145th Street Read online

  “So what she’s doing is running around trying to show what she’s all about. The way I figure it is if the ho wants to go, let her go because I ain’t running behind her. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” Big Time answered. “You can’t, you know, get to somebody when they want to be on their own.”

  “So I had to turn her out because I can’t use nobody around that brings me down. If you bring me down I got to turn you loose because you get in the way of business. Wack don’t walk and flak don’t talk in no business . . .”

  There was a dude sucking on a crack pipe and Big Time thought he was looking in his direction. What was he checking him out for? How come Sweet Jimmy had the guy in his place, anyway?

  Big Time felt himself easing out but with the pipe sucker watching him he had to fight the nod. He had paid twenty dollars for the hit and Sweet Jimmy’s stuff was correct but now he was freaking because of the guy watching him. And all the stuff about his sister might have been a trick bag. He might have been testing him, to see what he knew, if he could hold his stuff or if he was going to slip and slide so that he could be had or maybe run lame but he knew he could separate himself out from the dudes who were down and out and he knew he was dealing with the real game so nobody could work their show or creeping and peeping and waiting for you to wear down so they could get over. Big Time was tired but he still checked out the guy across from him letting the pipe fall across his lap and leaning back from his hit and he wasn’t nothing but a crackhead trying to front like he was stupid clean with a gangsta lean and Sweet Jimmy’s snap rap flowing all around him dissing his sister’s flavor and checking him out at the same time and sleep . . . and sleep . . . and sleep. . . .

  Sleep.

  Wake.

  “Yo, man, you got a lot on the cap,” Sweet Jimmy said. “So when you see her you can tell her that you’ll hook her up with the S.A.T.”

  “Yeah, it’s no big thing.”

  Down from Sweet Jimmy’s place a woman was bargaining with a used furniture dealer over the price of a lamp. The man, short and dark, was trying to explain that he could get fifty dollars for the lamp downtown and had to charge her twenty-five.

  “This lamp doesn’t even work!” the woman was saying.

  “It’s art deco,” the dealer said. “They go for big money sometimes. Hundreds of dollars.”

  “Not when they don’t work” The woman’s voice rose in pitch and she separated her legs, securing her position on the sidewalk. “If it doesn’t give out any light, what good is it?”

  Big Time was tired. He checked his pockets. He had seventy-five cents left. He remembered he had a can of tuna fish at home and wondered if he really was in the mood for tuna fish. Sometimes tuna fish upset his stomach and he was already feeling a little nauseous.

  Part III The Roof

  “So where were you?” his mother had asked. “If you weren’t in school all last week just where were you?”

  He walked out. Didn’t she know there weren’t any answers? What was he going to say? That he had been searching and that he didn’t know what he was searching for? That he was afraid and looking for a place to be safe. That he didn’t know what made him afraid?

  That he was tired?

  There were no answers and the questions ate at him. He walked out and started down the stairs, her voice still ringing in his ears. He stopped. Where to go? Leaning against the wall he closed his eyes and listened for the feelings that rumbled though his silence. Nausea? So soon? No, just fatigue.

  He thought about the warehouse roof and started downstairs again. Sometimes, when it rained, the leftover garbage would mix with water and begin to stink Big Time squinted into the darkness. It was growing cold but he still didn’t want to go home and listen to his mother’s recital of his failings. Not tonight.

  Across the street and into the alley that led to the fire escape. Carefully climb the first ladder, bracing his feet on the window ledge, and then onto the iron stairway that led to the roof. There was a light coming from one window. The building was abandoned by everyone who could make a dollar on it. A few homeless people used it now, sometimes a crackhead down on his luck. Big Time slipped by the window with the light without looking in. Respect.

  Too cold. He hadn’t noticed how cold it had grown. If he could stand it an hour, maybe two, his mother would be asleep. He wondered what she dreamt about. Grass? Distant white clouds against a shock of blue sky? What did Miss Pat dream about? She was old enough to have a head full of movies.

