She couldn’t see the stranger but she could hear him, now whistling that god-awful song of his. There had to be another way out of here! A window off to her right looked promising, and she raced to it. Through the wooden slats nailed there, she could see a bum stumbling into the vacant lot across the street to take a piss.
“Hey! Hey, mister, help me! Please help me!” she shouted. When he didn’t hear her, she beat her palms against the wood. She tore at the immovable planks until her nails were bloodied, her palms crosshatched with splinters. Outside, the oblivious drunk finished his business and wandered off into the night, and Ruta sank to the filthy floor, sobbing.
When Ruta was three, her mother had locked her in a trunk so the landlord wouldn’t find out they’d had another baby and kick them out on the street. She’d sat there alone, cramped, quiet in the dark, and utterly terrified. It seemed like hours before they let her out, and ever since, any feeling of being trapped made her feel like a scared child again. Panic emptied her mind of logic. She wandered the sprawling house in desperation. Mazelike hallways funneled her into squalid rooms; doors opened onto brick walls. All around her, she heard the man’s terrible whistling. At last she spied a door she hadn’t tried. She put her hand on the knob. The floor gave way beneath her, and she plummeted down a long chute into a foul, forgotten hole of a basement. Her ankle throbbed where it had bent beneath her weight and she cried out with the pain. She tried to take a step but it was agony, and she crashed back to the hard, cold dirt floor.
The floors above her creaked. She could hear the stranger’s distant whistling. Her mind emptied of everything but thoughts of survival. She blinked in the darkness, forcing her eyes to adjust. She had fallen quite a ways; the cellar was very deep, probably twenty feet below street level. She was sure she could scream all day and not be heard. What she needed was a weapon. She dragged herself by inches, feeling with her hand for something, anything she could use. Finally, her hand came to rest on a smooth stick. It was lightweight, but applied with enough force against an eye or a throat, it could wound. She held the stick tightly to her chest and waited. Far above her, a door clanged open, allowing the thinnest shaft of light to penetrate. She could see a staircase behind a wall, but there was no way she could manage it in her current state. The stick was her best shot. She might have to do more than wound.
Mr. Hobbes closed the door and the light vanished. She was plunged into total darkness again, just like in the trunk. Ruta struggled to keep her breathing quiet when she wanted to scream with all her might. The stranger’s footsteps drummed dully but evenly toward her, and she realized he no longer had his cane. His song echoed in the cellar. This time, he added words: “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ’em off for a coupla stones.”
The saliva caught in the back of Ruta’s throat; she was too frightened to swallow. The old furnace flared suddenly to life, filling the room with an orange light that cast macabre shadows.
Ruta scuttled behind the gauzy ruin of a curtain hanging on a forgotten clothesline and watched through the grainy fabric. She couldn’t see Mr. Hobbes, but she could still hear him.
“ ‘… Babylon the Great, the Harlot Adorned and Cast upon the Sea, the Abomination of the Earth. And this was the fifth offering as commanded by the Lord God.’ ”
Ruta’s tongue was heavy in her mouth. Disquieting things skittered at the edges of her vision, but when she turned her head, they had vanished. Her left leg had gone numb.
“ ‘And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.’ Are you listening, Ruby?”
Ruta held fast to her stick and was silent.
The man fed something into the furnace and it flared. “ ‘And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.’ ”
The man walked the perimeter of the room as he spoke. “ ‘But the unbelieving, and the abominable, the whoremongers and idolaters shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. For only the chosen shall rise with the Beast. And the world fall to ash.’ ”
He was on the far side of the room; she could tell by his voice. Ruta’s vision blurred and her stomach roiled. With horror, she realized she could not move her legs at all. What was happening to her? She thought back to the doused handkerchief and the coffee she’d drunk, and her heart beat wildly. What had been in them? She looked again at the stick in her hand and saw that it was a bone. Ruta cried out and dropped it in revulsion. The curtain shot back. Mr. Hobbes loomed over her like a fiery god.
