He turned on his back and thought about crime and safety. What would he do if
someone did break in, point a gun, demanded money and threatened violence?
The Bronx was not a dangerous place. Many dangerous looking people about, yes,
but not really dangerous.
Near one o'clock he was still wide awake; he had to get up in five hours.
But now the lady in the building next door, the wife of ex-police Officer McGuigan,
opened her back window and started reeling out her washing on the clothes line. It
was a warmer than usual late September night and possibly her last chance to hang
clothes on the line.
She did this during the summer at midnight. It was part of the night noise he'd
grown accustomed to – squeak squeak as she fed the line out, quiet as she pinned
the family wash, then squeak squeak again. By morning she had taken it all in as if not
wanting the neighbours to see faded, crumpled clothes hung out to dry.
The squeaking clothes line usually caught the attention of her dog, a massive
creature they kept chained at the back. It barked and snarled as if it hated the world,
not its owners, for its chained condition. It pawed the empty food bowl which went
clang clang on the concrete. The lady pulled on the squeaking line and shouted, Shut
up, you sonofabitch, shut up!
Any other night this might have all passed as nothing more than people getting on
with their lives. Now with his anxiety heightened he began to brood and wonder.
Nothing stayed the same for too long in this city. Buildings came down, new
structures went up; strangers moved in, people gathered old habits and belongings
and moved on. Constant movement and change – this was what awaited you in the
city.
Around two o'clock, his mind still abuzz with errant thought, the sanitation truck
arrived. He heard the beeping sound as it reversed; he listened to the whirring noise
as the loading mechanism picked up the dumpster outside the bodega. For long
minutes there was the most incredible noise, a whirring clanking dumping noise, metal
feuding with garbage. He couldn't imagine anyone sleeping through it; amazingly
Amarelle did.
At moments like this, caught in a concatenation of strange sound and incident, he
felt most vulnerable. What will become of me in this city?
He reached back and groped through some deep pocket of memory, searching for
his island, and that hour of night when the sound of cicadas, the swish of tree
branches on galvanized roofs were like gentle guardians of sleep.
The sanitation truck made one last grinding upheaval crushing the remnants of his
night, leaving only slivers of fear through which the city poured odor and omen as
disturbing as the howl of wolves and dogs on a prairie.
(from Ah,Mikhail, O Fidel! by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 