The Years of the City

  Another movie? But the next theater she passed was closed by the storm, and anyway the money was getting low. There wasn’t much traffic any more, she realized, and not even very many pedestrians, and it was very dark. She began to be scared.

  In a city with numbered streets and avenues it was impossible for her to be lost, but when she found street signs not snowed illegible she realized she was a long way from familiar places. Home was out of the question for her now; she was too tired to undertake a walk of fifty or sixty blocks. But her father’s office was nearer. Nearer but out of reach. When she finally floundered her way there the man at the door was not old Mr. Sullivan, whom she knew—and who, she remembered, was dead. It was a stranger. He seemed friendly enough but all he would give her was advice—“Go home, kid. I can’t let you in, they’d fire me!” Certainly he would have changed his mind if she had begged, or even explained—but she didn’t know that.

  And then Nillie had come along.

  Jo-Anne and Vanilla Fudge paused at the 42d Street intersection while a snowplow roared and scraped in front of them. They watched it silently, waiting to cross. It wasn’t trying to ease traffic flow—that was impossible. It was only trying to clear space so that the abandoned buses that had not been able to make the ramps of the Port Authority Bus Terminal would have a place to get out of the way. It wasn’t succeeding; the job was impossible. City buses, long-distance Trailways and Greyhound monsters, trucks, taxis, passenger cars, police cars were all tangled together. The bus terminal had been the hub of one of the busiest traffic complexes in the world, and all the vehicles at last had surrendered to the storm. What it looked like more than anything else was the plastic snow under a two-year-old’s Christmas tree. The presents had been opened. The toy vehicles were scattered heedlessly—and the person who put them there had been sent off to bed, abandoning them for Daddy and Mommy to pick up. But Daddy and Mommy were not equal to the task. “Honey,” said Vanilla Fudge as they got ready to cross, “do you know what an abortion is?”

  “Sure I do!”—indignantly.

  “Then you ought to count your blessings, because suppose your mother had decided not to have you?”

  Jo-Anne brought up sharp on the sidewalk, staring up with her mouth hanging open. Nillie nodded. “Was your daddy mean to her?” Jo-Anne shook her head. “Or to you? No, I didn’t think so. So she just screwed up her life some way. People do that, honey. I know you’re hurting, but don’t you think he’s hurting too? Looks to me like the two of you need each other—now come on in here and let’s get warmed up!”

  The snow was coming down a little more slowly, the wind a hair less violent, but Jo-Anne was still frozen as they pushed at the revolving door. It didn’t push easily. It would not turn until, grumbling, the family of Hispanics whose bus to Bayonne had never left inched out of the way. Once inside, it was hard to move.

  There didn’t seem to be room for two more in the terminal. Every wall had some body propped against it, trying to sleep. Every bench, countertop or stair had someone stretched out; so did most of the floor. All the escalators were stopped and filled with people except for two—once they had been stopped, too, but then the trapped crowd so clogged them that no one could get up or down; so the sleepers had been dislodged and the motors started again to keep them clear. “Gee,” said Vanilla Fudge, wrinkling her nose, “you could catch something from the air here.” She gazed around, frowning. It wasn’t just the dense, smokey, sweaty air that was troubling her, but the little girl read her mind.

  “I’ll be all right here,” she said. “Honest. I’ll just keep calling home till my Daddy answers, then he’ll tell me what to do.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “Well…” But the child was safe enough here. “I could find a cop,” Nillie offered. Jo-Anne shook her head wisely.

  “They don’t want to bother about me right now.”

  “Well, that’s true enough.” Nillie looked around and found a part of the floor less congested than most. It took a little squirming and shoving, but she made room for the little girl. When Jo-Anne was obediently seated, Nillie steadied herself with one hand on the girl’s head and, one at a time, pulled the red boots off. “My feet are freezing,” she complained, looking around. “Well. You stay right here, I mean as much as you can. You’ll be all right here.” Had she just said that? Seemed almost as though she had, but her mind was no longer on the little girl. It was Dandy she was thinking about now.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said, and picked her barefoot way to the escalator.

