Drop (22 page)
In the driver’s seat, Alex had sat down so quickly that a bit of her hair was caught in the jamb. She didn’t bother to free it. I ran out to the street, but she wouldn’t look up at me. Automotive coughs as the wreck tried to start itself, gears shifting angrily into first, and Alex was screeching away from me. Standing in the street, my 3.5-inch floppy in hand, I watched her go through a red light just to put some distance between us.
July. She wouldn’t answer my calls, no matter how many times I dialed the number. She knew from her caller ID box that it was me.
Ring-ring
for Christopher, no pickup except for the recorded dismissal of her machine. After a few days, I started calling when I knew she wasn’t there just so she wouldn’t be sitting, listening to me babble. Pleas sat on her answering machine like sloppily wrapped presents, waiting for her to get home and open them. But all I was getting in return was silence, a conspicuously quiet phone. She knew that my holiday was coming, what firecracker lights meant to me, that I needed to recharge on them to last another year, she knew that there was no way I would go out there alone, unescorted and unprotected, to face the mob of Philadelphians that would also be present to witness the glory. I even had her camera, and regardless of the fact that she wasn’t getting any work, she loved that baby. I knew that was eating at her. But that’s was how tight the door was shut.
On the morning of the Fourth, I realized I was going to have to go over to meet Alex in person. Let her beat or scream or chastise or whatever she had to do to me before we headed down to the Parkway to watch the sky combust. I bought some flowers in Reading Terminal, figured they might soften her some. Calla lilies, long and white like she liked them. Only three but shit, they costed. At the thrift shop on 44th Street I picked up a vase, a long orange glass cut like crystal. Back at the crib, it took an hour in hot water to get whatever gunk was in it cleared out. I was just trying to shove those stems in when—
Pop pop pop poppop pop
—the familiar sound of a community coming undone. It had finally come for me. This time, no faint ghost. This time, right outside my window. So loud I dropped the vase in the sink and broke the bastard, only two hours after I bought it. So shocked that instead of hugging linoleum like a sane man, Chris Jones was hanging out his window, poking his head through that big rip in the screen that the mosquitoes had been flying in for months.
Outside, an absurdly large American car, too damn long to be taking that curb that fast, screeching out an angle in front of my building. Hanging out the passenger window, the upper half of a shirtless well-built man, all I could see of his head was the top of his baseball hat (maroon and white, the old school Phillies kind). He was going through great lengths to point something out behind him. But it wasn’t called pointing when you had a gun in your hand.
Pop pop pop
goes this weasel, bangs even louder than the wheels screaming a turn underneath him. It was the only thing screaming though: everybody else standing around the intersection was too busy getting down on the ground to make a sound.
Pop pop pop
. Hiding behind telephones poles and stationary automobiles so that the next
pop
wasn’t for them. Look at the weasel, his gun pointing everywhere as if he wasn’t even aiming at anything at all, just trying to see how many times he could pull the trigger.
Pop pop pop
. That gun looked like part of his arm.
It didn’t matter how bad it wanted to, there was no way that Caddy was going to make that turn.
Pop pop pop pop
. Even when the nose cleared the parked cars below my window, the ass just flew out to greet them. Thin metal crunching, plastic cracking in long dry lines, glass going from one unified plane to many smaller individual ones. The car it clipped jumped up onto the sidewalk. Weasel man, not prepared for the impact, flailed around like a mouse in a cat’s jaw, then went limp against the side of the Caddy. Arms flailing towards the ground, chest banging against the passenger door as the smoking wheels took him through a red light at Chester Avenue and beyond. Leaving bodies hugging sidewalk behind him.
I ran down the steps, calla lilies in hand. Outside, people were already rising from the ground, checking for newly opened orifices, searching their clothes for signs of wet maroon. Once satisfied that they had gained no new holes, they looked around at the others. There was a woman thirty feet from my door, lying next to the parked car that the Caddy had slammed into. She was still on the ground, forehead resting on the pavement, hands loosely hanging away from herself. Just as motionless as the car she lay beside.
