been thinking of pussy a few minutes before, he wouldn’t have glanced over at the young women perched on the wall around the play area and he’d have missed the whole show. And the moral of that was . . .
Circling the park, he passes benches set in concrete just off the main path. Built to last forever, they weren’t going to make it. Somebody had expended enormous energy attacking them. Not casual violence but premeditated murder. You’d need heavy-duty weapons to inflict this damage. Sledgehammers. Crowbars. Why kill these benches whose sole purpose was offering people a place to rest their asses and enjoy the park? Why would anybody need to go declare war on a bench? Whose life was that fucked up? One or two benches survived, hacked, splintered. When would they get theirs? At night or in broad daylight? When all the benches were gone, what part of the park would be wasted next? Cudjoe hears the hobnailed boot tramp of soldier ants, the metallic grinding of their jaws as the column chews its way through a sleeping city.
He checks his watch. No guarantee she’d show up. Why should she trust him? He’d been surprised when she agreed to talk into the tape machine. Surprised when she said she’d meet him in the park. Clark Park between Baltimore and Woodland, around Forty-third. Yes, he knew the place. Yes, he’d be there. Would she?
Three blocks away the basketball court, the hollow. Nothing shaking as far as he can tell. A few people that from this distance, at this hour of the morning are silhouettes, dull shadows until they step beyond the border of trees and then their edges catch fire, bristle in the shimmer of sunshine bathing the far end of the park. One of those figures, wiggling in its nimbus of light, could be hers. Difficult from where he stands to be sure. No chance he’ll miss her if she wants him to find her.
He crosses Chester Avenue, takes the lower dip of the path toward the court. Benches here, above the hollow, spray-painted and carved but intact. Cyclone fencing encloses three sides of the basketball court. All those new courts erected in the sixties had four high metal sides. People said they were part of the final solution. Lots more had sprung up in the ghetto since he’d been away. It ain’t over yet, Cudjoe reminds himself.
This rusty fence seems higher, the court smaller. He can’t remember the asphalt rectangle ever looking as forlorn, abandoned. In the old days when he’d arrive early to shoot around, the court might be deserted, but he’d never felt alone. Only a matter of time before other players would bop in. He wishes he’d brought a ball today so he could pat it, make it boom in the stillness. Glory hanging on every shot. He surveys the backboards, the crooked, netless rims. No clue anybody will play here today, tomorrow, ever. Was the court dead or just sleeping?
Best action migrated all over the city. Years ago Cudjoe knew where they’d be playing any night of the week, they being the bad dudes, the cookers, superstars. If your stuff wasn’t ready better not bring it out there. They’d put a hurt on you. Send you home with your feelings hurt. Don’t care what college you play for. On the neighborhood courts no coaches, no referees, no scholarships, nothing but you and what you can do and a whole lot of bad brothers who could play some ball. Some Sunday afternoons the action came to Clark. Court up at Sixty-ninth and Haverford packed and people cruise by Clark, get it on here instead of lining up for winners at Sixty-ninth. Knuckleheads tore down one rim at Forty-seventh and Kingsessing, couldn’t run full court there, so Clark be it. The Big Time. Joint rocking. They all be out here.
Nothing like it. Cudjoe can’t help smiling as he thinks of himself in the thick of the action. Pushing past the point of breaking but you don’t break, a sweet second wind gets you over and it’s easy then, past breaking or not breaking. Doing your thing and nothing can touch you. Past turning back. You’re out there. Doing it. Legs and heart and mind and breath working hard together. You forget everything you know and play. The wall you can’t move, that stops you and makes you cry when you beat your head against it, is suddenly full of holes. A velvet-stepped ladder tames the air. You can rise over the wall or glide through it. Do both at once. Unveil moves you didn’t know you owned. You don’t remember the wall till you’re past it, over on the other side and a guy runs up to you and sticks out his palm and you slap skin low, high, higher, and the winos, junkies, bullshitters and signifiers jamming the sidelines holler amen like they just seen Black Jesus.
Cudjoe watches bodies flash past. A sound track explodes with crowd noise. The court’s full, then just as abruptly empty again. Seconds pass quietly as the camera pans splitting wooden backboards. Droopy rims. Asphalt cracked with dry riverbeds and tributaries. A view of the empty court shot through interlocking squares of chain-link fencing to suggest how things might look from the steel-meshed window of a prison cell. Inside looking out or outside looking in. Then the court’s full again. Music blasting. Players grunting, panting, squeak of sneakers, cheers from the sidelines, thud of strong bodies every shade of black and brown and ivory colliding, tangling, flying. Cudjoe inserts himself into his film, a solitary figure, narrow shoulders framed by the emptiness of the court that is quiet again. A man caught up in reverie, shuttling at warp speed between times and places, a then and a now. Cudjoe is an actor embarrassed by the cliché shot, a director who can’t resist filming it this way. Camera whirs behind his back, inside his skull. Court full, then empty. Sooty clouds, right on time, roll in from the west.
He senses Margaret Jones behind him, moving closer. Coming the long way round, under the canopy of trees, then into a band of light where her body blurs, disintegrates, her steps slower as warmth drops on her shoulders. Her eyes are fixed on his back, sure now it’s him. Measuring, assessing the pose he’s held too long now, but won’t alter because he wants her to find him this way, wants her to shorten the distance between them, do some of the work to bring them together. He hopes she’s wondering what he’s thinking, that she’ll realize she doesn’t know everything about him. She reaches the trail worn through the grass alongside the far wing of the three-sided fence. He must not turn around too soon. He’ll break the spell, she’ll disappear. She’s wearing an intricately wrapped turban, a robe with swirls of bold color. A few more paces will free her image from the disciplined strands of wire. He pivots abruptly and finds no one there. His timing’s off. He’s scared her away. Would she have been there if he’d held out just an instant longer? Too late now, charm’s broken. Back across Chester Avenue a woman sitting apart from the others smokes a cigarette on the stone wall enclosing monkey bars and slides.
Nkisa used to bring Simba here. I brought my kids, Billy and Karen, when they were little ones. Wasn’t nothing so great about the park. This dinky playground stuff been here forever and half of it been busted forever but I liked the walk down from Fifty-ninth and liked getting out the house. Somebody different to talk to. Other women stuck at home like me with little babies. So once in a while I’d truck all the way down here to Clark with one in the stroller and one holding my hand.
Ten years or so ago.
About that.
Well, I might have seen you then. I lived on Osage. Spent half my life in the park. Played a lot of ball here.
They still play. Or call themselves playing. More drinking and snorting and smoking reefer than ball playing. A rowdy bunch now.
Used to be good hoop.
I wouldn’t know anything about that, but I’d skin Billy or Karen alive if I caught them hanging around here. Pimpmobiles and dopemobiles. Sell you anything you big enough to ask for. And if I know what they’re doing, the cops got to know. You think the police do anything about it? Hell no. Not till one these little white chicks slinking around here ODs and turns up dead, then they’ll come down on that corner like gangbusters.
So the park’s not what it used to be.
What is? Tell me if you know what is.
You might have run into my wife and boys here.
You have children?
Yes.
