South Street

by David Bradley

  “Oh. Are you sure you don’t want to go to Canada?”

  Rayburn smiled at her. “Yeah,” he said, “yeah, I’m sure.” He gave her a dirty leer, and she smiled back at him. He stepped out onto Chestnut Street just as a bus went by, blasting the sidewalk with black diesel exhaust. “Blue and orange,” Rayburn mumbled to himself as he turned toward South Street. “Blue and orange. Shit.” But as he walked he smiled and whistled tunelessly.

  Jake leaned against a crumbling wall, staring through the heavy screening and soot-smeared plate glass at the rows of bottles on display in the State Store. The pain in his stomach gnawed at him. Jake sucked in a few wincing breaths, his eyes never leaving the bottles. The pain gradually subsided to a dull ache. He rubbed his belly with one hand while the other searched through the pockets of his pants, shirt, coat, and sweater in search of some money. The search proved fruitless as it had several times in the two hours Jake had been standing there.

  The cars and trucks trickling off the Expressway onto South Street cast fleeting glints and shadows across Jake’s form, the sun, reflected from windshields glinting at him like a winking eye. Occasionally a patron went past Jake and entered the store, and Jake’s eyes would hungrily watch the shadows moving inside until the customer emerged carrying a brown paper bag. Somewhere a siren wailed, and Jake automatically turned his head away from the store window. The source of the siren was invisible, but Jake caught sight of a gangling figure moving down the other side of the street. Jake pushed himself away from the wall and shuffled out to the curb. Traffic prevented him from crossing immediately, so he turned and shambled along, keeping an eye on the far sidewalk. When there was a break in traffic Jake crossed and pursued his quarry, gaining slowly but steadily.

  The tug on his sleeve caused Brother Fletcher to stop and turn, and the sight of Jake’s stubble-encrusted face made him take a step backward. “Reverend?” Jake said.

  “Yes,” said Brother Fletcher, his hand beginning the inevitable journey toward his pocket. Brother Fletcher’s wife maintained that he was the softest touch on South Street, and he was. He gave money that he didn’t have to almost anybody who asked, drawing the line only at the gang of heroin-addicted devil-worshipers who hung around the occult-supplies store on Twelfth Street, and feeling guilty about that. Jake was so obviously a charity case that he didn’t even need to ask. Brother Fletcher pulled out some change and extended his hand. Jake looked down at the coins.

  “What’s that for?” Jake said.

  “Why, wine,” said Brother Fletcher.

  “I don’t take no handouts,” Jake snapped.

  “What?” said Brother Fletcher. Jake looked at him scornfully. Brother Fletcher put his hand back in his pocket. “Then what—”

  “I wanted to thank you for puttin’ me up the other night.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Ain’t you the preacher up there to The Word a Life?”

  “Well, one of them, yes.”

  “Well, all right then. You let me sleep in there the other night when I wasn’t feelin’ too good.”

  “Oh,” said Brother Fletcher, “yes. Now I remember.”

  “Yeah, well I just wanted to say thanks.”

  “Well,” said Brother Fletcher a trifle uncomfortably, “you’re quite welcome. But it isn’t necessary to thank me.”

  “Why not?” Jake demanded.

  “Why, well, because any servant of God would have done the same.”

  “So? An’ I wouldn’t be too sure a that. How ’bout that muthafucka—oops, ’scuse ma French, how ’bout that Sloan?”

  “Uh, yes, I’m sure Reverend Sloan would—”

  “C’mon now,” Jake said.

  Brother Fletcher grinned sheepishly.

  “That’s better,” Jake said approvingly. “Y’know, for a preacher you’re damn near human.”

  Brother Fletcher felt his neck grow warm with a flush of pleasure, a reaction that he found embarrassing. “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  “Say what?” Jake said.

  “I said, ‘Thank you.’”

  “Oh. I’m gettin’ so I don’t hear too good all the time. I guess I’m gettin’ a little old.”

  Brother Fletcher regarded Jake’s dilapidated features. “No,” he said, “I don’t think it could be that. You don’t look that old.”

  “Well I ain’t that old,” Jake snapped. “All the same, I’m gettin’ on up there. I don’t move as fast as I used to, an’ ma stomach’s no damn good no more. Hurts all the damn time.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?” Brother Fletcher asked.

  “What for? There ain’t but one cure for old age, an’ I ain’t ready for dyin’ yet.”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “I got a lot a good years left.”

