Runaway (20 page)

He kicked out. He brought his foot up into Bugs's groin, and Bugs let out a yell, and then the fingers magically dropped from Johnny's arm. He staggered across the room, wondering if he'd make it. He heard Bugs yelling wildly behind him, and he heard footsteps, and he could hear the low moaning of the man who'd been burned by the kicked grill. He headed for the steps, his arm throbbing and aching, with the sounds angry behind him, the footsteps thudding against the hard floor. His own feet hit the iron rungs of the steps, and he started down, hearing the clattering, resounding footsteps above him, clanking down the steps, like the distorted sounds in a terrible nightmare, down, down to the main floor and then across the darkened room with the piled dusty furniture and the shouts and cries behind him all the way. He leaped up for the window and jimmied it open, and then shoved the loose bar aside.

“I'll kill that black bastard!” he heard Bugs shout, but he was already outside and sprinting for the fence. He jumped up, forced to use both arms, and he saw the wild blood streak he left on the fence, and that was when he knew his arm had started bleeding again. He panicked for a moment, and then he was over the fence and dropping to the sidewalk, just as Bugs squeezed through the loose bar in the window.

He was tired, very tired. His arm hurt like hell now, and his heart exploded against his rib cage, and he knew he could not risk a prolonged chase with Bugs behind him, because the bastard would surely catch him.

He was at the corner now, and Bugs still hadn't reached the fence. He spotted the manhole, and he ran for it quickly, stooping down and expertly prying open the lid with his fingers. He'd been in manholes before. He'd been in them when the kids used to play stickball, and a ball rolled down the sewer and the only way to get it was by prying open the manhole cover and catching it before it got washed away to the river.

He was in the manhole now, and he slid the cover back in place, feeling it wedge firmly in the caked dirt, soundlessly settling back into position. He clung to the iron brackets set into the wall of the sewer, and he could hear the rush of water far below him where the sewer elbowed into the pipes. There was noise above him, the noise of feet tramping on the iron lid of the manhole. He held his breath because there was no place to go from here, no place at all.

The footsteps clattered overhead, and the iron lid rattled, and then the footsteps were gone. He waited until he heard more footsteps, figuring them to belong to the other vags who'd been with Bugs. And finally there was no sound overhead any more.

He was safe. They didn't realize he'd ducked into the manhole. They were probably scouting Third Avenue for him now, and they'd give up when they figured they'd lost him.

To play it doubly sure, he edged his way deeper into the sewer, holding to the iron brackets with his good hand. The stench of garbage and filthy water and the bowel movements of a giant metropolis reached up to caress his nostrils. He was tempted to move up close to the lid again, but it was darker down below, and if someone did lift the lid, chances were he wouldn't be seen if he went deeper.

The walls around him were slimy and wet, and the stink was all around him, like a soggy, vile blanket that smothered him. He felt nauseous, and he didn't know whether the nausea came from the dripping slime of the sewer or his dripping arm, and he remembered then that his arm was bleeding again.

He clung to the brackets, and he watched the blood spread on the bandage, and he shook his head wearily and wondered what he'd done with the orange-crate stick he'd used for a tourniquet so long ago, so goddamned long ago.

But at least he was safe here, and Bugs and the boys were upstairs. Upstairs. The thought frightened him a little. He descended deeper in the manhole until the elbow of the sewer was just beneath his feet, and he could hear the rush of water loud beneath him.

He was very weary, more weary than he'd been in all his life. The weight of the entire city seemed to press down on him, as if all the concrete and steel were concentrated on this one hole in the asphalt, determined to crush it and him into the core of the earth.

He hooked his left arm onto one of the brackets, and he hung there like a Christ with one arm free. The free arm dangled at his right side, the bandage soaked through now, the blood running down and dropping into the rushing water below.

Drop by drop it hit the slimy surface of the brown water while Johnny hung from the rusted iron bracket, praying that no one would lift the manhole cover, wondering how long it would be before he could go up again. Drop by drop the blood mingled with the brown water, flowed into the elbow where manhole joined sewer pipe, rushed toward the river.

