by John Keene
We walked down a near-black hallway, and he again knocked six times on a door. To our left I noticed another door open but a crack. I walked over toward it and peeking in it saw a stairwell look like it led to the roof. The door Dandy had rapped on opened, baring a brother, face backlit by lamplight. Dandy pushed in, towing me with him. Before us sat a bed, face down in it, I saw squinting, lay a white lady, least I thought she was white, and a female, but sheets covered her legs, pillows concealed her head. Since she wasn’t moving I didn’t know if she was alive. The room stank of sweat and piss, no one had ever cleaned up in here, and I could also smell urine rising from the floorboards and the dark sheet shrouding the window. I turned toward the door and Dandy grabbed my elbow and said, “See, I told you I had something I know you’d like. Who don’t want a pretty girl like that?”
The brother, double our age, probably 30, skinny as a knifeblade and just as ugly, whose presence I had almost completely forgotten, piped up from the shadows, “Who this little red bastard, you only sposed to be up here by yourself.”
“This my cousin, slave,” Dandy replied, placing his hand inside his jacket like he had a shank or revolver in there, and I really wished I had left him on Cope and just headed straight to the event. “What mine is my blood, plus you owe me triple anyway.” While he was talking the white lady began moaning and lifted her behind in the air and spread her legs wide open. “Just think of this as partial repayment.”
The man looked from me to Dandy, then said, “Y’all got an hour with her, and no mad shit neither,” and Dandy said, “Slave, who the fuck you think you dealing with?” He reached into his jacket again, then said, “Where that special cigar you sposed to have ready?” The man pulled a cylinder, wrapped in what looked like butcher paper, from a cloth pouch slung over his shoulder. “Light it, so we know it okay.” The man lit the cigar from a candle near the door, and drew hard on it three or four times, then he passed it to Dandy, and Dandy drew on it some before passing it to me. “You can get out now,” he said to the brother, who stood staring at us, “we knows how to tell time.” Soon as the door closed, Dandy pointed to the cigar, which reeked of burning trash, and I took a hit, I had smoked tobacco before but I still choked some because it was so strong. When I handed it back to him he took another hit, then rubbed it out on the wall.
“Now Red,” he said, “you been with a woman, right?” I nodded, even though I never gotten any further than kisses with Rosaline. Dandy studied my face in the darkness. “That hinky midnight girl I seen you with before, she probably ain’t really give you any, though. Nothing like this.” Then: “You go first, my treat.” I shook my head, which felt so light it might separate from my neck, and again started toward the door, but Dandy said, “You gonna get you some of this grade A first.” I was trying to decide what to do when I saw the lady putting her hand between her thighs, saying something I couldn’t understand, it was in a foreign language and I was already dizzy but getting excited too, I knew being in this room with this white woman was forbidden and if they caught us they would hang us, but Dandy was stroking the outside of his pants and saying “She and I is both waiting, Red,” so I looked for a place to put my clothes. I untied my cravat and removed my shirt and waistcoat, then started to remove my boots when Dandy said, “Naw, leave everything on but tie and shirt, put them on this chair right here, we gotta hurry and I sure ’on’t wanna see ya little red ass.” He pulled a long knife from somewhere in his suit coat, which he draped over the edge of the chair. Following his lead I left my shirt, tie and waistcoat there, unbuttoned my pants, and shuffled to the bed, where the woman kept saying “Leave, leave.” I told Dandy that she was telling us to go away and he said, “Fool, she saying she want you in German, hurry up.” I climbed onto the bed, I could smell her woman smell, and from somewhere shit and vinegar, the sheets were damp but not soaked, I couldn’t really see her face because she still was concealing it under a pillow, maybe I didn’t want to see it, I could see her back curving up white as soapstone in front of me, her behind as fair arching, the thick fair hair on her sex, I leaned closer, kneeling, my knees sinking into the soft mattress, and—
