Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

Inside, the television was still on, but Jifar was gone, probably to bed. After turning off the set, Snowden collapsed on the couch, almost immediately beginning the process of gathering the willpower to rise once more, accomplish that long list of things like take off his shoes and brush his teeth that suddenly seemed so monumental. The sound of his own labored panting lulling him to sleep, Snowden tried the motivational tool of holding his breath and refusing to let it go until he forced his body to at least get up and microwave something. It was the sound of heavy breathing continuing from behind the couch that shot him up and over. When Snowden's blind fist slammed into a cast-iron frying pan flying nearly as fast in its same direction, he was as awake as any narcotic stimulant could possibly manage.

When Snowden experienced a sharp and sudden pain, it was his habit to hold the afflicted area and jump up and down. He wasn't sure if he did this because he had grown up watching Chuck Jones cartoons, or if Jones himself had just called attention to a innate quirk in human pain management. Either way, this is what Snowden did, and this is what he was doing now. Jifar, for his part, had dropped his culinary assault weapon and was jumping up and down with Snowden, in time and sympathy, offering "You should have knocked!" over Snowden's primal "Ow."

"What were you thinking, boy?" It was his own father's voice Snowden used. This he knew from the timbre — it came on first deep and argumentative then got even lower, turned to a rage-filled scream on the last word. This Snowden knew also because Jifar turned his head to the side, tensed his face to counter the expected blow. He didn't run away, he didn't raise his arms to guard himself because he had learned, like Snowden had at his age, that that just brought more blows, harder ones.

"I'm sorry. You don't be sorry, I am. Just, what were you thinking, little man? Were you going to try and kill me?"

"I didn't know it was you. Honest."

"Who the hell else is going to put a key in the door and come in here? Huh?" Snowden could hear the anger start to build again in his voice, tried to extinguish it by talking slowly enough to give himself the chance to control the emotion in each word. 'You give my keys to anybody to make copies?"

"No. I don't do like that. I'm a man."

"You're a man. Great. Then who the hell else was I supposed to be, then?"

"I don't know. Maybe you the Chupacabra or something," Jifar admitted.

"The Chupacabra. That monster." Snowden looked at the boy and could see who that monster was. The one with the gray mustache stained brown at the bottom from smoking Dominican cigars, the one with the endless supply of novelty T-shirts, like the one that said JUST SAY NO TO CRACK with the illustration of a woman's anatomically impossible cartoon ass swallowing a helpless man. That monster. Snowden could see the monster's claw marks on Jifar, in a line along his biceps at the same place on both arms; they were the ones you get from being shaken really hard. Jifar's skin was the light brown of fall leaves, the dotted bruises a dull green. They looked like tattoos of olives.

"The Chupacabra," Snowden confirmed. Jifar stared up at him for a few moments to decide if he was being believed or taunted, decided he didn't care and started nodding vigorously in the affirmative.

"I thought your boy said he only went after people in Washington Heights. He's coming down below 145th Street now?"

"Mannie Ortiz says he started all the way up Inwood, like 220th Street or something."

"So he's working his way down."

"Yup. Mannie Ortiz says Harlem's just lunch. He's going to have dinner on the Upper West Side."

"Why not the Upper East Side? They're richer."

"He's following Broadway. Mannie says he sleeps along the tunnel of the one and nine trains during daylight."

"Little man, can I tell you something? Mannie's your friend, but he's full of chocolate. You shouldn't believe everything Mannie Ortiz has to say about the world. There's no such thing as a Chupacabra. It's a story, a myth. It's like. ." Snowden was going to say Santa Claus but caught himself, unsure where Jifar stood with that phenomenon. "Like Spider-Man. It's just made up." The look Jifar gave him, the in credulousness, the pity, made Snowden fear it was a reflection of his own face moments before.

"No, lots of people talking about it. Lots of people thinks it's the Chupacabra, not just Mannie Ortiz. Adult people. His big brother Vernon, he's in the eighth grade, and a boy in his class saw it running around 135th Street station. They shot at it."

"But they didn't hit it, did they?"

Jifar shrugged a no.

" 'Cause it ain't real. Don't worry about monsters, or anything else. You want to be safe in life? Just stay happy, try not to stay poor when you grow up, and watch your step, and you'll have nothing to worry about. It's that easy," Snowden told himself as well.

"I WROTE PIPER a poem," he said.

It had been three months since they'd moved her in. The weeks after were peppered with Bobby's territorial talk about his apologetic calls to her answering machine, laments that he was never home to receive her call in case she was shy about leaving a message on his, and then mention of the woman ceased. Snowden knew from this that Piper Goines had never called Bobby back; the thin man was not the type for quiet victory. So then two months went by and Bobby started up again and Snowden realized he hadn't conquered his obsession, just his need to talk about it.

"It's totally her poem, too. It's her; I used her actual voice for it."

"Where you get her voice?"

"Off the phone."

"So you've been calling her."

"Oh yes, I told you she gave me her number." By this it should be noted that Bobby meant that he'd taken it off the back of the Horizon receipt form she'd signed. Snowden had given it to Bobby on his request, as well as a pen and his own back as a writing surface. Snowden was impressed with the intensity of Bobby's fixation, that not only could he ignore that fact, he could also ignore that Snowden knew the truth as well.

"Damn, boy. Congratulations. You finally got to talk to that woman."

"Yeah, right? Well, not in person, I left a message. Then I got recordings of her voice off her answering machine, she changes the message all the time. I just mixed the words together on my computer."

Bobby's contention was that showing up unannounced at her office at the New Holland Herald the next day was not stalking, it was just being practical. He had several reasons for this, the most creative was that if she received an unsolicited package with a tape inside it, as a reporter she might think it was a lead on a kidnapping, and he didn't want to disappoint her. By coincidence — one of those amazing coincidences the universe doles out to keep its inhabitants on their toes — Snowden had been instructed by Lester just the day before to place two ads at this very same paper. This was less of coincidence when you considered that Bobby had overheard Lester's instructions and apparently planned to tag along for moral support.

The ads, handwritten in Lester's small linear script along with font instructions, sat in Snowden's breast pocket with the message:

Folk of Harlem!

Are you considering moving away from the area? Retiring? Going back down south or to the Caribbean? Whether you're a home owner or a renter, contact Horizon Property Management to assist your transition. Cash bonuses for all referrals.

and

Folk of New York!

Coming back to the dream of old Harlem? "Let Horizon Property Management help you make it a reality. Buyers or renters, call now.