Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

Walking back home with that night-city elation, Snowden went to bed and slept well, got up the next day feeling even better. For the week that followed, the same thing kept happening. When Snowden finally recalled the dream, he couldn't remember if it really was one or just his groggy mind imagining, but it didn't matter. Either way it paused his anxiety long enough for his life to get going again.

Snowden found it was a glorious thing to have a purpose, to have one was to know what he'd always been missing. When each day began Snowden knew what he had to do and why he had to do it. When each day ended Snowden found himself running out of hours instead of having to drink the last few away. There was bliss in certainty. The Horizon man found being one intoxicating.

It takes a while to build a home out of a Harlem shell. You start with the abused structure, long the victim of poverty and neglect, and you salvage what little you can from it: a facade, some original woodwork, a porcelain fixture nobody in fifty years could figure out how to rip out for profit. Put a new roof on top to keep the elements from causing further damage, then under its protection you can begin to develop what's inside of it. The first thing to do is get the electrical work and plumbing up to date, followed by the windows and walls, winterizing and painting. Unless you're doing major structural construction, the last thing you deal with is the floor beneath your feet. To look at his prize in the beginning, Snowden's brownstone seemed a hopeless cause, a place that would never be inhabitable let alone one he'd enjoy living in. But it was, like all things in Harlem, a matter of small steps and patience, dedication to a vision, the determination to see it to fruition no matter what the cost.

They got as far as the wiring by the day of the Second Chance Program press event. It was enough that there would be power for lights, video, and sound equipment. Snowden was allowed to come inside his new home for the first time that morning. It was a prime location on 120th Street, directly across from Mount Morris Park, you could even see the fire tower from the street. Walking up the front steps Snowden thought, This is my stoop. Moving through so many empty, dark rooms Snowden thought, These are mine and I have a lifetime to fill them.

The townhouse was full of surprising details. The removal of the mirrored wall off the sitting room had revealed a chipped but salvageable mural that Lester hoped would prove to be an Aaron Douglas when authenticated. Between the stairs was a full-sized manual elevator, installed for a wheelchair-bound resident in the thirties and still fully functional. Lester took great pleasure in showing Snowden how to pull on the looped rope to make it go up and down as they stood inside it. On the third floor, Snowden found the remnants of a building-length bookshelf built into the eastern wall, a beautiful if battered piece of oak cabinetry that caused Snowden to wonder out loud if he'd ever own enough books to fill it.

Lester let the comment hang out there for a moment, echoing in the empty space, before saying anything. "Look, I made an awful, unfortunate mistake in going to him about the Piper situation. I didn't realize they had any sort of relationship, let alone what I now know of it. That was a horrible position I put him in, inadvertently of course, but it was my mistake. That said, you're the one in charge of the program now. He has to be dealt with."

"Bobby will be just fine," Snowden told him. "He'll get over it. You want to worry about something, worry about your dog, you know what it means when he starts sniffing the floor like that."

Wendell's butt rocked back in forth as it wandered out of the room. Lester called the dog, but Wendell just looked over his shoulder at him in annoyance before turning around again.

"Snowden, you don't get over losing someone you consider that important easily. I know, I was a mess after Jesse passed. Don't tell anyone, but I missed that man so much I used to spray Wendell with his cologne at night just so I could pretend it was him sleeping next to me," Lester confessed.

"I will deal with Bobby. Reasonably. I sent him an invite so you never know, he might show up today. You put me in charge, so you'll just have to trust me with it. I tell you who is in mortal danger, though: your dog. I don't care if the floors aren't done, if he shits on my new home he's dead."

"Wendell would never do that," Lester said, but he hurried down the hall in search of him anyway.

There was a joke told by white supremacists that all you had to do to round up black people was get a big bucket of fried chicken. This was not only racist and offensive, it was also entirely untrue. It wasn't fried chicken, it was shrimp. If you sent out flyers advertising free all-you-can-eat jumbo shrimp, you could attract more Negroes than a Red Lobster on Sunday. Another little-known fact: The same rule applied to a subset of journalists as well, the lazy kind who actually liked press events, liked having their stories prepackaged and lobbed underhand to them. Tertiary news stories were chosen or ignored based on the quality of the buffets at their press events, and a good seafood teaser could make the difference between peripheral public awareness and complete obscurity. Combine these two categories and you could create the kind of mob that began to form in Cedric Snowden's future living room early that evening, struggling to push past each other without spilling their plastic plates and champagne flutes.

Congressman Marks stepped up on the stool he'd placed discreetly behind the podium and began clearing what little throat he had to get their attention. When that didn't work, Marks pulled from inside his lapel what Snowden hoped was a starter pistol and shot it straight up above him. "Ah, an ode to the bad old days of Harlem," he joked to the stunned and silent crowd, but it actually garnered a few laughs after a second.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining me in bearing witness to this great day for Harlem. In a time when more black men go to jail than college, it is more important now than ever that we create a second chance for our men, our community, and ourselves. ."

Snowden closed the door to the kitchen. He'd listened to the congressman's speech twice in practice, and while he agreed with it, he didn't feel the need to spend ten more minutes of his life listening to it again. There were so many of them in there, looking up at him, chewing his food and words. Snowden wondered if Piper had known any of the reporters in attendance and what she would have said about them.

"This is it, the big moment, the culmination of so much work," Lester said from behind. Snowden turned to him. Lester in white. Patent-leather shoes so shiny they seemed made of melting vanilla ice cream, a matching fedora whose black band was his outfit's only dissent.

"Horus — I don't see him out there. Did you even tell him I won yet?"

"Of course I told him. Yesterday. Took him down to Chelsea Piers, stuck a suitcase and a ticket for a ten-day Caribbean singles cruise in his hands, then I told him. Went fine, nothing to worry about," Lester said. He was missing a molar about halfway back his mouth, you could only see it when he smiled real big.

"Good. So he wasn't mad."

"Oh he was absolutely furious. A real murderous rage, I'll tell you. But I managed to get him on the boat," Lester said. "Then I sat there watching the little bridge for four hours to make sure he didn't sneak off again. He should be cooled down by the time he sails back. The man's too great an asset to lose. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a sociopath with a sense of loyalty."

Lester turned to look once more at his charge, noticed the strain in Snowden's face as he stared off toward the room ahead.