ignored most of the other criteria that establishes the kinds of choices that ensures a stable community. Once they moved in, you couldn’t move them out without catching them dead to rights selling dope, raping, robbing or killing someone.
Ernie Wishbone, carefully choosing his words, interjected, “Dancy, I’m troubled by the crime there. Calvin, you’ve got to do something about security. There’re a lot of drugs going down. The police hear from the tenants. They’re scared to death. The cops can’t make a bust. Your rentacops won’t cooperate. I can get the district commander to assign some soft clothes to live in one or two of the units. But I don’t trust your security. It’s gotta be real discreet. That’s the only way you’ll break it. Those bozos you’re using are on the take. I know it. Everyone knows it. It stinks.”
“Come on, Ernie,” Lance responded, “you cops don’t like private security. You know that. These guys’re honest. They’re limited, sure, but honest.”
“What security firm?” Mazur asked.
“Calvin’s,” Ernie said, sitting back, his hands palm up in the air.
“What about hiring off-duty coppers?” Dancey asked.
There was a moment of absolute silence. Everyone at the table knew Dancey’s relationship with Calvin.
Calvin stood up. “Listen, you guys, I’ll run my business the best I can. You can’t afford off-duty police. I’m giving you the best deal you’ll ever get.”
“We can’t stand by, Calvin. If the cops are telling us drugs or other crimes are being committed,” Dancey said. “We just can’t. We know about it. We haven’t stopped it. We have to. No deals. We can’t allow this to go on. You and Ernie work it out.”
“Sure,” said Wishbone. “That okay with you, Pastor?”
“Absolutely.” Gaines looked at Calvin. “Just like Dancey said. We’re responsible, Calvin, and we’ve got to act on our responsibilities. You and Ernie get together. Tonight, if possible. That work for you?”
Lance shook his head affirmatively.
Miriam Stern got up. “I’ve got to go, Reverend Gaines. Harold’s under the weather. I’d vote to provide more funding for better security at Dubois Parc. But I have to tell you that the Mayor isn’t happy about the high rises. That child’s murder was the last straw. You know that, Mr. Lance. The Mayor told you.”
“The Mayor and I agreed to make some changes,” Calvin said.
“I didn’t know you saw the Mayor,” Dancey said.
“I didn’t.” Calvin, smiling, charming, but clearly upset: “He sent a message. Just like we’re getting tonight. He doesn’t like to deal with black people. Right, Miriam?”
“That’s malarkey, Mr. Lance, and you know it.” She was becoming feisty. “You didn’t keep your appointment, and he sent me around to tell you what he wants. I don’t think you like dealing with women. That’s what I think.”
“Okay, okay,” Reverend Gaines interrupted. “We’re going to leave the high rises for the Mayor, Calvin and the Public Building Commission to resolve. Instead, the Fund’s going to pursue a plan for rebuilding the neighborhood. It’s Mrs. Abigail’s plan. You all know about it. Mr. Gertens paid for it. The Mayor likes it.”
Dancey interrupted. “But it shows the high rises gone.”
“Right,” said Mazur, “replaced by single family homes. That’s what everyone wants. Affordable housing.”
“Don’t give me that affordable stuff. Everyone wants it but the families you’re kicking out,” Dancey said. “They can’t afford anything. That’s why they’re there.”
“Everyone’s impacted,” Mazur said. “Those families you’re talking about will live in better homes, safe neighborhoods and have good schools.”
“By your standards, not theirs.”
“Their standards, Dancey. Their standards are same as the rest of us. They just never had the chance.”
“Listen, all of you,” Gaines stood up, “we’ve stumbled for years on issues ranging from failed schools to fear about safety. I’m not going to have us stumble now on the high rises.” His face was set. “This issue will be resolved. Trust the Lord.”
“I’ll trust you and the Lord, Pastor,” Calvin said, “but no one else.” He motioned to Ernie Wishbone.
As they began to excuse themselves from the meeting, Gaines spoke softly, firmly, pronouncing each word, each a piece of hard-wrought steel:
“I hear you, Calvin. Let me say what I told my congregation last Sunday. That boy shouldn’t have been sent out alone, alone between those buildings, into a land of no return, into death’s valley. Those men shouldn’t have been in those buildings shooting at each other. Who is responsible? The mother for leaving the boy alone? You’re a girl, a young woman, old enough to have a child. If you’re old enough to have a child, you can’t duck the issue. You take care of them. You feed them. Keep them clean. You wean them properly. You educate them. They’re yours. You shelter and protect them. Don’t beg off because you’re poor. You’re single. Because you’re a black woman in a white world. For us black men, we can’t let terror and crime run rampant out of control in our own communities. They’re our communities. These people are our people. Stop pointing the finger at white society. They don’t care. And we don’t get it.”
Gaines voice became softer:
“Remember Paul’s Epistle to the Thessalonians,
Know that the day of the Lord cometh as a thief in the night.
For when they shall say, Peace and Safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as a travail upon a woman with child; they shall not escape.
You are not in darkness and that day shall not overtake you as a thief.
We are all children of light, of the day; not of the night, nor of darkness.
Let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.”
The Pastor sat down again. There was silence. Then shuffling. Lance and Wishbone shook hands with Gaines and left.
Miriam followed them out.
As Dancey got up, Reverend Gaines said, “A little more trust of each other would help, Dancey. What is it about you that seeks approbation. . .no, not really approbation, but from others in how they see you? Why must they find you? Can you find yourself in those images? Is the mirror the same, or does each glass have a different opacity, resolution, and brightness, hiding a different tunnel and channel for escape?”
“I respect you, Pastor, but even you read too much in me.”
Before David Mazur could extricate himself from the table, Reverend Gaines seized on him, “You ought to help, David Mazur. You’re the one honest friend Dancey has. He can sleep with some of the others. He can walk around town with the newspaper crowd. He can court business tycoons like Sam Collins. None of them has much interest in the image in his mirror. Why should they? Why should you? Because Dancey’s a friend.”
Mazur waited. He said finally, “Dancey has to decide whether being white like me is so different from being white like him. The answer, if there’s one, doesn’t matter to me. Does it matter to Dancey?”
Dancey and Gaines were alone again in the room. Dancey recalled the time he was sent to see the Pastor by the Judge about working in Africa, and Gaines made the connection with Blatchford, the Quaker leader. They sat across from each other. There was silence.
“When your father died, Dancey, you spoke at his memorial service. I did too, of course, but I remember your tone, the love you expressed -- and your anger. Did you hear yourself?”
“I suppose,” Dancey said to him, “I don’t want to be disrespectful, Pastor, but do you know the entire Bible by memory?”
Gaines looked up at Dancey. “I have very strong memories, Dancey, but I don’t memorize everything I remember. I read the passage last night, thinking about myself and my brothers, about our people, your people, Dancey. I remembered when I first came here, not as a minister, but as a young man who wanted to learn about learning, learning about faith and God, and how to use faith and learning to lift up those who were without a voice, without hope, or at least without hope of being lifted up. I got myself to school on the G.I. bill, and I worked in the bus garage cleaning, the only regular job I could get in those days. Wiping away the tears and waste of yesterday in those buses. None of us could live in the university neighborhood then. You spoke about that at your father’s service. You were not going to hide behind your white façade. You told us you had nothing to declare. How bitter you sounded.”
“I was just stating the facts. No one should forget their history.”
“I haven’t, Dancey. But I don’t want to be burned up, to be consumed by that history. I want to make changes. Take your history. There was a time, after your mother’s death, when you lived with Carolyn and me. Do you recall?”
“Of course.” Dancey, his voice uneven, lowering in tone, losing its resonance at the emotion welling up in his throat. “Of course I recall. My father sent me away.”
“No, Dancey, I suggested it might be good for you, for him, Ruth, and for you, if you came to live with me for a brief time. The Judge wanted you back from the very first night. He came by. He knocked on our door. I let him in. He wasn’t thinking very clearly. He hadn’t since Esmeralda died. She had been taken suddenly. You remember? Taken to the hospital in the evening, she passed by the morning. It was very quick. Your father couldn’t say goodbye properly. He stood in our parlor. He asked after you. I told him you were sleeping very fitfully. We could hear you tossing and turning. Give him a few weeks, Bigger. Give yourself a few weeks.
“Perhaps I was wrong. I believed it was best for you and for him. We held hands, and I took him to your bedroom. He watched you sleeping. Your father didn’t say another word, and then he went quietly to the door.”
“I asked to go home.”
Gaines smiled, “Not exactly, Dancey, you seemed to be having a good time, playing with our kids, going to school, and coming with me to the church in the late afternoon. Bigger came to the church. He said it was time for you to come home. He wouldn’t have it any other way. No longer down in the dumps, he was nearly his old self. He was still grieving for Esmeralda, but had made up his mind to get on with it. It was time for you to go home. He was right. I took you home.”
Dancey didn’t say anything else.
“We were talking about history. Yours and mine. I found scrubbing buses didn’t bring in much cash. I needed more money. Bus cleaning was at night. I checked in. The contemptuous white guy running the garage would wave me on. You didn’t want to look at his mug, unshaven, a wet cigar stuck between his teeth, chewing away. I’d hustle to a locker, put on my overalls, pick up the mop and pail. The only other guys there were black guys. Who else would do this job? Some of them didn’t make it beyond a few days. Some would come to work drunk. The white guy would put his arm around their necks. He was a big bruiser. He’d take them outside, give them a good kick in the pants. I’d never see them again. The other cleaners didn’t talk to me or each other. We did our thing, embarrassed, I think, that we were scrubbing buses.
“After a while, some things began to open up. Daytime I was a mail carrier, a postman, to earn more money. I delivered mail from one white hand to another in the university community, where I could walk with my bag, heavy on my shoulder with words, but dared not speak any words to those I met on the street. I didn’t put my bag down or sit on a bench, nor even think of stopping in a store for a pop sickle or chocolate bar. I passed other black people, heads down, a nod here and there, a hoarse greeting and then gone.
“Don’t forget your father and Esmeralda lived the same life, their souls imprisoned by the same bars of hate. They protected you and Ruth. You were different, Dancey. You could, if you wanted, walk any street anywhere. You could put your school bag down and sit on a bench. Later, when you went from shorts to long pants, you did not fit in our own neighborhood where, ironically, if not for the protection of Moses, you were in fact the prisoner. Today, of course, everyone’s incarcerated. But then your parents and sister were constrained from escaping because of their color. You were constrained from existing there by your lack of color. I remember and I remember all of these hurts. I can’t be angry for myself, but angered for all of those denied by ignorance and arrogance.
“I’m not standing on the mountain, Dancey. I never have. I’m not asking folks to look at me. I don’t even want them to listen to me. I want them to hear something else. The ocean. The silence of the skies. A voice that calls to them. I want them to see a hand beckoning. He’s not me. I want to witness the curtain unfolding, as the Hebrews say, to reveal the sky and the earth, and to reveal Him. Is that too much? If I were bitter, angry for myself, how could I ask them to listen?”
Dancey had not tried to interrupt. Now he said, “Am I angry? I don’t think so. Am I bitter? I doubt it. You’re a prophet of redemption. Our minister. My pastor, as you were to my mother and father.’
“You asked me and I’ve tried to remember my history, Dancey. I recall certain passages. Perhaps they’re all good events, even scrubbing buses and delivering mail in an alien country. We all have these tasks to do. And you, Dancey, what do you remember? Are they good events of your past or only the hard, the difficult, the bad memories?”
“I’ve no memories. Only themes.”
“I don’t believe you.” Gaines was cool. His voice was firm. “I don’t think you’ve tried to remember. You’ve grasped for connections. You grew up connected to Calvin and Jasper. You’re selective in your memories of childhood. I suspect everyone is. You couldn’t say a good thing about Blatchford, that poor old Quaker, or your wife, Kristin, for whatever reason rejected by you. What’s your memory of getting to know Trooman? Memories are a way of making connections, but I don’t think memories are the way you wish to be connected. You want someone else, perhaps everyone else to make those connections for you. Isn’t that correct?”
“You’re asking too much,” Dancey said. “Why should I bother? Born black, tinted white, I’m even different from my mother and father, even different from my sister. I could see. They could see. Wouldn’t you wonder as you opened your eyes whether you belonged? Where you belonged? What would you think when you strayed outside the door to play, to school, or to walk in the street where you didn’t belong? You talked about an alien world. No world was home for me. It’s all a ruse.”
Gaines sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. It was getting late. He said, “We’re made as we are. We’re told, and we believe, we’re made in His image. His image’s not static, Dancey. It takes the form of all shapes and all colors. Image is a malapropism expressed by black people, white people, by all peoples everywhere. This being I worship and I believe you worship is magisterial in our world and we humans give this magisterial being a shape, a form, as we do to everything. It doesn’t matter how we describe the indescribable. The Hebrews were forbidden to say His name. He’s the Ineffable. Without a name how do you describe some thing? But He’s not a thing. He’s a presence that suffuses our selves and our universe. What did Ezekiel see?”
“Ezekiel? You can’t be serious, Pastor?”
“But Dancey, I am. He asks not for description, not even a word, only for acceptance, and rejects a ruse. You don’t have to see or be seen. It’s what you feel and how you reach toward Him, how you reach to Him. I really believe those words. Can you?”
“Can’t say I do. I wouldn’t deny you, Pastor, nor your words. I can’t make the connection even to those words, or to a prophetic vision of those images. . .”
“His image?”
“His image.”
“What did you see when you looked at Moses Moore? How do you recall him? Or take Jasper? Or Calvin? Or even me?”
“I see black men who don’t look like me. Moses’ gone. Jasper’s scheming somewhere, probably in the backroom of his church on Sin Corner.” Dancey smiled at the thought. He went on. “I like what I see in Calvin. Calvin’s doing right. The best he can for all the people who depend on him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Am I sure about Calvin, or about all of us?”
“You left out you and me. About Calvin? Let’s start there.”
“No one’s given so much of his heart and soul. . . No, that’s not accurate. There’s also you.”
“Forget about me. Calvin?”
“You heard me.”
“Calvin’s one of my flock, Dancey,” Gaines said. “Like you, I brought him forth in my church. I baptised the both of you. I tried to shelter Calvin from his mother’s worst ways, and I wanted to bring him close to her love for him. I did not want him ever to deny her. From the time he was a small boy, Calvin knew how to use her and use me to get to her. I’ve been thinking about our triangular relationship the past few days, especially since the problems over Dubois Parc. I’m having my doubts. You heard him tonight. What’d you think?”
“He’s a businessman, Pastor. He’s giving us the best he knows for the people living in Dubois Parc. He’s no better nor worse as a businessman than any white man.”
“Ah, Dancey. Those words. They’re dissing us. I came lately to find Calvin a bit of a manipulator. I have to say it. I know it hurts you. It hurts me. I hope I’m wrong. I’m not judging Calvin. I’m not judging you. I’m trying to find myself in your lives. In a time of oppression and exile, it was the prophet, Ezkiel who gave the image of the Glory of God. If we can sense that greater presence, why does it need a face? Why can’t we accept, you accept yourself, and all of us accept each other? And if we fail, if we forget each other, and I fear this in Calvin, what then? Who are we? Who will we become?”
