Hunting in Harlem (27 page)

Even after Bobby ran off, Snowden kept looking down because there was no turning away or back anymore. All the fear, the revulsion,
the guilt, and disgust bubbling within him at the distant sight of Piper's broken body, Snowden identified, named as the price
for Utopia. Doors on other apartments started opening, other heads poked out into the stairway just as his did, but Snowden
forced himself to keep looking, to acknowledge the price before continuing.

OF SHRIMP AND OTHER SMALL BAIT

A YEAR CAN go by rather quickly when you're busy. exactly 365 days after their first Horizon meeting, the winner of the Second
Chance Program's leadership challenge was announced, and Cedric Snowden Jr. accepted gracefully. No balloons, no cake or streamers,
just a firm handshake from a former congressman and a date for the press conference when, on site, the keys to the prized
brownstone would be handed over. "If it doesn't happen in front of cameras," Marks chuckled away Snowden's reservations, "then
it doesn't exist." In the end, the competition was far from stiff. Bobby hadn't shown up for work or answered his phone in
the two weeks since the incident, and Horus was Horus, so the choice was rather obvious. Snowden felt proud anyway, took it
as an honor because he felt he'd earned the right to.

Cedric Snowden tried to think about this honor as much as he could, about the responsibility of watching over the new recruits
in the year to come, of overseeing their evolution into the men of Horizon. Cedric Snowden like to think about this because
he found that when he wasn't, he was thinking about Piper Goines instead, a subject he drifted to even more despite a concerted
effort not to. In Snowden's waking moments in the days before Piper's funeral, it was the image of her disappearing so easily
over the railing that had captivated him. Snowden thought
bloop
every time he remembered it, as if attaching a cartoon sound effect would minimize the impact for both of them.
Bloop.

At night, asleep, the image Snowden was haunted by was altogether different, though equally singular. It was Piper Goines
falling down the stairway wearing a long flowing white dress, endless folds flapping. It was the type of dress Snowden doubted
the real Piper would wear even if you gave it to her. In the dream, Snowden's view was centered on her as she fell down, the
dirty tenement stairs a blur for both of them. Eventually his own vantage would halt and Piper's body would go flying below
it, upon which point Snowden would kick himself awake as quickly as possible. The dream tended to come to him in those transitory
moments at the beginning and end of sleep, leaving Snowden unsure if he was just imagining it, an uncertainty that led to
Snowden rejecting his closet hideout for his well-lit bedroom instead.

The vision continued until the funeral, a bleak, silent affair even for its kind. The event created new images of Piper to
replace all the others, surprisingly pleasant ones fueled mostly by the childhood pictures arranged as a collage before Piper's
closed casket. Snowden had feared meeting the famed Abigail Goines of Piper's tales, but the woman up at the front pew was
so drugged that Snowden doubted she knew that he or most of the other guests were there, even as she nodded and smiled at
them.

People pointed at him, the last one to see her alive, the fateful friend with the fourth-floor walkup, yet nothing more came
of it. But why should it, Snowden kept reminding himself. It was an accident.

Snowden kept looking over his shoulder, up into the rafters of the Episcopalian church, for Bobby Finley to arrive and declare
differently, but the skinny man never appeared.

The congressman arranged for the ride to and from Connecticut to be provided by Piper Goines's former editors Olthidius Cole
Jr. and Sr. The younger of the two drove. The older of the two yelled at him to pass any car within fifty yards, once going
so far as to shove his battered cane onto the gas pedal in response to the disobeying of a direct order. For a while, Snowden
amused himself by watching the large man cursing at his son and every single driver he managed to overtake on 1-95, pausing
only to go off on tangental tirades about the Jews, the honkies, those bastards at City Hall, "those goddamn Dominican Puerto
Ricans," and the niggers. Excluding the mention of the last two groups, Mr. Cole's private rants sounded much like his front-page
editorials, evoking in Snowden the same exhaustion from their tediousness, only this time he couldn't just shut it off by
putting the page down, so Snowden closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep instead.

It was dark, late, and they were approaching a toll booth when Snowden had the dream he'd been waiting for. One minute his
legs were numb and Olthidius Cole was leaning over his son to curse out the collector, the next Snowden closed his eyes and
it began. In his mind, Piper came to his house just like before, dressed like her too, the same bags under eyes, the lack
of makeup - it was very realistic. The biggest difference was that this time she knew everything. Everything. Like how important
it was, what they were doing. Like how a piece of their soul was part of the deal, but that it was worth it. It wasn't just
Piper who understood now, they all did - and by that Snowden took to mean all the unintentional martyrs even though she spared
him the pain of listing them. "I understand," she said again to him, and then Piper looked right at Snowden and said,
Ci
Bloop,"
and was gone again. Snowden opened his eyes and they were in front of Horizon's storefront grate. Olthidius Cole turned around
in his seat screaming, "Get out my car you freeloading prick," out his flapjack face.

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.

"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."