South Street

by David Bradley

  “You act just like a baby,” she said, coming out and standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “I acts like a baby? Me? Shit.”

  “You do.”

  “So what’s that make you?” She didn’t answer. “Well, what’s that make you? ‘I gotta have a new dress just like Charlene.’ Next thing you want’s three fuckin’ bastards that belongs to God knows who, just like Charlene.”

  “Maybe I would,” she said sweetly. She came out of the kitchen, smiled at him, moved toward him, her robe hanging open. “What you gonna do if I does get pregnant, baby? Least you’d know it wasn’t yours. Your little piece a limp licorice couldn’t knock up a mosquito.”

  “Shut up,” Rayburn said tiredly.

  “Some folks gots cocks, Rayburn. Sometimes I even feel—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Oh, don’t you like to hear about it? You might learn somethin’.”

  “I don’t want to learn nothin’,” Rayburn said.

  “You’re right. You ain’t never gonna learn nothin’, you ain’t never gonna be nothin’. You ain’t never gonna get nowhere. You’re too fuckin’ old.”

  He came across the room and knocked her flying with his closed fist. She picked herself up, spitting blood, but there was a soft look in her eyes. “Janitor,” she said. He struck her again, full on the mouth, and he felt blood hot in his mouth from her cut tongue as she pulled him down and kissed him. He struggled to rise, to get away from her, but she clung stubbornly to his neck. He struck out at her weakly. Her lips were against his, soft and cool-warm, like the breeze flowing down the corridors between the buildings on a night buried deep in July. Her eyes opened, wide and brown, her teeth digging into his ear as his tongue clumsily battered at her throat. He felt frightened, moving his hands over her, avoided her eyes for fear of what he might or might not see. Her body tensed and arched against him as his hand found one tender spot. She gripped him with her wiry arms. She tugged at his clothing.

  Then he looked into her eyes and saw them soften as he stroked her skillfully, harden terribly when, in his excitement, he fumbled. Her hand reached for him, hard and dry, hurting him. She moistened it with her own juices, grasped him once again. Suddenly he realized that, far, far too soon, he was coming. He saw her smile of contempt, of triumph. He wanted to scream and cry. He tried to stop himself, to twist out of her grasp, but her hand moved swiftly and knowingly. He closed his eyes.

  When he opened them she was smiling at him, taunting. He lifted his hand and brought it flat across her face, seeing as he did so her eyes soften and mist over. He slapped her again, feeling something inside him rip and tear like a great white sheet. But her eyes were closing, slowly, in some strange ecstasy, and he felt a glow of power somewhere inside him as he slapped her again and again.

  Somebody was dying.

  In the vast deserted depths of Franklin Field agonized gasps echoed faintly but clearly, a death rattle, or a ragged orgasm. But the gasps were rhythmic, accompanied by the sound of pounding feet that approached, swept past, receded. The sun beat down out of a sky that was hard and high and very blue and exceptionally clean, even for a Sunday. It was hot. It was too hot to be running. Brown knew it. He had known it as soon as he had entered the stadium and stood looking at the immense and empty stands, imagining them filled with people, hearing dead echoes, feeling the hangover lurking like a sponge behind his nose and eyes. He had felt the heat bouncing off the concrete hidden beneath the artificial turf, and he had known that the most sensible thing would be to go home and go back to bed. But he had made a pile of his sweat suit and towel and water bottle and he had set out for one slow lap on the track. With the first spring of perspiration coating his skin, with his muscles just loosening up, Brown had felt full of optimism, and so he had settled down to run in earnest. Now, hearing his own gasps echo as he punched out his fourth lap, he felt fear. It sounded like he was dying for sure; the pain that managed to penetrate his fogged-over brain scared him, and the flat track, stretching and curling back on itself and stretching again, the track scared him. He considered stopping. But Brown had long before made a rule that, once he had begun, he would not stop until he had completed the distance. It had made him feel virtuous at the time. Just now, rounding the west turn and rolling into the stretch, it was making him feel sick.

