Tag: Fiction

    Mrs. Haliburton arrived at the school at about seven in the morning. She was driven
  there by her husband in their Cadillac Seville. It idled for a few minutes at the front
  entrance while its occupants, looking straight ahead, exchanged important reminders;
  then Mrs. Haliburton stepped out. She was among the first to arrive, and often the
  first to leave.
     Her departure, about an hour before the exodus of the three thousand students,
  was also through the front entrance. The Seville was not there to take her home. She
  walked. Sometimes she stopped by the post office; chatted on the sidewalk with old
  ladies gripping shopping carts; then she caught the bus. A lady of social standing, she
  felt at ease in the streets of her community.
     Once in the building she attended to paperwork for half an hour; then she picked
  up the phone and called her "girlfriends", women who like Mrs. Haliburton worked at
  a desk; single or divorced black women, like Noreen at the Board of Education, or
  Thelma at the Superintendent's office. They formed part of her valuable network of
  information. 
     Networking for Mrs. Haliburton was as important as the underground railroad back
  in the old bad days. She had her sources, people she relied on to leak information
  from downtown. Often she learnt in advance about new proposals for John Wayne
  Cotter H.S. She'd pass on the leaks to astonished colleagues with a wink and a smile,
  and "Don't tell anyone you heard it here first."
     Other bits of information she filtered to people in the community, folks she met on
  Sundays at her husband's church; influential grassroots people whom the Bronx
  politicians courted and turned to for votes.
                              (from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)                                                                                                                                                                                                      
                                                                        

      On Friday evenings Amarelle would urge him to take her out to dinner. They'd  
    gone out twice before, crossing a bridge into Manhattan and dining at a Greek
    restaurant. She smiled and made small talk, commenting on the decor and
    overdoing her excitement when the waiter took their order; while Radix, quiet
   and stiff, looked around and wondered what was no longer appealing about dining
    at home as they did on the island.
         When he stopped their eating out evenings – the one weeknight of dressing
    up, getting away from the decrepit neighborhood and dining like people with
    money to spend – Amarelle never forgave him. Now on Fridays there would be
    for him only "pot luck". And this evening she hadn't even come home from work!
         There was a Chinese Takeout on the next block.
         He stood on the stoop, buttoning his jacket, and he stared across the road
    where hours before someone had been killed. Strips of yellow police tape left
    behind flapped about on the sidewalk. A little girl emerged from the bodega
    with a bag of groceries. The Budweiser neon sign glowed and promised fun.
         At the Chinese Takeout the woman took his order without looking at him.
    Numbah 34, right? He hesitated; he changed his order, wanting something
    simpler. Okay, you want Numbah 35? She seemed eager to take his order, get
    it bagged, take his money; her eyes were cast down, her hands busy with
    detail behind the counter. And behind her – wearing their white chef hats and
    labouring over steaming bowls and pans – her Chinese helpers.
        He stood still looking out at the streets, arms folded, pondering the price of
    existence out there. The Chinese shop was next to a supermarket, and adjacent
    to a place for cashing checks. On the other side of the street, a towering
    apartment building, through whose glass doors a steady stream flowed – children
    babies in strollers, overweight women.
        Two young men came in and instantly swept aside his reflective mood. They looked
    at Radix, at his clothes, his shoes, all in one quick measuring motion; then they
    looked away. They came up to the plexiglass partition and rapped hard with knuckles.
    The Chinese woman looked up from her counter in terror; she pulled a pencil from her
    hair and waited.
        "Numbah 36!" The Chinese woman repeated the order just to be sure. "Didn't I
    just say that?… Wha's the matter…you fucking deaf?…Didn't I just say Numbah 36?
    That's what I want…and a side of fries. I don't know what this chump here wants."
    And his friend – bulky, babyfaced, wearing a bubble jacket – grabbed him and tried to
    put his head in an arm lock for calling him a chump.
                    (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
 

          He felt first the surprise of impact; he saw the head of the driver snap back,
     his hands raised in the air a little theatrically. The lanes beside his kept moving;
     vehicles behind him tried to manoeuvre out of his lane, honking in frustration at
     what his apparent carelessness had caused.
         The driver approaching him wore a baseball cap and sneakers; his shirt was
     unbuttoned; he seemed not to mind the cold temperature; he had a beer
     drinker's belly and a very annoyed manner. Radix watched him, ready to admit
     it was all his fault, waiting for the first indication of how the matter would be
     resolved.
        He sensed someone else watching: across the road, standing on the cracked
     asphalt, a man and a ferocious looking dog. He was dressed in a grey sweat suit;
     his face under the hood looked grizzled, gaunt. His dog sniffed the grass and
     tugged at the leash, wanting to move on; but the man wasn't ready. Radix caught
     his eye, felt his anticipation of something dramatic about to happen.
        Meanwhile the driver had inspected his rear bumper which looked dented but
     was otherwise intact. Radix' vehicle had gotten the worse of it, a smashed head-
     lamp; and as he tried to gauge the extent of the damage the man raised his arms
     in a gesture of disbelief and anger.
         He came up to Radix, "What the fuck?"… staring, waiting…"What the fuck?";
     then he walked back to the front of his car and reached inside, for a cigarette
     pack.
         Though not threatening this behavior left Radix uneasy.The man lit his
     cigarette and with his arms bracing the car appeared to be pondering his
     options. At intervals he said "Shit" with strange vehemence, as if building up
     emotional steam. He seemed to be waiting for Radix to say something, and
     Radix knew that the tone and choice of his first words would determine what
     happened next.
          He glanced at the man with the dog across the street. He could feel the man's
     knowingness, his amused appraisal: Like fish out of water… Don't know what 
     the fuck you're doing, right fella?  He looked back down the road, at miles of
     backed up traffic. People driving by gave him quick looks of fury. A wind gust
     sent dust in his face.
        A woman's voice from the man's car, screamng "For chrissakes, Angelo, shut 
     the door!" shifted his attention from Radix. He answered her in Spanish. They
     had a fierce rapid exchange, the accident forgotten for the moment; then the
     woman got out and came around to inspect the damage.
         She moved briskly as if accustomed to taking charge in mishaps like this, when
    her man wasn't sure what to do; and she smiled at Radix and commiserated, "Hey,
    it's not so bad…could have  been worse." Then in a firm tone she said, "Get in
    the car, Angelo,"  annoyed, muttering  "…the fuck outta here."
         Angelo came back to inspect his bumper one more time. He pointed and shook
     an unhappy finger at Radix: "You better learn how to fucking drive!" And with
     that the matter was settled – the man getting into his vehicle, moving off with
     sharp loud revs, daring anyone to hit his car again.
                                                (from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)