5- Spectators
Dancey was a veritable communications hub for connections that extended across the city, across the nation and across the world. There is no Central anymore. The connections are direct. “This is Dancey,” he would say. His mandated calls were to clients, politicians, civic leaders and hundreds of other contacts that told him what was happening and what was going to happen and with whom. He also reached out each week for Ruth and a short list of friends, including David Mazur, Patrick, John Trooman wherever he was, Jasper Joseph, Adlai Hacknott and others. He talked daily with Calvin and at least twice a week with Reverend Gaines. This routine list does not include the women, girls and ladies with whom he was in contact. The wires hummed with his energy. He was a familiar with those in his network, regardless of how geographically or, more importantly, emotionally they were at a distance. He would take a break from his deal-making with the clients that lined up in the firm’s reception area impatiently awaiting his beck for the return call his secretary had promised to dial up to someone on the list, or to track down those he couldn’t reach with his first attempts. His landings could be rough, surprising, when news arrived unexpectedly on the wire.
He had called John Trooman in Washington one afternoon. He got a pool secretary at the State Department. She wouldn’t give him another number. He asked to be connected to Adam Feldstein. He would see him with Trooman whenever he was in Washington. He learned Feldstein was an old acquaintance of David Mazur, who had told him the two now lived together. The female voice on the other end said Feldstein was away.
He finished off his calls by talking briefly to Ruth.
He had a lot to say to his sister. He and Kristin had separated. It was for the best. She was living in the house with the children, Bigger Jr. known to everyone as Jimmy, and Essie. He had taken an apartment nearby. Did he think it would end in divorce? He hoped it would. Kristin hadn’t stopped yammering at him since they were married. Ruth came right back at him:
“Maybe, Dancey, you didn’t give her a chance.”
“I gave her every chance to pause, to take a breath between accusations. It was direct indictment, trial without jury, and then sentencing.”
“I remember last Christmas,” Ruth said, “You sat at the table criticizing everything she said and everything she prepared for the meal. You just didn’t let up. Jimmy and Essie looked down at their plates.”
“Ruth, my dear, she didn’t prepare anything for the meal. Kristin can’t boil an egg.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
‘I know what you mean. My shrink said I should fight back. I fought back and she became a tiger. I can’t open my mouth for air without her saying Dancey this and Dancey that.”
“What’s next?”
“I don’t know, Ruth, but divorce’s probably best.”
“And the children?”
“It’ll work out.”
He picked up the phone again. He had Trooman’s home number. It was the middle of the afternoon. He couldn’t imagine John being there.
Adam Feldstein’s raspy voice answered, a tone of high anxiety, not entirely masking his usual truculence, trembled on the words. Dancey imagined Feldstein’s head moving nervously back and forth.
“Adam, it’s me, Dancey James. I’ve been trying to reach John.”
“He’s here. He’s here. Can’t talk now. Resting.”
“Resting? John never rests. Is he okay?”
“No, he’s not okay.” Feldstein paused. “He’s ill. Very ill. Verste?”
The worst came to Dancey’s mind, but he didn’t have the courage to ask. It was, he thought, for the victim to say. “Will you tell him I called?”
“Of course.” There was a pause. Then, having gotten himself together, Feldstein asked, “So what’s happened to the Bernstein boy?”
“The Bernstein boy? I don’t know any.”
“The boy you’re representing in that dreadful murder. The shvartza that was sliced to ribbons.”
“Burns. Arthur Burns.”
“Burns today was Bernstein yesterday. That miserable family.” Feldstein stopped again. “He’s a cousin. I grew up with his mother. We lived next door. Our families went to shul together. She married Arthur Bernstein, an accountant. We were introduced to him as Mr. Bernstein. Not Arthur. Mr. Then suddenly the Bernsteins are no more. The Bernsteins are the Burns and they’re living with the rest of the goyim. She was a good girl, Torsie, really a good girl. Not a beauty. But wholesome. Not real smart. But shrewd. Now what? The husband plays golf at the country club. She sees the ladies for bridge. She wears fancy clothes purchased at some upscale Lane Bryant. They’re expensive. But she takes a lot of material.”
“You called Carrie a shvartza?”
“That upset you?”
Dancey thought a moment about it. Upset me? Yes, Yes, he wanted to say, but didn’t bother. Why? You can’t change these people.
Feldstein kept on going at a high rate of speed. “I really didn’t mean it. I don’t know anything about any of them. I knew he was obsessed with this girl. His mother called. Who else would she call, but her cousin, Adam, the philosopher king. So what did I say? I said, ‘Torsie, step back. Give him lots of room.’
“ ‘What if he marries her?’ She groaned.
“ ‘It happens in the best of Christian homes,’ I said. ‘Look at Harry Belafonte.’ That cooked things good. She hung up.”
“He says he’s innocent.”
“Ovey, I know all about it. The dead girl’s mother’s a witch. ‘The devil did it,’ she says. That’s what the Republicans say about the Democrats here and the Democrats about the Republicans. I bet the devil in this deal is the tension between Arthur’s total commitment to a black girl in white society, his obsession and decision to give up his nice white life and then his rejection by her.”
“Close, and maybe you’ll get a cigar, Adam,” Dancey said. “It’ll have to be played out in court. Right now, I’m more interested in John.”
“John? Oh, yes, my God, John. I’m much more interested in John.” His voice faded, as though he was trying to catch hold of himself, of his emotions, a man who wore most of them not only on his sleeve but all over his body and the rest of his clothes down to his shoes. Feldstein said, “You should look in on him. He’ll call you.”
Adam Feldstein ended the connection.
Trooman called late in the day.
“Am I interrupting something, Dancey?” His voice had lost the clear tone Dancey recalled from those days in North Philadelphia.
“Only my thoughts about you.”
“Remember Blatchford?”
“Of course, the Chief Quaker.”
“You’ve got a role for everyone. Everyone but you. For me, Blatchford projected acceptance. You sat quietly. Composed yourself. If you had something to say you got up to say it. If you could say it with rectitude, you said it calmly. You remember? I went to see him when he was ill and in the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. He was preparing to die. His white face lay back against the starched pillow, cushioned by white hair, his hands folded over the hospital sheet. It was like any other hospital room, I guess, a sarcophagus for the diseased undead. Like the ones I know. It’s become a full-time occupation these days for me. The lid’s open. The curtain surrounds the bed and a table on wheels crammed with the objects to be buried with the prince – tablets and pills, cups, an untouched tray of uneatable eats. On the wall slightly to the left of our pillow, his pillow, my pillow, hangs the blood pressure gauge next to a little plastic thermometer holder. Across from the bed, if you cared, a Besler sunflower, yellow and green, 1613 now blooming on the off white walls, the glass, or is it plexiglass, reflecting the fluorescent lights rimming the bed. Teams of doctors and nurses wandering in and out every time we began to speak. They ask the same questions. Lying there, like Blatchford, I came up with a brilliant idea. Have a stack of 3 x 5 cards. Each card has an answer: ‘Fine.’ ‘Not Fine.’ ‘Pain.’ ‘Comfortable.’ ‘Temperature 103.’ ‘Blood pressure 72/120.’ ‘Oxygen level.’ ‘Heart Rate.’ And so forth. You shuffle and hand them to the docs each time they enter your chamber. I don’t know all the answers. But if you’re functioning when they take the tests the first time, why not make it easier for the next team? I know how it is. Yes, Dancey, I’ve traveled there more than anywhere else in the world. Posted by illness, an ambassador of anesthesia, sanitation, and eventual petrifaction.
“We mentioned Blatchford. When I visited him in hospital, he said, ‘I’m glad you came, John.’ He actually said, ‘John Trooman. I’m glad you came, John Trooman.’ Not to show that he knew my name, but to say the full name for me that I’d remember who I am.
“I asked him how he was doing.
“ ‘I’m waiting,’ he said. ‘I’m not surprised. I wish I’d more time. But I know all of us must die. There’s nothing special about it. At a certain time in the right circumstances, there’s nothing more to it.’
“He was direct, soft spoken, but direct so that all I could say was: Are you comfortable? Passing through my mind was the question whether, as you accommodate yourself to your own death, do you think about it every waking moment? If you’re not frightened , are you anxious? Blatchford wasn’t. He’s a difficult model.
“He responded to me, Trooman said, ‘Am I comfortable? A very good question. I’m not very comfortable. I’ve said my last words at my last meeting. I’ve nothing more to say. If you’ve nothing more to say, how can you talk about pain and discomfort? If I say too much, the nurses and doctors’ll medicate me. No longer would I know I’m waiting. I’d not know. I want to know. That’s all I want.’
“Blatchford went on, ‘I’ve put it all together. Remember our work in North Philadelphia? That’s what I wanted to do. We make decisions. We can. You did. You could’ve been like most of the children who came to the Club. They never decide anything. They get trapped on a downhill trajectory. That’s it.’
He paused. He was certain about what he had to say to me. He went on, ‘Somehow, despite the abject life she lived, your mother decided. You went along. In the beginning you didn’t have a choice. She didn’t give you one. Later on, it was your decision. She made all the difference in the world for you. I can remember her bringing you to the Club that very first time, dragging you along behind her powerful, persuasive figure. No one argued with her. Yes, we can work with John. Not to worry. ‘No, he doesn’t have to be one of us.’ I thought she meant a Quaker. She meant white. While all the children were black, the staff in those days was white. She wanted you to become a black man in your own right with black role models. That was a lesson for us who were trying to do good. It was a lesson about what was good for the children in our care.’
“He took a sip of water from the plastic glass on the bedside table and continued: ‘Then as now the children ran in the street, dukking it out with each other in play before they became old enough to mean business. Your mother would have none of that. She came yelling into the Club. She scooped you up. Held you in front of me, your legs kicking. ‘John’s to stay inside ‘til I come to git him,’ she said. ‘Keep him off the street.’ She pointed her finger at me – ‘Where you can see him.’ We tried to help the others, even help them decide the kind of world they would enter. Those kids didn’t have moms to help us or them. They were mostly alone, no parent, no adult. I’m not blaming anyone. They were all occupied with surviving. Once you decided, John, it was your own struggle that made the difference. I’m a white man with many opportunities. I went to Haverford, where every good Quaker should go. You’re a black man from the ghetto. Opportunities? You’ve got to be kidding.’
“ ‘I did all right,’ I told him. ‘I’m not complaining. And you?’
“ ‘I made my choice. I worked as hard as I could with kids. I waited.’
‘ ‘And now?’ I asked.
“ ‘I didn’t select cancer as the road to eternity. It’s a rutted pavement with lots of potholes. Each bump is slowly destroying the machinery. Every time the ignition’s turned, you sense the weariness of the entire apparatus. A fender drops off. An axel cracks. No springs or shocks anymore. The engine’s rusting. Here I am, nearly on the other side. I can’t get there on my own. Too worn out. I’m waiting for the tow truck.’”
Trooman was quiet for a moment. “Dancey, there wasn’t much more for me to say to him then, and not much more to say about him now.”
“Listen, John, did you choose?”
“Did I choose? I made a decision and now I’m waiting. Stay in touch, Dancey. You could come to see me while there’s something to see. It’s a decision for you. You who doesn’t.”
“Doesn’t?”
“Doesn’t make decisions.”
“Did you hear from him again?” Patrick asked Dancey.
“I call him once a week, just like I call you.”
“You going to see him?”
“I should. In a little bit. It used to be he’d be hard to find, sent off to Kenya or Ghana, the Congo, or on a speaking tour of colleges around the country. I like to recall him from North Philly. I can see his slender frame, his shirt soaked in sweat, holding up wall board, painting walls, or just working with the little bastards we were charged with changing. Did we? I think John was a bigger influence than me. I must have asked myself a million times if I failed them because of my color? Did these kids find a role model in John? Or was it his certainty in himself?”
“It was the same with the girls,” Dancey said, “the girls we’d meet in the bars. He’d dance around with one, and then send her into my arms. He would laugh and say it’s his contribution to integration. It’s hardest for me to accept his high energy and intelligence disappearing. You know, like a star shot across our lives to burn out before we catch and gauge the light. He slips away even before we can cup our hands. I was taken with my success with those girls. I never thought about him. A girl might ask, Who’s the black dude with the big ears and nice eyes? He’s never on the make. John never forgot himself, his mother, his neighborhood, that he was black, and always stepping high, stepping up.”
Patrick and Dancey sat across a small table in the bar of Dancey’s club. He was nursing a scotch and Patrick a light brew that frothed to the rim of a very fancy glass stein etched with the club’s initials. They munched on pretzels from a little woven basket and picked over a plate of canapés.
Patrick told him, “Only in a place like these high class clubs would they serve stale pretzels and unappetizing thimbles of food. Not even a cat would eat this stuff.”
“No beef jerky for you, Patrick.” Dancey continued with his description of Trooman, “John said I’m indecisive. I must choose. He joined the choir with my father, Ruth, and the Pastor. I can’t understand this perception of my being indecisive. It’s not how I expected them to observe me.”
“It’s not about the everyday, Dancey,” Patrick told him. “In work and play, you seem to make all the big ones. Only about yourself you elude decision. Mirrors won’t help. By mirrors I’m talking about other people, me, Ruth, John Trooman, Mazur, Gaines, even Calvin Lance.”
He rolled his glass in his hand and then looked at Patrick, He was testy. “You and Gaines have mirrors on the mind. Anything else, Patrick?”
“Don’t be annoyed. But yes, there’s something else. You know your pal Jones, Johnson Garvey Jones’s flown the coop?”
“You sure it’s not more police gossip? No, I guess you’d know. I’m shocked. I have to say I’m sorry. He helped me. He helped Calvin. He was generous with good times.”
“Maybe, but Jones’ secret life of crime came unraveled,” Patrick said. “Ernie and his G Man friends broke into Jones’s office and then his apartment. Nothing. It was like he’s stuffed everything down those fancy bidets of his. No trace of anything. No Jones. No secretaries at the office. No other staff. No papers. Not much furniture. And the apartment was likewise. I’d been there for parties. Ernie said they found no girls. No guys. No coke. Like everything disappeared in the dead of night. One step ahead of the bill collectors. Only this time it was the Law, with a capital L.”
Dancey put his drink down. “Why? I mean, why were the cops after him?”
“We’re about to splash it across the paper. Took my folks a few days to put it together. I got the tip from Ernie. You know the cops. There’s always a few who’ll dish it out to their trusted reporter friends. Meet me at Sage’s. See you at Tony”s. You give and they give. Take. Take. Take. It’s the game.”
“And?”
“Jones’ had the biggest laundry in town. Those airport newsstands? And the twenty photo drop off counters around the city? Yeah, you and me,” Patrick told him, “would purchase a newspaper or a roll of mints rushing to the plane, or bring in a roll of film to the corner processor. We paid with fifty cents or a buck. Day and night very busy people also bought a roll of mints, a magazine or newspaper, and they paid with a roll of thousands of dollars in bills. Not just hundreds. Not less than thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Jones sold the world’s most expensive Lifesavers. Now where you think that kind of cash comes from?”
Dancey looked at Patrick. His eyes went up. “And Collins?” He asked.
“I doubt anyone’ll ever nail the Evil Sam. Just like in the Burns case, the Devil’s invisible. Hell, I think Collins is a figment of our imagination.”
