by Lewis Shiner
He drove home, left the car, and walked the two unlighted blocks to the Berkshire house. He couldn’t seem to remember how to walk naturally. Caution took him around to the back door, and before he could knock, it opened into the darkness of the kitchen. He stepped inside and smelled her perfume. Then she was in his arms, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown that Robert soon peeled away. Her mouth tasted of cigarettes and brandy and he couldn’t get enough of it.
But once he was sitting on the edge of her bed, his clothes in a heap on the carpet, he was stricken with doubt. If I do this, he thought, things will never be the same. I will have given up the moral high ground, and for what?
There was a candle burning on the dresser, and by its light Cindy was trying to read his face. “I don’t even care if we have sex,” she said. “Could you just hold me for a while and put your hands on me?” Her eyes glistened. “I get so goddamn lonely.”
The show of vulnerability seemed to be what he needed. It happened quickly after that, both of them sprinting for the finish line. Afterwards Robert felt distant and empty, like a sun-faded black and white photograph of himself. To ease the awkwardness he began to touch her again, and the second time was slow and tender. The third time, in the soft light of dawn, was entirely about the proximity of their sleeping bodies and the smells of the previous lovemaking that still clung to them, a simple and unconscious act, a last trip to the buffet table for no other reason than that he’d been hungry so long.
*
After that they saw each other nearly every weekend. Bill’s and Ruth’s cars were the warning signals. In their absence, the coast was always clear.
Once Cindy said, “I stay with Bill because, in spite of everything, I really love the big lug. But I don’t get you. Why don’t you leave her?”
It was the summer of 1966. They lay apart, smoking, Robert savoring the moment more for its absences than for what was there: the lack of tension, of desire, of urgency. “It’s hard to explain. I try to picture myself telling her, and all I see is her confusion. She would not be able to understand why I was doing it.”
“She can’t understand that you need sex?”
“She couldn’t understand how that could be more important than having a good home. Or not disappointing her parents.”
“And that’s a reason to stay with her?”
“Evidently,” Robert said.
They lasted through the end of the summer, not quite a year, and it was indifference that broke them up. Robert found her pleasant enough company, and the sex was exactly as good as the excitement he managed to bring to it. When the excitement failed to materialize, as it increasingly did, it left him frustrated and angry.
“This,” Cindy said after one such occasion, “is not what it used to be.”
“No,” Robert said, “it’s not.”
He got dressed and went home.
After that she no longer hugged him when he came to the club, though he would on occasion buy her a drink and ask after Bill. By fall she’d taken up with one of the executives in Bill’s office, or so the gossip went. It seemed a worse betrayal than sleeping with Robert, and hurt her in his estimation.
That gossip made him nervous, briefly, that Ruth would find out about his affair. If she’d heard, she didn’t show it. And the winter of 1966 began to melt into the spring of 1967.
*
It seemed to robert that the world had changed more in the three years between 1964 and 1967 than it had in his father’s entire lifetime.
Having seen a glimmer of hope in President Johnson’s push for civil rights, black people who were tired of obstruction and delays began insisting on full equality. Summertime had become the season of riots. The police action in Vietnam had turned into a full-fledged war. The US, which had never lost a war, was now mired in one it couldn’t win, and the issue was tearing the country apart.
People only a few years younger than Robert seemed to have evolved into a different species. Most of the weirdness was confined to the West Coast, but even North Carolina had its share of recreational drugs and ban-the-bomb symbols and scruffy clothes and music with guitars that sounded like power drills.
All these things, Robert saw, were symptoms of the same idea, the idea that change was possible, that the way things had always been was not the way they always had to be.
Mitch had been swept up in it, growing his hair and sideburns, wearing paisley and polka-dot shirts to work. As jazz splintered into factions, Mitch opted for the funky pop of Ramsey Lewis and Cannonball Adderley over the new thing that Coltrane and Ornette and Sun Ra were doing. Robert himself mostly listened to his older records, or went to flea markets and thrift shops looking for more from the early sixties.
