Chapter 81
That July, a kind of madness seized Harlem. Place the blame where you want—oppressive summer heat, American hubris gone wild (they’d won the war, after all), or the nuclear bomb the government detonated in the New Mexico desert. Pick one or all—your choice—but the fact remains, Harlem was raging.
In an apartment in the building across the street, a man came home from work, sat down to dinner with his family, and then shot them all dead. The newspapers said that before he killed himself, he ate a dessert of fresh peaches and whipped cream at the very dinner table his wife and children were bleeding out on.
One starry Saturday night, Betty Brown, a single woman, down on her luck and pregnant with her fourth child, took her babies to the Third Avenue Bridge and flung them, and then herself, into the river.
A returning war veteran stripped naked and proceeded to march down 125th Street, blowing a whistle, brandishing his freakishly long penis at astonished onlookers.
Harlan hadn’t washed in weeks and was drinking heavily. He’d drained all the alcohol in the apartment and bloodied his fist against the wall when he demanded that Sam buy more and Sam refused. Afraid that father and son would come to blows, Emma ran out and purchased two bottles of Scotch. If the look Sam gave her had been a bullet, Emma would have been dead.
When Harlan wasn’t drinking, he was sleeping, sitting in bed staring at the walls, or pacing in his room, chain-smoking. Sometimes his parents could hear him sobbing through the walls.
Emma brought him meals because he rarely left his bedroom, except to relieve himself and sometimes not even then. A neighbor reported that she had seen Harlan urinating out the window.
Sam threatened to have him committed, and Emma promised to kill Sam if he did.
Once Emma made the mistake of mentioning Lizard’s name, and for that offense Harlan didn’t speak to her for a week.
Aware of Emma and Sam’s difficulties, Lucille and other close friends sent flowers and notes of encouragement. The religious amongst them lit candles for Harlan and added his name to the church catalogs of the sick and shut-in.
Harlan didn’t know it, but he had entire congregations praying for his recovery.
* * *
One steamy Tuesday afternoon, Emma opened the apartment door to find John Smith standing there in his army duds.
“How long has it been?”
“Too long, Mrs. Elliott.”
After Darlene died and Mayremma moved with John to New Jersey, John had only come back to visit a handful of times in just as many years. However, he had kept in touch by phone, calling on birthdays and holidays.
“You are looking so good. Tall and as handsome as you wanna be.”
John blushed. “It’s the uniform.”
“You make that uniform look good. I will say this: you brave to be wearing it out in public.”
“Why’s that?”
Emma cocked her head. “Ain’t you heard? White boys stringing up Negro soldiers, saying they deserve to die for killing white men, even if those white men were Germans.”
“Oh, yeah, I did hear ’bout that. That’s them crackers down south though.”
“And the crackers up north too.” Emma swept a piece of lint off his lapel. “Sit down. Get you something cold to drink?”
“No thank you, I’m good.”
John studied the dark halos around her eyes and the silver edging her hairline.
“How’s your mother doing?”
“Aww, she’s all right.” His eyes roamed around the apartment. “You miss the house?”
Emma shrugged. “Yes, I do. Living in a building is plenty noisy though.”
“You should come out to New Jersey, it’s nice and quiet.”
“Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.”
John tilted his chin at the piano. “You still giving lessons?”
“Here and there. Not like I used to.”
John glanced at his watch.
Emma got the hint. “Well, I know you didn’t come to jabber with me. How’d you hear he was back?”
“Word gets around.”
“That it does.” Emma smoothed her hands over her skirt. “He hasn’t felt much like company. I’ll tell him you’re here, but I doubt he’ll see you.”
John stood. “No need to announce me, just point the way.”
Emma twisted her lips. “The thing is, John, Harlan ain’t the same person you used to know, and sometimes he gets real irritable—”
John raised a halting hand. “Does he have a gun in there? ’Cause I can handle a little irritability. I spent the war dodging bullets, but I don’t wanna have to dodge any here at home.” He chuckled.
“Nah,” Emma shook her head, “he don’t have a gun.”
“You sure?”
“You still a fool. Go on now, Harlan’s room is down the hall, second door on your left.”
John didn’t bother to knock; he walked right in and snatched the blankets away. “Get up, nigga!”