  Jo-Anne nodded after her. The nod didn’t mean agreement. It only meant that she understood the woman didn’t want to take any further responsibility for her. Should she go to sleep? But she wasn’t really sleepy, for some reason. Her mother would have said overtired. Besides, it was noisy—people arguing, somebody snoring, over her head a TV monitor with a rock band blaring, though there was no picture, only the legend: Stay tuned for special bulletin. Jo-Anne watched Vanilla Fudge go. Then, getting up as quietly as she could so as not to wake the fat lady sleeping next to her, she followed, up the one moving escalator, tortuously through the crowd on the second level. Some of the stores were still open—a coffee shop, an ice-cream parlor, a bar—but apparently just to make room for the stranded. They seemed to have run out of anything to sell. Jo-Anne hesitated at the ladies’ room. The line was forbidding. But the need was urgent.

  By the time she emerged from the washroom Vanilla Fudge was of course long gone. Jo-Anne was beginning to be tired, but there was a row of phone booths just across the way. That was another long line, but Jo-Anne’s conscience was bothering her badly. It was almost a relief when there was no answer at her apartment.

  She hunted for a better place to sit down, and found one neglected by most people because it wasn’t very warm. It was one of the loading docks, only scantily protected from the outside air. Not a problem for a young girl in a snowsuit and two sweaters. She didn’t much like the looks of her neighbors, who were passing a brown-paper bag around as though it were something to drink. But it wasn’t as noisy here.

  Sleep overcame her—until she woke up because somebody’s hand was inside her snowsuit. It was a man, older than her father and far larger. He smelled bad, breath and body, and he had not shaved for a long time. And the others who had shared the place seemed to be asleep—no, seemed to be pretending to be asleep.

  Jo-Anne screamed.

  The man shifted position quickly, thrusting his face into her neck. His other hand was on her throat. “You shut up, sweetie, or I squeeze!” he rasped.

  It wasn’t a bluff. He not only was willing to do it, he was already doing it. That didn’t stop Jo-Anne from trying to scream again; she was shocked and disoriented, and she would have screamed her head off if the pressure on her throat hadn’t turned it into a harsh rattling bellow.

  But someone evidently heard. The man, swearing, turned, hurling her into the door to the bus bay. When she got herself turned around enough to see, there was another man there, a tall, young, black man in a red beret. He had the would-be molester in a choke hold, and he was glaring down at her. Then the fury on his face tempered to recognition.

  She knew him, too. It was the Smasher, the Pin from across the street.

  At eleven A.M. Shire Brandon had passed the point of being sleepy. They had moved the center of operations from the City Hall to one of the big network studios in midtown.

  It was really happening! Ever since two A.M. every radio and television station in the city had been running standby teasers, announcing that the Universal Town Meeting would begin at noon. Mobile camera crews were spotted around the city, ready to pick up remotes. It was no problem to get them there; they were the same crews who had been covering the storm, all night long and the day before; the overtime and double-penalty overtime bills were going to be fearsome, but the crews were all in position. The Mayor, just now being made up after four hours of sleep, had cut a t
ape to announce what was happening; the City Council had been somehow collected and brought together in City Hall; the bargaining teams for all the struck and go-slow unions had been assembled; translators were on hand in the assigned radio stations, drafted from the United Nations; even the Director had been bundled up out of his warm apartment on Central Park West and brought down to the studio, where he twittered and beamed and got in everybody’s way. “Oh, Shire,” he said ecstatically, “it’s looking good, isn’t it?”

  Part of the reason the world was looking good—at least better—was that the snow had tapered off. A few of the north-south avenues in Manhattan were very nearly open again; progress had even been made on a few of the major cross streets, and the subways were running everywhere there were subways. It would be some time before the Els and the tunnels and bridges were of any use to anyone, but at least there was movement again.

