Mat Johnson - Hunting in Harlem

Lester made the dazed Snowden sit in the truck's cab while making sure everything was OK with the customer. It took that smell of brave Wendell to reacquaint Snowden with his senses, an entirely uncalled for, overdone remedy in Snowden's opinion. Wendell had all the regular canine odor expected from such an active dog, but his more disturbing smell was of cologne. It lay on him so thick you could smell the alcohol in his fur. This was not a new discovery, Bobby had mentioned it weeks ago and the two of them had a running bet on what brand it was. The wager was doomed to remain unresolved. Neither one would dare ask Lester about it, let him know they had the image of him down on his knees, spraying his ridiculous dog. Snowden was in the process of trying to roll up the window when Lester yanked the door away from him, pulled on the fabric above his knees before bending his legs up and inside.

"Mr. Finley called me, told me what was happening. I was waiting here in the cab, I wouldn't have let it get too far." Lester scratched at Wendell's ass as he talked. Wherever you put your hand on Wendell, he always moved so that it was soon on his ass.

"If you know what happened, then why'd you just give Horus that money?" Snowden asked.

"Sometimes you have to throw a dog a bone," Lester told him, falling into a baby voice right after to ask Wendell, "Isn't that right?" repeating this until the dog licked his face in response.

"Protecting the weak, taking a stand against the odds, that's what Horizon's all about. The congressman would be very proud. So as a reward, I'm giving you a special project from now on. It'll provide you an additional opportunity to learn the business and earn some extra dough," Lester said, Snowden's acceptance of the offer assumed. "Tomorrow, six A.M. Not in front of the office, but at the lodge entrance. This is your special project, so keep this to yourself. And you don't wear your uniform for this job."

NOTHING RAGED LIKE a Harlem night. There was no quiet acceptance of the day's end, no dying of streetlight. Through his shades, an orange, hopeless glow landed in strained parallelograms across Snowden's walls and ceiling, keeping his room lit like it was dusk till dawn. Harlem at midnight was louder than some parts of Midtown during the day. Noise as consistent as boisterous, a seamless stream of audio pollution, poor people loud because sound was the only thing they could afford in quantity.

Snowden had a game. Lying sideways in bed, pillow pulled over the ear exposed upward, midnight hours behind him, the goal of his game was to count ten seconds of silence to fall asleep within. Hours of reaching to three or four before being halted by conversations yelled from one end of the street outside to the other, honking livery cabs too lazy to ring a bell, kids screaming in joy or horror. One, two, three, four, then something. Always something. It was almost magical, how one sound would die down always to be replaced by another, just as piercing, just as inconsiderate.

Snowden preferred obsessing about the literally disturbing sounds outside his window. If he got angry about them, made them the focus of his frustration, he was less likely to notice the sounds emanating from the apartment below. The vibrations of shrieks that rose through the ceiling, through insulation to floorboards, trailed up the post of Snowden's bed to tremble his mattress in sympathy. The beatings. Lying there, Snowden waited for the next percussion of skin on skin, for it to shut up the yelling or ignite more. Eyes closed, wishing ears had the same option, Snowden's mind could provide information his senses couldn't. From the sound of the hit, Snowden could tell impact location, force, and source. In his mind he could clearly see Jifar, the boy who lived down there, taking the blow. Snowden could differentiate the resonating smack of open hand to the side of the face from the quick thud of a palm thrust to the back of the head, and remember exactly what it felt like to be something small and confused as someone impossibly large and inconceivably hostile assaulted you.

Worse, the sounds that followed. The father, Baron Anderson, made a habit of singing to his karaoke machine in the shower after most skirmishes, belting out canned tunes with a guilt-free and joyous enthusiasm. Pleased, wailing vocals over music caught and gutted of voice and harmony. Snowden hated Baron Anderson for being tone deaf, felt it was deliberate, felt it was gloating. A list of music Snowden was slowly beginning to detest as much as the man who mangled it: every single track of Marvin Gaye's Forever Yours (despite himself), all Smokey Robinson's post-Miracles creations and even some before that (" People say. ." People say shut the hell up it's two o'clock in the morning), every top ten hit between 1981 and 1987.

Snowden awoke at five-thirty A.M. to the sound of crickets. They weren't really there, but with the window closed and rain muting the neighbors outside, his room was quiet enough to hear the sound of home on a summer morning, light chirping of crickets in his mind. After over a month in Harlem, Snowden's Philly seemed in contrast impossibly southern, spacious, slow, and behind him. Out his front door half asleep, his waking mind lost in memory, Snowden nearly tripped over the bundled body lining the top of the stairs in the hallway, clutched desperately at the rail to keep from falling over it, through the wide stairway shaft, and five stories down.

The memories of a child's screams that had plagued Snowden's dreams were understood as he kneeled next to the little figure, lifted off the cloth at the end he assumed was covering Jifar's head, just like he always did when he found the boy sleeping in the hall.

"Little man." When Snowden lightly squeezed Jifar's cheek, the boy's eyes began to open, looked up at him blinking, pupils barely lifted from lids. Jifar yawned, the hot smell of morning blowing across Snowden's face.

"I was camping. You woke me up." Maybe it was the light lisp of his voice that doomed the boy, maybe it was that simple. Maybe the sound reminded the brute who was his father of the wife Snowden deduced had left him far behind. Or maybe Jifar's father was one of those people who didn't need a reason, just enough drink to bring out his character. Maybe he was just bad, like there are some people who are just good in this life.

"You can't stay out here like this, somebody's going to trip over you and fall down the stairs, break their neck."

"Somebody did fall once, right before you moved here. The woman who used to live where you do, she jumped right down," Jifar said, staring at the stairs beside him. "She was lonely. And mean."

"You want to go back downstairs and get back in your bed? He's probably passed out by now." Jifar pulled his blanket over his head again, its cartoon pattern faded and dotted with fabric pills instead of pixels. Snowden looked at his watch, thought of Lester doing the same in front of the office, pulled his keys out and into Jifar's hand.

"Now listen. These are yours. Anybody gives you trouble, you ever need to get away, you use these. This apartment is your safe place, OK?" Snowden told him, wishing there was someone he could call instead, wishing that he hadn't been through the foster care ring himself and could believe it was that simple. That this was a world in which you could pick up the phone and then find yourself in a better situation than the one you were already trapped in.

Jifar glanced down at the keys before pulling them within the blanket without comment. If he'd bothered to shrug, even that message of ambivalence was lost in the folds of the cloth. Lester and Wendell paced in circles in front of the lodge, the man absentminded and heavy footed, the dog intense and intent on finding a square foot of concrete good enough to poop on. The dog was surrounded by young admirers, children in maroon blazers with gray shorts and skirts who called Wendell by name as he ignored them. Lester shooed them off as Snowden approached, and the children shot up the lodge's steps, the last boy making a great effort to close its towering door without slamming it.