  He thought the boy was a dog, that is, when the boy came out of the shadow Big Time imagined that it was a small dog that had been lying in the shadows.

  “Who you?” he asked, his heart calming, his breathing headed back to normal.

  “Benny,” the boy said.

  “Penny?” Big Time asked. “Your name is Penny?”

  “Benny,” the boy repeated. “With a B.”

  “What you doing up here?”

  “Nothing,” Benny said. He stepped forward into the dim moonlight.

  He was eight, maybe nine, Big Time thought. He could have been eleven if the thin arms coming from the short-sleeved and collarless shirt were from hunger. The jeans he wore were worn and dirty.

  “What you mean by ‘nothing’?” Big Time asked.

  The boy shrugged and looked away.

  Beyond the roof of the warehouse the ’hood lay in smoldering darkness, the amber lights of the sleepless glaring, forming odd patterns of bothered art. Even farther below, the streetlights marked off sullen pathways that squared back into themselves.

  “You should be home,” Big Time said.

  “Should be.”

  “Where you live?”

  “Malcolm X,” Benny said, referring to the avenue.

  “I haven’t seen you around.” Big Time pulled his jacket close.

  “I seen you,” Benny replied. “You hang on 145th.”

  “What you do—go around watching people?”

  “Sometimes.” The boy let the word dangle in the cool air.

  Silence. Big Time didn’t know what to say, or if he really wanted to say anything. He was sleepy, that was good. But he didn’t want to sleep on the roof if the boy was there. He wondered if the boy, if Benny, felt the same way.

  Music came in snatches as if the wind only carried what it chose to bring to them, brief moments of rhythm, a piece of song, a distant hint of melody. The silence fit in well.

  BLOOF!

  Benny jumped and Big Time whirled toward the door to the stairway.

  “What was that?” Benny asked.

  “Nothing,” Big Time said. And then, “Probably those junkies down below.”

  “You come up the fire escape?” Benny asked, his voice high and still filled with tension.

  “Yeah.”

  Benny went to the back of the building and looked down.

  “There’s a fire,” he called back.

  Big Time went to the roof edge and looked. Flames were shooting out of the window onto the fire escape on the floor below. Now there was shouting.

  “Damned crackheads must have been freebasing,” Big Time said. “They started a fire.”

  “What we going to do?”

  “Shut up, man!” Big Time felt the anger surge in him. “What you here for, anyway?”

  “We gonna die?”

  “I said shut up!”

  Big Time went to the door leading to the stairs and tried it. It was locked. He pulled it harder. Nothing. He knew it would be nailed shut.

  “You can’t open the door?” Benny asked.

  “Look, I don’t care if we burn up or not,” Big Time said. “It don’t make me no never mind.”

  Big Time sat down on a box and crossed his legs at the ankle. He watched Benny go to the door and pull on it, his small body looking even smaller as it became more desperate. Behind him the light from the flames flickered.

  It don’t make me no never mind, he thought. Lie. Panic inside, like the
panic of feeling sick and not having any money. A growing anxiety that already had filled him, and now threatened to overflow.

  “Why don’t you do something?” Benny said. “You grown!”

  “That don’t mean nothing when the door’s locked,” Big Time said.

  “Yeah, it do!” There was a trace of snot under Benny’s nose. “Yeah, it do.”

  The kid was wrong, Big Time said. Being grown didn’t mean nothing. Being grown just meant you were around for a while. All he had to do was to take a chill pill. Relax until the set was over.

  The boy went to the edge of the roof and looked over again. He backed off quickly. Then he went to the front of the roof. There was no fire escape there, no way to get down. He put one leg over, as if he were going to try to climb down the front of the building, then pulled it back.

  “Man, sit down,” Big Time called to Benny.

  The building was on the corner and one side went straight down. Big Time remembered looking at the faded sign painted on the bricks. It read SINCLAIR INKS. Big Time watched the boy look down and wondered if he would jump.