  “I can see that,” said Brother Fletcher.

  They stood facing each other in a slightly uncomfortable silence. “You know,” Jake said finally, “I generally get along pretty good with you fellas. Onliest thing wrong with you is all that religion makes your brains a little soft.”

  Brother Fletcher opened his mouth and closed it again with a sharp clacking sound.

  “Whad you say?”

  “Nothing,” said Brother Fletcher, “nothing at all.”

  “You know,” Jake said, “I don’t even mind talkin’ to you. Some a you fellas don’t know how to keep their traps shut. They’re all the time preachin’ some shit, uh, ’scuse ma French, an’ tryin’ to make folks feel ’shamed a theyselves for tryin’ to have a good time an’ get along in the world. But you ain’t said moren ten words. You must be the shortest-winded preacher this side a Hell.”

  “Thank you,” said Brother Fletcher, “I think.”

  “Tell you what. Seein’ as how you’re such a good fella, maybe we oughta have lunch together some time.” Jake peered at Brother Fletcher from beneath his grizzled brows.

  Brother Fletcher pulled at his nose to conceal a smile. “Why that’s a fine idea. Are you free today?”

  “I ain’t never free,” Jake said, “but I can be reasonable.”

  Brother Fletcher laughed appreciatively. “Fine. Where—”

  “Leo’s got the best sandwiches on the street,” Jake said quickly. “Only maybe you wouldn’t feel right goin’ there, seein’ as it’s a bar. You know what a bar is. Don’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Well don’t you be jumpin’ to no conclusions. I mean, all bars ain’t the same. Lightnin’ Ed’s ain’t like some places I could mention.”

  “Did you say Lightnin’ Ed’s?”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “You been there?”

  “No!” said Brother Fletcher. “But I’ve—heard about it.”

  “Yeah?” Jake said. “I didn’t know you fellas kept up on that kind a thing.”

  “It’s a minister’s responsibility to be aware of the pitfalls awaiting the unwary,” said Brother Fletcher loftily.

  “Yeah, well,” Jake said. “I bet y’all have one hell of a good time checkin’ out them pitfalls. C’mon.” Jake started off down South Street, leaving Brother Fletcher standing on the sidewalk, gasping indignantly. After a minute he grinned ruefully and followed along.

  Leo had just finished constructing another leakproof sandwich of radical design. He had used a hard roll carefully mashed down on the inside so that the crust formed a reservoir that Leo felt certain would sufficiently contain floods of mayonnaise, ketchup, and pickle juice. Leo had used an abundance of these materials, desiring to submit his theoretically perfect design to the most rigid of practical trials. With quivers of anticipation jiggling inside his belly Leo grasped the sandwich firmly in both hands, opened his mouth, inserted the sandwich, and was about to subject his construction to the pressure test when Jake came through the door followed by a tall bony man wearing a clerical collar. At the sight of the collar Leo’s hands went lax and the sandwich fell, smearing mayonnaise, ketchup, and pickle
juice all over Leo’s white-aproned front. “Shit,” said Leo. “I mean, g-g-g-good afternoon, Reverend. Lord, I mean God, I mean, ah, what a mess.” Leo flapped his hands helplessly. The remains of the sandwich slipped from his apron onto the top of the bar. Leo grabbed for a damp side towel but couldn’t decide whether to clean himself or the bar with it. Finally he pulled off his apron and used it to wipe the bar. Jake sat on a stool, cackling at the performance, while Brother Fletcher stood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, embarrassed by Leo’s embarrassment.

  “Aw, take it easy, Leo,” Jake said. “He don’t bite.”

  “He’s a preacher,” Leo said defensively. “You hadn’t oughta bring a preacher in here without warnin’ me.”

  “This one’s okay. He don’t even give a damn if you says damn, long as you don’t put God in front of it. Right, Rev?”

  “I ain’t never had no preacher in ma bar before,” Leo said.

  “You prejudiced against preachers, Leo?” Jake asked innocently.

  “Hell, no!” roared Leo. “I ain’t prejudiced against nobody. But shit—ah, ’scuse me, Reverend. I mean, I ain’t got nothin’ against preachers. …”

  “Well then, what’s all the noise about?” Jake demanded.

  “Well, what about ma other customers?”

  “Please,” said Brother Fletcher, raising a hand. “I understand perfectly.” He moved toward the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Leo said. “I wasn’t meanin’ for you to leave or nothin’.”

