A couple blocks from the river, near Cope, from behind the corner of a warehouse my first cousin on my daddy’s side, Daniel Lyons, emerged, smoking a cheroot as thick as a tree limb, and soon as he saw me he tipped his brim and called me over. He had been a few years ahead of Horatio and me in school, though after Jonathan, but he had always seemed as if he were much older. People in the streets called him “Dandylion,” though to me he was just “Dandy.” The blue serge suit he sported was as fine as anything the white gentleman at the Academy this afternoon had worn, and even in the evening light the rings glinted from every other one of his stubby copper fingers. I hadn’t seen him in a while but wherever he happened to be, my mother warned me constantly, so was trouble. Nevertheless I didn’t know anybody walking the streets of Philadelphia who could stay so close to danger yet outside the lasso of the law or always have as good a time doing so.
“Uzcay, where you rolling?” He extended his cigar. I declined. When he pulled a flask out of his inner pocket and offer me some after he took a sip, I declined again.
“Work, Uzcay,” I said. “An event. Near Rittenhouse Square.”
“Ahh.” He smoothed his full mustache, which looked like he had been trimming and waxing it for decades. He added, “Rittenhouse. That’s some fancy pish, Red. What you doing over here? Little play before you toil the night away?”
“Just got some time, taking a walk to burn it off before I got to sweat.”
“Sweet,” he said. “What time they expecting you? I want to show you something if you got just a few minutes.” His voice lowered, like he didn’t want anybody, not even me, to hear what he was about to say. A man on a horse trotted past and he grew silent. “Something real good. Only for my blood.”
“Oh no, Dandy,” I said, registering at that moment that I ought to slap palms and run straight to the event, even if I had to expend a half hour to spare just milling about outside the back gate or in the square itself. “I can’t be late for this, I swear.”
“Why you think I’ma make you late? Edray, my little man, come on now. All I axing you for is a few minutes. Just got something to show you. Know you’ll like it.” He took off his hat and stroked his perfectly parted and pomaded head of hair, the shine on the black bales setting off his beringed fingers.
“What is it? Where is it?” I looked around and wondered at that moment what Dandylion was even doing over in this neighborhood with all the toughs and bandits and everything else, especially since these west-side white folks were known for jumping out of alleys ready to fight. I told him, “Look, Dandy, I wish I could roll with you right now but I got to get to work. Plus, this area over here—”
“See, Uzcay,” he said, “you always wanna be like that. Hincky. Last time we cooled it ain’t you have a good time?” and he was right, we had gone to a house south of here, ten blocks perhaps past the Naval Asylum, where some people he knew had set up a gambling parlor, with enough free liquor for a shipload of sailors, several fiddlers, and hours of dancing. There were even white folks there too. Before that, right after I turned fifteen I had ridden the ferry with him to Camden to attend a cockfight, and had had my first taste of beer there. “Rittenhouse Square is it?”
“Just east of there. I swear I can’t miss work, Dandy, you know how hard things is these days.”
“Red, cool your heels. You ain’t going to miss no work, we only going a few blocks away, in the direction of Rittenhouse. By the time we done you could crawl there and still wouldn’t be late.” So he started walking but I stayed where I was, until I spied these two white boys, men really, across the street, they were watching me, not frowning but not looking neutral either, and at the very moment they started to advance in my direction I thought it best to follow Dandy.
At a three-story building that on the outside looked like any other on the block but also like one in which no one had lived for a while, he knocked six times on the weathered front door. I started to turn around as soon as we entered because it was very dark, except for a single lamp, not even gas, in the foyer, but Dandy took my arm, guiding me up the stairs, past a brother I didn’t even see at first with a face so hard it could cut metal, though when our eyes met they contained the glimmers of assent, slightly reassuring me. We reached the second floor, which appeared empty though I could hear things going on in several of the rooms, cackling, flesh clapping against flesh, dice or marbles hitting a wall. Dandy proceeded up the stairs to the third storey, still holding my arm, and I knew then that I should turn around but I also wanted badly to see what he had in store.
We walked down a near-black hallway, and he again knocked six times on a door. To our left I noticed another door open but a crack. I walked over toward it and peeking in it saw a stairwell look like it led to the roof. The door Dandy had rapped on opened, baring a brother, face backlit by lamplight. Dandy pushed in, towing me with him. Before us sat a bed, face down in it, I saw squinting, lay a white lady, least I thought she was white, and a female, but sheets covered her legs, pillows concealed her head. Since she wasn’t moving I didn’t know if she was alive. The room stank of sweat and piss, no one had ever cleaned up in here, and I could also smell urine rising from the floorboards and the dark sheet shrouding the window. I turned toward the door and Dandy grabbed my elbow and said, “See, I told you I had something I know you’d like. Who don’t want a pretty girl like that?”
The brother, double our age, probably 30, skinny as a knifeblade and just as ugly, whose presence I had almost completely forgotten, piped up from the shadows, “Who this little red bastard, you only sposed to be up here by yourself.”
“This my cousin, slave,” Dandy replied, placing his hand inside his jacket like he had a shank or revolver in there, and I really wished I had left him on Cope and just headed straight to the event. “What mine is my blood, plus you owe me triple anyway.” While he was talking the white lady began moaning and lifted her behind in the air and spread her legs wide open. “Just think of this as partial repayment.”
The man looked from me to Dandy, then said, “Y’all got an hour with her, and no mad shit neither,” and Dandy said, “Slave, who the fuck you think you dealing with?” He reached into his jacket again, then said, “Where that special cigar you sposed to have ready?” The man pulled a cylinder, wrapped in what looked like butcher paper, from a cloth pouch slung over his shoulder. “Light it, so we know it okay.” The man lit the cigar from a candle near the door, and drew hard on it three or four times, then he passed it to Dandy, and Dandy drew on it some before passing it to me. “You can get out now,” he said to the brother, who stood staring at us, “we knows how to tell time.” Soon as the door closed, Dandy pointed to the cigar, which reeked of burning trash, and I took a hit, I had smoked tobacco before but I still choked some because it was so strong. When I handed it back to him he took another hit, then rubbed it out on the wall.