—Dandy was next to me saying, “Put it in, Red,” as she hiked her buttocks up to me and threw her head around to see me, I glimpsed her face and saw she was probably the same age as the brother at the door, her long brown hair falling all over her back as she took me in her, Dandy putting me hard in her, pressing us together and I thought of Rosaline and how this felt. I started to push into the softness, the woman sliding back and forth, I reached down to grab her hips and at that moment I thought about Horatio and how he had described this all once, I could see him and kept pushing harder, my hands on her sweaty hips, she pulling my insides out of myself and I shot out everything like I had never done before and cried out as Dandy pulled me away, handed me the knife and a handkerchief and said, “Use that bowl of water there to clean yourself up good,” and I stepped off the bed as he clambered onto it, telling me, “Soon as you done cleaning up good guard that door,” and she barked out something and he grunted and started pumping and I almost forgot to wash myself, his pants fell around his knees and he gripped down between her thighs and still hard and aroused again I couldn’t stop watching them, his dark mounds hammering back and forth, her legs clamping onto his. “Red,” he said glancing at me and I checked the door, it was still closed and he howled real loud and shook and she screamed out “Leave, leave” till he jumped up and said, panting, “You cleaned up completely?” and “That was good, right?” and “Way we did it she won’t get knocked up by neither of us bulls,” and he grabbed the handkerchief from me and scrubbed himself several times, as the woman sat up in the bed, now calling out to us. Dandy said, “See, you done made her forget her real man,” then “Red, tie your tie, “ he straightened it for me, took the knife, donned his suit jacket, when all of a sudden we heard a street whistle and banging—
—Dandy threw open the door, his eyes darting, “I seen stairs,” I said, he seized my hand and I led him to them, there was a white cop’s voice, maybe two, below us, no sign of the brother outside our door, we could hear chairs being overturned below us and somebody screaming as something tumbled down the stairwell, we were halfway up to the roof when Dandy said, “My hat, Cuz, you go on!” and I told him, “I’ll wait, I can’t leave you,” and he say, “No, you got to get to your job,” and I realized I forgotten all about it, I was probably already late, but I told him, “I can’t leave you,” the white voices were ascending, nearing us, we could hear the batons or maybe tire irons hitting the walls, bannisters, flesh, I stayed there on the stairs as he ran back and I heard a cop voice holler, “It’s a god-awful hive of ’em,” and Dandy yelled from the room, “You got to go, I don’t want you to get sent up, they’d break our necks for that white girl,” but I did not move till he came barreling up behind me pushing me through the hatch onto the roof, it was evening now, the roofs of Philadelphia like silver-black waves, strewn with pearls and gold.
Dandy replaced the hatch, but we could still hear voices just below us and he said, “Red, we gonna to have to jump,” and I said, “Where, off the roof?” not even thinking about how we would reach the street, and he pointed, “Over there,” from the stretch of roof we stood on to one lower, then there was another with a parapet, and the hatch started to open and he stomped it back closed and said, “Let’s go,” so we rared back and sprinted and soared—
—Onto the next roof half a story below, I hit the surface first and skidded to a halt, Dandy did the same thing, we stood and ran and jumped again, onto the parapet roof, rolling as we
landed, “One more,” he said and we leapt, over a gap my whole body length, closing my eyes upon as we crossed it, I spotted a chimney and a water tank and we hid ourselves behind them, Dandy clutching his hat and laughing, “Red, even in the dark it’s clear you black as a chimney sweep,” and I looked at myself and him, he appeared to be all smeared in tar, his face and palms and shirt, like my cravat and tie and waistcoat, my pants and palms all black and sticky, even my hair, a thick layer of pitch from one of the roofs all over both of us, and we could hear the cops yelling from the building but they couldn’t see us, and they were not about to jump. I knew once we somehow came down there was no way I could show up like this at Mr. Linde’s, and I tried to think of an excuse to tell Dameron, but began formulating plans to talk to his rival, Mr. Thomas Dorsey, first thing Monday about joining his catering company since I already foresaw what was going to happen. Dandy was still laughing and saying in a low voice that rode the blackness, “You hear them cops still up there trying to figure where we disappeared to?” and “You know I want to do that with you again,” and “Red, Cuz, you really flew!”