“Don’t be put off by my appearance, my dear. I am only beginning to manifest.”
His arms and neck had been branded with strange tattoos, symbols she didn’t understand. The symbols rippled and bulged. His flesh moved as if something slithered just underneath. The fear could only find voice in her first language, and so she whispered the prayers in Polish.
The man frowned. “Prayers? I thought you were a modern girl for a modern age.”
Backlit by the furnace, the stranger was a dark demon. The numbness had reached her arms now. Ruta’s teeth chattered. “P-please. Please. I w-won’t tell nobody.”
“But you will.” The stranger dragged Ruta by her useless arm. “I told you that you had an important destiny to fulfill, and so you shall: You, Ruby Bates, are the beginning of the end. Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on….”
When he reached the wall just behind the furnace, he felt along it with his bone-pale fingers. A hidden door opened, revealing another, secret room inside.
“Nie, nie, nie,” Ruta whispered, as if she could will the door to stay closed.
“ ‘I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.’ ”
He smiled at her, and in his eyes she saw the fire and the endless swirling black, and her bladder let go.
“The ritual begins again,” the stranger said. He pulled Ruta into the hidden room, and all she could do was scream.
PASSING STRANGER
“New York City’s famous Hotsy Totsy Club presents the Count Carruthers Orchestra and the beautiful Hotsy Totsy Girls!”
In the wings, Memphis Campbell watched as the scantily clad chorines launched into a high-energy dance number. The club was on fire tonight. Gabe’s trumpet wailed, and the Count’s fingers tore up all eighty-eight keys on the piano. Gabe played a bit from “America the Beautiful,” turning it briefly into a dirge and letting his trumpet slide into despair before picking up the beat again. The white folks in the audience didn’t get it, but smiles broke out on the faces of the black folks.
Gabe hit his last piercing note. The audience applauded as the chorines bowed and sashayed offstage laughing and talking. A curvaceous girl named Jo stroked Memphis’s cheek as she walked past. “Hey, Memphis.”
“Hey, yourself.”
Memphis’s pal Alma rolled her eyes as she adjusted the front of her costume. “You making money or making time tonight, Memphis?”
“Both, I hope.”
Jo giggled and tickled her fingers up his arm. Memphis employed the smile with Jo. “ ‘PASSING stranger!’ ” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “ ‘You do not know how longingly I look upon you/You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking (it comes to me as of a dream)/I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you…’ ”
“You write that, baby?” Jo purred.
br /> Memphis shook his head. “That’s Walt Whitman. ‘To a Stranger.’ You ever read his poems?”
“She doesn’t read anything other than the gossip columns,” Alma said. Jo gave her a murderous glance.
“You’re missing out,” Memphis said, aiming his full-wattage smile at Jo.
“This boy lives at the library over on 135th Street. Wants to be the next Langston Hughes,” Alma informed everyone.
“That so?” Jo asked.
“I could read some poems to you sometime.”
“How ’bout Sunday?” Jo said. She licked her lips.
“Sundays always were my lucky days.”
Alma rolled her eyes again and pulled Jo back into line. “Come on, girls. We don’t have time for foolishness. We need to get changed for the moon number.”
“Bye, baby.” Jo blew Memphis a kiss and he pretended to catch it.
“Memphis!” the stage manager bellowed around the cigar clenched between his teeth. “I’m not paying you to play with the girls. Papa Charles wants you. Hop to.”
In the narrow hallway, Memphis passed Gabe and the Count, who were on their way out back.
“Hey, boss,” Gabe said, gripping Memphis’s hand. “We going to that rent party on Saturday? Plenty of flossy chicks and whiskey.”
“Whose whiskey? Don’t get some coffin varnish off someone you don’t know and put us both in the morgue.” It was a fact that disreputable bootleggers sometimes mixed the booze with kerosene or gasoline.