At 28 he was two years from the age where he could no longer be trusted, according to the wisdom of the young. He and Ruth had a sizable nest egg, enough that they could trade their house for a newer, bigger one, if Robert had seen any point in it. They were not in it often enough at the same time to feel crowded. For two weeks each summer they would dutifully go on vacation, usually by car—to Mexico, to the Grand Canyon, to the Lakes District in Canada. The constant proximity made Robert snappish and Ruth, in turn, sulky.
The idea of change was as thrilling to Robert as it was terrifying. He didn’t know where to start. He tried to talk to Ruth about his frustrations, and she met him with the incomprehension he’d expected. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” she said, “but I’m sure it will pass.”
Robert didn’t know what was wrong either. He was no closer to leaving Ruth than he’d ever been, and for all Mitch’s idiosyncrasies, he was a generous and easygoing employer. Robert tried golf, tried learning chess from a book and replaying famous games by himself, went through a phase of heavy drinking that only sapped his strength.
Then, in March of 1967, Mitch said, “It’s time.”
Robert straightened up from his table. “Time for what?”
“They’re asking for sealed bids on the East-West Expressway. Finally.”
“Bids?”
“Don’t worry, it’s in the bag. Was I right about IBM?”
“So we pull the plug on Hayti,” Maurice said. Maurice had fought change on every front and won. He was wearing newly bought versions of the same clothes he’d had on when Robert met him. He had nothing but anger for the Black Panthers; he was sure they were “going to spoil things for the rest of us.”
“I didn’t think you cared,” Robert said to him.
“I don’t,” Maurice said. “It’s a slum. Let’s take it down.”
“What do you mean, ‘let’s’?” Robert said. He knew that he was perpetually on edge lately. He seemed unable to do anything about it. “It won’t be you that takes it down, it’ll be me.”
“Don’t do it, then,” Maurice said, bending over his work again. “I don’t give a Goddamn one way or the other.”
“All right, you two,” Mitch said. “Be cool. We been waiting a long time for this. This is the road to the future we’re going to be building, here. This and Interstate 40 will open the Park right up. We’ll be papering the walls with money.”
“Rah rah rah,” Robert muttered. “Sis boom bah.”
“Robert, you want to share that with the rest of the class?” Mitch said.
Robert didn’t bother to answer. Mitch’s good humor was unshakable and probably, Robert thought, chemically enhanced.
Mitch sat at his drafting table, rarely used these days, though still in the center of the expanded bullpen. He unrolled a single blue line print, still smelling of ammonia, that showed a section of highway. “The first stretch,” he said, “begins at Chapel Hill Road downtown and runs east for two and a half miles.”
“Two and a half miles?” Robert said, looking dumbfounded at the map. “What the hell good does that do anybody?”
“It’s a start, Robert.”
“It’s a start through the middle of Hayti.”
“This isn’t exactly news. Yes, it goes
through the middle of Hayti. Just like the residents of Hayti voted for four years ago.”
“That was when they thought they were going to get new houses and a new commercial center and a whole new city. Only that’s never going to happen, is it?”
“No, Robert, it’s never going to happen. Now, the second stretch will turn south and hook up with I-40 straight into Raleigh. We should have that done in three years—”
Robert walked out. He sat on the trunk of his Chevelle and lit a Lucky. When he looked up, Mitch was standing in front of him. It was only March second. The sky had clouded over during the day, and the temperature had dropped into the forties. They were both in their shirtsleeves. The chill felt good to Robert, cooling him out, as the jazz men would say. Mitch had his arms folded.
“I don’t know what’s bugging you, man,” Mitch said, “but you need to get a handle on it. Especially in front of the whole office. You know what I’m saying?”
“You going to fire me? Oh, that’s right. You can’t fire me. Your pal Randy Fogg might complain.”