  “I thought you were,” said Brother Fletcher, a bit stiffly.

  “God, no. I mean, ’scuse me, no. It’s just—well, ah, don’t you guys wear undershirts or nothin’ under there?”

  “You want me to remove my collar?”

  “I’m sorry,” Leo said, “but this here’s a bar an’ if some a ma customers caught sight of a preacher’s collar, why, it’d be almost like seein’ a cop car parked outside.”

  “No need to explain,” Brother Fletcher said briskly. He quickly removed his collar and shirt and stood in his undershirt. “How’s that?”

  “Thanks, Rev,” Leo said. “Now you can have one on me. You do drink?” Leo peered at Brother Fletcher. Brother Fletcher felt his face grow warm. “’Scuse me, Rev,” Leo said slowly, “but ain’t I seen you in here before?”

  Brother Fletcher swallowed. “I—”

  “Nah,” said Leo. “Couldn’t be. Now I got Coke an’ stuff like that, if you don’t want a beer or nothin’.”

  Brother Fletcher breathed a sigh of relief. “I guess one beer wouldn’t keep me out of heaven,” he said.

  “Hell, no,” Jake said. “You know what they say. One drink an’ you might get in, two drinks an’ you gotta get in, three drinks an’ you can’t get up that high.” Jake laughed uproariously, Leo grinned, and Brother Fletcher gave a hearty, uncomprehending horselaugh.

  “Yeah,” Leo said, “an’ four drinks an’ you can’t get out.” Jake and Leo smiled at each other.

  Brother Fletcher was suddenly aware that something was expected of him. He felt horribly inadequate, but then inspiration struck him like a bolt of lightning. “Yes,” he said, “but no matter how many you have, once you’re in you never want to leave.” He laughed happily and raised his beer.

  It was a hot afternoon. The sun burned in a sky so blue it seemed that the color had been pounded into it with a sledgehammer. Waves of heat hung shimmering above the roofs of parked cars, reflected off the windshields of moving ones in quick, sharp glints. The rolling tires made kissing sounds as they pulled away from the insistent grasp of heat-softened asphalt. The bellowing exhaust from the number forty bus was a slightly warmer, dirtier current in the sea of hot, filthy air. In the transom space over the door of Bad Boy Bob’s Bar-B-Q an exhaust fan labored, sending the aroma of sweet-sour sauce dancing out onto the street to the beat of one bent blade that banged against part of the housing. Bad Boy Bob switched the fan to high, and the beat quickened while everything else in sight slowed down. The winos congregating near a burned-out boarded-up bashed-in storefront sank back against the grimy wall and basked like black snakes in the sun’s heat. Fast Freddy fingered his slips and waited for the Man; business had been brisk but Fast Freddy had the uncomfortable feeling that somebody was going to hit him big. Harry the Hype, swathed in sweaters, hung onto a parking meter, waiting for his connection. Despite the heat Harry the Hype was shivering—a junkie has no summer. Upstairs in the Elysium, Cotton climbed out of his bed, lumbered down the hall to the men’s room, entered a stall, and emitted clouds of flatulence, two blobs of feces, and grunts of orgasmic satisfaction. Mrs. Fletcher pushed her shopping cart along the burning sidewalk, the perspiration on her skin making her clothes wet and heavy. Rayburn Wallace sat before his living-room window, staring out at the silver sparkle of a jet as it lined out for the other side of the world. Leslie, draped across the broken-down sofa, dressed only in her panties, flipped through the pages of Black Stars magazine and nibbled on a Hershey bar. In the cool dark interior of Lightnin’ Ed’s the afternoon crowd watched the Phillies losing another game to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Brother Fletcher, his conscience sleeping through the hot afternoon, clutched a frosty mug of Schmidt’s beer and groaned along with everyone else as the Phillies slid into undisputed possession of the National League cellar. The Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan rolled down the Delaware River Expressway into the city, the air-conditioner of his Lincoln Continental going full blast, his stereo tape player pounding out James Brown’s latest, which bore a striking resemblance to James Brown’s previous. In her twenty-third floor apartment Alicia Hadley, Ph.D., tried to concentrate on the paper she was preparing for possible publication in the journal of the Modern Language Association, entitled “Reflections of the Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement in Contemporary Black Poetry.” Leroy Briggs lay on his king-size mattress, his tiger-striped sheets twisting around his ankles as his pumping legs fought to carry him clear of the dangers lurking in his dreams. Adlai Stevenson Brown, occupation bartender, stood in the air-conditioned coolness of Frankie’s Place, scribbling fragments of poetry on paper napkins. Patrolman Mario Arbruzzi completed the grisly process of hauling one corpse, property of the late Louis P. DiGeorgio, retired bartender, out of the Delaware River. Big Betsy considered a problem of fluidics—how to get both her body and sufficient water with which to wash it into a bathtub at the same time. Willie T. cruised down South Street in Leroy’s Cadillac, checking the action and searching for any signs of invasion by Gino’s Italian Army. The city panted through hot August Friday. The rivers oozed downstream, fighting sluggishly against the awesome pressure of the incoming tide. At desks and tables and benches and counters and consoles workers paused and sighed and thanked God it was Friday. In Center City Friday was the end day, and the buildings, the streets, the sidewalks would rest through Saturday and Sunday and come to choking life on Monday morning. On South Street Friday was the beginning and the asphalt panted in preparation.