And the rat clinging to the rotted orange crate lodged in the sewer pipe turned glittering bright eyes toward the manhole opening, and his nostrils twitched as he smelled blood. His teeth gnashed together an instant before he plunged into the water and swam toward the source of the blood.

Fourteen

She tried to see beneath the skin of Harlem.

She tried to take her mind off the neons that tinted the night sky. She went up Beale Street, 133rd between Seventh and Lenox, the street that had been called Jungle Alley in the 1920s, the roaring show place that was supposed to contain the heart of Harlem, a phony gaudy street set up for those who had the loot. The old spots were gone now, all of them—the Nest, Mexico's, Pod's, and Jerry's. She stopped in at Dickie Wells's place, but Johnny wasn't there.

And then she hit all the bars, the big bars and the little ones, the ones with small combos and the ones with jukeboxes, and the ones with strippers and the ones without. She ignored the clink of glasses and the sounds of music. She studied the faces, and she knew there were about 918,000 Negroes in Harlem, more or less, and she knew that Johnny was one of them, and so she studied the faces. And because she studied the faces with such scrutiny, and because the opening of her coat occasionally revealed the long curve of her flank, she was mistaken for something else, and she got an offer in almost every bar she hit. She ignored the offers when she could. In one bar on Seventh, a man pulled her down onto his lap and thrust his hand under her coat, surprised when he found a silken robe and an almost nonexistent bra, more surprised when he felt the sting of her hand on his face.

The music gave her a background. The music was the music of a dock hand singing to the moon on a New Orleans wharf. The music was the lonesome wail of a cotton-picker, the plaintive cry of a fugitive slave. The music was the blues, and the music was low and soft, or high and hot, the jazz that started with a black man's horn, the bop that flowed from ten tan fingers. She ignored the music. She was looking
under
the music, and under the sights and the sounds and the smells, the way someone will look under a rug for a missing coin.

And when she'd covered all the bars she knew, and all the bars she didn't know, she began hitting the diners and the all-night luncheonettes, and a few of the drugstores that were open. And she listened to the talk, but the talk did not penetrate because she was looking and not listening.

“This cat, he the end, man. He gi' me the skin, an' then he say, ‘Boy, lay a deuce on me, I hungry.' I tell him to cut out, 'fore I slit him ear to ear, an' man, he disappear.”

She looked, and she did not listen.

“What kind of a girl do you take me for, Jase?”

“Just a nice girl, that's all. A nice girl I'd like to take home to Mother. Right this minute.”

“You ain't got no mother, Jase, and you know it.”

She smelled the coffee, and she saw her reflection in the polished urns, and she saw the deep brown liquid spilling from the spouts.

“This number's a sure thing, Joe, I know it.”

“There ain't no number's a sure thing.”

“This one is boy. It's on my Social Security card, an' it's on my girl's apartment door. Now if that ain't a sure thing, you tell me what is.”

“Ain't nothin' sure but death and taxes.”

She was cold. She should have put more on. But she walked, and she opened doors, and she looked, and she closed doors, and she walked again, because somewhere in Harlem there was Johnny.

“You missed the whole point what he was talkin' about.”

“I heard him just the same as you did.”

“He wasn't sayin' we should become communists. You hear him once mention communism?”

“No, he was too smart for that.”

“He was only sayin' we shouldn't spit on Russia. That's what he was sayin'. He was sayin' Russia was our salvation, that's all.”

“And that ain't communism, huh? Man, you don't know yo' ass from yo' elbow when it comes to politics.”

“I listened to as many of these guys as you did.”

“But you always miss the point. I can spot a communist at sixty paces. I can smell the bastards. Even their soapboxes are stamped, ‘Made in USSR.'”

“You never saw that, man. Who you kiddin'?”

The talk, the endless talk, the small talk that occupied the long nights, and she did not hear the talk except as a background.

“Wun't nobody could fight like Louis, nobody.”

“What about Wolcott?”

“He's a bum. Louis eat him up if he was in his prime.”