Dameron fired me and must have sent word to Mr. Dorsey, who refused to bring me on, so I got only a few jobs here and there with the smaller caterers. Sometimes when I was julienning carrots or making a roux I formulated the extreme idea of working down on the docks, though I also thought it was a good idea to avoid being anywhere near the Schuylkill, because if the cops didn’t spot me one of them from that house might, while the Delaware side, brimming with far more wharves, was not only locked down by immigrants, but Dandy’s usual territory. Jonathan wanted to know what had really happened, though I would not tell him, but I considered asking if he could get me on with his boss, Mr. Kahnweiler, though in truth I didn’t want another job in his shadow nor be a stockboy. I recounted the story to Horatio, only I said the woman was one of us, I was ashamed to tell him the truth, just like I didn’t tell Dandy I’d thought of Horatio when I was with her. Nevertheless Horatio asked me to describe it over and over, to paint a spoken picture of me and then Dandy inside her. I tried not to think about what happened though whenever I patted my empty pockets I cursed and then grinned at the memory of that evening with my cousin.
Wherever I went now during my searches for work, everybody, black and white, seemed to be talking about the war, how the Southern states just kept leaving and the Confederates were eventually going to invade Pennsylvania, how there would soon be no more slavery and how, they said at the barber, they’d put us all in bond if Richmond was not defeated. There were appreciably more white men in uniforms in the streets. Sometimes the white people even seemed to treat us a little better than usual, sometimes, as I found in Independence Park or on the streetcars, worse. Once I was shoved off after paying, another time a rider, decrying the fact that there was a war going on at all, spat a brown stream of tobacco juice in my direction. The summer came and then was nearly gone, I all the while doing my occasional cook prep jobs, because there weren’t that many special events or parties, hoarding every penny, just waiting for the Academy lectures to start again. Mostly I walked the avenues looking, for jobs, for something, anything, from one end of the city to the other, checking in at the Gas Works and the Arsenal, the railway stations and the hospitals, but nobody wanted to sign me on because they already had workers or weren’t hiring us or because I was still too young.
One hot August Sunday evening I met up with Horatio near Washington Square. We were just ambling and sharing a cigar and, as if an invisible fuze exploded in my head, I said, “I’m going to go work with Mr. Robins’ friend,” and he said, “Who?” and I said, “’Member, at the last Academy talk, about the air balloons?” and he said, “How you even recollect that?” and he laced his arm around my shoulders and took the cigar from my lips and rolled it in his and said, “Colored can’t fight in this war, specially not no 16-year-old,” and I said, “I heard them talking at the barber about it, they asking the president to allow colored volunteers and troops,” and he traced something on the back of my neck and said, “Well, you ain’t even grown enough to muck out stables yet,” and I pushed him away and said, “I’m telling you, I’m going to go work for Mr. Robins’ friend, I still got his carte de visite,” and I thought about showing it to Horatio, since I had been walking around with it in my pocket for weeks, but instead I said, “I’m even going to go to Washington if I have to,” and he yanked me back to him, pushing the cigar in my mouth and said, “You can be a admay li’l ignay, Edray, know that?” then “What that white man name again?” and I say, “Mr. Edward Linde,” and he asked, “Ain’t he related to that man reason you got fired?” and I said, “Maybe”—though from the card I knew they shared the same address—“but the old man was throwing that party and he ain’t know who was supposed to be there, Dameron got rid of me cause I never showed up and ruined them clothes, plus my latenesses, even though I only ever missed one other party and was late just a handful of times.” Horatio paused, observing me, then said, “He give you your job back come September, can’t nobody stay angry at you long,” and I said, “Nobody cept Rosaline, though I don’t care,” and Horatio winked at me and said, “We both know why.” But I didn’t. Instead of asking what he meant I said, “Well, I’m going to go work with Mr. Edward Linde, and that Professor Lowe,” and Horatio laughed and hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe and I wrestled him off me and punched him in his chest, he chasing me, still laughing, all the way up Locust.
