Dead I Well May Be Read Free

thatthey would never have found it but for some sleekit nosy neighbor tipping them off.
    What if I deny that’s me? I suggested.
    Are you denying it’s you?
    I don’t know.
    Well then, the man said, adjusting his glasses.
    Nan offered us more tea. I said no but the man took a dish, as well as some of her drop scones.
    How old are you again, Mr. Forsythe? he asked after a while.
    Nineteen.
    No longer a juvenile. Dear oh dear, he said ominously.
    Look, what exactly are you saying I did wrong?
    You were claiming unemployment benefit while working on a building site. I am afraid, Mr. Forsythe, you’ll have to go to court.
    Yeah, but what for?
    For benefit fraud, mate, the man scoffed …
    But I didn’t go to court. I pleaded guilty the next week and signed off benefit forever. I was unemployed, had been so for over a year, and now I was never going to get any more money. I moped for another week. Nan couldn’t support me on her pension so there was no choice but to do what my cousin Leslie said I should have done twelve months earlier, which was to work for her brother-in-law who worked for Darkey White in America. Darkey would pay for my ticket, and I’d pay him back in time served.
    I didn’t want to go to America, I didn’t want to work for Darkey White. I had my reasons.
    But I went.

1: WHITE BOY IN HARLEM
     
    I
      open my eyes. The train tracks. The river. A wall of heat. Unbearable white sunlight smacking off the railings, the street and the god-awfulness of the buildings. Steam from the permanent Con Ed hole at the corner. Gum and graffiti tags on the sidewalk. People on the platform—Jesus Christ, are they really in sweaters and wool hats? Garbage everywhere: newspaper, bits of food, clothes, soda cans, beer cans. The traffic slow and angry. Diesel fumes from tubercular bus engines. Heat and poison from the exhausts on massive, bruised gypsy cabs.
    I’m smoking. I’m standing here on the elevated subway platform looking down at all this enormous nightmare and I’m smoking. My skin can barely breathe. I’m panting. The back of my T-shirt is thick with sweat. 100 degrees, 90 percent relative humidity. I’m complaining about the pollution you can see in the sky above New Jersey and I’m smoking Camels. What an idiot.
    Details. Dominican guys on the west side of Broadway. Black guys on the east. The Dominicans are in long cotton pants, sneakers, string T-shirts, gold chains. The black guys are in neat blue or yellow or red T-shirts with baggy denim shorts and better sneakers. The black guys are more comfortable, it’s their turf for now, the Dominicans are newcomers. It’s like
West Side
bloody
Story
.
    In the deep pocket of my baggy shorts I start playing absently with the safety on my pistol. A very stupid thing to do. I stop myself. Besides, these guys aren’t the enemy. No, the enemy, like the Lord, is subtle, and in our own image.
    Some kids playing basketball without a hoop. Women shopping; heavy bags weighing them down, the older women pushing carts, the younger wearing hardly anything at all. Beautiful girls with long dark legs and dreamy voices that are here the only sounds of heaven.
    Harlem has changed, of course. I mean, I’m not talking about the 125th Street of today or even of five years ago. There’s a Starbucks there now. Multiplexes. HMV. An ex-president. This is before Giuliani saved the city. Twice. This is 1992. There are well over two thousand murders a year in New York. Gang wars. Crack killings.
The New York Times
publishes a murder map of Manhattan with a dot for every violent death. Once you get above Central Park the dots get thicker and east and north of Columbia University it becomes one big smudge. A killing took place yesterday at this very corner. A boy on a bicycle shot a woman in the chest when she didn’t give up her pocketbook. Those guys down there are packing heat. Shit, we’re all packing heat. The cops don’t care. Besides, what cops? Who ever sees a peeler