Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

"Mr. Snowman, you better get used to this kind of thing. When the congressman retires — and now that things are going well I really don't think that will be long now — you'll be in charge, most likely." Snowden looked up, saw Lester smiling a confirmation of what he'd just said.

"Why not you? Lester, if the congressman retires, why wouldn't you take over the whole thing? You're the most qualified."

"Oh, no," Lester waved the silly thought away from him, thought about it another moment before shaking his head. "I could never do that, all the planning and everything. That takes a gift. Besides, all that paperwork, all that time behind a desk. I'm more a man of the field," Lester told him. "I like to get my hands dirty."

There was applause. Responding to his cue, Snowden pushed open the door and walked out. All eyes on him as he shuffled his speech on the podium, Snowden forced himself to look up at the room as he was trained to before he began.

"I was once was lost," Snowden began, pausing to the count of two-Mississippi, "but now I'm found. I was blind, but now I see."

It was that easy. That African bass thrown into his voice for resonance, his pointer finger raised for emphasis, thumb resisting halfway up it as a nod to Martin Luther King, and all of a sudden he was a leader. The words kept coming, falling after each other easily, even the intonation came naturally. A couple of minutes in and he wasn't even listening to what he was saying, but that was OK because he was busy reading the crowd instead. "Yes, searching for tomorrow's leaders among yesterday's failures is dramatic and extreme, but what Horizon's Second Chance Program recognizes is that facilitating dramatic change in the ghetto is going to take the extreme." When the front door opened across the room, Snowden was in such a flow he instinctively raised his voice to keep the spell from unwinding. When Snowden saw the top of the black hat, then the uniform below it, he didn't stutter, he didn't lose one bit of his passion or speed. He just thought, Well, that's it. They've finally come for me.

Starting to lose the attention of the room as the cop pushed his way to the front of the crowd, Snowden slammed his fist down on the podium for emphasis. Lester was the one who went to the officer, cut him off before he could get any closer. Snowden watched as the two clasped like family and asked himself, How could I ever question that this was meant to be} As Lester guided the officer back to the kitchen, Snowden nodded and smiled but didn't stop speaking for a moment.

By the time Snowden heard the door behind him open again he was firmly into the stride of his conclusion and had forgotten his moment of panic. It came back to him, though, the feeling if not the specifics, when midsentence a tapped shoulder was followed by the ear-whispered, "We have a serious problem." When Snowden turned to look at Lester's face he almost didn't recognize it, having never seen it shaped by fear before.

Bobby Finley sat on the top of the Mount Morris watchtower with a bullhorn, a child hostage, and at least a thousand hardback copies of the same book soaked in gasoline. This last number was an estimate and varied considerably depending on whether you asked the crowd of firemen, the crowd of EMS workers, or one of the many representatives of the police. It was a clear and sunny day and Bobby was really buoyed by this, because after all the exhaustive work preparing for this moment, rain would have really put a damper on things.

Jifar, kicking his legs as they hung over the railing and pointing, was the one who saw Snowden coming, just another exciting addition in the growing spectacle of the day. The boy deserved a good show, Bobby felt, after being such a good sport about the heavy lifting and the fumes and everything. The two of them watched in great amusement as Snowden broke from the crowd and started climbing up to them, leather-soled shoes loosing their purchase on the metal beams wet from the dripping Great Works, tie flapping desperately over his shoulder in the wind.

"Let him go," was the first thing Snowden said when his head poked over the edge. Jifar looked at Snowden's huffing sweaty face and stuck his tongue out. As nervous as Bobby was, it was actually good to see the man.

"Yeah, I need your help with that." Bobby pointed at the mountain-climbing harness already tied around Jifar's waist. "I didn't want him slipping climbing down so I need your help lowering him."

Snowden looked at the rigging on the boy like it was some sort of pedophiliac bondage gear, asked Jifar if he was hurt in such a tender voice that the kid just laughed at him. Jifar was sitting on white paper Snowden recognized to be the loose pages of The Tome, strewn everywhere like kindling.

"He's fine, and don't worry, it'll more than carry his weight. It's on a rather ingenious pulley system," Bobby said pointing up. Snowden saw the dark color of the other man's jeans and realized they were soaking. It was also then that Snowden noticed that Bobby had his favorite lighter in his hand. "The two of us have been hoisting up boxes and gas cans twice that weight all afternoon without the slightest problem."

"That shit was dope," Jifar confirmed. "You should have been here!"

Snowden reached down and patted Jifar on the head, in part to see if the boy was as wet as The Great Works that were piled everywhere around them. Satisfied to his dryness, Snowden walked closer to Bobby, motioned for them to both move farther along the perch for privacy.

"This is sick, Bobby. You got me, just like you demanded, now let him go." Snowden didn't even have to whisper for privacy, another batch of approaching sirens covered his voice for him. Looking down, even at this distance, Snowden could recognize some of the press people he'd been sermonizing only minutes before, some with their little hors d'oeuvres plates still in their hands. Marks had barked at Lester immediately for interrupting Snowden's speech, but their guests would have noticed the sounds and lights of the emergency vehicles climbing up the little hill right outside the window anyway. Forget shrimp, everybody knew a lazy journalist's first love was a newsworthy spectacle.

"Oh, you can go too, just help me get the kid down safe and do me a little favor once you get on the ground again. I don't blame you for what happened, Snowden. I don't. I blame myself for creating the situation. I sure as hell blame you for the part you played, but you're going to have to deal with your conscience in your own way. This is just my way of offering repentance, making the best out of the situation," Bobby said, holding up the lighter, knocking off the lid with a snap, and just as fast closing it again. "Tell me something though, does that look like pretty much all the media whores from your little coronation down there, or should I wait another minute before I get started?"

Snowden looked down. There seemed to be even more of them. Two news vans had appeared, both racing to raise the masts of their broadcasting antennas. "Don't do this, man," Snowden told him. "You have a cause that really needs you, your intelligence, your passion."

"I don't have a cause, not like that anymore. What cause could be worth it if it ends up with people like Piper Goines dead?" Bobby asked, then smiled and waved to the crowd below, clearly enjoying himself. He finally has an audience, Snowden realized.

"So that's it. You're just going to light yourself on fire as some medieval self-punishment. You're just going to give up on life like that, Bobby." Snowden frowned his distaste. "That is so stupid."

Bobby stopped waving, stopped smiling too, just turned and stared at him for few seconds before gaining a slight grin again. "Don't you see? This isn't about giving up. This is about love. This is about sacrificing myself for the one thing in the universe that actually is worth believing in."