  The stands watched him, and Brown kept himself going by thinking of the people that had occupied them at one time or another to watch powerhouse football games in the good old days when the University of Pennsylvania defeated Penn State instead of being confused with it. Brown labored before gathered ghosts, smiling coeds, Ivy Leaguers waving pennants, wearing boaters. Brown ran past old alumni with white hair and ten thousand dollars to contribute to the building fund. Brown ran them down.

  The track got harder and the sun got harder. A little man with a hot ice pick floated down from the sky and took up a station over Brown’s belly button, poked his ice pick through Brown’s side, and teased. Brown kept going. The little man grew slightly more insistent. Brown got the message, kept on.

  The ninth lap was always the hardest. The little man replaced his ice pick with a brace and bit, and turned away merrily. Brown felt his hip tighten and gave up. The little man smiled as Brown slowed and let his legs stretch out. Nine laps wasn’t bad, Brown told himself. Not for a hot morning after a heavy drunk. Nine laps was okay. The little man snorted and floated away. Brown forced his aching back muscles to keep his torso erect, his head up as he moved down the backstretch, past the ranked hordes. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abe Lincoln. Brown kept his dignity, kept his hands loose, kept his breathing in precise cadence with his footfalls. He swept down a backstretch filled with giggling ghosts, into the east turn.

  Every black schoolboy runner on the East Coast dreams of the east turn of Franklin Field, dreams of rolling down the straight and pouring on the coal through that final turn and streaming on to a victory in the Penn Relays. The black faces mass in that turn, black voices clot. A last-place runner will save something for that turn. The second-place runner will make his move in that turn. Everything beyond that turn is downhill drag. Brown, defeated, years beyond high-school spirit and schoolboy fervor, rolled into that turn and heard dark murmurings of disappointment. Brown cursed and started pulling himself back together again, floated into the straight, and let himself go.

  The little man reappeared, clucking sadly, unlimbered a buzz saw, and set to work, humming. Brown’s face twisted in agony as his body protested. He pounded through the west turn, no longer running easily, and laboring, came up on the south stands, spitting on the track as he moved through the ghostly glares. The east turn came up. Brown shortened his stride and kicked into the straight, hearing no cheers beyond his own gasps, almost but not quite catching up to his own shadow as he powered across the finish line, head up, back straight, legs and hands outstretched and grasping.

  Twenty feet beyond the line Brown fell apart like a puppet with its strings suddenly sliced, his breath coming in irregular gasps, his arms and legs going in all directions. He slowed, stopped, his head hung, sweat poured from him. He would have thought he were dead, except he hurt too much. He let his head hang but started moving again, fighting the urge to lie down on the track and turn into a knot. By the time he had completed one slow circuit he had his body under some semblance of control. At the end of the second lap he decided he had begun to think he was going to live after all. By the time he had finished a third lap he had decided he might as well. He bent over and pulled on the sweat suit, allowed himself a small swallow of water, picked up the towel, and left the stadium.

  His hangover was gone. He walked to the corner of Thirty-third, contemplating an accident of the city’s geography: on his left was South Street; on his right, the same street was Spruce. Brown looked to his left. Then he turned the other way and began to move west on Spruce, breaking into a jog as if he were in a rush to get away from the intersection. The street was deserted except f
or parked cars. Brown dodged construction sites, made his way toward a trio of high-rise apartment buildings that erupted from the asphalt like acne blemishes. Brown slowed as he approached one of the buildings, fished in the pocket of his sweat suit for his keys, but the door opened before he got to it. Brown let the keys fall clinking back into his pocket. “Mornin’, Speedy,” he said to the doorman.

  Speedy grinned up at him from his bucket seat behind the electronic security console. “Hey, Adlai,” Speedy said. “Seen you comin’ on the TV.”

  Brown peered over the console. “What the hell?”

  “Brand new,” Speedy said proudly. “With this here contraption, all I got to be doin’ is watchin’ TV. See, you switches the channels just like a reglar TV, an’ you can see in the garage an’ in the elevators an’ everywhere. I had ma eye on you a long time, so you be careful, nigger, or I’ll have the Man on your black ass.”

  Brown chuckled. “The Man lives on ma ass. You see into bedrooms with that thing?”

  “Don’t need to,” Speedy said. “Hell, I can imagine a lot bettern most a these here white folks can fuck. Course there’s exceptions, like that there blond bitch, what’s her name …”

  “I know who you mean,” Brown said.

