Philadelphia Fire. John Edgar Wideman
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best moment. Many high fives and a good, deep-down sense of pushing to the limit and bringing something back. After the winning basket they gathered under the hoop still shuddering from Sky’s humongous dunk. Their eyes met, their fists met for a second in the core of a circle, then just as quickly broke apart, each going his own way.
If you keep playing, the failing light is no problem. Your eyes adjust and the streetlamps come on and they help some. People pass by think you’re crazy playing basketball in the dark, but if you stay in the game you can see enough. Ball springs at you quicker from the shadows. Pill surprises you and zips by you unless you know it’s coming. Part of being in the game is anticipating, knowing who’s on the court with you and what they’re likely to do. It’s darker. Not everything works now that works in daylight. Trick is knowing what does. And staying within that range. You could be blind and play if the game’s being played right so you stay out past the point people really seeing. You just know what’s supposed to be happening. Dark changes things but you can manage much better than anyone not in the game would believe. Still there comes a point you’ll get hurt if you don’t give it up. Not the other team you’re fighting then, but the dark, and it always wins, you know it’s going to win so what you’re doing doesn’t make sense, it’s silly and you persist in the silliness a minute or two, a pass pops you in your chest, a ball rises and comes down in the middle of three players and nobody even close to catching it. You laugh and go with the silliness. Can’t see a damn thing anymore. Whether a shot’s in or out. Hey, O.T., man. Show some teeth so I can see you, motherfucker. Somebody trudges off the court. Youall can have it. I can’t see shit. The rest laugh and give it up, too. You fade to the sidelines. It’s been dark a long time at the court’s edges. People’s faces gloomed in deep shadow. A cigarette glows. Night sure enough now. Cross a line and on the other side it’s been dark for days.
Mellow reggae thumps from the open door of a car. A light crowd of hangers-on in groups by the curb, against the chain-link fence, around a bench on the court, huddled at another bench farther away where the hollow drops off from the path. Riffs of reefer, wine, beer. You smell yourself if you’ve been playing. Cudjoe’s in the cluster of men lounging around the bench in the middle of the court’s open side. Night dries his skin. He feels darker, the color of a deep, purple bruise. He won’t be able to walk tomorrow. Mostly players around the bench, men who’ve just finished the last game of the evening, each one relaxing in his own funk, cooling out, talking the game, beginning to turn it into stories. Cudjoe knows the action will flash back later, game films on an invisible screen above his bed. All those years of playing and it still happens. While his stiff muscles unknot, too tired to sleep, the game movie will play in his head whether he wants to watch or not.
If he told his story to the other men, if he wasn’t a newcomer content to listen to the others, if he wasn’t too tired and beat to say his own name three times in a row, his story would be about night dropping on the city, how deep and how quietly it settles over the park. Nothing the same now. Trick about night is it changes things but you can’t see exactly how. You know the park is different, you feel it in your bones. Night air cools your skin, contours of the ground rise and fall in unfamiliar rhythms, spaces open which haven’t been there before, the hollow loses its bottom, a black lap you’d sink into forever. Night can shrink things. The players beside him are smaller, parts of them lost, stolen by shadow, their voices husky, pitched to the night’s quiet, movements slowed as if night’s a medium like water and they must conspire with its flow. When night’s closing down it shuts things in on themselves and that’s why you are on a ship with these other men thousands of miles from everywhere else, floating through darkness, and you can’t help sensing the isolation, the smallness because night cuts you off drastically as a knife. But since you can’t see clearly, you can’t really tell. Night expands some things. Trees explode silently, giant black puffs hovering like clouds against the sky. You know night’s different and you guess at why. Can’t help guessing, wondering, even though you understand you’ll never understand because night is about hiding things. About things changing. And Cudjoe knows it would make a good story. They’d all be in it. Would the players testify, help him tell his story as they cool out after the game?
The other fact about night—it doesn’t last. Night’s temporary. But you can’t really be sure about that, either.
My poor, aching wheels.
I can dig it, bro.
My mind’s right there. Tells me just what to do. But my legs ain’t with it. In their own world. I send the message and by the time they move, it’s too late.
Like the mayor.
That cat missing more than wheels.
You can say that again.
He’s not stepping down, is he? You watch. He’ll run again. Probably win again if the party’s behind him.
Why you think they wouldn’t be behind him? All he did was torch a few crazy niggers. That’s why he’s up in office in the first place. Keep youall ghetto bunnies in line. Sure, he goofed. But things so fucked in this city whoever’s in the mayor’s chair bound to fuck up. Mayor don’t run the city, city runs him. Them slick dudes own the mayor are grinning from ear to ear cause if it had been a white boy dropped the bomb, bloods would have took to the street and the whole city nothing but a cinder now.
Tell the truth.
Leave the mayor alone, youall. Cat’s doing his best. Hate to hear people bad-mouthing him. Specially black people. Finally voted in a black man, and now nothing he does good enough for you.
Ain’t about black.
Bull-shit. You think they’d let him burn down white people’s houses? Sheeit. He be hanging by his balls from some lamppost. Mayor’s not in office to whip on white folks. Nigger control. That’s what he’s about.
New houses they building up on Osage spozed to be pretty nice.
No stoops, man. How you spozed to have a neighborhood with no stoops?
Check it out. What’s up there mostly holes in the ground.
Where the people living lost their homes?
Not in City Hall. Not in the mayor’s neighborhood.
At least they’re living.
Don’t care what nobody says. It was murder, man. Murder one and some of those lying suckers ought to pay.
They appointed a commission.
Hey, bro. Commissioners all members of the same club. Thick as thieves. Downtown chumps all eating out the same bowl. They come in where I work. Smiling and grinning and falling over each other to pay when I bring the check. You think they going to hang one their own? Watch. Commission will claim some poor blood lit the match.
Papers been spreading that lie already. Like the brothers poured gasoline on the roof and locked theyselves in the basement and set fire to the house. Who’s spozed to believe that shit?
Have they found the little boy?
The one survived?
They say he survived. If he did, hope he’s a million miles away from here. They’ll fuck with him if they find him.
Blame him.
If he ain’t dead already. Papers say eleven dead. Means at least eleven. Lie about the numbers like they lie about everything else. If they admit eleven it means that’s how many bodies they caught red-handed with. Don’t know how many dead in those ashes in the basement. Papers say a boy escaped. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.
Anything left in that bottle, man?
Here, dude. You got the rest.
Cudjoe decides not to ask about the boy again. Cheating in a way when he asked the first time. This mood, this time belongs to nobody. Each man free as long as they relax here letting night close over them. If a city lurks beyond the borders of the park, it’s no more real than the ball games they play again as they talk. They are together in this. No agendas, interviews or interviewees. Are the streetlamps dimmer or has the city slipped into a deeper