Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

"No you don't. Listen, you might not have seen me hanging around lately, but I call in, I make all my appointments, pick and drop off my keys at night. I've been busy."

"You been busy," Snowden said, recognizing Bobby's self- involvement as much as his face.

"Yes. I've been doing a lot of thinking and a whole lot of writing. I started a new book, actually."

"Piper Goines asked me about you, she was trying to find you too. What you got going on with her? Just tell me, does it have anything to do with Horizon?"

"Sorry, my relationship with the lady is private." Bobby held out his palm like a cop stopping traffic.

"Oh, it's a relationship now, look at that. With a lady, no less," Snowden chuckled as he took his seat. It was a bitter sound; it made his nose itch when he made it. Snowden had other sarcastic, ill-humored comments to make, but when he looked out below and saw the coffin laid lengthwise before the altar he forgot them. "This ain't regular services."

"Snowden, it's two-thirty Friday afternoon. I doubt there's a religious institution in Manhattan having regular services at this moment."

"Man, I cannot believe this. I hate funerals, I don't even plan on having one of my own. How the hell you expect to convert me to the One True Faith if you don't bring me to a proper sermon?" Snowden kicked up his feet on the chair in front of his own, sighed loudly enough for one attendee down below to stare up at the two of them. In response, Bobby reached his arm around his coworker sympathetically until the man below nodded his empathy and returned to his own mourning. Snowden was as shocked by the gesture as much as he was by how soothing it felt. See, that's all I really need, he told himself. A good hug.

"I'm not trying to convert you to Christianity, Snowden. I'm not even Christian myself."

"Then what the hell do you want? I don't see your black ass for weeks on end and then you decide to reappear. Why? What do you want from me?"

Bobby looked back, waited for Snowden to stop breathing so hard so he would listen.

"I want you to hear my confession."

One sound Snowden doubted would be tolerated at a funeral: hysterical laughter. Bobby's elbow to Snowden's stomach was the only thing that kept both from finding out exactly what that reaction would be.

"I'm not listening to your confession," Snowden said as he rose. "Don't dump your crap on me, I got my own problems."

"Snowden, I've committed murder."

Snowden sat back down again. This wasn't because he wanted to listen to more, because he really really didn't, not one word, not one tiny little fact, not even the sentence he'd just heard, it's just that Bobby said it so loudly that more heads from below were looking up and now Snowden was the one worried about attracting attention.

"Jesus man, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you have to confess right here, with the guy's family right below?" Snowden whispered.

"Not him," Bobby said, pointing till Snowden knocked his hand down. "I don't know anything at all about that guy, he's a complete stranger."

"If he's a complete stranger, then why the hell are we here?"

"Well, I killed complete strangers. So for the last month I've been coming here every day to complete strangers' funerals. I mean, existentially speaking, one complete stranger's as good as the next. Snowden, I'm the one that burned down the Mumia Abu-Jamal House."

"No you didn't," Snowden assured him.

"Yes I did. It was arson. It was me. Three people died, people I didn't know, had no grudge against. It's OK, I know you believe me, you saw me there. I know you weren't that drunk."

"I saw nothing, I don't know nothing," Snowden had said this to himself so many times in so many ways lately that there was actually a part of him that believed it.

"Lester told me to. He didn't say it in that many words, but basically he told me to. He had the whole place cased out, its weaknesses, everything. He told me nobody'd be there. You know what? Not that it makes me any less culpable, but I don't think he really cared that those men who died in my fire were there at all. I'd turn us all in if I wasn't absolutely sure those poor kids in the league would get totally lost in the shuffle. And to be honest, I'd sooner kill myself than go back to jail again. I mean, what purpose would that serve, anyway?" Bobby asked, shifting in his seat with his discomfort from the thought of it.

"It's nothing," Snowden offered him.

"What?"

"What you did, don't worry about it, it's nothing. Nothing at all. That's how you have to look at it," Snowden told him.

"Snowden, I'm not out here messing with you. This isn't some kind of joke, I'm being serious." Bobby managed to lean even closer. "I broke in and lit a basement fire below a wall of subgratle insulation and now three people who cried and laughed and loved are dead. Just because a couple of ex-cons cared more about a dream for a community than the people who actually lived in it. Snowden, I killed three human beings."

"I know who you killed, I read the paper. You killed a guy who used to call up people and claim they had outstanding balances on their credit reports to get their MasterCard numbers."

"Dio Demilo. He had a nine-year-old daughter Tio in foster care he wanted to win back when he got on his feet. I guilted Lester into letting the poor girl into the Little Leaders League. She cries in the middle of tutorials — your little friend Jifar told me that."

"The other guy, the bastard who used to work at the post office, he would go break into homes that submitted hold-mail requests, he was a scumbag."

"Greg Tanen, he was first arrested for drug possession at the age of — "

"Nigger shut up. Just shut up. Stop doing this to yourself, it's stupid. You don't think they would have caused more misery on their own if they'd stayed around? You can't bring them back, so just stick with your dream. Accept it as the worthwhile cost. It's the only way."

Head wagging with pity, Bobby Finley bent forward, reached under his seat, and yanked out a plastic cooler. Snowden made the oath watching him that if there some kind of burnt body part inside that he was going to start screaming, regardless of the consequence. "Peanut butter and jelly?" Bobby held out to him.

"Bobby, why in God's name do you have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sitting under this church bench?"

"Peanut butter and jelly just sits better. I tried using balogna, figured it has a lot of preservatives so it would stay good under there for a couple of days, right? Gave me the shits something fierce."

"You know what pisses me off the most about all this?" Snowden demanded.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. Why would you be annoyed at all?"

"Because here I am basically agreeing with you about all the stuff you yourself are always going on about. I'm seeing you in pain and I'm telling you what you need to hear. I'm giving you an out, I'm repeating your schtick back to you and somehow you're still managing to sit there with that smug look on your face like I'm the idiot."

"I'm sorry that's how you feel." The way that peanut butter looked sticking to Bobby's mouth, the smacking noise it made as he talked, it wasn't helping Snowden's mood in any way.

"Those guys died and that sucks, but Harlem just got that much closer to being the promised land. Any means necessary,' right, like Malcolm X used to say."

"Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. Turns out that's bullshit. Turns out the means just might be the most important part. You were right all along, Snowden. Belief isn't safe. Look man, that's really why I asked you here," Bobby said, swallowing the rest of his mouthful, wishing he'd brought some milk to go with it. "I've watched you almost a year now, and you don't believe in anything! Not in God, not in humanity! You have no higher cause than your own and yet you still manage to get out of bed every morning without losing it. You want to help me? Then tell me, Snowden, tell me how do you do it. How do you keep from being blinded by ideals?"