  Speedy gave him an appraising look. “Oh yeah? You been into that, too?”

  “What you mean, ‘too’?”

  “Oh, nothin’. Just that, way I hears it, when her husband ain’t home, which, just ’tween you an’ me, is mostly, she don’t like nothin’ bettern to go out huntin’ for some black—”

  “No thanks,” Brown said. “It’s all yours.”

  “Hell, I’m too old for that,” Speedy said.

  “So am I,” Brown said. “By about three hundred an’ fifty years.”

  “Yeah, well,” Speedy said. “Anyways, I can imagine what goes on.”

  “Well, you keep on imaginin’ an’ keep that damn TV set outa ma bedroom.”

  “Course, ma man,” Speedy said. “Wouldn’t spy on a brother. Now the super—”

  “Shit,” Brown said, and turned to push the button for the elevator.

  “Your woman lookin’ for you again last night,” Speedy said. “I said I didn’t know where you was.”

  “Umph,” Brown said. “How come it takes this elevator all damn day to get nowhere?”

  “South Street again?”

  “Shit,” Brown said, stabbing at the button again.

  “Man,” Speedy said, “if I was you I’d stay the hell away from there. That street’s a stone bitch. I ’member once upon a time the city was gonna fix it up. Turn the whole damn place into a what you call garden spot. Townhouses, playgrounds, good schools, all that shit. So they went to work an’ condemned all the buildin’s, drove out all the business. Makin’ way for the white folks. That whole street turned into a cemetery. Everybody was livin’ on borrowed time. Then the city changed its mind. Wasn’t nothin’ left but sorry-ass niggers that couldn’t afford nothin’ else.”

  Brown looked at him. “It’s an old story. It happens everywhere.”

  “Sure do,” Speedy agreed. “Every day in every way. Trouble with niggers is they gets old ’fore they gets tired.”

  The elevator door slid open and Brown stepped inside, punched a button. “You watch that bitch,” Speedy said. “She’ll get a hold on you, turn you every way but a-loose.”

  “Which bitch?” Brown asked, as the door slid shut. The car boosted him upward, the doors opened again, Brown stepped out into a carpeted corridor. Walking down the hallway, Brown self-consciously wiped his face, patted his hair. He went to a door halfway along the hall, inserted his key, stepped inside, shivering at the sudden chill; the air-conditioning in the lobby and corridor had been reasonable, but the apartment unit was turned up too high. Brown hated air-conditioning. He longed to cut the unit off, but it wasn’t his air-conditioner. It wasn’t his apartment either.

  Brown crossed the carpeted living room, entered the bedroom, shucked off his sweat suit and shorts, slipping into an ancient blue terry-cloth robe that was ripped out under both arms, moving quietly so as not to disturb the woman who lay on the bed, her body concealed by the white sheet. Brown looked at her for a few moments, watching the rise and fall of the sheet as she breathed, then he picked up his soggy running clothes and carried them back through the living room and out onto the balcony. He didn’t feel tired any more. He felt strong and quick and he giggled softly as the carpet rubbed against the bottom of his feet. A small spark of electricity arced from his hand to the metal handle of the sliding door; Brown winced, slid the door open, stepped out onto the tile, and stood in the hot sunshine while he draped his wet clothing over the rail. He squinted up into the sun, lowered his eyes to look out over the city, the ugly refineries in the south, the treed jungle of Fairmount Park to the north, and, to the east, the spires of Center City. Brown’s eyes wandered slightly south, along Spruce Street until it reached the Schuylkill. He snorted and turned away.

  Brown sat in the living room, in a big white beanbag chair, feeling bored. He got up, went back into the bedroom. The woman slept on beneath the sheet. Brown looked at her for a while, then slipped out of his robe and moved around to the far side of the bed. He started to lift the sheet and ease in beside her but hesitated. He drew his hand back. Then he set his jaw and slid onto the bed. He lay there, his still-sweaty skin sticking to the sheet, pulling slightly as he moved, sending a hand sliding out, laying it across her, his fingers brushing the tuft of hair at the base of her belly. Brown felt his body start to hum, felt strength flow into him. The hesitation vanished, he began to move with almost infinite patience. Carefully, slowly, he moved his hand over her, lightly stroking the flesh between her navel and the swell of her breasts. He raised himself up on his elbow and waited, almost bored. She moaned sleepily and turned away; Brown, unperturbed, stroked her haunch. His hand moved slowly. His thoughts were elsewhere.