Mitch shook his head, refusing the bait. “Man, you are pushing it. If ever I saw a man needed to get laid, it’s you. Seeing as how you’ve got a taste for the dark stuff, I could fix you up. Change your luck, man.”
Robert thought his rage might overwhelm him. Before it could explode, Mitch held up one hand and said, “Whoa, brother, hold on. I got a better idea.” He produced a thin, hand-rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket. “Smoke this. Get a little perspective.”
Robert jumped off the car and backed away. “Jesus Christ! Are you out of your mind? What if a cop was driving by? Get away from me with that stuff.”
Mitch shrugged and put the joint in his pocket. “Suit yourself. This is going to be legal in a few years. People won’t bother with booze anymore. It’s going to be a better world.”
“For who?” Robert said. He brushed Mitch back with his arm and got in the car.
Mitch was still talking through the rolled-up window as Robert started the engine. “Take the rest of the day off,” Mitch said. “Get your head together. As long as you bring your ass back here tomorrow. We got work to do.”
*
The work, not surprisingly, was more demolition. The time had come to go after the businesses on Pettigrew Street. Today it was the Dreamland Shoeshine Shop.
Robert got to the office at eight and Mitch sent him straight over to the job site. The crane company had learned its lesson and sent a dour black man in his fifties named Johnston. Leon and Tommy Coleman were already there, talking to a middle-aged black man in a rumpled suit.
“Jerome Harris,” the man said, shaking Robert’s hand. “This was my store.”
“I’m sorry,” Robert said. “You know it wasn’t me that—”
Harris waved away his apologies. “They got me a place over to Tin City now.”
Tin City was a row of temporary buildings around the corner on Fayetteville Street. The Hayti Redevelopment Commission, still pretending that a new shopping center would magically appear any day now across from St. Joseph’s Church, had their headquarters there, and a few of the hardier Pettigrew Street businesses had moved in next to them.
“It’s temporary, you understand. I’ve had to relocate four different times, but it’s always been called Dreamland. Been my dream for 40 years now to have my own shoeshine business. That’s where the name came from.”
It was hard for Robert to meet his eyes.
“When they build me my new place, I’ll keep that name. Dreamland.” He shook Robert’s hand again. “I’ll let y’all get on with your work. Man’s got to be able to do his work. That’s what the good Lord put him here for.”
When he was gone, Tommy said, “I believe the good Lord put me here for something besides work, but I don’t work, I don’t get to do what the good Lord put me here for. So let’s get it on.” He looked at Robert. “You all right, Captain?”
“Go ahead,” Robert said. “You know what to do.”
Robert walked across the street and sat by the railroad tracks. From there he had a good view of the decay that had set in. At least a third of the businesses had closed and some of the buildings had been cleared, leaving gaps like missing teeth in an idiot’s grin. The few people on the street walked with their heads down, focused on their destinations and not their surroundings.
Robert was still sitting there when a group of protesters rounded the corner, headed his way. They had signs reading, “Save Hayti” and “Keep Your Promises,” all, sadly, looking as if they’d been painted by the same hand. There were 20 of them, with a few young white faces together at the back.
At the front was Barrett Howard.
It was the first time Robert had seen him since the IBM press conference, other than on TV or in photos in the Herald. He looked bigger and angrier, and he’d grown a bristling mustache and sideburns to match his large, lopsided Afro. He led the marchers straight to the Dreamland Shoeshine Shop and spread them along the sidewalk for maximum effect. Then he looked up and down the street, as if wondering where the photographers were.
Instead he saw Robert. A wave of uncertainty washed over his face, then he sucked in his stomach and walked across the street.
Robert sat where he was, on the low railroad embankment, and waited for him. The wind gusted, and a candy wrapper fluttered down the middle of Pettigrew, clinging briefly to Howard’s ankle. Howard kicked it away and climbed the embankment to where Robert sat. He nodded and sat down. After a moment he said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” Robert said.