The next morning I woke early, scrubbed myself completely, and put on my nicest shirt and trousers. As soon as Mama and Jonathan had left the house I headed up Broad to Mr. Linde’s near Rittenhouse. I tried not to get all sweaty but it was hot as a griddle outside, and I was nearly soaked through when I reached the front door, so I patted myself down with the handkerchief Dandy had given me, my souvenir of our last adventure. The house sat back from the street behind a stone wall, broken by a black wrought iron gate with the letters AVL, in a circle, in its center. I let myself in since it was not locked, and walked down a brick path through a garden full of flowers and statues. Using the gold-plated knocker I rapped gently. A man with gray hair in a blue livery suit opened the door, looked at me then behind me, curiously, and said, “You got a delivery for Mr. and Mrs. Linde?” and I answered, “I am here to speak to Mr. Edward Linde.” At this the man scrunched up his face, shook his head and said, “Boy, come again?” and I repeated, “I am here to speak to Mr. Edward Linde, Sir, the scientist.” The man stared at me, then said, “Wait here,” and I remained there, half-watching coaches passing, small groups of elegantly dressed people heading toward the square, wagons making deliveries. The man returned to the door and hissed, “Go out the front and come around the alley, I’ll meet you at the gate near the stable.” He was still looking like he couldn’t believe I was there, but I obeyed his instructions, walked all the way around the wall till I found the alley, where he was waiting for me at another black gate, this one locked. I could see through it that the rear garden was even bigger than the one in front and the house, which was three stories, was immense too.
“What you want with Mr. Edward Linde, ‘the scientist’?”
“I work at the Academy—” and before I finished he cut me off.
“If you got a message for him from them tell it or hand me the paper. I’ll pass it on to him.”
“No, Sir,” I say, “I ain’t—didn’t—finish. I work at the Academy and I met Mr. Linde there, and he told me he going to work with Professor Lowe, who also a scientist working with balloons, and—” Shaking his large head, the silvery tufts rising like wings from th
e bluish-brown crown, he waved for me to stop.
“I’ll go get Miss Katherine, this all too queer. Stay right there.” I stood for a while, stepping out of the way when two white men dragged a dray, loaded with several crates, alongside me, and like magic the man returned to unlock the gate and let them carry the crates in, though he repeated to me, “Right there.” When the deliverymen left, paying me no attention, the older man returned with a tall young white woman. He said to me slowly and formally, “This Miss Katharine Linde, Mr. Edward sister. You can tell her what you want through the gate. Shall I wait here, Miss?” She shook him off and he went back into the house, though I figured he and probably everybody else in there was watching us closely. The young woman looked mostly like Mr. Edward, but in female form, with long, chestnut hair that she wore up in a comb.
“What is your name . . . how can I help you . . . ?”
“Theodore King, Ma’am,” I said. “I work at the Academy on Saturdays at they lectures and I met Mr. Edward at the last one, by Professor Thaddeus Lowe, the balloon specialist, and Mr. Edward, who Mr. Robins say—”
“Excuse me, did you say Peter Robins?” She almost blushed as she asked this, so I momentarily looked away. She opened a fan and sat on a small stone bench near the gate.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “The very same. Mr. Robins was saying that Mr. Edward was studying science, and Mr. Edward say—said—that he was going to work with Professor Lowe.”
“Theodore,” she said, making me think she was about to tell me something, but she was just pronouncing my name. She looked me up and down, before staring at some of the white flowers, hovering like stars, beside her. “Mmm. This is so very odd. Do you have a message from the Academy for my brother? Anatole said something about a message.”