Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

Finished, Horus stood frozen, eyes skyward, arms behind his back.

"What? You mean now?"

"Yeah, that's right, now. Look — I want you to look at it, it's all there. It's all true, see? Except for that servant part, I'm more a junior partner if you want to get real about it."

Piper spent most of the walk marveling at her judgment's complete inability to overpower her curiosity, even for long enough to say the word no. Horus spent most of their walk talking. A bunch of teenagers passed, at least ten of them, goose-down jackets puffing them up like blowfish, and one yelled out to him, "Who's your tailor? Marcus Garvey?" but Horus was not to be interrupted. Horus was from Chicago. Horus was a legend in that town. As a baby, Horus took Old English with his Enfamil. Finally noticing the lack of response, Horus turned his sentences into the form of questions.

"So what's that Bobby shit? I thought you were kicking it with my man the Snowball."

"Robert's a kindred artistic spirit. I'm enamored with his literary skill, that's all." In a wave of practicality, Piper thought to ask if Horus was also going to walk her home but stopped when she couldn't decide if he was really that less scary than anything else she might run into.

"I like the way you talk, you talk real educational. So you into brothers that write. I write too, you know that? I got me a book, it's going to be printed and everything." Horus snapped his fingers, pointed at her. They were long digits, each joint its own distinct ball. Horus's knuckles looked like he used them to walk on.

"That's great. What's it about, who's publishing it?" There were moments in conversations that Piper found for whatever reason to be particularly strained or laborious, when she thought, How am I ever going to get through this? How am I ever going to string enough words to get through to the other side}

"Well, OK, you see it's not really one of those get published kind of books. I'm thinking of getting it photocopied and spiral-bound at Kinko's, though, that's what I'm thinking of. It's called People I'm Gonna Kill When I Get My Gun. It's not actually a story in the traditional sense. More of a list, I guess you could call it. Yeah, it's a list. People who pissed me off, people who tried to fuck me over, play me for a sucker — you get the idea. I started it when I had to take this. . class-type thing. It felt so good, I just kept working on it after I got out again. See, I do a name, then a strategy, you know, break it down line by line. Don't get the wrong idea, it's more a fantasy thing. I mean, I been had my gun since I started it, I just kept the tide 'cause it sound so good. Man, I get in a zone, you'd be scared how I pump out them pages!"

"I bet I would," Piper said through clenched and smiling teeth. Don't run, she kept telling herself. Nuts are like rabid dogs, trying to run away from them only makes things worse.

It was only a conversation like this that could inspire joy at the sight of one Olthidius Cole Sr., as it did when Piper saw him waddling out of the Horizon storefront, pulled forward by his dented aluminum cane. Piper used him as an excuse to break away, yelling, "Hi, boss! Did you get a chance to read my draft?" to drown out everything else that was being said. Cole looked so Started to see her that Piper thought for a moment he might try and whack her with the stick, but instead he rolled his eyes, flapped his cheeks, wagged his head at her impudence, and kept moving.

"So now you know all three of us, who you think is going to make it all the way? Who you think is going to win?" Horus asked as he unlocked the front door.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." Piper wasn't

sorry, she wanted to be inside, beyond him.

"Oh, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, you do," Horus insisted.

"First let me confess, I'm already a fan. I've been following your byline since your revealing article on the accidental death rate." Cyrus Marks wore a smoking jacket, silk, Asian markings. He seemed to think this jacket made him charming, or at least added to his charm, this Piper gathered from the dramatic ritual he made of repeatedly tying and untying its belt, a gesture she found both absent and vain.

"The one I got scooped on. Well, I'm glad somebody saw the original piece. The Times ran a very flattering likeness of you, I remember."

"Yes, well, I have been reading your work with great interest ever since. Olthidius Cole was just in that very seat telling me how thorough your research into the fire at 121st is, I look forward to seeing the final draft. I love your movie reviews as well. Even when they forget to print your initials I know if it's you because you're the only one at the Herald who ever dislikes anything made by another black person."

"I'm just honest, but I also try to be fair. There's usually some good even in the worst, when there is I mention that too." It was a small black world. Piper wondered which mediocrity's creator Marks was related to, and why it had taken this long for her call to task. Her last printed review was a dissection of Bo Shareef's new hit, Don't Go There, where she traced the book's three central cliches back to their origins in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Birth of a Nation, and Nigger Heaven, going on to list the book's uncanny plot similarities with episode twenty-three of Malcolm Eddie.

"Of course you do. I find your reviews very fair. And honest. Blunt, but all true honesty arrives bluntly. I appreciate that. There seems to be a general consensus to avoid self-criticism in our community, doesn't there? Not simply in the arts, but in general. I agree with you. It's a new age, I'm all for calling a spade a spade, if you will. Without addressing our deficiencies, how can we ever hope to improve?"

"I guess. So why am I here?"

Marks took the question like a child had slapped him with it, laughed at it, and pushed it away. "You studied at Columbia. They have an excellent yournalism program. So you had Akers, Pavez, Wharton."

"Pavez was my adviser."

"I imagine he'd be an excellent one. He's got a good head on his shoulders, albeit a fat one. He had many good things to say about you as well."

This comment, this was the official alarm. This was the thing that Piper knew made ordinary people pull back yet compelled her to plunge forward. "OK, now this is getting a little bizarre. Why are you calling and asking people about me and why did you invite me here?" Piper made like she was trying to gather her coat from the back of her chair, but Marks must have known she was bluffing. He didn't even attempt to talk until Piper had stopped moving and was looking at him in the face again.

"I have a job for you. That's the short of it. Let me assure you, though, that I was not trying to pry. It's just, well, you know the black middle class is only but so big, you run into people, topics arise. This whole community, it functions on the network of friends, the currency favors. I'm really not trying to be obtuse, it's just that I feel this is a large proposition, so it takes a bit of buildup."

"All right, you got me. Talk." Piper felt herself getting very excited and felt equally foolish about that.

"Right. Well, I just have three questions. Indulge me in those and I'll tell you whatever you like. You went to one of the top journalism schools in the country, you're obviously very intelligent, talented, it's not like you're over the hill in any way. Why are you working at a shameful rag like the New Holland Herald?"

"That's easy, because it wouldn't be the 'shameful rag' you seem to think it is if more qualified black folks didn't run away to the bigger papers and leave it behind," Piper defended.