           Approaching his car Radix noticed a tiny pool of what looked like…what was
    most certainly…green engine coolant fluid near the front tires. Panic with tiny
    fingers gripped his heart. He bent down to inspect the fluid. How could he        
    be sure it came from his car?
        He got in and turned the ignition. The car started after the third try but the
    engine shuddered and rattled ominously. At the second traffic light, with the
    interior warming up and everything else sounding normal, his anxiety faded. He
    drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and looked out at a city heading
    home under grey skies.
        On the overpass he looked down and saw four lanes of traffic jammed up on
    the highway, stretching for miles, crawling forward. He'd have to go down there;
    he'd have to ease his way into that crawl. There were alternative routes but he'd
    never taken the time to explore them, knowing only one road home; hating
    roadways, the time-consuming need to travel on them; drivers who showed no
    concern for human limb and life.
        At the access road to the highway other drivers were having second thoughts.
    One fellow, already half way down, threw his car in reverse and came barelling
    back, the driver's head craned round, he didn't give a fuck what anyone thought
    as long as you got out his way.
         Radix decided to stick to the local roadway. It ran parallel to the highway
    until the highway went up and above ground and ran for a mile or so on concrete
    reinforcements, offering the convenience of not having to pass through local
    communities.
         But the roadway, an uneven strip, its lanes not clearly marked, soon backed
    up; traffic lights at intersections up ahead kept changing, from red to green
    then back to red for long minutes. Yet nothing moved. He began to regret not
    taking the highway which he could see above him, cars moving slowly, but
    moving; there was flow up there, and order; no bumper poking and jostling for
    space. The cars up there seemed… and before he could finish that thought his
    car struck the rear end of the vehicle in front.
                                        (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
 

               On Labour Day Radix was pressed into driving upstate to visit Amarelle's sister
          who with her husband always arranged for friends from the city to get away from
          that boring Labour Day parade, with its corrupt union leaders and fawning politicians
          walking down Fifth Avenue; away, too, from the violence prone West Indian carnival
          in Brooklyn with the steelbands and the bum bum rollers and revelers playing mas'.
          Get away from all that, drive along beautiful highways to a place called Poughkeepsie, 
          where they promised good food, clean air and quiet leisure activity.
              There was the problem of getting there.
              The Bronx had its own travel frustrations, the narrow choked roadways, careless
          people walking and claiming as much right to the streets as any BMW; the potholes
          that weren't there yesterday. Radix had grown accustomed to all that.
              When he started travelling too far out from those landmarks and had to rely on
          those green oblong signs he felt a strange fear.
              He wasn't much good at road map reading; he felt certain he'd get lost somewhere
          along the route, miss an exit, run into strange territory, some tiny close-knit town
          whose residents could tell straightaway he didn't belong there. For her part Amarelle
          couldn't understand why someone with a college degree would find it so difficult to
          follow a road map.   
              Once they got to the three-lane highway Amarelle immediately adjusted her seat
          from the straight-up position; she lay back and commented on passing scenery; then
          she closed her eyes behind her sunglasses, coming alert only to remark how lovely
          it must be to live out here once they'd saved up enough money to buy a house, which
          was what upward-thinking people did.
              The long rolling expanse of road, other people leisurely in their cars, the trees
          changing to fall colours – what freedom!
              She was looking forward to the comfort and space upstate, to meeting friendly
          people who had jobs and could afford the things they owned. No hostile stares; no
          Fordham Road; no sidewalks choked with people peddling cheap watches and ency-
          clopedias.What freedom!
              For his part Radix, driving in the centre lane, pretending to focus on his driving,
         was thinking of the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union. Did these people rushing
         by strapped in their seatbelts understand the significance of what was happening in
         the Soviet Union? Did they have a clue?
              He'd come to associate the rise and fall of nations with the fortunes of one man,
         be it an Abraham Lincoln or a Napoleon. Now it was the turn of Mikhail Gorbachev.
         Of course, it was a far more complicated process but it pleased him to think that way.
             When he came off the highway and turned into what looked like suburban, not
         upstate New York, he followed Amarelle's directions (her car seat was upright again);
         he drove slowly through neat orderly streets; past a white kid in a bright blue parka 
         pedalling his bike and trying to outrace a chasing dog; past a stretch of wooded area
         beautiful and desolate, a shopping plaza.
              And he hoped that when they arrived at Amarelle's sister he'd meet someone he
         could talk to about Mikhail Gorbachev, for at that moment nothing else in the world
         mattered.   
                           (from "Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel!" a novel by N.D.Williams)