“I want you to know I’m sorry for what happened that night. I should never have taken you out there. It was wrong. I apologize.”
“That was a long time ago,” Robert said. “Besides, all you did was show me the truth. I had to see it myself to believe it.”
They sat for a while in silence, and then Robert said, “How have you been?”
“Good. Busy. We’ve come so far so fast, and we still have such a long way to go. What about you?”
“Good,” Robert said. “Busy. What happened with the union?”
“Union didn’t work out. Folks in the South, some ideas they’re not ready for. Which is a shame, because the alternative…well, it’s going to be a lot harder in the long run.”
That last had an ominous ring that Robert didn’t want to pursue. He let it slide into another silence and then found that he couldn’t stand it any longer. “Is Mercy all right?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Who else would I ask?”
“We split up. Been more than two years now.”
A wild tangle of hope and joy exploded in Robert’s chest, making it hard to breathe. “You split up?”
“She quit the religion, too. I stayed. I’m a houngan now. A priest.”
“She quit?”
“She quit within a couple months of that night. All it was was the truth of things coming out, like you say. Her heart wasn’t in the craft, and she’d about had her fill of me anyway.”
“It looked like her heart was in it to me,” Robert said.
“I told you before. That’s wasn’t Mercy. That was Erzulie.”
He had changed, Robert saw. There was conviction in his voice that hadn’t been there before.
“She didn’t seek you out?” Howard said. “I thought sure she was going to come to you.”
“No,” Robert said. “She never did.” The idea, the unrealized possibility, the very words, thrilled him. “Do you know where she went?”
“I don’t know that she went anywhere. It was her house. She threw me out. She’s still there, for all I know.”
Images cascaded across Robert’s inner eye. Mercy in her short, white terrycloth robe, in the white silk dress he’d first seen her in. Her face so close to his on the dance floor. He stood up and focused on the job site across the street to drive the pictures away.
“What’s going to happen here today?” Robert asked.
“We wav
e our signs. Maybe somebody takes our picture for the paper. We get lucky, a TV crew shows up and we get 30 seconds on the 11 o’clock news. You knock Dreamland down and another piece of black history gets obliterated.”
“You don’t want to stop it?” Robert was smiling.
“Are you serious?”
“If you all were to stand between the crane and the building, I’d have to send my crew home.”
“You wouldn’t call the cops?”
“I don’t need cops telling me how to run my job site. Today’s Friday. Once word gets around, there’ll damn sure be cameras and reporters down here on Monday.”
Howard scrutinized his face, more in suspicion than gratitude. “Whose side are you on?”
“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know. Are we going to do this? If so, we should do it.” They walked across the street together. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to go through with it, of course. If not Monday, then soon. It’ll cost Mitch a few days’ pay all around, which he can afford, and maybe Mr. Harris will get a new store out of it.”
A young black man in the crowd looked familiar, and with a hot flash of embarrassment, Robert realized why. “That kid there—he was the one, the one with Mercy that night.”
Howard nodded uncomfortably. “His name’s Donald Harriman. He’s very devoted to the faith.”
“Yeah,” Robert said. “Yeah, I guess he would be.”
“Look, I got to get these kids mobilized. Maybe you don’t want to be standing around here when I do that.”
“No,” Robert said. “I expect not.”
The bulldozer and the first of the dump trucks arrived as Robert caught up with Leon and Tommy. They’d blocked off the eastbound lane of Pettigrew, and Tommy was directing traffic around the heavy equipment.
“They ain’t going to cause no trouble, are they?” Leon asked.
“They might,” Robert said.
“Is there something funny going on here that I don’t know about, Captain?”
“It’s spring,” Robert said. “Don’t you like the spring?”
Johnston had the crane in place, parked parallel to the curb, the wrecking ball ready to swing from right to left into the building. Leon stepped away from Robert and shouted, “Y’all people stand back from the crane. Don’t nobody want to get hurt, here.”