Lair of Dreams

Harlem streets that had been bathed in neon hope taunted Memphis as he walked toward home. A cluster of young, drunk downtowners pushed out of the whites-only Cotton Club and stumbled down Lenox Avenue singing “Everything Is Hotsy Totsy Now” at the top of their lungs. They took up most of the sidewalk, and Memphis wanted to knock into them, pushing them into the street. Instead, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of the suit he wore, his fingers still clutching the crumpled poem.

“Hey, Romeo! What happened to your big date?” Clarence called, laughing, from the front door of the Hotsy Totsy as Memphis passed by. “Aw, now, don’t worry none, Memphis. Plenty of girls inside.”

Not the one I’m in love with, Memphis thought. At the edge of the neighborhood, on a derelict street far from the excitement of Lenox Avenue, a man sprawled across a sidewalk, reeking of liquor. Memphis recognized him as one of the local drunks—Noble Bishop. He didn’t have a coat. A man could freeze to death out here.

Memphis shifted from foot to foot. “Hey. Hey there, Mr. Bishop. You all right?”

The drunkard swore at him.

Fine. Lie there, Memphis thought. He knew what Octavia would say: “You can’t help a person who doesn’t want to be helped.”

But the man was a wreck. His shirt was ripped, and there was a nasty wound on his arm that looked bad. Memphis stood in the cold, torn.

“Looks like you could use a doctor,” Memphis tried.

Noble Bishop gaped up with red eyes and an expression devoid of hope. His voice wasn’t much more than a frayed thread of sound. “Why? He gonna make me free?” And then he laid his head down on the cold sidewalk and cried.

Memphis was no doctor and he was no saint. He couldn’t make either of them free. But he might be able to do something about Noble’s festering cut if he was brave enough to try. Or would he fail at that, too?

“Mr. Bishop, I better take a look at that cut on your arm,” Memphis said, drawing closer. His heart thumped in his chest. The whole night was a disaster, and here he was flirting with the possibility of even more trouble.

The drunk kicked at him halfheartedly. “Don’t need no help from you! Git!”

“You need help from somebody. Just let me have a look. That’s all.”

Reluctantly, Noble offered his arm, an expression of barely checked violence in his eyes. He smelled not just of booze but of piss, too. Fighting back his revulsion, Memphis gripped the man’s arm at the wrist and just below the elbow and closed his eyes, trying to draw on that healing place deep within. But nothing caught. No spark. And suddenly, the night veered from awful to hopeless.

“It’s gone,” Memphis said to himself. He felt frantic. “I lost it again.”

“Let me go!” The man smacked Memphis on the shoulder and cuffed him once on the ear.

“Ow! Quit it, you old drunk!” Memphis said, dodging Noble’s blows.

“Let go! Let go!” Swearing to beat the band, Noble landed a punch that caught Memphis in the thigh, and the whole lousy night swelled up inside Memphis like a wave. He didn’t want to heal Noble Bishop; he wanted to hit him and keep hitting him. He wanted to strike back at the world. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the man’s arm and held on tight.

“You want this arm to rot off, you damn fool? Stop it, ’fore I hit you back! Stop—”

The connection surged through Memphis quick and hard, like an electrical current. His body jerked twice. The back of his tongue tasted of iron. The street beyond blurred, grayed, then filled with light. The last thing Memphis saw was the drunk’s eyes going round as coins as he tried, but failed, to speak.

Memphis felt as if he were falling, and all around him was a sound like rushing water. His body settled, and he stood once more in that other, healing place that lay between this world and the next. He felt the press of spirits beside him. Their hands welcomed him back first, and then he saw them standing all around: vague shapes of ancestors draped in layers upon layers of cloth, reaching across oceans and generations, unknown yet so familiar. There was the soft, distant rhythm of drums and subdued singing. A warm breeze brought the smell of salt and heat-baked sand.

When their hands fell away, the shapes parted, and Memphis saw his mother in a coat of shiny blue-black feathers, waving at him through amber fields of sun-ripened wheat.