Gabe spread his hands wide and grinned. “Leave it to Gabe, brother.”
Memphis laughed. Other than Isaiah, Gabe had been the one constant in his life. They’d met in the fourth grade, when Gabe had gotten into trouble with the principal for selling cigarettes behind the school and Memphis had been assigned to be his buddy and set him straight. It set the tone of their friendship: Memphis was still there to get Gabe out of trouble, and Gabe was there to help Memphis get into it. The one thing Gabe was serious about was music. He was one of the hottest trumpet players in town. Word was definitely spreading about the skinny kid with the big sound. Even Duke Ellington had come to hear Gabe play. It was one of the reasons Papa Charles kept him on. Gabe was a prankster and a troublemaker, but once he started playing that horn, it was all worth it.
“Going out for a smoke. You want some mezz?” Gabe asked. His eyes were already a little red.
Memphis shook his head. “Gotta keep a clear head, Gabe.”
“Suit yourself, Grandma.”
“I usually do,” Memphis said. He swiped a hand across the overhead light, feeling the warmth of the bulb, and then passed through a tunnel into the building next door where all the offices were. Several secretaries sat at long tables, counting money from the morning’s numbers racket. Memphis tipped his cap to them and slipped into Papa Charles’s office. From his seat behind a mahogany desk, Papa Charles waved Memphis toward a waiting chair while he finished his telephone call.
Papa Charles was the undisputed king of Harlem. He controlled the numbers racket, the horse races and boxing matches. He ran the bootlegging and fixed things with the cops. If you needed a loan, you went to Papa Charles. When a church needed a new building, Papa Charles gave them the money. Schools, fraternal organizations, and even Harlem’s professional basketball team, the New York Renaissance, or Rens, were financed in part by Papa Charles, the Dapper Gentleman. And at several clubs and speakeasies, like the Hotsy Totsy, he showcased some of the best musicians and dancers in town.
“Well, as long as I’m running the numbers in Harlem, it’ll stay black,” Papa Charles said firmly into the telephone, “and you can tell Dutch Schultz and his associates that I say so.” He hung up forcefully and opened the lid on a silver box, selecting a cigar. He bit off the end and spat it into his wastebasket. Memphis lit the cigar’s tip, trying not to cough as the first puffs of smoke billowed out.
“Trouble?”
Papa Charles waved the thought and the smoke away. “White bootleggers want to run the Harlem rackets now. I don’t intend to let them. But they’re working hard at it. Heard the police raided one of Queenie’s joints last night.”
“I thought she paid off the police.”
“She does.” He let that land while he drew on the cigar, turning the air thick and spicy. “The white folks’ll lose interest in our games. They’ve got bootlegging to keep them busy. Still, might want to be extra careful out there. I’m telling all my runners. How’s your aunt Octavia doing?”
“Fine, sir.”
“And Isaiah? He getting along all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, good. And on the streets?”
“Smooth as Gabe’s licks.”
Papa Charles smiled. “Best way to learn the business is from the streets up. Someday, you can be working right here next to me.”
Memphis didn’t want to work for Papa Charles. He wanted to read his poetry at one of Miss A’Lelia Walker’s salons, alongside Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jean Toomer—maybe even beside Mr. Hughes himself.
“You all right, son? Something the matter?”
Memphis found his smile. “You know me, sir. I don’t wear worry.”
Papa Charles smiled around his cigar. “That’s the Memphis I know.”
Good old Memphis. Reliable Memphis. Charming, easygoing Memphis. Look-after-your-brother Memphis. Memphis had been the star once. The miracle man. And it had ended in sorrow. He wouldn’t ever risk that again. These days, he kept his feelings confined to the pages of his notebook.
“It’s time to collect the gratuities from our grateful friends,” Papa Charles said—code for the protection money every business paid to the Dapper Gentleman if they wanted to stay in business and have his protection. The city ran on corruption as much as on electricity.
“Yes, sir.”