“Yeah, well, Wolcott ate
him
up.”

“That's 'cause he wun't in his prime. Man, when Louis was in his prime, wun't nobody could touch him. Nobody.”

And then there was no more talk, because there were no more places to hit. There were only the streets then, and she took to the streets. The lights in the tenements were out. The street lamps threw their glare onto the asphalt. She could hear the click of her sequined slippers on the pavement, and once a horn blared at her as she crossed the street aimlessly, and someone shouted, “Hey, you damn fool, watch where you're going!”

She
was
watching. She was watching very carefully. She was watching the way people walked, the slope of their shoulders, the tilt of their heads, the clothing they wore. She was watching all these because she knew Johnny the way she knew herself, and she knew she could spot him by his gait, or the way he held his head.

She saw the empty faces, the hollow faces, the ones hopped to the ears. She saw these, and she recognized them instantly, the wide staring eyes, the slack lip, the faint smile, the expression of bewildered wonder. She searched the faces, and in those faces she saw the momentary release from living, the high that would keep its owner away above Harlem until the edge wore thin, and then there was always another needle, or another lump of white piled high on a mirror, waiting to be sniffed up into the head, waiting to blow off the top of a skull. And she saw the other men, The Men, in capital letters, The Men who served the hunger. She recognized them because The Man was always recognizable. The Man was someone you got to know in Harlem, because The Man held the key to the magic kingdom of dreams.

And there were those lying in the gutter or huddled in the doorways, and these were not hopheads. These had their own poison, and they took that through the gullet, and it burned out their stomachs and their intestines and it finally hit their brains until they began to corrode like rusted water pipes. She saw these, and she stopped at each one she saw, looking down into his face, hoping it was Johnny, and yet praying it would not be Johnny lying in the gutter. She walked, and she looked, and the streets were very dark now, and she was a little frightened. She heard a sudden footstep behind her, felt a hand on her arm, heard a whispered “How much, baby?” She threw the hand off her arm, and she hurried away into the darkness, wondering, Do I look like a whore?

Only a whore walks the street at this hour. Only a whore or a woman looking for her man. But where do you look? Where else is there?

She knew he was not religious, but she tried the churches anyway, all of them, thankful for the open doors, hoping Johnny had wandered into one of those open doors. She tried Kings Chapel Pentecostal Assembly on Fifth Avenue, and she tried St. Philip's on West 134th, and the Metropolitan Baptist on 128th, and the Abyssinian Baptist on 138th, hitting the churches as she thought of them, doubling back over her own footsteps occasionally. She hit all the churches she could think of, and then she started with the store-front churches, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She went to the Harlem Branch of the Y on 135th Street, but he wasn't registered there. She tried the Lafayette Theatre, and she hung around outside the movie houses that were still open with the late shows, watching the people as they spilled onto the pavements. She hung around Harlem Hospital, and on a chance she went inside and asked if they had a patient named Johnny Lane, but they had no one by that name.

She didn't know where to go any more. She tried Mount Morris Park, frightened when she heard footsteps behind her. She ran all the way out of the park, but in spite of her fear, she tried the other parks, Morningside Park, and then St. Nicholas Park, but she didn't find Johnny.

The streets were deserted now, and the lonely click of her high heels frightened her. She did not want to give up, but she simply didn't know where else to go. Could he have left Harlem? Gone down into Wop Harlem, maybe, or Spanish Harlem? Had he left the city entirely? Or was he lying in some hallway with his arm bleeding? Where was he? Where?

She headed for the Kingdom of Father Divine on 126th Street. An angel named Heavenly Peace told her that she had not seen anyone answering to Johnny's description. She left the place, looking crosstown to where the warehouses were cluttered near Wop Harlem. She glanced at the high outline of the Triboro, and she thought about the Father Divine chant, “He has the world in a jug and the stopper in his hand,” and she wondered where in that jug Johnny could be.

She headed east, mostly because she didn't know where else to go. She walked down 126th Street, her heels clicking on the pavement. She stuck to the middle of the street because the sidewalks were darker.