Harlan shot up, eyelids flapping. He stared, face contorting, shoulders jumping. “John?”
“The one and only!”
Harlan made an attempt to smile, but his lips refused to cooperate. “John, wow,” he mumbled, pulling the covers over his scarred thighs. “Been years, right? Look at you, an army man.” Harlan reached for the pack of smokes resting on the night table.
“Geez, man, it smells like ass and armpits in here.” John pinched his nose. “Open a fucking window. It’s ninety damn degrees outside, and you closed up in here like it’s winter.”
Harlan slipped a cigarette between his lips. “Aww, shut up, you sound like my mother.”
John sat on the windowsill. “So, how you been?”
“You know,” Harlan raked his fingers across the wild hair on his cheeks, “surviving. H-how ’bout you? And your moms? How’s she doing?”
“Can’t complain. She’s doing okay. I’m driving a cab now.”
“Really? Out there in Jersey?”
“Yep. Just part-time, you know, in between gigs.”
“Oh, you still playing?”
“Of course, ain’t you?”
“Nah, gave it up,” Harlan sniffed.
“Sorry to hear that.”
With the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, Harlan said, “No need to sound like somebody died. It’s just music.”
John grunted. “Just music? Was a time when music was your life.”
“Well, things change.” Harlan’s eyes carefully avoided John’s penetrating gaze. “Hey, so how’s your mother?”
John folded his arms. “You already asked me that.”
“Did I?” Harlan laughed. “My mind, it goes in and out sometimes. You got a light?”
“Sure.” John handed him a silver-plated lighter embossed with the initials JS.
Harlan ran his thumb over the letters. “Nice,” he breathed.
Cigarette smoke mushroomed. John opened the window, removed a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, and shook a joint into the palm of his hand. “Hey, look what I got.”
Harlan eyed it, licking his lips. “Is that what I think it is? I haven’t had one of those in five years.”
“Well then, it looks like I came at the right damn time.”
“Fire it up.”
“I’m not smoking in your mama’s house. You know she hates this shit. Let’s take a drive, maybe go see the old neighborhood.”
“You got a car?”
“Negro, didn’t I tell you I was driving a cab?”
Harlan scratched his head. “Yeah, but you said you was driving a cab in New Jersey.”
John shot him an exasperated look. “What you think, the cab turns into a pumpkin if I drive it to New York? Man, you been shut up in this funky-ass room too long, the bad air in here is fucking with your mind.”
Harlan smashed his cigarette into an ashtray overflowing with butts and peanut shells. “Yeah, well, the old neighborhood ain’t nothing but dirt now. Mama said the city bought up all the houses and then tore them down; that’s why we had to move here.”
John nodded. “Don’t mean we can’t roll through, just for old time’s sake. We’ll go down to the water, burn this beauty over the river.”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Or, ” John suggested lightly, “we can drop in at Abyssinian.”
Harlan frowned. “The church?”
“Yeah.”
“You kidding? You went to war and came back religious?”
John gave him a sober look. “And you didn’t? Out in those trenches, me and God became the best of friends. He kept me safe and sent me back home to my mama, intact.”
“Well, I wasn’t in the war,” Harlan mumbled, dropping his head a bit.
“Them scars on your legs say different.”
Harlan lit a new cigarette and pulled hard.
“Look here, I got friends and you got friends who came back in bags with tags on their toes and some who didn’t come back at all, like your man Lizard. We the lucky ones. God brought us home for a reason. You think this all an accident? Nah, man, this is God’s plan.”
John pushed himself up from the sill, walked over to Harlan, and crouched down by the bed. “I know you been through some bad shit, and you dealing with some pain that you think no one understands. But I’m here to tell you that God understands, and because He loves you, He is willing to take all that pain and anger from you; all you got to do is give it to Him.”
Harlan’s mouth twitched. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes; tears trickled down his forearms. “You full of shit,” he gurgled.
“Nah, man, not about this.” John patted Harlan’s knee. “You go on ahead and cry, ain’t nothing wrong with crying. It’s cleansing.”
After Harlan mopped his face with the edge of the blanket, he said, “You think God’s all right with us smoking weed?”
“Why wouldn’t He be? He the one created it. It grows outta the ground just like the flowers and the trees, don’t it?”