  BLOOF!

  The flames shot past the roof briefly and went down. They were followed by belching, choking smoke. Big Time went to the edge and looked over. The fire was coming out of two windows now.

  “Help!” the boy was calling over the side.

  Big Time waited. He watched Benny run from side to side. For a while the boy’s panic was more interesting than the fire. What would he do? How did he feel? Did he feel alone even though he, Big Time, was still there? Could somebody be alone with another person so close?

  Benny was crying as the flames burned the edge of the roof. There was a small wall, less than three feet high, on the sides of the building. Benny went to the other side of the roof and looked over. Then he ran back to the center and ran toward the edge, stopping when he reached the wall. He had lost his nerve.

  You grown, he had said.

  What could he do? Doors locked. Fire coming. He wished he had a hit. What he needed was a hit.

  “You got any weed?” he asked Benny.

  “I don’t smoke,” Benny said.

  Big Time had to pee. He went to a side of the roof and started peeing. Behind him Benny was shouting off the edge of the roof. He was calling out “Help!” into the darkness.

  He was scared but it wasn’t a big thing. He had been there before. Only thing that could happen was him and the boy going down. It wouldn’t even make the news. Two dudes from the ’hood found dead. That wasn’t even news.

  “I’m going to try to jump to the other building,” Benny said, his eyes searching Big Time’s face.

  Big Time walked slowly to the edge of the roof. He looked over. It was a good eight feet across to the next building and maybe a yard down. It was too far to jump if he tried going over the wall. And there was no way the kid could make it.

  “We’re trapped, man.” Benny’s face was tear-streaked as he sided closer against Big Time.

  “I’m not trapped,” Big Time said.

  “You going to jump?” Benny asked.

  Why don’t you do something? You grown!

  “What you so scared for?” Big Time asked. “Being scared’s not going to help you get off the roof.”

  “What you going to do?” Benny insisted.

  A hit would have mellowed things out, Big Time knew, but he also knew that mellowing out would kill him. He had always known that.

  The smoke was getting thicker and flames were rising above the edge of the roof. Nausea. His eyes were stinging, his hands were shaking. He wanted to sit down and go to sleep.

  “What you going to do, man?” Benny asked again.

  “Take it easy,” Big Time said. He looked over the small wall. There were a few bricks protruding from the wall. He stood and put one leg over, found a brick that stuck out an inch from the wall and tested his weight on it.

  “You going to jump?” Benny’s face was full of fear.

  “I don’t know,” Big Time said. He swung his other leg over until he was sitting on the small wall with his legs dangling. “Sit up here with me, Benny.”

  “I can’t, I’m scared.”

  “Yo, man, I’m scared, too. Hey, ain’t that something. I’m sitting up here on the wall and I’m scared out my damned mind.”

  “Why you laughing if you scared?” Benny asked. “Why you laughing?”

  “ ’Cause I didn’t know how scared I was before,” Big Time said. “Now I do. Now I know just how I feel. C’mon, the fire’s getting closer.”

  “I’m too scared.” Benny took a step back.

  “Hey, I’m grown, Benny,” Big Time said. “I know what I’m doing. Take my hand. It’s okay. Really.”

  Flames, like yellow demons, streaked through the thick smoke that poured from the fire. Benny started to choke, his chest heaving up and down with his coughing. They heard the sound of fire engines and Big Time looked down to see a fire truck go up Amsterdam Avenue.

  “They don’t know about this fire yet,” Big Time said. “We’ve got to bust a move. Come on, take my hand. We’ll jump to the next roof.”

  “We can’t make it,” Benny answered. “It’s too far.”

  “It’s not the best way to get down,” Big Time said. “But it’s what we got.”

  The fire crackled and a shower of cinders came from one corner. Benny, his teeth clenched, climbed onto the small wall.

  “We can’t make it,” he whispered.

  We can’t make it, Big Time thought. He could fling the kid, though. If the kid wouldn’t hold on to him he could fling the kid onto the roof.