“They were very close, Jones and Collins,” Dancey said. “I put together some sweet deals for Collins. Chicago buildings, property in New York, Los Angeles, outside Santa Fe. Jones called a lot of plays for Sam.” Dancey stopped himself. He said, “Privileged information.”
“You’re talking to a reporter, Dancey. Be careful. I mean I could turn one of my guys loose on this.”
“You wouldn’t find anything and I wouldn’t say anything. Beside, you wouldn’t, would you?”
“Yes I would,” Patrick said. “Nothing and no one’s sacred. You lawyers. You’re all alike. You think you’ve privileges no one else has. Like the President of the United States. If he’s a lawyer, he’s well trained in lies and deception. You’re all above the law. Right?”
“You know better, Patrick. I thought between friends. . . .”
“I’m flabbergasted,” Patrick said, “that you’d pull a stunt like this. We’re friends, Dancey, but no dorkin for you or anyone else.”
“Doesn’t matter. There isn’t much more to say about it. Jones introduced Calvin to Collins. You published the results.”
“You know them both. They’re clients.”
“Calvin and Collins. I’ve never represented Jones, nor has anyone else at the firm. I can’t say more.”
“That’s okay, Dancey. There isn’t anything you’ve said I don’t know and nothing more I need to know. Here’s something you probably know but don’t say, Arthur Burns’ father works for Collins. A finance guy. Counts beans.”
Dancey looked startled. He didn’t say anything.
Patrick thought to himself, New information for the counselor. He said to Dancey, “Let’s talk about women. You seem to know a lot about the subject.”
Dancey flashed his big smile. “I know a lot of women but I know nothing about them.”
I was sitting around the office after midnight chewing the shit with Gurnsey when we heard it on the pox radio. Fire. 4142. Now that’s Gurnsey’s territory. Arnie went storming out a photographer in tow.
“You ought to call your pals,” was his parting shot.
I knew he was thinking about the story. To have Calvin and Dancey there would make it juicier. Probably should call Mazur. After all, someone’ll accuse the university of setting the fire. I called Dancey at the apartment where he shacks up with the Marie Antoinette of the Legal Profession. She answered the phone. She sounded to me between the sheets, the act completed. Dancey probably’s got his hands around her breasts, those dried up teats she had pumped up and filled with Styrofoam to tease him.
The silver tones of Jane Ashmole Conner: “ Patrick. You don’t let a girl get her beauty rest. Dancey? He’s snoring away.”
No secrets here. I heard him cough.
“What is it?”
“Fire at 4142, Dancey. I’m heading over. Maybe you should call your client, Mr. Lance.”
Why would I, the city editor, race to a fire? I’d no interest in fire trucks and flames, a turn on for all sorts of deviates. It was the imbroglio yet to be revealed that I wanted to witness.
You approached the projects. You saw the buildings outlined in the white glare of spotlights from the fire trucks. On a normal night, if there are any normal nights near the projects, you would hear the sound of shots, gang battalions at war; you wouldn’t see the buildings, other than their hulking shapes, the little yellow lights in the stairwells glinting through the night, a few lights on the roofs focusing on the ground below, the lights you’d expect at a concentration camp. The streets to the projects were blocked off by cop cars, their blue lights flashing in the darkness. I pulled into a cluster of press cars and trucks with their antennas sending live broadcasts to the wealthier world, and walked a couple hundred yards past cops and firemen, their engine trucks pulled as close as possible, the spotlights on their cabs hitting the sides of 4142, providing the lights I’d seen from a distance. Firemen were going in and out of the small opening that was the front door to this multi-story hellhole with tanks on their backs, clasping axes and other tools of their trade. I could see Gurnsey to one side talking to the fire chief, sweating profusely in his heavy gear, the perspiration running in rivets down his face, his mustache and beard dripping like the leaves of a bush after a rainstorm.
Even standing as close as I was, I couldn’t hear their voices distinctly over the constant scratchy snatches of voices, phrases, barking orders and numbers on the police and fire radios. I looked up at 4142. Even in the white lights you couldn’t see anything. No flames. You wanted to witness the smoke pouring from the windows. Perhaps there was. But you had to imagine the smoke whether it was there or not. I was sure that Gurnsey’s story would include flames, smoke and other descriptives. He was good at creating a scene from all the incidents of his career, embellished details of what could have been if only it had.
I came up to Guernsey and the chief and put my head between the two of them.
“You know the chief?” Guernsey said.
“No. How bad?”
The chief spoke in a low gutteral. “Lots of smoke. Electrical. Plastic.” He turned toward the building. “Lots of deaths. They crammed into an elevator. It jammed. Shut. They couldn’t get out. Escape. Filled with smoke. Fumes. They just smothered to death in their own puke. Women. Children. Babies.” He spit out tobacco juice and went back to chewing.
Someone slammed his back. He didn’t flinch.
“Hey, chief. Real shit.” Joey Consanto stood there, his meatball hands back in his pockets, his feet spread apart, rocking back and forth. “You know, the Mayor ordered the Housing Commission to close this fuckin’ building down before something like this happened. But oh, no, Mr. Lance says it’s jes fine. Whitey’s displacing blacks. Urban removal. Jes fine for human habitation. You wait, Lance says, lots of middle class folks are gonna move to 4142. Leave it to me, says Mr. Lance. So the City seeks a court order. Know what? The judge say, Babe Chicks, it’s not clear whether the PHC’s exempt from code. All of Lance’s civil rights friends were there. Cheering. Let me study it, the Judge says. There’s case law about deprivation and death? Anyhow, that was months ago.”
The chief pointed to Gurnsey and me.
“I know them. Let’s see if they’ll print this stuff,” Consanto said. He looked at me. “Ernie’s in the building with relatives and overseeing the cops there. I can’t believe we let people live in these conditions. In my parish, we take care of the poor.”
“Where I grew up, Joey, they didn’t let them in my parish,” I told him, “and I bet not in yours either.”
He shrugged at me.
The chief headed back to the trucks. Paramedics were coming out of the doorway with covered stretchers. Dancey headed our way, walking between the fire trucks.
“Hey, Gurnsey,” I said, “what happened to a story on the court order?”
“Give me a break, Flynn. I filed it. You spiked it. Enough, you said. Whose gonna read this stuff anyhow?”
“I was right. Okay, when you get done here, try to find Lance. I told Dancey James to call him. We need a comment from the Chairman.”
Consanto and I intercepted Dancey.
“Pretty bad?” He asked.
“If bad’s unnecessary suffering and death,” Consanto answered. “Where’s your pal, Lance? Scared we’ll lock him up?’
“Cut it out, Joey. You guys’ve a hardon for Calvin.” Dancey looked angrily at the big cop.
“Youse get the court order blocked?’
“Court order?” Dancey asked.
“Yeah, the City wanted 4142 closed down.”
“Don’t know anything about it.”
“Speak to your client. He’s your client, right?”
Dancey didn’t answer. Then he said, “I tried to reach him when Patrick called. No answer. Where’d the fire start?”
“Top floor.” Consanto stared at us. “You know whose in that elevator, James?”
“Stop it, Joey,” I said.” How could he? Let’s play fair.”
Dancey stood next to me. “It’s okay. The Deputy’s never liked me. Was it my father, Joey? He let too many poor folks free?”
“Your father was fair. Straight. He didn’t play around with assholes like Lance, rats like Johnson Garvey Jones and Collins.” Joey turned to the building. “Enough of this. I’m checkin’ in with Ernie. You guys can come along, if you want. Gurnsey’s already been inside.”
“The victims?” Dancey stood in front of Consanto, not blocking his way, a foolish act if that had been his intention, but seeking an answer.
“Mattie Rose and her brood.” He marched toward the building.
The cops and firemen at the door parted to let Consanto in. He turned to motion to the two of us. We followed.
Calvin Lance did not appear. Reverend Gaines did. He came into the building in an open shirt. He shook hands with Dancey and his head at me. One of the cops led him and Dancey up the stairs to the floor just below where Mattie had lived. The firemen had forced open the elevator door. Gaines and Dancey climbed quickly up the stairway, now illuminated by bright emergency lights the firemen had brought in, passing firemen and cops heading in each direction, and leaving me far behind. Exercise was not on my list, and that included hiking up a steep concrete staircase. Out of breath, I joined them in front of the open elevator.
Mattie and her children, her nieces and nephews and the other children she had taken in had been taken away by the time we arrived. Gaines held the hands of two women sobbing uncontrollably beside him. He did not attempt to cite scripture, which I had expected, instead he was speaking of Mattie, describing her life among them. She had cared about all of them, not just herself and her children. “Everyone who lived in 4142 were her family,” he said. “Our family.”
The firemen were wrapping up, hefting to their backs the respirators and other devices for saving lives they had been unable to use.
I asked Consanto, “And the fire?”
“It wasn’t much as far as flames. Big time in lives lost. Some electrical wiring in the wall that was supposed to be fixed just burst in its plastic sheathing. The hatchet guys put it out with extinguishers. But the smoke and fumes drove Mattie out. Probably panicked. No signs posted about not using the elevators; use the staircase in case of fire. No instructions to anyone. You talk to those ladies with Gaines. They’ll tell you there’re no warnings about what to do if there’s a fire. Nothing. Can’t recall seeing a repair man around for what. . .weeks? Months? Don’t tell me no one knows at the PHC. They know. But they’re too busy. Contracts. Fees. And now, with Mr. Lance, developing policies and plans. Policies and plans. Contracts and fees. What about people? Mothers and children? Anyone hear about them, mothers and children?”
Dancey had disappeared. I didn’t see him duck down the stairs. I assumed he had. Consanto and I walked down together. It was huffing all the way for me. We met Ernie Wishbone in the vestibule.
“What about the muezzin here?” Consanto pointed to the security man behind the glass screen, his head adorned with his white skull cap. “Wasn’t there a fire alarm?”
“He says the annunciator hasn’t worked for months, maybe a year or more. He reports it once a week,” Ernie said. He added,” I went through the building top to bottom. Our guess is that Mattie flung open the door to her apartment and drove the children ahead of her to the elevator. Why she didn’t take the stairs’s beyond me. You think your kids are going to burn up and you panic. Sure. You never think about the stairs. You go the way you get up and down every day. On the way to the elevator, she banged against the other apartment doors. Her neighbors came running out. Kids and all. There weren’t that many people left up there. Most of the apartments were trashed and unlivable. They pack into the elevator. Only one car’s working. As we found out, it’s not working. With Mattie comes the fog, the fumes, the smoke. They don’t even get to one floor. The machine jams between floor, like it usually does, only this time it fills with the smoke and fumes. You know the rest. It became a gas chamber. I’ve seen a lot. Guys blown to pieces. Stabbings. Bad accidents. Here you had them on top of each other on the floor, purpled and blue, eyes bulging out, tongues swallowed, soaked in their own bile and excrement. The medical examiner’s gonna have a tough time. The Pastor said he’d go along and take responsibility for them. What’s that mean, take responsibility? I guess close their eyes. Put their troubled, tortured souls to rest.”
Miriam Stern went to see Gertens. She asked David Mazur to accompany her. They waited in the reception area until H appeared, slim, unbending, but courteous in welcoming them, and escorted them back to his corner office overlooking the city and the Lake. He motioned to two chairs. H took his own behind his desk surrounded with photographs of children and grandchildren. On the walls hung photographs of his father, with a little boy holding his hand, dressed in the clothes of the early part of the century, standing on the stoop of a row house. Next: H in his shorts with a basketball clutched in his hands. H with his bride. H with the Secretary of Defense, standing in front of veterans housing. H’s dogs. Miriam and Mazur looked at each photograph. Mazur told her later, “There’s a certain fascination looking at snippets of someone’s history who has lived as long as H and done as much. You ask yourself why he’s selected this photograph and look to find some revelation. Then you realize that its just sentiment, and think how unusual in his case. Did you notice how H watched us from behind his desk, not intruding in our tour of his life, curious about what we might see, what we might find of him, sitting in his chair, quietly taking in his visitors before making the gesture.”
“The gesture,” she asked.
“His acknowledgement that we were there for a purpose,” Mazur responded.
H finally said, “Miriam, you asked for this meeting.”
“I was hoping you’d get Calvin Lance to join us,” She said.
“Me? Get Lance here without a pile of cash? You should’ve had this meeting in the Mayor’s office. I can’t get Mr. Lance to tie his shoes.”
“The Mayor’s going to close the projects. It’s over,” Miriam announced.
“Don ‘t tell me.” H spoke softly, but firmly in that nearly inaudible voice. “Tell Lance and his buddies on the Public Housing Commission.”
“The question, Mr. Gertens, is whether you’d relocate some of these tenants? If Gertens takes them in, it would go a long way to averting protest.”
“You know, Miriam, that Lance and his pals will be in court the moment the Mayor announces. My company has considerable distaste for these kinds of controversies.”
Gertens paused. “Let me put it another way, You close the buildings and settle the relocation issue. We’ll screen potential tenants for our developments. If they get through the screening, we’ll rent to them. It’s not a ploy. We house a large number of impoverished families.”
He sat back in his chair. “I’ve been around a long time. I’ve integrated our developments. Not only race. Also class. Get it straight. You don’t just put people in homes, if you want them to be homes. You help them understand what it means to live next door to each other. How do you live together in a community? It’s appalling how these housing authorities operate. If I could do that in 1945, you can do it now. If I can do it now, so can anyone. Don’t give me this business about how we provide shelter to the poor. The way we do is degrading. Why not brag about shelter for rats? Rats are right at home. They thrive in PHC buildings.”
In the brief pause, Mazur turned to Miriam, “When’s the Mayor going to tell Lance?”
“We tried, but couldn’t find him. Reverend Gaines’s in the Mayor’s office now. The Mayor’s summoned the Public Housing Commission members.”
“There’ll be fireworks. It’s huge political risk for him.”
“I know. That’s what Adlai Hocknott and other civic leaders are telling the Mayor. There’ll be a race war. He’s going to start a race war in the City.”
“Psawh,” said Gertens.
“And Dancey James?” Mazur asked.
“The Mayor called him this morning.”
“If Dancey knows, Calvin’s got to know,” Gertens said.
“That’s where the Mayor started. No one’s gotten hold of Calvin. He’s been missing in action since the fire at 4142.”
“I’m sure that’s not all that’s troubling him,” Gertens said.
“What do you mean by that,” Mazur asked.
“I’m told Collins pulled out.”
“Pulled out?” Mazur asked.
“Pulled out. Decided not to finance Lance’s shopping center. Now, you know, I’m not Mrs. Gossip. Lance’s people came to us for help. Unless Lance finds another source, he’s ruined. Can you imagine, he came to the Evil One, blessed be me?” Gerstens smiled.
Miriam stood up. “Mr. Gertens, Can I tell the Mayor you’ll help out?”
“You tell the Mayor we’ll treat these people like any other prospective tenants. You tell the Mayor I don’t have a problem housing blacks, poor people, or anyone else who meets our standards. I’ll spread them through our units in the City. We can try the suburbs. You know the suburbs are tough. Their hearts and minds are razor wire against blacks and poor people. They still don’t get it. Yes, tell the Mayor exactly that. Tell him to stop blustering and stick to his guns.”