“Memphis, you sure you all right?”
Memphis offered up the smile again. “Never better, sir.”
On the way out of the club, Memphis nodded at Papa Charles’s chauffeur, who stood guard beside a brand-new Chrysler Imperial before blending into the crowds out for a good time on Lenox Avenue. He hit up the various nightclubs Papa Charles ran—the Yeah Man, the Tomb of the Fallen Angels, and the Whoopee—along with smaller speakeasies hidden in brownstone basements on tree-lined side streets. Memphis followed big men through back rooms gray with cigarette smoke where people sat at green felt tables playing cards, hustling pool, or rolling craps. The women would cup his chin, call him handsome, ask him to dance. He’d beg off, using the smile to smooth the rejection. Sometimes the club owners offered him a drink or let him listen in on the jazz or watch the revue girls dance. Other times, they made him wait upstairs in a dimly lit office, where Memphis was never sure if they’d be coming back with money or a Tommy gun. In the neat columns of the ledger, he wrote down the amount paid, dodging questions about whether Papa Charles knew if the fix was in for this fight or that game.
“I’m just a runner,” he’d say and use the smile.
On the streets, he kept an eye out for plainclothes cops. If he got arrested, Papa Charles would have him out in a few hours, but he still didn’t want to take the chance.
It was well after eleven when Memphis returned to the Hotsy Totsy. Gabe came running up to him. “Where you been, boss man?”
“Out on business. Why?”
“Come quick! It’s Jo. She fell and hurt herself.”
“Then call a doctor.”
“She’s asking for you, Memphis.”
Jo sat at the bottom of the stage stairs, crying, surrounded by concerned chorines. Through the crack in the curtain, Memphis could see the audience getting restless. It was time for the next number to start, and already Jo’s ankle was swelling up. “Caught my heel on the second step and turned it,” she burbled through her tears. “Oh, please, Lord, don’t let it be broken.”
“You’d better tell Francine she’s on,” one of the chorines said.
Jo shook her
head. “I gotta go on tonight. I need the money!” She looked up at Memphis, her eyes hopeful. “I remembered about you. What you could do. Please, can you help me, Memphis?”
Memphis’s jaw tightened. “I can’t do that anymore.”
Jo sobbed and Gabe put a hand on Memphis’s arm. “Come on, brother. Just try….”
“I told you, I can’t!” Memphis shook off Gabe’s hand and stormed down the stairs as the stage manager cradled Jo in his arms and carried the miserable girl away. Onstage, the emcee announced the next number, the Black Bottom, and the other girls plus Francine scampered out wearing smiles and very little else. Memphis deposited the money he’d collected on his rounds with the secretaries. He pushed out into the night again, his mind troubled by memories of a time when he was someone else, a golden boy with healing hands: Miracle Memphis, the Harlem Healer.
The healing power had come on Memphis suddenly after an illness when he was fourteen. For days, he’d lain in a state of semiconsciousness, seeing the strangest sights as the fever burned through his body. His mother never left his side. When he recovered, they went straight to church to give thanks. On that Sunday morning at the old Mother AME Zion Church, Memphis healed for the first time. His seven-year-old brother, Isaiah, had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm. The bone stuck up under the skin at a terrible angle. Memphis was only trying to quiet his screaming brother when he put his hands on him. He never expected the intense warmth that built suddenly between Isaiah’s skin and his own hands. The trance came on him hard and fast. His eyes rolled back and he felt as if he had left his body and was trapped inside a waking dream. He saw things in that strange empty space he inhabited for those long seconds, things that he didn’t understand: faces in the mist, spectral shadows, and a funny man in a tall hat whose coat seemed to be made of the land itself. There was a bright light and a fluttering of wings, and when Memphis came to, shaking, a crowd had gathered around him in the churchyard. Isaiah had weaseled out from under his brother’s touch and was swinging his arm around in perfect circles. “You fixed it, Memphis. How’d you do that?”