  “Get ready,” Big Time said quietly.

  Benny held Big Time’s arm and Big Time pushed him roughly away. “Don’t punk out on me,” he said. “Don’t be grabbing me, just jump when I tell you.”

  “I can’t.” Benny looked back toward the burning roof. “I just . . .”

  “Jump!” Big Time leaned forward into the dark space, felt his feet against the wall and pushed as hard as he could, flinging Benny into the blackness in front of him.

  For an eternity they hung in space, screaming and straining and reaching for something to catch on to. Big Time felt his chest hit the edge of the other roof and his legs go over the side. He was sliding over, he grabbed something, a bottle, it moved and he grabbed the edge of a vent.

  “Benny!”

  “I’m okay,” came the reply.

  “I’m hanging over the edge,” Big Time said.

  “I’ll go get some help,” Benny said.

  No, don’t go. Please, don’t go. How long could he hang on? His chest was hurting, and his knees. He tried pulling himself up and felt a sharp pain in his wrist. He was scared and hurting and desperate and it felt good. He thought he was going to laugh again. He imagined himself falling off the roof, falling backward to a sure dying and laughing all the way. He hung on and lifted his leg. The knee throbbed, the leg hurt, but he got his foot up on the roof. He pulled as slowly as he could. He didn’t want to die. He pulled himself until he got his shoulders up and was able to roll his body to safety.

  The smell of tar was sweet. He could see his wrist. It was bleeding. Everything was sore. His body shook with hurt and fatigue. He stood up just as the door opened and Benny came running through.

  “You made it!”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were hanging off the roof?” A heavyset woman stood in the doorway behind Benny. “That’s what the boy said.”

  “Yeah,” Big Time said. “I’m okay now.”

  “Lord, look at that building burning,” the woman said. “Must be those junkies that hang out over there.”

  “Yeah,” Big Time said.

  Benny was talking about the fire as they went down the stairs. It had already passed over into adventure for the boy. By the time they reached the first floor there were fire engines out front and a small knot of people, only half-interested in the fire, watched the firemen work

 
; “I’ll see you around the block,” Big Time said. “And the next time you see me you better say hello or something.”

  “Yeah, I will,” Benny said.

  By the time he got home he was getting stiff from the bruises. He knew it would be worse in the morning. He thought about Benny again. The next time he saw him maybe he would even hang out with him a taste, rap to him about staying away from the roof, getting home early, and other good-doing stuff. Maybe.

  “He said what?” Peaches looked up from the math book we were studying from.

  I’ve known Peaches all my life, which means for fifteen years, and I hated to see her sad. Peaches is not the kind of girl to get messed around easy but I was there when her mama told her about Big Joe.

  “He asked me to set a date to marry him,” Sadie Jones said, standing at the sink.

  “He’s got some nerve,” Peaches said. She took a deep breath and shook her head.

  “And I told him I would,” her mama said. “Honey, it’s time I got married. I’m not getting any younger and you know Joe’s really sweet.”

  Peaches didn’t say another word but in a minute I could see the tears running down her face. When her mama came over and put her arm around her shoulders Peaches shrugged her off. Later, when we were checking out the tube, I asked her why she was so upset about Big Joe.

  “You know your mama likes him and he’s sweet for an Old School dude,” I said.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with Big Joe, Squeezie,” Peaches said later, tagging me like she always does when she’s upset. “I think if she loved my daddy she wouldn’t go messing around with somebody else.”

  I wasn’t even going there. I mean, you’re supposed to give people their propers when they’re alive but after they’re gone for years all you have to do is just don’t diss them. I personally never diss no dead people, anyway. Okay, so Peaches was sad and walking around like she lost her best friend, which is me. The closer the wedding got the more down she was. Nothing anybody said could cheer her up. Her mama asked her up front if she wanted her to say no to Big Joe.

  “Honey, I’ll do it for you,” Peaches’ mama said.

  “Do what you want,” Peaches said.