Gertens stood up and walked them to the door of his office. His slender form turned to open the door. He said, “This business of concentrations, isolation and government blessed deprivation has to stop. Maybe your Mayor’ll make a difference,’ Gertens said to Miriam Stern as she put her hand on the door.
He shook hands with Mazur. “We’ll see. My expectations of public officials diminish each year I’m alive. Thank goodness that won’t last for long. I couldn’t stand it. He smiled at Mazur: “I don’t mean being alive.”
It had been several weeks since the Mayor’s news conference. The photograph of the Mayor and the other participants ran below the fold with the story, but doubledecked above was the Reverend Jasper Joseph leading his protesters, his mug scrunched against the window to the Mayor’s conference room, a child’s face pushed and distorted on the glass, before, as the caption said, the cops carried him and about six demonstrators to the street.
“Why’d it run in Metro instead of the front page?” Gurnsey complained bitterly. “It’s an important story. Hundreds of people are going to be dislocated. It is a huge controversy. The Mayor is taking a big risk. What’s wrong with the paper? Chicken shit?”
“No one really cares, Arnie,” Patrick told him. “Pull in your horns. The big story’s coming.”
In the news conference photo, all were smiles except the Mayor. He was grimacing. If the image had been in color, his wattles would have appeared bright red, inflamed, and, if there had been audio, the noise of his belly churning from the acid of anger would have made conversation at the breakfast table nearly impossible. On his right were two well-dressed black executives of the Public Housing Commission; Reverend Gaines and Alice Abigail stood to his left.
“Where was Calvin Lance?” Gurnsey asked at the news conference and was told the PHC Chairman was out of town. “That’s very unusual,” Guernsey shouted from where he stood. His “How come?” was ignored.
The Mayor made his statement: The buildings will be closed. There’ll be an analysis whether they can be rehabbed or should be torn down. Every family, every individual will be housed and housed in better conditions. He didn’t mean just anything, anywhere. He meant safe, sanitary, decent, crime free. He sputtered out each word, banging his fist on the lecturn. “No more children shot. I mean anything’s better than the projects.” He paused and looked to his right. Then he pounded his fist on the lecturn again. “Every person a decent home. Just like you,” pointing to the reporters and cameramen. “Yeah, just like me and you.” He had a few more words, but interrupted himself by slamming his fist down, the words snarling from his mouth: “Every person will have a decent home.” As though he wanted to say, You hear: Decent.
One of the PHC staff got his chance to say that every resident, regardless of where they were placed temporarily, would have a chance to return to these buildings once the rehabilitation was completed. The Mayor looked down, the veins pulsating in his neck under his beet red face. He didn’t say anything more.
Gurnsey asked, “Who’s going to believe that message? Who’d be that stupid?” He calmed down to probe, “Can you afford to rehab those units?” He quoted H Gertens about a minimum of 45 million dollars. That’s $75,000 plus or minus per unit. Who pays?
Too early to tell, he was told.
He called Gertens again after the news conference, “Sure I looked at the buildings. Right after they were opened,” Gertens said. “I knew they were goners then. I’m not referring to buildings. I mean the tenants. They’re built to federal standards: small rooms, little square windows, nothing differentiates them from prison cells. I bet the government uses the same architects.”
Gaines and Mrs. Abigail said nothing at the news conference. When Gurnsey spoke to them afterwards, Gaines would say only that he would look to Mr. Lance and the Mayor to make good on their promises.
“But they were different promises,” Gurnsey shot back at him, “and Lance isn’t even here to make them. They were made by some low-level PHC bureaucrat.”
“Either way,” said the Pastor, “we must make sure these people don’t suffer anymore. They deserve the opportunities the rest of us enjoy.”
Charlie Abigale had picked up Alice and the couple went home, across the street from the buildings they believed would soon no longer taint their lives.
It’s just one meeting after another. First Gertens and Stern, then Reverend Gaines asks David Mazur to come by the church to meet with him and Dancey James. Mazur asked Gaines, “What’s on the agenda? The high rises?”
“No,” Gaines said on the telephone. “Dubois Parc.”
He arrived to find a solemn twosome. Mazur had never seen Dancey so grim. Combative, yes. Nearly always ironic. Now his eyes looked down, his lips tightly pressed together, as though he was about to deliver the death penality, or receive the same. Gaines sat at the head of his conference table in an atypical attitude. Davey had seen him even in the worst of times, providing support and comfort to those who were ill and those gathered to pay their last respects to a father or son, to a daughter or mother who was preceding them through the Pearly Gates. The Pastor, Mazur thought, is sitting shiva, but for whom and why? They exchanged the usual formalities.
“I asked you here to talk with Dancey and me about an unusual and disturbing situation,” Gaines said. “Please sit down. I’m not asking you or Dancey to bow your heads in prayer. I shall. I need guidance. If you wish, join me.”
The Pastor held his head, short cropped and gray, between his hands. Mazur watched his lips move. He looked over at Dancey James. Dancey James had placed his hands against the sides of his forehead. He did not bow his head.
“All right,” Gaines said. “I don’t feel any better but my head’s clearer. Dancey, why don’t you begin?”
“Davey, you know I had Dubois Parc audited.” Dancey paused and then continued, “While the Neighborhood Fund is the entity that takes federal funds, I asked the auditors to examine Dubois Parc separately. When I got the results, I called the Pastor. The Fund’s got a clean bill of health. Dubois Parc does not.”
“I don’t understand,” Mazur said.
“I didn’t either when the auditors called me,” Dancey said, “I asked to meet with them and Harold Hochstein. You know he’s a partner. I wanted a witness and I wanted someone who could ask tough questions not clouded by personal involvement.”
Mazur was stunned by the admission.
“Harold’s a bulldog. He’s also something of an expert on fraud and white collar crime.”
“And everything else,” Mazur added.
“That’s true. He can be hard to take, but not dismissed.”
“The bottom line,” Gaines interrupted, “is that funds we obtained from the government for rehabbing Dubois Parc can’t be accounted for.”
“Did you ask Calvin?” Mazur asked. “His firm’s operating Dubois.”
“Yes. I tracked him down. He’s been in Philadelphia since the fire at 4142.”
“That’s a heck of a long time.”
Dancey stood up. “The fact is that Calvin has a lot of excuses. Yes, he’d have his staff look into it right away. He said get on it. That was a week ago.”
“How much are we talking about?” Mazur asked.
“We’re talking about something in the neighborhood of a half million dollars. It’s not the biggest amount in the world, but enough to sink Dubois and the Fund. If the auditors can’t provide a clean report to the government, there’s going to be a federal investigation. There’s more. You want to say something, Pastor?”
“Dancey brought this situation to my attention immediately. We decided I should see Calvin alone. I wanted Calvin to have his say. I flew to Philadelphia. I met with Calvin. He looked terrible. He had deep bags under his eyes. His face was drawn. His clothes were disheveled. That’s never been Calvin. We went to dinner and we talked. I can’t say I like the image of getting down to pray with troubled people, exorcising their sins, relieving their anxiety or grief through the laying on of hands. You’ve both seen me do it, and surely the Baptismal rite partakes of that close connection with a soul seeking purity in Christ. I want to bring the soul and heart into harmony with our Lord and thus ourselves. I try to establish the Word of the Lord in your heart. Let it enter and recapture your soul. It’s not easy in a restaurant, loud with the music booming from the walls, young people dancing around the tables, knocking into your chair. I tried with Calvin. It wasn’t working in the restaurant and neither of us were hungry. I said, ‘Let’s go somewhere else.’ He said he’d been going to the same place all week, a place he discovered when he first came to Philadelphia.
“We drove to Kelly Drive along the Schuylkill River, pulled off and parked in a small lot. Calvin picked out a bench overlooking the river. We sat silently for a while, watching the lights of the cars reflected on the water as they sped along both sides. There was a light breeze and it was chilly. Calvin said to me, ‘I like to watch the boat crews in the late afternoon as they ply the river, training for some contest. It’s not something we ever did or could conceive of doing. Someday, I think, a black kid’ll enter the University of Pennsylvania, where once there were no blacks. One day that kid’ll be a helmsman.’
“ ‘Is that necessary?’ I asked him.
“ ‘It’s necessary if we’re ever going to make it, if black kids are going to run banks and insurance companies in Philadelphia, become managing partners of old-line law firms that have existed here in one form other another since the Revolutionary War. It’s necessary if we’re going to share in America’s wealth. It’s the real revolution for independence.’
“There was something about the heavens over the river, a finger of water created before our time began on this planet, like the trees and grass, shrubs and rock formations, however tempered by us, however changed and rearranged, were initiated by a power beyond our comprehension. You find some greater presence, as you looked across the river, as you looked up to search the infinite deep night. There was a raw inconsistency between measuring out the wealth that Calvin sought and the wealth we already possessed. Calvin had said he was partial to this location on the river. You couldn’t see the city from here. You could barely make out the Girard Avenue Bridge. He told me the bridge was a platform over the River Ganges from which rich white people occasionally would want their ashes strewn on the waters beneath. He didn’t know why. I said perhaps they desired a final reckoning of belonging to a world which in life had eluded them.
“ ‘Why are you in Philadelphia?’ I asked him to break into my own thoughts and to bring him back to what we must discuss.
“ ‘Elderly housing. My company manages two big 202 projects, some 500 units altogether. I come to Philly pretty often. It’s a cash cow. I often end up here, looking across the water, thinking about where I’m going and how to get there.’
“We heard a siren and saw an emergency vehicle, one of those ambulances that looked like a meat truck, except for the red lights flashing on top, bright yellow lights blinking beside the headlights, rushing toward us. Is it coming for us? I wondered. It rushed by, blazing away along the river, parting the sea of invading cars.
“The flashing lights and the siren seemed to wake Calvin. He stood up. ‘We should be going, Pastor, I appreciate your coming to see me. Everything’ll be all right.’ He spoke like one of my contrite sinners. Coping, having resolved his behavior to himself, he was testing me to see my take.
“ ‘Sit down, Calvin. We haven’t begun.’
“He did.
“ ‘You ever think about your mother?’ I asked him. It wasn’t fair, but I had to help him reveal himself. It’d be the only way he could cure himself. He calmed down.
“ ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘She disappeared from my life when I was growing up. She wasn’t there when I was a kid. When I started school, she seemed to be released. Not so for Muchie. You remember Muchie.’ Calvin said more as a statement than a question. He went on: ‘He took care of me. He made sure I didn’t get bashed by the gang bulls, beaten up, sodomized, my lunch money robbed. Later, he made sure I’d the bucks to make it. Muchie took care of me big time. He didn’t ask for anything in return. Listen, Pastor, I know what you want to discuss. But let me ask you: Must blacks be held to a standard higher than whites? Why should they perform any differently from whites? Take sex. Our parts’re thought to be so much larger. Breasts, Vaginas, Penises. What about when it comes to moral principles? Here we’re thought to be much diminished. Business acumen? Us, are you kidding? We’re not supposed to add or subtract. We operate on C.P.T.’
“Calvin went on in a monologue I found troubling coming from Calvin.
“ ‘In business,’ he said, ‘whites may cross the line and blacks cannot, whites’re trusted by the financial institutions, allowed to take risks that blacks cannot. Whites’re given the chances, the opportunities we aren’t. Who takes risks with us? Why is this?’ Calvin asked. Then he said, ‘I did nothing any white businessman on the make wouldn’t do.’
“I asked him, ‘What’d you do?’
“ ‘What’d I do? I didn’t do anything anyone else wouldn’t do. I want to survive. I did what I had to.’
“He was looking for protection, if not absolution, I think, because he began to talk about Moses again.
“ ‘Muchie, I can see him now,’ Calvin said. ‘He wasn’t any older than me, or for that matter Dancey. It’s that he’d garnered stature on the street, despite his large horselike face. What if each of us had his big nose and lips? How would we’ve done? Did we fear that he could be us? Were we embarrassed by him? By his big hands that dangled in front of him? Did we forget they could ball into fists and put an end to some harasser? We liked that. He was like something that sprung from the bush, a primeval god fiercely poised to protect us. But civilization caught up with him and overwhelmed him. He did what any other poor black guy had to do to make it. He succeeded and became wealthy, big time, respected by everyone. . . .’
“ ‘Not everyone,’ I said, ‘His mother and father were desperate about him. I was desperate about him. Had we abandoned him or had he abandoned us?’
“ ‘I didn’t see that. I saw his success.’
“ ‘Some success, Calvin. He’s dead.’
“ ‘At least it was quick.’ There was a note of desolation in Calvin’s voice.
“ ‘Quick is meaningless. He was horribly murdered. Dead. What is it, Calvin? What’s happening? I know Dancey told you about the audit. He’s asked Miriam Stern’s husband, the lawyer Hochstein, to look into it. Tell me what happened?’
“ ‘I’d rather not. Let’s wait.’
“ ‘Calvin, our Lord Jesus Christ spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness with our sins. He came back to purify us. You must return for your own purification. You can’t hide from it. No one can hide from the Lord. No one can hide for long from his fellow man.’
“ ‘Tell that to Sam Collins. Tell that to Jones. You know Johnson Garvey Jones? Tell it to the banks and the insurance companies. Tell it to all my creditors.’
“ ‘Do any of them matter, Calvin? What about the souls who live in Dubois Parc? Several hundred women and children who are mostly well meaning and without much hope. Who’s to tell them? What about all the people in the neighborhood who depend on the Fund? On you? On Dancey? On me? What’re we to tell them?’
“There was silence other than the noises of the night, the sound of the cars, and, in the silence between us, two men, you could imagine hearing the water, the river. Across the river the lights of the cars made a solid streak. The trees were dark shapes, their limbs hidden beneath bowers of leaves indistinguishable in the night. Down the river you could see the faint lights of the bridge.
“A car pulled up and parked next to us. When it stopped, I turned and saw it was a police squad with two cops inside. One got out,
“ ‘Stand up and keep your hands at your side,’ he hissed at us.
“ ‘Oh, for Jesus’s sake,’ Calvin said, “Two men in suits sitting quietly by the river. They’re black these two men. How unusual. That’s the difference between us and them.”
“The cop stood in front of us. He was tall, gangly, red hair under his police cap that was pushed to the back of his head, his hand on his holster. ‘You guys got i.d.s?’
“ ‘Sure,’ Calvin told him.
“ ‘Okay, Stand next to the squad. Take the position: Put your feet apart and your arms on the roof. We’ll fish them out.’ The cop stood to one side as we leaned our bodies against the car, feet outspread, hands on the roof, balancing ourselves.
“It’d been years since I’d been subjected to this. I knew the routine and I knew how I’d feel afterward. I could feel his hand on my wallet, as though he had crawled into my jacket, against my shirt, his skin, cold, damp, leaving a trail on my body under my clothes.
“ ‘Okay, turn around.’ The cop gave us back our wallets,
“ ‘Now move along.’
“ ‘We want to talk some more here, officer,’ I said, unless we’re breaking the law.
“ ‘I’ll break you if you don’t get out of here.’ He raised his truncheon over his head and in a voice that seemed to be exploding with rage started cursing us.
“A voice shouted from inside the car. ‘That’s enough. Leave em be. They don’t want trouble and I don’t want trouble. Let’s roll.’
“The cop pulled his hat down to his forehand and then put himself back into the squad car.