I ran over, knelt by her. It was an elderly woman, a skinny one. The scarf she had tied around her head had slipped off and sat limp over the back of her skull, revealing a freckled scalp and a loose collection of white hairs. I brushed the material aside and reached for her neck to check for a pulse. Life had battered that skin soft. A hand shot out to slap my own. I jumped back, startled.
‘My neck’s ticklish,’ she said, staring up at me. I helped her rise off the ground.
Looking around, we were all standing there, the whole neighborhood. People were talking, nodding their heads, people were brushing themselves off.
‘Is everyone okay?’ I yelled. All present seemed to think so. A group inspection showed there was nobody left on the ground, nobody hiding in the bushes, nobody left bleeding in a car that we didn’t know about. First-floor apartment windows opened and everyone was fine in there, too. Nobody seemed to know who the guy was shooting at, but whoever that was had disappeared like the rest of the madness. And in its place were smiles. Wherever people had been hurrying to go five minutes before was forgotten. Giggles and grins. A block party without music or potato salad, just us celebrating being alive. It was like we all hit the numbers at the same time.
‘Now that’s a good omen!’ the elderly woman said smiling, retying her scarf around her head. She danced up and down as she did it. When her bonnet was set, I handed her my flowers. She smiled so big that the top row of her dentures fell down, clacking for me. Chris Jones, the recluse, for once so proud to play the part of the Philadelphia Negro.
The
pop pop
had finally come to me and still I was standing. Not just alive, but standing, calm, watching the dust return to rest. Look at me, not even sweating on this humid afternoon. I was unshakable; I was. I was invincible. I was determined. So I was fireworks bound.
Near sunset, I got off the number 34 trolley alone, joining the current of pedestrians marching north towards the Art Museum, protected only by a T-shirt and shorts and the camera that hung before me. Together, we, the city, walked to the Parkway, feeling as if the clouds were boiling, our clothes heavy with sweat. T-shirts that would be outdated by tomorrow and flags that would be forgotten even before then, left as litter for someone getting paid overtime to pick up.
Legions of temporary nomads trudging forward in the spaces between traffic-stricken cars, the screams of drunks and infants and the overwhelming feeling that something was about to happen, something good, something free. Amateur arsonists letting bottle rockets fly over the crowd by lighting the fuse and launching them from their hands, toddlers staring at the tin sparklers they held, fantasizing about eating the flame. Cops on bikes glided down 22nd Street towards the action, their tight blue butts hanging over the seats. As they coasted, they tapped on car doors and told young men to turn their music down, trying to bring peace in the battles of sound. Yam-skinned man canvassed out on the corner of 24th and Waverly, smiling and putting his hand forward like a Tuesday morning politician, waving at children, dancing to whatever rhythm was loudest to his ears. ‘Hot!’ he said to me when I passed. If they packaged whatever fire burned in his skull, we’d be addicted to that, too.
The Parkway is a full mile of wide street and grassland separating the lanes, its main road lined with flags of every nation worth arguing about, colored banners I used to stare at as a child and wonder if they existed beyond names. At the end of the street, making the whole thing look like an emperor’s driveway, sits the Art Museum. That’s where I was headed. A public palace complete with Greek pillars as thick as redwoods and steps so wide they seem to invite the entire city to climb them simultaneously. By the time my section of crowd poured out onto the Parkway, the museum’s orange stone was illuminated in floodlights, its majesty accentuated by the fact that it was deserted and the street before it was heavily packed with worshipers. That’s where the fireworks would be coming out of, so that’s where I kept walking. When the flow of the crowd died I continued to charge on, armed with a sharp elbow and endless self-pardons.
Two blocks from my target, the crowd had compacted into a sweaty wall, people packed so tight they couldn’t move their arms or balance themselves if they were falling. The cops had us jammed in like this, stuck on the grass partitions. They were clearing the roads for ambulances and important people. It was hard to see anything but heads. Short folks and children were scampering up shoulders, lampposts, and telephone poles. Standing confidently on streetlight boxes until mounted police rode up and told them, on eye level, to get down. I wasn’t short but that’s what I needed to do: climb up, get a vantage point, somewhere I could not only get a clear view of the festivities but also some good overhead shots of the crowd. Through pushes and will, I made it to the side barrier, ducking underneath the wooden horse when the cop closest wasn’t looking. When he turned around, I was already walking towards him to ask how I could get back to the press booth. Nodding, he pointed me down the street towards my goal.