  The sun scorched its way down the western half of the sky, trailing red haze across a wino’s vision, imprinting afterimages on the eyes of the no longer suffering Harry the Hype, who, connection made, eased northward to wait for the avalanche of evening pleasure-seekers with their snatchable purses loaded with cash if he were lucky, with credit cards if he were not. Alicia Hadley stepped from her shower and began half-heartedly to prepare for an evening out with a caramel-skinned stockbroker named Wendell Isaac Whyte. A sheepish and slightly inebriated Brother Fletcher hurried home, his clerical collar somewhat bent out of shape. A soaked and scrubbed but still odoriferous Big Betsy armored her face for the evening’s campaign. Cotton considered the remains of a sixteen-ounce steak done hardly at all, sighed, and ordered another. Rayburn Wallace slipped a sandwich and an apple into a brown paper bag, kissed his sleeping wife on her sweating forehead, and left for work. Willie T., wincing, paid for refilling the cavernous gas tank of Leroy’s car. The Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan, sipping brandy on the rocks, liste
ned to a recording of the previous month’s Love Feast, savoring the sound of his own cultured voice reproduced in stereophonic sound. Leslie woke from her afternoon nap, called Rayburn’s name, smiled when there was no answer. Mrs. Fletcher stared as her husband rushed into the apartment and went directly to the bathroom without stopping to say hello. Fast Freddy sat contentedly in a corner of the Elysium’s lounge, sipping beer and thanking God that no stupid nigger had managed to hit the number. Adlai Stevenson Brown hung up his apron, accepted his pay in cash from Frankie, and said good-bye. He shoved the money into his shoe, stuffed a mass of paper napkins into his pocket, and stepped out onto the street.

  The hot afternoon air struck Brown like a foam-rubber-covered fist. Sweat sprang out on his brow and ran from beneath his arms. He crossed Walnut Street into Rittenhouse Square, dodging a well-dressed woman walking a carefully clipped poodle, and continued on across the Square on the diagonal, coming out on Eighteenth Street. By that time the heat had begun to feel good to him.

  Brown moved along through the ranks of redbrick townhouses and then, quite suddenly, entered the half block of dilapidation that preceded South Street. Each day, walking home, Brown had marveled at the speed of the change from prosperity to poverty, from neat to ramshackle, from white to black. It was not at all like the transition from day to night: there was no modulation like dusk, or dawn. It was more like the snapping of a switch, the crossing of a threshold. It was the sharply illustrated difference between inside and outside, and it was the sharpness of it that bothered Brown more than the change. And the change bothered him a great deal. It bothered him that there was a change at all, and it bothered him that he changed as he crossed: spoke differently, smiled differently, cursed differently, perhaps even thought differently and felt differently. It was as if, crossing the visible border, Brown left something like a piece of luggage in a coin locker, and on the other side he picked up the piece of luggage he had deposited there at his last crossing. Brown turned left onto South Street and headed toward the apartment he had rented. On his way he passed the Elysium Hotel and recalled that he was out of beer. He retreated into a sheltering doorway and, concealed from the eyes of the ungodly, worked his pay envelope out of his shoe. He transferred a ten to his pants pocket, shoved the envelope back, and crossed the street. He entered the Elysium, ordered a six to go, and walked out again. The event did not go unnoticed. Willie T. saw him.