‘I put my hand on Calvin’s shoulder. We walked back to the bench. I had to catch my breath. You feel as though you’ve been castrated. I try to consider the source. Should I condemn an entire race? You understand, David? I want to rise above other people’s weaknesses. I say to myself, they haven’t accepted our Lord. They don’t understand his Word. But I can’t. I know I have to allow my anger to dissipate before I can speak to Calvin again. Under the impenetrable sky the image of Him I have imagined, even knowing there is no image, has momentarily disappeared with my heart.
“ ‘You haven’t answered my question, Calvin, What can we tell them?’
“ ‘Pastor, my mother never asked anything of me, except to leave her alone if she brought a john to the apartment. I was to stay in the closet that was my bedroom. I never asked about her comings and goings. She provided, and I am grateful. Mostly she wasn’t there. Muchie never asked anything of me, and he provided. He gave me something. He was always there. What’ve I received from anyone else?’
“ ‘What’ve you given them?’ I answered.
“ Calvin said, ‘You want me to come back to tell the world that I used the Dubois Parc funds for my shopping center? I needed the money to make something every black kid could be proud of, made by a black man for them and for their parents.’ Calvin said in a voice that was almost guttural, the charm that beckoned all of us gone, every word angry. ‘What big white bank would help after the great Sam Collins reneged on his financing deal? Reneged. Like the word? Like he reneged. Like she had me, her baby, and she reneged. It’s all about us renegers, isn’t it?’
“ ‘It’s about doing the right thing, Calvin.’ I told him. I told him, ‘You know the feds’ll be all over us, Calvin, if we don’t work this out. The solution has to come from you.’
“ ‘With what? What’ll I use to make Dubois Parc whole? To make me whole? Collins won’t even return my calls.’
“ ‘Forget about Sam Collins. There’s nothing you or anyone can do about Sam Collins. He gave his word. He broke his word. Is all the money gone?’
“ ‘All the money’s gone. Collins didn’t have any in it. He pledged and I borrowed on his pledge. You’d tell investors Sam was in the deal, and they’d make a call. I’d sign the papers and we were on our way. Until the deal went south and the creditors stepped in, taking nearly everything. I’d put all my eggs in that basket.’ He paused. ‘Then, as soon as word got out that Sam wasn’t in, it unraveled until there was nothing, not a broken shell, not even a feather.’
“ ‘I can’t hide from you what you must know already, Calvin. There may be an indictment. You’re better off coming back, trying to work out a deal with Hochstein and let the chips fall where they may.’
“ ‘Easy for you to say.’
“ ‘Not true, Calvin, Very tough for me. For all of us. I’ve never abandoned anyone, Christian, Jew or Muslin, anyone who’s sought redemption. The Fund will not file criminal or civil charges, if you make a clean breast of it and if you propose a work out. I don’t care over how many years. I’ll stand with you. I don’t impose faith on anyone, but I offer you a bridge to faith, if you can bring yourself to seek belief, to cross to the other side.’
“Calvin stood up, ‘You’re a loving man, Pastor.’ He put his arms around me. ‘Let me think about your love.’
‘And that was it. I came back first thing in the morning and I’m waiting to hear from him. I pray for him. I loved this boy. How have I failed him? I wish only that I could pray with him.”
6 -- Finder
The opening of Arthur Burns’ trial was attended by reporters jammed into the courtroom like flies on an outdoor café table nibbling on smears of strawberry jam and orange marmalade. The trial had been slightly delayed awaiting the judge’s order on the presence of video and still cameras. She didn’t take long to ban them and to set guidelines for news gathering that had more to do with restrictions regarding the jury than with reporting on testimony in open court. She was a petite older woman, who sat behind the bench in her black frock on what appeared to be a high chair but could have been a stack of phone books, her hair in a dark gray bun, her face pierced by bright blue eyes set above a button nose and pale pancaked cheeks. She didn’t wear lipstick and her nails, poking out on little hands from the black sleeves, were clipped short and clear. The proceedings had been moved to the largest courtroom, a room more narrow than rectangular, with the jury box along one side and tables in front of the bench for the Assistant States Attorneys on one side and the defense on the other.
The cast included Dancey as Arthur Burns’ lawyer, Davey Mazur from the university where both the murdered and the alleged murderer had been students, and Patrick Flynn, the city editor who had a reporter covering the case.
Patrick told Dancey he was there because of what he termed the socio-dynamics represented by Carrie and her family, especially the mother who claimed Burns’ innocence by reason of the Devil, Burns himself who had confessed and now had recanted, and a society in which white guys don’t usually murder young black girls. To Davey, Patrick said, “In the nation’s recent past many evil deeds were done on rumors of black brutes raping and murdering innocent white women, just as rumors of the blood eating rituals of the Jews led to their persecution and murder in years gone by. The paper will cover the gory facts straight out, including those no one can deny and those we infer. I’m turned on by the interesting phenomena revealed in the undercurrent rushing through our lives.”
Davey said he didn’t know about the phenonmena. “This seemed like a tragic case of someone going off the deep end. He hoped,” he said, “Patrick and his reporters would stick to the facts as revealed in court rather than prurient suppositions pulsing through their brains.”
Dancey had gone through four days of jury selection. His challenges were more of class than of race. As he said later, his one chance was to select people who might have an understanding, if not sympathy, with an individual captured by abnormal behavior over which he has no control, overwhelming the standards of moral behavior that had guided him until that instant. Dancey would show that Arthur Burns had lived such a life even as a young man, that he was compelled to commit a violent incomprehensible act, an act the perpetrator could have comprehended and not perpetrated had he been normal. He would have to demonstrate Burns’ true character and he would have to provide testimony from psychiatrists about Burns, establishing the trigger for his abnormal behavior and why it had been pulled by forces over which he had no control. That was Dancey’s strategy and he had assembled the troops, psychiatrists and psychologists, teachers and friends and even friends of Burns’ victim, Carrie Lorimar.
“I’m worried,” Dancey said, “by the presence of Hettie at every step of the way and the absence of anyone from Arthur’s family. I’m also worried about the race issue. Five jurors are black.”
He didn’t have time to think about it before it came crushing down on him and his client. The Afro-American News, the city’s largest and most respected black newspaper, editorialized on its front page, not unusual for the AAN (known by everyone white or black as AND), screaming if Carrie had been a white woman and Artie Burns a black man he’d be on his way to the gas chamber. Forget about by reason of insanity. What about this little girl, heinously murdered in the full bloom and promise of her youth? What about her family, a family of religious, God fearing people? Remember, it said, America’s proud history of lynchings, shootings, burnings of innocent black males.
“See, see,” said Patrick to Davey, “it was bound to happen.”
The Judge was furious. She spoke shrilly, a high pitched voice not quite hiding a bit of the brogue: “This case hasn’t even begun. The court hasn’t heard a word of testimony, seen a shred of evidence. Already the media’s trying to influence the outcome.” She sequestered the jury for the duration of the trial.
Dancey didn’t dress in his blue blazer and gray trousers for the trial. Instead of the Princeton look, he became a tall imposing figure in a dark gray suit, deep blue shirt and yellow print tie, talking to his client, Arthur Burns, who was escorted on each side by bailiffs. Dancey had on the right costume for this Judge. The Assistant States Attorney by contrast was dressed in a sport coat and chinos. The Judge seemed to look with distain on her landsman’s apparent lack of respect for the protocols. What could she do in this day and at his age? She looked at him and said something nasty about school boys that few could hear. Michael Tully was no donkey. He knew his stuff and he presented his case of direct evidence, from the testimony of the cops to the testimony of the medical examiner, to students and teachers from the university to one of Carrie’s sisters, all of whom spoke about the love and caring nature that had formed her life to the obsessive relationship (he implied meaningless jealousy) between the victim and her killer, to the violence that literally cut the girl into pieces. Over Dancey’s objections, he entered the video tape and transcript of Arthur Burns’ confession.
Tully led the first cop on the scene through his testimony.
“Yeah, I answered the call. We didn’t know what. The dispatcher said a man was shouting on the phone, crying that he killed someone. He gave the address. When we got there, the door was open. I went in the front and my partner went to the back of the apartment house. Close to the university. One of those first floor units. Small, you know, living room used as a study and bedroom. There was a tiny little kitchen. Like the blood bank had burst. It was everywhere. You didn’t have to do much searching. We found her right in the middle of the living room. Horrible sight.”
Dancey was on his feet. “Your honor, just the facts without the adjectives. The jury will see the photographs.”
“Sit down, Counselor,” she said quietly. “They might as well hear from the first person there. Objection overruled.”
Tully continued, “And your partner?”
“He came in the back. The window was smashed in the little kitchen. Someone had thrown a brick, then grabbed out the rest of the pane to get in. The window was next to the door. All he had to do was reach around to open it.”
The homicide detective provided details of his investigation.
Tully: “Why’d you suspect Mr. Burns?”
“He gave his name to the dispatcher. It’s on the tape.”
“When you arrested him, did he say anything?”
“He sobbed. He cried. I read him his rights. The usual. I urged him to get a lawyer. No, no, he said, I killed her. I’m so sorry. I hate myself. She was the only person I truly loved.”
“Your witness, counselor.”
Dancey asked him, “Didn’t Mr. Burns deny he had killed Ms. Lorimar?”
“Later, after the girl’s mother got hold of him.”
“Her mother? Isn’t that a bit unusual?”
“If you’re asking me, sure.”
“How much later before he changed his mind?”
“Weeks. Maybe two weeks.”
“And what did he say?”
“He asked to see me. I was the investigating officer. I’d taken his statement at the time he was arrested. I videoed it. I sat down with him. He said, ‘I’m innocent. I want to withdraw my confession.’ I said we’d let the judge decide.”
“Now, detective, did he say why?”
“He said only that he’d thought about it and been counseled by Carrie’s mother. He hadn’t done nothing wrong.”
Dancey sat down.
Tully went through the medical examiner’s testimony quickly, not showing all the photographs, but introducing the packet with Dancey’s permission. Then he called more cops, the dead girl’s teachers and her friends to testify first about her and what they knew about the relationship with Burns.
When Dancey began his case, he reviewed Arthur Burns’ faultless young life. He put on the stand a well-known psychiatrist who had seen Burns at his mother’s insistence at the outset of his infatuation with Carrie Lorimar.
“Describe the childhood of Mr. Burns?”
“Nothing unusual.”
“Nothing unusual? What about his relationship with his mother?”
“She was overbearing. But what of it? He was lucky to have a caring, loving mother.”
“And his father?”
“He had other fish to fry”
“What does that mean? Tell us.”
“It’s not unusual in these upper middle class families. The father was determined to belong. He was a climber on the way up. He was obsessed by status and success as he measured it. He was promoted from a bookkeeper to financial officer of a global firm. It came down to his fitting in, to belonging.”
“Belonging?”
“Belonging to the right clubs. To the right groups. He wanted to be accepted socially.”
“And?”
“And, Arthur didn’t fit. Nor did his wife, as Mr. Burns became more a part of the social order he desired.”
“Your report is based on?”
“My interviews with the wife before I saw Arthur and my sessions with Arthur. Mr. Burns wasn’t able to fit me into his schedule.”
“His father’s obsession, as you call it, had some impact on Arthur?”
“It may have helped set the stage for what happened. Arthur was a good boy. He returned his mother’s affections. Perhaps too much. They compensated together for the father’s rejection. They spent a lot of time together. I don’t mean anything improper, only that it was an unusually close relationship through adolescence. He was a good boy, as I said, devoted even as a youngster to humanitarian causes. For example, he was an active Scout. He took care of a neighbor’s children. He volunteered in the community, tutoring after school, cleaning up litter on weekends, and he played sports with his friends. In school, he was a participant. He did right. He was well brought up.”
“And he achieved?”
“He achieved in high school and he achieved in university. At least at the beginning. His mother doted on his successes. When they became public, when he made the Deans list, when his exploits on the playing field were reported in the local newspaper, his father began to show him attention. After all, his pals, the father’s business associates and club mates, also read newspapers. It was another ticket.”
“Aren’t you being a little hard on senior Mr. Burns?” Dancey said.
“Hey, this is a guy who changes his name, religion and relationships just to belong. He had a big league job with big league bucks and bigger league prospects. How about a few minutes for your wife, and, more importantly, for your son?”
“And what happened?”
“What happened? Arthur became infatuated with this girl.”
“This girl being Carrie Lorimar?”
“Yes.”
“Was there something odd about the relationship?” Dancey asked.
“The girl was African-American. The parents agonized about it. It wasn’t anything they wanted. The mother was ordered to get Arthur to break the relationship. I was retained. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Mrs. Burns asked me. ‘We’ve done everything for him. We want him to have normal relationships. Something must be troubling him. This doesn’t just happen. It’s not normal. It’s not right.’ I saw Arthur for several months. My involvement wasn’t going anywhere. I told Mrs Burns. ‘Arthur doesn’t see what he’s done wrong. I can’t say I do either. From all accounts, Carrie seems like a very nice girl. You should be so lucky. You’re wasting your money on me. This isn’t anything I can affect.’ She was unhappy with me. Arthur could’ve cared less. She called me later. Then there was a blow up. They must’ve given him an ultimatum. Arthur stormed out of his parent’s home. He stormed out of his mother’s life. That must have been very painful for him, as it was for her. I mean in terms of his psychology and how he functioned. She’d be okay. She was a mature woman who had her woman friends. It was truly deeply fracturing for him. It was the end of the only strong support he’d had from childhood through adolescence. He made that decision. It was major. You make a decision like that if you’ve an alternative. Carrie was the alternative. If the alternative suddenly isn’t there, you’re lost, afloat, perhaps, as in his case, worse, flailing violently at yourself and even others, even someone else.”
Mike Tully, the cat-eyed, chino-clad states attorney, was on his feet. “Your honor, I appreciate counsel’s biography of Mr. Burns. For all the doctor’s hypothesis, I don’t see the relevance. As I told the jury, we’re here to present the case that Mr. Burns murdered most horribly Ms. Lorimar. It wasn’t self-defense. The defendant wasn’t threatened. Counsel hasn’t presented Ms. Lorimar’s childhood, hand reared by her mother and father, home schooled, a young lady who helped everyone she encountered. Black or white, it didn’t matter. The issue here is that no one deserves to die at the hand of another. It’s a capital offense. No one deserves to die as Ms. Lorimar did. Who ever robbed this young woman of her life must pay for it. We’ve presented conclusive evidence that person is Mr. Burns. If Mr. James and his client have evidence to the contrary, they should present it.”
Suddenly from a seat in the courtroom a high-pitched woman’s voice began chanting, “It’s the Devil. The Devil done it. Arthur saved my girl from the Devil. Yes he did. The Devil’s done this deed. . . .”
She would have gone on, but the Judge, her face flushed, stood up banging her gavel, “Stop it. This instance. Take that woman out of here. Clear the courtroom. Clear the courtroom. Get her out of here.”
Bailiffs rushed to Hettie Lorimar. She struggled with them, until six uniformed men lifted her up into the air, holding her legs and her arms, the heavy puffballs of flesh hanging from her exposed thighs. They carried her like a battering ram, screaming now at the top of her lungs, “The Lord’ll save us, like he saved my baby. Oh, Lord save us. Lord. . . .” The door banged after her.