I made it all the way to Eakins Circle, directly across from the Art Museum steps, when the PA system started announcing tonight’s celebration. The sky was as black as North Philly. On the podium, a local diva was reinterpreting ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ prancing about the notes, determined to make the song hers. I tried getting a shot (maybe I could dish it off to her publicist later in exchange for cash), but the crowd wouldn’t spread for me. I still needed higher ground; there was a fountain about thirty yards away I started pushing towards.
Its ornate bottom was shaped like a square, a life-size copper animal guarding every corner. Each beast was currently being ridden by spectators who’d had the foresight to arrive earlier than me. At the center of the monument, atop a massive granite podium, sat George Washington on his perpetually trotting horse, its metal muscles bulging from the weight it would continually bear. Besides George, the space went unclaimed. I could get shots of everything from up there.
Climbing into the fountain’s dried basin, I pushed through bodies as the crowd continued to condense in anticipation. At the base of Washington’s podium, it was clear why it went unclaimed. The bastard had to be fifteen feet high. The singing had stopped; the mayor was talking; it wouldn’t be long now. I had to get up there. My only chance was a waterspout further along the side, an old painted thing that probably didn’t even work any more. It looked solid: it stuck out about two feet from the ground. This was it, this would be my final victory.
The crowd around the pipe spread for me once it realized I was about to do something stupid. Using the yard of space I had as a runway, I thrust forward. My left foot landed squarely on the spout’s top, my calf coiled and aching to be sprung. In an instant, a leg that was bent shot into straight rigidity. I was flying. My hands reaching upward, my body stretching so fiercely that sections of my vertebrae no longer connected. Higher I floated, the distant pedestal above becoming close, feasible, nearly in my hands. And then it was becoming distant again, as far away as Brixton, moving more beyond my capacity the further I fell to the ground. Landing, my feet stung, Alex’s camera banged hard against my chest. I tried again. Up. Down. I tried again. Up. Down. I tried again. Too dumb to stop. Certain that my ancestors would witness my struggle, bless me with the gift of flight.
‘Yo cuz, you need a boost.’ He was a short brother, muscular. Behind him his girlfriend seemed annoyed he had offered to touch me. In three seconds, I thanked him so many times he already regretted his offer. My booster cradled his hands and leaned against the stone for balance as I stepped into his palms. Up, up, I was reaching. Still a good six feet away but getting better. The strong little bastard was pushing me higher as I balanced myself against the granite, lifting his hands from his waistline to his shoulders. I could hear him grunting over the noise of the crowd. Above us, all my fingers twinkled for something to hold on to. General Washington remained in his saddle, motionless and nonplused. Wedging my foot against the wall and bending his knees for support, booster had pushed me above his own head now. He was a superhero. The crowd had turned from the mayor’s final words and it was booster they were watching. Two hands over his head, his arms trembling, balancing my one sneaker in his palms. I almost didn’t care that I was still about three feet from touching the top. There was a great view from here; maybe he could just hold me for an hour till the fireworks were over. Maybe we could walk like this home together.
‘You got it, black,’ another voice yelled up to me as a brother as tall as a Sixer stepped forth from the onlookers. His skin was so sweaty, the gold chains around his neck looked dull on his flesh. ‘Come on here,’ he told me. He was someone I would never risk slightly nudging, let alone stepping on, but he stretched out next to me, arms over his head, making a higher stair with his hands for me to walk into. I did, shifting my weight to the next leg. ‘Reach!’ he demanded, and I couldn’t deny him. Grabbing hold of the metal hoof of Washington’s steed, I pulled myself onto the structure. ‘Go, go, go,’ they were chanting below me. Forgetting the consequences of gravity, I rose, stood up, grabbed on to Washington’s oversize left thigh and pulled myself onto the back of his saddle. I had never ridden a horse before. One hand around the president’s waist, I waved in victory as the crowd thundered its pleasure around me.