  The Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan watched as the matron cleaned up the smashed glass and smashed parts of the demolished amplifier. The sight of her bent over, sweeping, giving a panoramic view of her broad white-uniformed rear end, with fleshy legs squeezed and a roll of blubber pushed out over the top of her support stockings like toothpaste out of a tube, was enough to make Mr. Sloan faint. The matron finished her sweeping and laid her broom aside. Groaning and creaking, she eased herself down onto one knee and began to wipe the carpet with a damp cloth.

  “That will do, Sister,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan.

  “Gotta get this here glass up,” she said in no uncertain terms. “Can’t have people cuttin’ they feet.”

  “It’s carpet,” Mr. Sloan said. “That won’t help.”

  The matron continued to wipe.

  “That will do,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan sharply.

  The matron looked back over her shoulder and scowled at him, her face above her ponderous posterior making her look like a misformed snowman. “All right,” she said, “but if you cuts your foot open, don’t you come cryin’ to me.”

  “I’m not likely to cut my foot unless I go walking around barefoot, now am I?” snapped the Reverend Mr. Sloan.

  The matron looked at him, then at the studio couch at the other end of the office. “Yeah,” she said, “I ’spect you’ll be all right so long as you keep everythin’ on all the time.” The Reverend Mr. Sloan glared at her. She unconcernedly levered herself to her feet, gathered up her cloth, broom, and dust pan, and departed. Mr. Sloan cursed in a most un-Christian manner and went back behind his desk, stabbed a button on his panel. Thirty seconds later his first assistant stood before him. The Reverend Mr. Sloan looked up from his watch. “Getting a bit slow in our old age, aren’t we, Fletcher?” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan.

  “Sorry,” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Never mind,” said Mr. Sloan graciously. “You have important responsibilities today. Have you prepared the sermon?”

  Brother Fletcher nodded silently. His jaw muscles bulged slightly
as he clenched his teeth.

  “Good, good,” said Mr. Sloan jovially. “No, no need to show it to me. I have complete faith in your abilities.”

  “Thank you,” Brother Fletcher replied stiffly.

  “Sit down, Brother, sit down. You won’t be on again for another twenty minutes.”

  Brother Fletcher looked doubtfully at the chair.”

  “Sit, Fletcher,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan.

  Brother Fletcher sat, accepting the seat that Leroy had declined.

  “There,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan in a voice that dripped rancid honey and machine oil, as Brother Fletcher’s body sank into the depths of the chair. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you.”

  Brother Fletcher’s Adam’s apple bobbed expectantly.

  “Turnbull did an excellent job warming them up this morning,” Mr. Sloan observed. “I’d appreciate it if you’d convey my compliments.”

  “Certainly,” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Tut, tut, tut,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan, shaking his head. “Such a shame about that young man. Promising future, good mind. Such a waste.”

  “Waste?” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Sloan. “I’m afraid he is much too concerned with the pleasures of the flesh. I regret to say it, but I fear he must go.”

  Brother Fletcher looked shocked. “I know Turnbull has a girl friend, but don’t you think that at his age that’s only nat—”

  “He’s queer,” said Mr. Sloan.

  “Upl?” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Queer,” repeated Mr. Sloan. “Faggot. Sissy. Punk. Homosexual.” He raised a hand. “I know, I know, Fletcher, you were fooled. So was I for a time. Turnbull puts on a good show. I’ve noticed him making advances toward Sister Fundidia, trying to confuse us. But I know. I can tell.” Mr. Sloan leaned back in his chair and languidly placed a hand on the back of his neck, patting his bald head as if it were covered with a lush growth. He smiled winningly at Brother Fletcher. “If there’s anything I hate,” he said, “it’s a closet queen.” Brother Fletcher’s Adam’s apple bobbed rapidly. Mr. Sloan dropped his hand. His face hardened. “Really, Fletcher, we couldn’t have him leading a troop of boy scouts, now could we?”