The Judge, still pounding her gavel, waved the jury from the room. Bailiffs took Arthur Burns out. Tully and James followed the Judge to chambers.
“What’d you think of that, Davey?” Patrick asked Mazur.
“I’m filled with pity for everyone caught in this episode,” he said. “But I wonder about Dancey. What’s going to happen now?”
Patrick said, “I don’t know. This feisty lady judge reminds me of my sisters. No imagination at all. She wasn’t very sympathetic to the Evil One theory. Dancey’s going to have to produce something more than a head shrinker.”
Dancey and Tully walked into the hallway outside the courtroom. They were joking.
“My sister, Ruth called,” Dancey was telling the prosecutor as Davey and Patrick walked over to them. “Ruth said she understood even mass murderers have to have representation. She just thought it was strange I took this case. I told her the Pastor volunteered me. Our father’d understand. He took on a lot of bad guys no one else would touch.”
Tully said, “I hate to tell you, Dancey, we’ve got a Judge who doesn’t like your client and has bonded with the dead.”
“Yes, but she agreed to a psychiatric evaluation. Probably just to exorcise Hettie and the Evil One from her courtroom. So, Mikey, how long?” Dancey asked.
“Six weeks. That enough time?”
“Two months. Give the shrinks enough time, if the Judge agrees. I was surprised she okayed a psychiatric evaluation by the State. She may hate Burns but she likes me.”
“You know your client. I can’t believe that little shit’s going to go along.”
“So?”
“What kind of psychiatric evaluation can you have for a guy who won’t participate? In the meantime, the press’ gonna have a field day. Think of all the liberal scribblers getting their anxst off. I mean they’ve been bested as pc types by AND. AND hasn’t even started yet. We’re letting this white guy go to camp for eight weeks, after he cut to pieces an absolutely innocent black girl?”
“You keep using white and black. You’re right. It’s all about race. Arthur gave up being in white society for Carrie Lorimar who then rejected him. White he couldn’t be anymore. Black he wasn’t. I can’t use it in court. But there it is.”
Dancey looked at Davey and Patrick listening in. “You know Mike Tully? Davey Mazur and Pat Flynn.”
Tully smiled, “Sure, I see the Editor every now and then for a drink, and Davey and I’ve mixed it up with a couple of cases. Dancey, you’ve your own unique take on color. I doubt little Jack the Ripper’s gonna escape the gas chamber. He’s confessed. So he’s recanted. Lots of people headed for the gas chamber do likewise. It’s like getting religion. You only get absolution at the end if you’re alive to ask for it. And his future mother-in-law? The Devil did it? By the way, for all your boy’s growing up with Mom and without Dad, I didn’t see either of them in court.”
“Regardless of what happened,” Dancey said. “I can’t think of a poor black family, even fatherless, where it would be the same. Even the crack head mom would show up as her son’s arraigned for murder. She’d be sitting there sniveling and coughing, the drug cooking her cortex. That perp may have no remorse, couldn’t care less if his mother’s there, but she’s there.”
He looked at Patrick and Davey and then waved his hand at Tully, “There you have it. Poor Arthur. He chose and was spurned once he did. The Burns are white, and believe in their purity, despite a Jewish blemish under the skin. Arthur’s not white anymore, at least as far as they’re concerned. Neutral’s not a color.”
Patrick went up to Omar as the crowd around the candidate began to thin. “You seem to show up everywhere these days, Omar. Must be the good press you’re getting. But I’m surprisd you haven’t said anything about the Burns case. After all, its blacks and white shoulder to shoulder in the lynch mob.”
Omar smiled, “The Devil made me do it convinces you?”
“What do you think Dancey should do?”
“Use the case as a teaching point. That’s what I’m preparing to do. An educational opportunity.”
Patrick starred at him in disbelief. “About what? How to make beef stroganoff out of your girl friend?”
Dancey intervened. “Let it go Omar. Patrick’s just putting you on.”
“I think Omar’s putting us on.” Patrick made an exit.
In the world of remembrance, even of the very recent past, Arthur Burns slipped from the public consciousness after a few days. Surely, not from the Lorimars, nor Dancey or Tully, or the cops involved, Carrie’s friends and perhaps some of Arthur’s acquaintances. But the list isn’t long enough to support continuing coverage by a newspaper or t.v. station, while Arthur is running his course in the State Institution for the Mentally Ill. The public depends for its memory on having the sentient images thrust in front of them, the new form of children being read to by their mothers. Under the court order, a psychiatrist is assigned to Arthur and sees him perhaps once or twice a week. Once a day he is visited by a psychiatric nurse who keeps notes. If Arthur were to act out, they would put him in a jacket and remove him to a tiny room. But Arthur has always been a good boy, and such behavior is unlikely. He’s shot his wad, as the expression goes. Hettie Lorimar visits him regularly, according to the reports furnished to his attorney, Dancey James. She often brings Joseph. Like a family, they pray together. Dancey thinks, Who is to wonder if Arthur is confused.
Dancey was on the move. The paper was after the scuttlebutt circulating in whispers about Calvin Lance. Despite its initial coverage, it hadn’t paid any attention to Sam Collins breaking his promise to finance Lance’s large shopping center. Patrick told Gurnsey, “Collins doesn’t use his own money for anything. Everyone else’s money earns money for Sam Collins. A story that is based on promises rather than big bucks won’t go anywhere.”
Before the news broke about Calvin Lance’s indictment, Reverend Gaines called a special meeting of the Neighborhood Fund for New Life. Each board member had been called repeatedly to ensure they would attend.
Gaines sat at the head of the table, Dancey and Harold Hochstein on each side. Miriam made sure she sat at the far end with David Mazur. Ernie and Alice Abigail were next to the two lawyers with Reverend Jasper Joseph and other neighborhood residents and institutional representatives chatting among themselves, puzzled as to why they had been summoned.
Gaines stood up, unbending, his hands clasped in front of him. He offered a prayer:
“Oh Lord, bring us together in fellowship and devotion to your Will. Enable us to fulfill our mission for You, creating goodness and trust among ourselves, and building a new life in our communities for our families and for our children’s children. Forgive us our trespasses and forgive those who trespass against us, and help us in reaching forgiveness and understanding of our neighbors. In Jesus’s Name, Amen.”
“Dancey,”he said, sitting down, “you proceed.”
Dancey looked at those sitting on both sides of the table and began, “I feel somewhat like Job returning alone to tell all. Of course the Pastor knows what I am about to say. Mr. Hochstein is my partner. He probably knows more than anyone else. But let me start.
“Up until now, we’ve kept this very confidential while we sought the facts. If you tell one person a piece of confidential information, you have to assume that six people soon will know, and then sixteen, and so forth. Job’s mission thus has diminished in the modern world.
“I find what Reverend Gaines has asked me to report very difficult to articulate,” Dancey said. He remained in his seat. His head thrown back a bit, his eyes closed. “I’m talking about a boyhood friend. We grew up together in this neighborhood, when there was nowhere else for us to grow up. Even for me, who may look different than most of you, but even for me. Whatever you saw, whatever you see, I couldn’t hide my true self, nor would I want to. We shared that experience of growing up here. He and I fought many battles together. He’s my closest associate. I admired him and loved him. I’m talking about another black man whom I trusted and you trusted.”
He went on, “When the Fund was audited, we kept the audit of Dubois Parc separate from the Fund’s. Let me give you a little background. We had obtained a large amount of federal funds to renovate Dubois. We got the federal dollars when the Fund assumed ownership from Jasper’s church and when we pledged to match those funds with private dollars the Fund raised. Thus, the Fund invested several hundreds of thousands of dollars in Dubois Parc. This released several hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money. We took on Dubois because the people living there, mothers and children, and about 100 elderly folks are all from this neighborhood. All need our help. It was an obligation. We did it because if we hadn’t the government would’ve stepped in, foreclosed on Jasper’s church, and in all likelihood auctioned off the paper that Jasper’s church held. We knew the winner probably wouldn’t’ve cared, and wouldn’t’ve had any connection to this neighborhood or to the concerns and needs of the Dubois Parc residents. They would’ve been absentee owners in the real sense of being absent physically and in spirit. What kind of commitment would they have had to these souls living in Dubois? None. It was a very big commitment for us. I argued then we needed an experienced African-American firm to manage the project for us. You know I rarely use that term. Black is best since black is what we are. But Jesse and his pals have designated us as African-Americans, so that’s what I’ll use. Calvin Lance’s firm owned and managed lots of difficult projects in the city. There was a lot of debate among us whether to hire Calvin, but in the end we agreed. There was consensus. Some of you, I know, still had misgivings. I thought Calvin Lance was the best person to do the job. We knew none of us could handle it ourselves. It seemed to make more sense than recruiting our own management team. Calvin’s from the neighborhood and his reputation was spotless. I trusted him. We ran together as little boys in these streets, we attended the Pastor’s church and Sunday school. He came to my home to share our meals with my mother and father, my sister and me.”
Dancey stopped. He lifted his head and looked from one end of the table to the other. “Having said all of what you know already, it’s not easy to go on. But here it is. The auditors found some half million dollars that couldn’t be accounted for in Dubois Parc. Calvin’s lieutenants did not respond to their inquiries. Both the Pastor and I spoke with Calvin about it. We’ve not had a satisfactory answer. I should say, we haven’t had any answer. Because of my relationship with Calvin,” and here Dancey stopped again, then he continued, his voice gravelly, soft, “because of my relationship with Calvin, our friendship, and because I’d recommended turning Dubois Parc over to his firm, Reverend Gaines and I agreed that I’d ask an independent person to conduct an investigation and pursue the discussions with Calvin. I asked Harold Hochstein, a partner at my firm, Westin, Krocker & Cabal. He’s tough, detailed, absolutely fair. Wherever something leads him, that’s where Mr. Hochstein goes, regardless. We disagree a lot, Harold and I. But Reverend Gaines and I knew he’d leave no stone unturned. We asked Mr. Hochstein to report today on his findings. Harold.”
“Thanks, Dancey.” He stood up at the table, not a tall man, but given more stature by swaying a little on his feet, running one hand through the bush of brown hair that rushed out of his head. “First a few disclaimers. Miriam Stern, sitting at the table here, is my wife. We’ve never spoken about Dubois Parc. We spend a lot of time at home discussing the Public Housing Commission and Mr. Lance. I’ve been involved in litigation against Mr. Lance, representing disputants on a pro bono basis. They were tenants of public housing seeking access under Mr. Lance’s new regulations, and, as ironic as it may seem, I’ve also sought the removal of high rise public housing buildings like 4142. Second, I’ve not spoken to anyone but Dancey and Reverend Gaines about our findings. I say “our” because I employed an accounting firm and a firm of special investigators, private detectives we used to call them, who specialize in white collar fraud to assist in this analysis. I call it an analysis rather than an investigation, because you must decide what steps you want to take in regard to Dubois Parc and Mr. Lance. I can tell you that other entities, including the State and Federal authorities, are looking into some of Mr. Lance’s other activities.
“What’ve we found?” Hochstein bent over a sheaf of papers, then went back to davening, his hand again rummaging through his bush: “As Dancey told you, somehow a half-million bucks is missing and can’t be accounted for. As yet Mr. Lance and his colleagues cannot or will not explain. We believe the time period’s a matter of months, and quite recent. In fact. Mr. Lance’s firm should be able to document the use of these funds for Dubois Parc. They’re not monies that can or should be used for any other purpose. To do so would constitute fraud, embezzlement, simply put, stealing. I suggested to Mr. Lance that unless he produced the accounts, documented how the funds were used for Dubois Parc, or produced the funds, we’d go to the authorities. Dancey will pass around the table copies of a letter I sent him. Mr. Lance then would have an opportunity to explain actions in both criminal and civil proceedings. Perhaps I overstepped my authority.”
Reverend Gaines, who had been listening intently, turned in his chair, held out his arm as though seeking the sign of peace, asked. “Who’d like to ask Mr. Hochstein any questions?”
Ernie pushed up his hand, “I know Pastor how you feel about Calvin Lance. But if Mr. Hochstein found any irregularities, we’ve got to file charges. If he stole, he should be treated like a thief. It’s not our money. It’s poor people’s money.”
“Officer Wishbone’s right,” Alice Abigail said. She always called Ernie “Officer,” as if he were still walking a beat. “There’s more to this than we’re hearing. Mr. Mazur and I went to see Mr. Gertens. We wanted his help. You know how he is. Polite. Will do anything for his university. He wants to see his old neighborhood rebuilt before he dies. He wasn’t responsive this time. He made it clear to Mr. Mazur and me that he wouldn’t lift a finger as long as we have anything to do with Mr. Lance. There’s a bad smell to Calvin. If he’s done what Mr. Hochstein says, we should tell the police, or the government.”
“Alice’s report of our meeting with H is an understatement,” Davey said, “I don’t want to go over all of it. But it does relate to Lance. H met us in the reception area, showed us into a small conference room, rather than his office, a room without any decoration, held out a chair for Mrs. Abegail and then stood at one side of the table.
“H stood there. ‘You want my help? You’ve got to make some decisions,’ he said. I asked what those decisions were. He said, ‘You’ve got to decide whether you’re sleeping with Mr. Lance and his pals. You sleep with them, you’re going to catch their disease. I’m not.’
“Alice and I acted confused.
“H explained, ‘Lance’s people came to see me. They’re in big trouble, or he is. Collins backed out of his deal to finance Lance’s shopping center. They want me to take Sam Collins’ position. I wasn’t interested. They were all nicely dressed, well spoken men. MBAs. Not a black man among them. They came armed with a portfolio of facts, not only on the shopping center, but on a dozen of Lance’s other housing projects around the city. The numbers are staggering. In the millions. They bluffed, but I don’t think Lance has anything. Not a dime. One project finances another and so forth. You can hear them falling on top of each other. I said I wasn’t interested, but I’d be glad to talk to Mr. Lance. A deal this size involves the archbishops, not deacons. Tell him to bring real money and a business plan. I know they caught my drift: Show me his equity position in these deals. I’m sure he has none. So they left. I had my people check this out. It was as I’d imagined. Lance has nothing. When he implodes, everything goes, including Dubois Parc and anything else you’ve got him doing. I told you this in the beginning. I won’t touch anything. I don’t want to be infected. The only cure for Lance is real money.’”
Mazur told the Fund board, “I know Calvin’s position: Why should he be held to a standard different from white developers and businessmen? That’s what he says. It’s another way to play the race card. It won’t help black people, white people, brown people, or poor people.”
Ernie broke in, “Right. He should be held to the same standard. Absolutely. If black people believe that white people get a better deal when they break the law, they should hang around with me. I arrest them all, whites, blacks, Chinese, you name it, them, us. I don’t care. I make a motion we send this information to the proper authorities.”
Dancey said, “The Pastor and I’ve a different proposal.”
Reverend Gaines had not moved in his chair. “I know how all of you feel. I feel worse. He was a member of my church. I loved him. I went to see Calvin in Philadephia and pleaded with him to meet with us. He hasn’t responded. I pray for guidance. Where did I fail him? He needs only belief to be able to face us. He fears belief.”
“Shame. Shame.” One of the board members called out. “If we wuz him, we’d be in jail, Reverend. We’d be done.”