  Brandon took his seat in the control room, nursing a cardboard carton of machine coffee. It was long since cold, and it hadn’t been very good in the first place, but every time he remembered he had it he wet his lips with it. “All remotes on line,” said the assistant director. “Tapes ready,” said the technical director. “Stand by,” said the director, nodding; and then, as the clock showed precisely ten seconds before the hour, he nodded. “Roll Eight,” he said.

  Brandon listened to the seconds countdown—nine, eight, seven—and then the director said, “Take Eight!”

  From somewhere a picture emerged on the screen. It was the Mayor, repeating his tape. “Today,” he said, “we are going to try to settle our differences, not sweep them under the rug. We are going to talk about the things that are crippling our city, and listen to all the proposals that are being made to settle them. Then you, the citizens, are going to help us decide. I say ‘help’ only because there is no provision in law for making this sort of community decision making binding, but I assure you that your voice will count. From time to time today there will be a vote. The way you vote is by calling a number on your telephone. Nobody will answer, but counters will register how many people call up on that number—one number for yes, one number for no. If there is a clear majority for either side we’ll take that as the voice of the people and then the City Council, which is now sitting in session ready to act, will do what is necessary. They aren’t bound to do what you say, but I assure you they will be listening intently. Those are the ground rules—”

  Somebody was touching Brandon’s shoulder. “Yes? What is it?”

  A network security man was handing him a folded slip of paper. “Message for you, Mr. Brandon.”

  “Thank you.” There had been dozens of messages; one more could wait. Brandon listened on:

  “—the event there’s no clear majority, then we go back to the bargaining committees or to individuals chosen at random among all you listeners and viewers. If you are selected to be on the air, you will have exactly thirty seconds to say what you want to say—speak in favor of one side or the other, make an alternative selection, suggest a modification—it’s your time, you can use it any way you want to. But thirty seconds is all you’ve got—”

  “They said it was important, Mr. Brandon.” The security guard was still standing there.

  “Oh, all right.” But he took his time unfolding it, watching the Mayor explain how each new suggestion would be offered to the viewers at large for voting, and the ones that seemed to command a favorable vote would be embodied in the next major vote. “The first thing we have to deal with,” the Mayor declared, “is the strike of our public servants. So first we will hear from the chief negotiator for the policemen—”

  But then Brandon heard no more, because his eyes had fallen to the message form. It said:

  A man named Willbur Perkins, who says he is a neighbor of yours, says your daughter is in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, main waiting room, south terminal, ground level. He says she is well and unharmed, but very tired, and he will stay with her until you get there.

  It is an exceptional parent who can be just to all his children equally. You try to give each one what he needs; that’s basic minimum. You give each what he deserves—that’s fair; and you give all what love directs—that’s parenting. And when there’s a conflict? When Bobby needs to be taken to his guitar lesson at the same time as Sue has to get to cheerleader practice? When there’s enough money for Chet’s teeth or Maisie’s wedding, but not enough for both? What do you do then?

  You do the best you can. And so Brandon divided himself between his two children the best way he could, though neither was a child of his flesh—the weary ten-year-old who needed comforting and caring and reassurance, and the child of his mind and heart that was even now naked to the inspection of ten million strangers. And they were inspecting it. They were using it! The way from the network to the bus terminal was a twenty-minute walk through crowded city streets—usually—but on this day it was nearly an hour, and detouring through as many office buildings and hotel lobbies as he could manage; faster than the choked streets, and warmer. And in every one, or every one that was open at all, someone had put up a television set and there were people gathered around. Listening. Arguing. Proposing. And, now and then, agreeing. Voices caught his ear, fragments, some from the crowds, some from the TV monitors. A cop: “—get along without more money, but, Jesus, could you make the job a little easier? Get people not to fight us?” A Hispanic: “Is wrong, how they say you have to be so big to get to be a fireman—I swear, I can climb a ladder faster than those turkeys!” A union leader on the TV screen: “You want us to be reasonable? You tell the members to be reasonable! They don’t want to hear reasons why they can’t get, they just want to have!” And all the long way, trudging through snow, slipping on wet tile lobby floors, dodging through service entrances, wending his way around tow-trucks tugging at abandoned cars—all that way Brandon was filled with love and pride and worry, an undistributed welling of emotion that was linked with his daughter and with his project and left him wet-eyed when he reached Jo-Anne and caught her up in his arms. All he said was, “The subway’s running again. Let’s go home.” And all she answered was, “All right, Daddy.” And hand in hand they hurried through the crowds and out into the city that was digging itself, slowly digging but surely digging, digging itself out of the wrack of the storm.