Gaines held up his hand. “I don’t see how anything -- us, those for whom we feel such a deep obligation, our neighborhood, society -- I don’t see how anyone will be served by proceeding with charges against Calvin. I propose we ask Mr. Hochstein to work out a plan for restitution to get us back our funds. Putting Calvin in jail won’t accomplish anything.”
“How will he make restitution?” Miriam Stern asked. “How?”
“He’s some assets,” Hochstein said, ignoring that the question came from his wife. “We’d ask him to pledge whatever cash flow is still available from his projects. We’d have to move quickly and have his signed agreement before others did likewise, including the feds. As far as we’ve been able to find out, his obligations to us pale beside his other manipulations. You could let things fall where they fall, file charges, and so forth, but I know the Reverend wants us to try for restitution.”
“Is this what you want, Pastor?” Ernie asked.
“Yes, it’s what’s best for the neighborhood and for us,” Gaines said. “Revenge won’t help anyone.”
“And you, Dancey?” Ernie looked at him.
“I’ll do whatever Reverend Gaines thinks best,” Dancey said. “If Calvin’s fate’s as dire as Harold believes and as H told Davey and Alice, we should get what we can while we can. I can’t tell you how much I regret this, how empty I feel, my own sense of shame for Calvin and for me. For me, because I believed in him. Unquestioning belief’s arrogance.”
“Other than belief in the Lord,” Gaines added. “It’s not that belief in God is enough. On earth, among men and women, we’re still responsible for our behavior. That’s Old Testament dictum. Our Lord Jesus Christ as He died on the Cross told us we didn’t know what we were doing. When will we learn?”
“I don’t suspect, Dancey, you’ll ever see the fees Calvin owes your firm.” Patrick told him over lunch at Dancey’s club.
“Not a chance, Patrick. He’s paid off about a hundred grand to the Fund, but after that I think it’s hopeless. His next suit of clothes’ll be green prison garb. I hope it’s one of those federal country clubs, like Sandhill. I went to see him a week or so ago. He’s on bail. I put up half and his girl friend, Marina raised the other half. I hate to think of how.”
“And?”
“He was as charming and solicitous as ever. He didn’t talk about his troubles. He didn’t ask me about the Fund or any of the other projects on which we worked together. He certainly didn’t raise the issue of the fees he owes my firm. I represented Calvin in a dozen different deals. Instead, if you want to know, we talked about our childhood, about Muchie Moore. Muchie meant a lot to Calvin and to me. It was Muchie who took care of both of us on the street. But, unlike me, that’s the only person Calvin recalls taking care of him and protecting him. Muchie was a very big presence in his youth.”
“But there was the church and Reverend Gaines.Your father. Come on, Dancey, don’t make excuses for Calvin Lance,” Patrick said.
“I’m not. You got to understand, Patrick, it’s a lot different for a poor black boy whose mom’s spreading her legs for anyone who’ll pay, who sometimes brings the mark home so that you can hear them screwing in the room next to your little closet, shouting at each other, the sounds of his hitting her, her screams when he tries some perverted sex. A slightly older Calvin standing in the doorway and watching some buck shove his prick in her ass, hitting her as hard as he can across her shoulders as she cries out in pain. Calvin not knowing what it means. A boy in the doorway. Why’s this big black man hurting my mother? He’s helpless. He wants to help her. He’s frightened. He’s scared standing there, watching. The picture, like a hundred others, remains in your brain until you put it all together years later. You’re still helpless, still scared, but now revulsion sets in.”
“He’s a poor black boy,” Dancey continued, “who comes home from school to empty rooms. There’s no one else there for two or three days at a time. Then she reappears, dressed like a million bucks, diamonds flashing on her fingers, a soft, luxurious mink coat draped across her shoulders that you play in when she throws it across her bed. I was in their apartment many times when she wasn’t there, playing the games kids play before they get too old to play games. She had a double bed and a dresser. In that tiny closet Calvin had a mattress. That’s it. Piles of clothes on the floor. Cans of food and stuff in the kitchen. But nothing that says home in those three little rooms, not counting Calvin’s closet.
“Sure, my father brought Calvin home many times. He played with Ruth and me, and he went to church with us. In between, and it was more in between than not, he only had Muchie. Muchie was our age. As we entered adolescence, it was Muchie who seemed to Calvin to have the connection and who could do no wrong. He was big and ugly. No one on the street tangled with Muchie. No one messed with him. He was there. He was more a presence for Calvin than for me. I’d my family. I was protected, supported by my mother until she died, and by my father and Ruth. We were better off. There’s no other way to put it. My mother and father built a moat of love around us. Calvin’s mother cared about one thing – that Calvin achieve at school. He did so well at school that he was propelled onward. He was recruited by colleges and State gave him a pretty good scholarship. Until college, until he took off, he’d only Muchie to get through the day. Muchie was his protector, giver of funds, role model for success. You couldn’t tell this story to the folks at Dubois Parc who depended on Calvin. It won’t make any difference at his trial, nor to the Fund board, nor to your reporters. The residents of Dubois Parc would rightly say, Where’s mine? The rest of us would ask, So what? You think he had it any worse than us? But Calvin’s right. If anyone in this city, any black man, had a chance to rise to the top, it was Calvin. He’s down and so are we. You understand, Patrick?”
Patrick shook his head.
“What’s that mean, Patrick?”
“I was hoping it’d indicate nothing very much. You can take my reaction anyway you wish. I’m not sympathetic to Lance’s tale of woe.”
The waiter brought Dancey another glass of Chardonnay and a beer for Patrick. The main course arrived – a simple breast of chicken with crisp vegetable chips for Patrick and a dish for Dancey.
“What’s that, Dancey?” Patrick asked him.
“Sweatbreads with braised cabbage. Want to try?”
He shook his head. “No organ food for me. Have you heard from John Trooman? You told me he was ill. You didn’t say, but I take it he’s HIV.’
Dancey looked up from his food. He took up the glass of wine, held it, sipped and then put it down again.
“I did go to see John again. Right before he died.”
“I didn’t know. I’m very sorry. I should’ve seen the obit.”
“The Times ran a couple of paragraphs, the second of which said, from complications caused by AIDs. Those words are a formula for how. There’re so many victims and so many reasons. In any event, I did go to see him. Adam Feldstein was there in constant attendance. He’d been taking care of John for more than a year, nursing him through all the bad times, taking him on trips to places John wanted to see before he died. Feldstein’s a noble character. Sometimes the worst events reveal the best in us.”
“They were partners, lovers, a couple?”
“That’s right, Patrick. Adam was there until the very end. When I went to see John, Adam stepped out of the room. I said it wasn’t necessary. I could see the emotional stress Adam was going through and the enormous control he exercised to maintain his sobriety in John’s presence. He insisted I should see John alone and flopped on a sofa in the reception area near the nurse’s station.
“I sat down in a chair beside the bed. John was hooked up, staying alive as long as machines could substitute for the normal functions of his body. Two little tubes in his nostrils provided oxygen, tubes running from his arms to plastic envelopes sent medicines and nutrients by special delivery. The tubes were held in place by giant cranes nesting above the head of the bed. Higher up on the wall, the monitors recorded his vital functions, which I knew were running down just like any watch runs down when you cannot wind it anymore.
“He rolled his large almond shaped eyes at me. ‘I should look pretty good, Dancey,’ he said, ‘Adam fixed me up. He washed my hair and my face, shaved me, and manicured my nails. He gave me the works when you announced your visit. I got the full beauty treatment.’
“John had always been slender. You’ve met him, Patrick, on a number of occasions in Washington and when he’s visited Chicago. When I saw him in hospital that last time his face was nearly without flesh, and the hand he poked out from the hospital sheets the appendage of a skeleton. I took his hand and stroked it. It was cold and clammy. I couldn’t speak at first.
“ ‘Be careful, Dancey. You don’t want to make Adam jealous.’ John tried to smile, but it must have caused him some pain. ‘He’s been wonderful, my Adam. Without him, where would I be? You’ve got to listen to all his theories on politics, race, schools, religion, families and home life and education. Everything. Well, nearly everything other than my condition and comfort. He doesn’t interfere with the doctors and their recommendations. You know what else?’
“I shook my head.
“ ‘He’s never asked.’
“ ‘Never asked?’ I said.
“ ‘Never asked with whom. How would I know? It could’ve been anyone, and it wouldn’t have changed how I feel about Adam.’
“I asked him if there was anything he would like? Was there anything I could do for him? I was thinking of the immediate, of the hospital room. I had foolishly brought him a book, a signed first edition of Invisible Man. The inscription from Ellison to S. Bellow: Ours Is to Explain. What was I thinking, bringing a dying man a book?
“ ‘Since Adam told me you were coming, Dancey, I’ve thought a lot about what I’ll ask of you. You remember our days together at the Club in North Philadelphia? We worked under Alexander Blatchford’s tutelage. You never thought much of Blatchford. I did. I grew up in that neighborhood. It was the bottom of the barrel, except for what Blatchford tried to create for us children. My mother made it different for me. She wasn’t a big Blatchford fan either. In her case, she didn’t trust white people. As kind and as good as they may be, like Blatchford, she’d say, ‘They ain’t gonna take care of you when the going’s rough.’ She should know. She cared for their children and scrubbed their floors for more than fifty years.’
“He paused and pointed to a little plastic bowl of shaved ice on the bedside table. I brought it over and took one in a spoon. He opened his mouth and I gently put it between his lips. They were parched, as though he had marched through the desert. He pointed to the chair. I sat and waited.
“He started again, the words coming with difficulty. It was a big effort and with nearly every sentence he would pause and expel a breath, as though the mechanical works, worn and in ill repair, were revolving much more slowly.
“ ‘Blatchford had only one message for me through all those years at the Club. He had the same mantra when I came back between college and law school and you and I worked at the Club. The same when I visited him, as you’re visiting me. Blatchford would say, Remember, always remember, it was your mother’s love that shaped you. Your mother lived for you.’
“John stopped. He tried to lift his hand to his face. I thought he wanted to wipe away a tear. Before I could reach him with a tissue, he dropped his hand to the top of the bed sheet. I took the bowl again and placed another sliver in his mouth and waited.
“ ‘About you, Dancey, it wasn’t ‘til that first reception at the State Department. How many years ago?”
“I tried to think. ‘Probably 15,’ I said.
“ ‘Perhaps. It wasn’t ‘til then that you revealed yourself, a black man, or perhaps you were outed by that journalist with you.’
“He meant you, Patrick,” Dancey said, taking a sip from his glass. “Remember?”
“He continued, ‘Many of those who were as light as you, Dancey, not even so brightly white, spend their lives passing. As difficult as you made it for me, for all of us, you didn’t try to pass. You let us swing in the balance. We had to decide whether you passed or not.’
“ ‘Not?’
“ ‘Right. I knew at once you were what we in my neighborhood used to call High-Class Neegroes. Not uppity. That was reserved for the arrogant and self-assured. No, high-class Neegro. Your sister, Ruth, she’s another. Ruth I met when I spoke at Duke. She was back for some alum occasion. What a privilege that she got to hear me and I got to meet her and to see you in her.’ Trooman tried to laugh. Then he went on, ‘I wasn’t one of them Neegroes. I wore the suit, but abhorred joining. I never forgot my beginnings. You know there’s all this talk about calling us African-Americans. That’s so we can all be high-class Neegroes without calling ourselves that.’ ”
“I laughed and told John, ‘Black is black, as far as I’m concerned.’
“John lay back on his pillow. There was a light knock. A team of doctors, residents, interns, nurses came into the room. I got up.
“The leader, a doctor with short clipped white hair, thin rimmed glasses, waved me back to my chair. ‘We’re just doing a little checking,’ he said.
“They all wore plastic gloves.
“One of the nurses took me a pair. I shook my head.
“ ‘That’s okay, Medi, he don’t need them,’ the head said. He looked over John’s chart and ordered up some blood work. He asked John how he felt. John said he felt transported to become resident in a penal colony for lepers. The doctor ignored him and listened to his heart, had the nurse recheck his other vital signs, as he looked in his mouth and nostrils. Then he said, ‘Don’t tire yourself.’
“ ‘Saving me for a long journey? Will I be repatriated to the colonies, or shipped out to sea in a box?’
“ ‘You know the facts,’ the doctor said. He walked out of the room, followed by his team. I saw Adam Feldstein fall in step behind them.
“ ‘You sure you don’t want the gloves?’ John asked.
“ ‘I’m sure.’
“ ‘Adam won’t wear them either. But, listen, Dancey, I’m tired. Let me get to the bottom line, since I’m almost there. I found one of those retirement communities in Philadelphia for my mother. They’re holding places for the old and infirm. She’s been there about five years. When I was able and in D.C., I visited her every other week. She doesn’t like it there. She says there’re only four other colored people. Can you believe it? She still uses that phrase. What’ll she do now that we’re renamed African Americans? She doesn’t want to stay there. Let’s face it. I’m not sure my benefits would keep her here, if I moved her. I’ve another solution.’
“He pointed to the bowl of ice. It was nearly all melted. I got up and went into the hallway to the nurses’ station. Someone filled it up. I hurried back. John was asleep. Or was it a coma? Or was it death? I didn’t know what to do. I went back to the hallway. Adam was sitting in a chair. He was drawn. I asked him whether I should wake John.
“He came back into the room with me. ‘Why not sit a while? He’ll perk up. I think you should wait. The doctors. . .the doctors.. . .’ He paused. ‘The doctors think it’s only a matter of hours, perhaps days before he’ll begin to be overcome by the waves and disappear beneath the sea.’
“I couldn’t express sorrow at that moment. I was anesthetized by being there. I asked him if he wanted to join me in John’s room.
“ ‘Did he tell you what he wanted?’
“ ‘Not yet,’ I said.
“ ‘Wait a little to see if he still wants to talk with you.’ Adam went back to the corridor and I to the hospital room where I eased myself into my chair. The late afternoon sun was skimming through the window, looking for objects to mirror its light, to determine its creativity. The rays flashed back from the mirror across from John’s face lying on his pillow, and the reflected light, even in his desiccated condition, picked up the tones of ebony and deep mahogany that gave him a certain rich beauty.
“He opened his eyes and pointed again to the bowl of ice. I succored him.
“In short breaths, he began talking to me again, ‘I’ve talked to my mother. Adam’s called her for me several times since I’ve been here. He’s going to bring her down from Philadelphia to see me. She knows this is the endgame. I think she accepts. She always has. I’ve told her I want her to live with a good colored friend of mine. ‘He can take care of you, mom. He’s hardly impecunious. He’s a real friend. We worked together at the Club and we’ve been close ever since.’ Did I lie?’
“I was stunned. Horrified. What would I do with an elderly black woman in my home. In my life? A dark cloud seemed to close around me. I didn’t know what to say.
“ ‘Shocked?’ John continued slowly. It was difficult for him to speak. I had to replenish the slivers of ice between his lips. ‘Dancey, you can do this,’ he said. ‘She’s a wonderful old woman. She doesn’t read books. She hates television, other than news programs. You won’t have to listen to the soaps. She reads newspapers and comments on the same. You’ll have to hear about the news. She’ll make known her views on world affairs, just like Adam. Unlike Adam, she has no political theories. She speaks straight from the street. She’s big on colored peoples’ affairs, which Adam’s not.’