  YOU KNOW WHAT A “SLUMLORD” IS? IT’S

  me. Me and people like me that saved our dough and looked for real estate to invest it in. Well, where can you find anything you can afford to buy? The slums, that’s where. And then the tenants expect you to give them sauna baths and swimming pools and a new paint job every six months, and the city won’t let you raise the rents, so what do you do? Sure, I’ve had a few violations. Maybe they don’t get all the hot water they want and it’s hard to get the exterminators in every time somebody sees a bug, but what do they expect? That’s not the worst thing. The worst thing is when they have one of those Universal Town Meetings and decide to rebuild the whole neighborhood, and then what happens to your investment? They call it progress! But actually I’m the first casualty of

  The

  Greening

  of

  Bed-stuy

  I

  Marcus Garvey de Harcourt’s last class of the day was H.E., meaning “Health Education,” meaning climbing up ropes in the smelly, bare gymnasium of P.S. 388. It was a matter of honor with him to avoid that when he could. Today he could. He had a note from his father that would get him out of school, and besides it was a raid day. The police were in the school. It was a drug bust, or possibly a weapons search; or maybe some fragile old American History teacher had passed the terror point at the uproar in his class and called for help. Whatever. The police were in the school, and the door monitors were knotted at the stairwells, listening to the sounds of scuffling upstairs. It was a break he didn’t really need, because at the best of times the door monitors at P.S. 388 were instructed not to try too hard to keep the students in—else they simply wouldn’t sho
w up at all.

  Once across the street Marcus ducked behind the tall mound of garbage bags to see which of his schoolmates—or teachers!—would come out in handcuffs, but that was a disappointment because the cops came out alone. This time, at least, the cops had found nothing worth an arrest—meaning, no doubt, that the problem was over and the teacher involved wouldn’t, or didn’t dare to, identify the culprits.

  One-forty, and his father had ordered him to be ready to leave for the prison by two o’clock. No problem. He threaded his way past the Construction—All Traffic Detour signs on Nostrand Avenue, climbed one of the great soil heaps, gazed longingly at the rows of earth-moving machines, silenced by some sort of work stoppage, and rummaged in the dirt for something to throw at them. There was plenty. There were pieces of bulldozed homes in that tip, Art Deco storefronts from the 1920s, bay-window frames from the 1900s, sweat-equity cinderblocks from the 1980s, all crushed together. Marcus found a china doorknob, just right. When it struck the nearest parked backhoe it splintered with a crash.

  They said Bedford-Stuyvesant was a jungle, and maybe it was. It was the jungle that young Marcus de Harcourt had lived all his life in. He didn’t fear it—was wary of parts of it, sure, but it was all familiar. And it was filled with interesting creatures, mostly known to Marcus, Marcus known to a few of them—like the young men in clerical collars outside the Franciscan mission. They waved to him from across the road. Bloody Bess at the corner didn’t wave. As he passed her she was having a perfectly reasonable, if agitated, conversation: “She having an abortion. She having an inflatable abortion. He having intercourse with her ten times, so she having it.” The only odd part was that she was talking to a fire hydrant. The bearded man in a doorway, head pillowed on a sack of garbage, didn’t wave either, but that was because he was asleep. Marcus considered stealing his shoes and hiding them, but you never knew about these doorway dudes. Sometimes they were cops. Besides, when he looked closer at the shoes he didn’t want to touch them.