“I tried to say something sensible. ‘What about Adam?’
“ ‘He’s not colored.’ He tried to laugh and began coughing. He sipped on the ice. He said, ‘She’s already living with a bunch of white folks. They could care less about her, she feels. She cares less about them.’
“ ‘Wouldn’t it better for her to stay at the home?’
“ ‘I just told you, I want her to be happy.’
“ ‘With me?’
“ ‘You’ll make her happy. Who’ve you now, Dancey? The Judge’s dead. Your stepmother’s living with Ruth. Ruth’s a workaholic in love with her hospital. You divorced Kristin. She and the kids got your house. You got lot’s of room in your new classy apartment for a little old colored lady. I’m sure she won’t interfere with your escapades with the ladies. I’m sure she’d prefer if you brought black girls home. I recall you did all right with black girls in Philly. She likes being called Mrs. Trooman, at least ever since I appeared. She’s very intelligent, very determined, and outspoken in her way, and has little white whiskers around her mouth and chin.’
“John Trooman closed his eyes and turned his head to avoid the sun. There wasn’t much else for me to say. What I really thought wouldn’t have been appropriate, or possible in those circumstances in the hospital room. He had wound down for the evening. I didn’t have the heart to rewind the works, if I could. It was the last I would see of him. Adam made all the arrangements.”
“Are you kidding me?” Patrick said. He had sat silently through Dancey’s recitation. “I can’t believe it, man about town, high-class attorney, at the top of his field, providing housing for an elderly black woman in your elegant apartment. Adopting a mother when you’re 45, a step away from a half-century.”
“Not kidding at all. Mrs. Trooman has been living in my guest suite for the past month. I went to the funeral and then accompanied her back to Philadelphia. I settled up with the retirement home. John set aside the funds, and he’s set aside a monthly allowance for her. Her room there was small, spotless, a highback reading chair next to which was a carefully stacked pile of newspapers and news magazines. In the other room, a single bed and bureau. All of which, including the newspapers, I could make better. The bureau had framed photographs of John, including one with me, and framed copies of newspaper stories about him. She sat on the edge of the bed. She didn’t want to stay. She was as fearful as me of her coming with me. I told her as much. Did I have to prove I was black? No. John’d fixed it. She even had my biography, the awful Who’s Who which at least declares my race.
“There’s such strength to her character. At the funeral, she didn’t sob. She didn’t speak. She clutched her hands together around one of those dog-eared, cardboard covered bibles. She walked with Adam, not leaning on him, just beside him. On the edge of her bed, we agreed we’d both give it a try. I could sense she was still grieving the loss of her son. She’s had a life of losses, and she seems to put grief at least at her side, rather than in front of her. That’s not right. She internalizes it. I’m sure she wouldn’t know what I’m saying and think I’ve tucked a hankerchief in my breast pocket. That’s a joke the two of us have. As for me, I got up from her bed, filled with hesitancy, looked out her window to the gray asphalt parking lot for the elderly and their guests. It wasn’t a lovely view of the countryside. It left you with a feeling of grimness, a view of where cars and trucks parked to deliver and to pick up. I didn’t see a black person, colored person, Neegroe, an African-American or otherwise, as I stood there, watching the families arrive, the vans disgorging old ladies in wheelchairs, the few old men on walkers. She came back to Chicago with me.
“For her arrival, I bought her a pair of pink mules with a fuzzy bun on the toes, a big white terry cloth robe that practically suffocates her, and some house dresses. They were pretty elegant ones at that. She joins me for breakfast. We talk about the day’s events, as reported in your newspaper. She’d make a good editor. She catches all your errors.
“I told her about Carrie Lorimar’s murder and Arthur Burns. She’s quite obsessed with crime, which is why she spends so much time reading your paper. Patrick, maybe you could publish less sordid everyday stuff. Crime’s usually a one-day event. You should print serious stories. She heard me out about the Lorimar case. She said to me, ‘He dead already and he know it, that boy. Devil? That girl’s mom needs her second floor vacuumed. No sir, he a dead boy.’
“I took her to Gussie’s with the kids, Jimmy and Essie. They’d wanted ice cream and Kristin was nagging me to take them. We drove over to pick them up from Kristin. I’d told Mrs. Trooman about Kristin and the children. I’d told her that Jimmy was named after my father, Bigger, but everyone called him Jimmy, and Essie after my mother, Esmeralda, Esmer for short and shorter yet, Essie. Mrs. Trooman insisted on staying in the car. When I brought them out of the house, she got out. I introduced them.
“ ‘You’re Bigger,’ she said, ‘and you’re Esmer. They’re nice names like the names we used to have.’
“They looked at her in astonishment. They’ve had plenty of experience with aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and many of their school friends who’re as black as they’re white and blond. You’ve met some of the relatives, Patrick. They’ve made it as teachers and lawyers, even a doctor or two. Mrs. Trooman was different for my children, and, while I’d prepared her, I hadn’t the children. I don’t know what Kristin might’ve told them.
“Jimmy hung his head for a second. Then he said to her, ‘I’m Jimmy and she’s Essie.’
“Mrs. Trooman didn’t bat an eyelash. She pushed Essie into the back with her and Jimmy sat up front with me.
“I’d expected to hear her talk to my children. After all, she’d spent a lifetime taking care of children. She didn’t offer any words, and neither did Jimmy or Essie. There was distance. It had nothing to do with race, as I said, perhaps unfamiliarity, but for kids that’s unlikely. It may’ve been her presence, or what I’m beginning to understand and accept as her sense of dignity in a world in which her dignity’s all she had to herself.
“The landscape near Gussie’s was different from when I was a kid, banned by the color of my friends, Calvin and Jasper, chased from the neighborhood in fear of our lives for the same reason.
“You weren’t here, Patrick, but you remember the ugliness, the contempt. The riots. The marches. The abuse. I was in college. I followed it closely. I wanted to come back to march with Dr. King.”
“Plenty of whites marched with King,” Patrick said. “You would’ve been right at home.”
“Thanks.”
“Remember,” Patrick said, “I was in London and I followed it from overseas. I wanted to come home to join the revolutionary war. I saw the pictures: Pelted with rocks. Dragged to the paddy wagons with King and his Southern Christian cohorts, college kids and right-meaning people. No war’s won without wounds, hurt, and death. But was it a revolution? So it appeared then, but I wouldn’t say so today.”
“It opened doors,” Dancey said. “Did it provide the integration H seeks? Not a chance. It was a stage, just as today’s a stage with all us highly educated blacks riding on the backs of working-class parents, beating down the doors of the professions. Is there real change? If you look around Gussie’s neighborhood you’ll see blacks, but in many a block you’d be hard put to find whites. Blood was shed to keep the schools white. They quickly tanned, and then overnight turned dark. Nothing’s improved the quality. Poor black ghettos remain poor black ghettos. Where’s the revolution?”
“It’s better. But the war’s still being fought,” Patrick said, “The struggle is in the hearts and minds of whites and black. “
“That’s what the Pastor says. It’s better than it was. Ruth likes to say, as long as blacks are black there’s no chance you’ll change the hearts and minds of most whites, regardless of what they proclaim. Different’s different and different breeds scorn and hate. Everyone, including you, Patrick, thinks I ought to chose what I am. I know what I am. I want you to chose. You being everyone. Do whites see me as one of them or one of us?”
“Dancey, you’ve got to grow out of this. You’ve no business asking us to decide for you.”
“I’m asking you to decide for yourself. That’s what this war was about. Take Mrs. Trooman. When you meet her, what will you think about her, not say, but think? I’ll be interested.” Dancey paused. “I should tell you more about our little trip with the children for ice cream.”
Dancey went on, “Gussie’s expanded along one side and the buildings on the other were demolished for a large paved parking lot. I pulled in. There were a lot of cars. We all got out. Jimmy and Essie gave me their hands. Mrs. Trooman walked in front of us. She was an old soldier, a warrior searching for a new home after the Trojan wars, her city sacked, her life utterly changed, propelled by that prowess which had enabled her to survive. That’s how she appeared to me, Patrick, trudging ahead of us.
“Mrs. Trooman pushed open the door. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon and the place was filled with families and guys and girls who looked as though they were still in high school. There were blacks and whites, and even a Chinese couple with two small children.
“Jimmy rushed up to the counter to look at a seemingly infinite list of ice cream flavors, sundaes and other treats. There was a grill now as well as a section behind the counter for soups and salads. You should try it, Patrick. Better than those blues bars.”
“I’m not big on frozen chemicals.”
“The tables stretched back into the expanded space, each covered with a checkered table cloth. High school girls in white blouses and red aprons, moved ungainly among the tables. You could still order at the counter and take out your cone or paper cup from which a mountain of ice cream or a chocolate sundae teetered. The girl waiters were sweet-faced, all smiles, some with the pimples of adolescence, chewing on the pencils with which they wrote the orders, self-consciously brushing back their hair with the other hand, the beginning of the dance that someday, a year or so hence, would be cunning and seductive. They bore no resemblance to the pervert who threw us out long ago, except for the dits that dotted their faces.
“I took the children by the hand to a table. I read to them the different options starting with the usual chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, butter pecan, and working up to mint chocolate chip, rocky road, fudge ripple, peanut butter and jelly, coffee, watermelon ice, raspberry and lemon. The entire plant kingdom. A list of sundaes and all their toppings, banana split and marshmallow chocolate cream, and, last on the list, chocolate and vanilla oreo.
“Jimmy ordered up a chocolate sundae with hot fudge, nuts and marshmallow whip and, not to be outdone, Essie did the same.
“I asked for a chocolate cone.
“Mrs. Trooman asked for the oreo without vanilla.
“ ‘Doesn’t come that way,’ the waitress said. ‘Oreo’s chocolate on the outside, vanilla inside, cookies top and bottom.’
“ ‘Thought you made it.’
“ ‘We do.’
“ ‘Leave out vanilla. I don’t eats vanilla. Just chocolate.’
“The waitress gave Mrs. Trooman a look meant to kill and then took the order to the counterman, pointing back to our table.
“The children were embarrassed.
“Jimmy asked her, ‘You don’t like vanilla?’
“ ‘I don’ts. I likes chocolate.’
“He was a smart boy, my Jimmy, ‘That mean you don’t like us?’
“ ‘That don’ts mean anything. I likes you and Esmer. But I don’ts likes vanilla. Now don’t youse worry, Bigger. You and Esmer gonna see a bit of me, and I’m gonna sees a bit of you. Youse don’t have to likes what I likes and I don’t haves to likes what you likes. I still likes you. That okay?’
“ ‘Yeah, I guess so.’
“Afterwards in the car, Jimmy talked the whole way home to Mrs. Trooman, turning his head to the back seat. He told her about school. He told her about his friends and the games they played together. When he got out at the house, he said to me, ‘I like your new mom, Dad. She’s okay.’
“ ‘She’s just a friend,’ I said. ‘She’s not my mother. She’s a friend.’
“ ‘That’s okay, Dad. I still like her.’
“ ‘And you, Essie?’ I asked her.
“She turned her Kristin face up to me, a perfect minature replica without the jay’s voice: ‘She your new girl friend?’ She asked.
“I told her, ‘Mrs. Trooman’s the mother of a good friend. She’s going to live with me.’
“ ‘Like your other girl friends?’
“I knew Kristin filled them with the worst shit about me. Jimmy kissed Mrs. Trooman goodbye on her cheek. Essie looked at her shyly and rushed into the house.
“I guess, Patrick, we’ll just have to see how it works out with the kids. I think it will.”
“What’s Reverend Gaines think of your new arrangement?” Patrick asked.
“She loves going to church on Sunday. She’s met the Pastor and he’s talked to her. I asked him whether I was doing right by her.
“ ‘That’s not the question,’ he said to me. ‘Are you doing right by you? Is this good for you?’
“I thought about it. I said to him, ‘It is good for me, Pastor. She knows who I am. That’s why she’s here.’
“He looked me up and down. ‘You had two loving mothers, Dancey. Three’s overdoing it.’
“ ‘We’re clear, Mrs. Trooman and me, she’s not my mother. She’s not even the mothering type. She’s a tough old bird,’ I told him.
“ ‘If you think it’s good for you, what else do you need to know? If it’s good for you, it’s good for her.’ The Pastor said, ‘She’s very intelligent and shrewd. She’s got street smarts. But she’s not an educated woman. She’s not the same status as Esmeralda and Isabel. I like her. How can you not? But it’s a matter of class. I worry whether the parts go together.’
“ ‘I’m not looking for a mother. If not class, we’re the same race, Pastor,’ I said to him.
“He frowned at me, then he laughed. ‘I’m glad she’s decided for you. If you think it’s good for you, it should be good for her. Class shouldn’t matter.’ He paused. ‘But it does matter, just like race, which shouldn’t.’
“So, who is she?” Patrick asked Dancey.
“She’s the mother of a dead friend. She’s my legacy.”
“And the women? Your dinners? Those elegant repasts you give in your apartment about once a week? There’s the heady conversation, and the ladies all dolled up, hardly covering the sexy undergarments you can see easily. They sit around your table, loll on your sofa, and undress in your bedroom for a night of sport. Your other guests are right out of the social register and the Fortune 500. On the side you’ve been shacking up with Jane Ashmole Connor, the Buffy vampire of the legal profession, even screwing her in public. If not her, there’s some other bimbo. Jane’s about ready for Medicare. Another tuck here and there and she’ll come undone. She’s spent nuclear fuel.”
“We’re not together anymore. We went to a party one of my clients gave at the Four Seasons. It was very formal, black tie, champagne to calvados. The works. Afterwards, we went back to my place. Mrs. Trooman was up watching Ted Koppel when we came in. I introduced them, and then she went to bed.”
“So?”
“As you said, we went to bed. Neither of us is guilty of age discrimination. It was pretty good, a demonstration that older’s no deterrent to good dirty fun. She must have a trainer. The calisthenics’re beyond my capacity. In the morning, we were having coffee together. Mrs. Trooman came in to join us, shuffling across to the table in her mules, her portly figure wrapped in that terry robe. She began talking about the news, as she sipped her coffee, dipping a piece of buttered rye toast in the whitish mixture. She was quite amusing. I find she always has something interesting to say, something I’ve missed, especially when she talks about the hankerchief blacks we all know – the head of the urban league, the publisher of AND, Congressman Herskin. She mimics them strutting and placing a carefully folded napkin in the breast pocked of her robe. I counter with tales of some of the white establishment.
“Mrs. Trooman says, ‘I don’t know them folks. I’se only knows about colored folks.’
“For the first time I saw in her face the ebony and mahogany richness that colored her son, and the ears, the large ears that I imagined he flapped off to the Pearly Gates. I marveled in her and was glad she was there to grace my life.
“After Mrs. Trooman left the room, Jane said to me, ‘You know, Dancey, I can find you a really good cleaning woman, a nice clean cut Polish girl who knows her place. You should get rid of this Bearded Lady. Give her a month’s wages, if you want to go overboard.’
Dancey finished off his wine. “That was the last time I saw Jane Ashmole Connor. Mrs.Trooman’s the test of every person I bring home, men or women. Do they fit?”
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