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I sip a glass of bourbon, staring at that thing for a long time.

May 19, 1943.

Somewhere, in the midst of all my fretting and fleeing, I turned eighteen today.

It’s my birthday. And not a soul around me knows it or cares. Not even me, until just now.

It’s not like I keep close track of the date. What’s the point? Wake up, keep moving. That’s all there is to do.

I pull some money out, thinking I might splurge on a long-distance call. I think about it for a long while as the coins sit warming in my palm. Who is going to want to hear from me?

Sophia comes down from Boston to visit me. I’m so glad to see her. A spot of bright light, a glimmer of the highest place my old self ever reached. I take her in my arms and kiss her.

“You came all this way,” I say. “Let me show you Harlem.”

Sophia settles against me. “So show me.”

I take her to the Cotton Club, the Braddock, the Savoy. We Lindy-Hop until the blues leak out of our fingers, until the music ends and shades of sunrise streak the sky.

We meet up with Sammy at another club for a drink the next night.

“Dang,” Sammy says. “She’s a fine-looking woman.” He sounds impressed that someone like me can keep up with a woman like her.

“That she is,” I agree. I watch her glide among the tables, making for the powder room.

Sammy shakes his head. “You got stars in your eyes, Red.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you think you’re doing with her?” It isn’t harsh, the way he’s asking. Just kinda mellow and curious.

I shrug. “Just having a good time. We go way back.”

“How long?”

“Couple of years.” I’m sure in that time I’ve been her steadiest man. She wasn’t traveling all these hours to visit anyone else.

He seems a little surprised at that. “She’s stuck with you all that time,” he muses.

“We have an understanding.”

Sammy snorts. “Yeah, I’ll bet you do.”

“Come on,” I say. “What are you after with this?” It isn’t curiosity anymore. He’s goading me now.

“I just want to help you see it like it is.” Sammy picks up his glass and raises it to me. “Any day now,” he intones.

“What?”

“You think you have an understanding? You just watch.” He tips the drink toward me, like a salute. “One of these days she’s gonna up and marry some whitey. A rich one. Right out from under your nose.”

“Naw,” I say. “She’s not the marrying kind.” Anyway, Sophia doesn’t need anyone else. The white men she dates are just for appearances. She’s mine. Her heart lies on top of mine in my chest, and I’m not about to give it back to her.

Sammy laughs, loud and deep. “Every woman’s the marrying kind. You just watch.”

Sophia’s on her way back to me. Like always. “Think what you want,” I tell Sammy. “I’ve been all over the map in the time she’s known me. She ain’t left me once.”

The cops turn up everywhere. They see me coming, and I have to skirt. Drop my parcel, hope I can pick it up later.

“Red, you’re too on edge,” Sammy says. “You need to relax.”

They could come for me anytime. I know it. I’m watching out the window, day and night. If they can’t prove it, they’ll plant it. So I stay different places, moving every night. I keep a few of my things at Sammy’s, but I mostly move around.

“Keep calm; keep your head,” Sammy warns. “Panic’s sent more than one hustler straight into the arms of the law.”

He’s lying back on his new houndstooth couch, watching me pace. I’m seconds away from tearing my conk out, strand by strand. It’s all I can do. I can’t sit down. Can’t keep still. If I stop moving, that’s how they’ll get me. They might be outside the door right now.

“You’re off the rails, man,” Sammy says. He pulls a packet of white powder from his breast pocket. Waggles it in the air. “You need some perspective.”

He tosses the packet onto the coffee table, where it falls next to a few playing cards, a rolled dollar bill, and one jagged slab of a broken mirror.

Sammy takes the king of clubs and uses it to scoot the powder into a neat line. He sticks the rolled dollar bill into one nostril and runs it over the line, sniffing deeply. “Yeah.” He sighs. “That’s a breath of good stuff right there.”

He tips the dollar toward me and motions me down. “Just like that,” he says. “A hundred percent better.”

Anything
, I think.
Anything to get outside of how I feel.

I bend over the powder. Look at myself in the slice of cracked mirror. Close my eyes.

The high hits right away. I feel alive. Like I can fly. It’s like coming home, but to a place without memory or thoughts.

Harlem, June 1943

I didn’t think it was going to happen, but I finally get papers in the mail about joining the army. The cops may not have caught up with me, but Uncle Sam sure has. My number is up.

I talk to some of the guys around the street about how they handled it. Some of them haven’t gotten called yet. Some of them have gone ahead and served. But I’m thinking about what Shorty said — his whole theory about how the black man shouldn’t have to fight this war. Not until we can dance in the same room as white folks. Not until we’re less likely to get strung up by the neck in a cornfield somewhere. Lots of guys have warned me not to take Sophia out of the city for that very reason. Might be they’ll find me swinging there some morning, if we venture into the wrong parts looking like a couple.

Shoot. I can’t even figure a way to take Sophia back to Lansing with me. That’s if I ever wanted to go, which I don’t. Is this the country I’m supposed to go to war and die for? I don’t think so.

My army interview date comes up fast. After listening to the guys, it seems like the best way to go is to play it crazy.

I go up in there stinking. Haven’t bathed for three days. Hair all crazy. The pretty nurses take my pulse and my temperature, then they put me in a room with a guy in a uniform — some kind of doctor. There’s a metal table in the center and two thin-legged metal chairs. It looks like both a room that wasn’t always for this and a room that couldn’t be for anything else.

I don’t even wait to find out what he wants from me. I launch into talking about smoking whitey. Whitey, who’s all this time been keeping us Negroes down.

I do wild eyes. It’s not hard to get to this place. The U.S. Army wants to put its hands on me, yet another white government man sent in to press me into place. I picture Mom bucking her spine beneath the grip of the welfare men, who claimed to know better. I wonder if Papa fought, too, when those white men came and pushed him on the tracks. I wonder if he ever saw it coming. I wonder if he knew they’d pounce on Mom and call her crazy so they could break up our family and send her away. They were always after our land, which they never wanted us to have in the first place.

I bet he saw it coming. How could he not? They burned our house, and yet he kept on doing the same thing, pushing his agenda, talking his big talk. He knew it would just fan the flames. He wanted to fan them. Might as well have lain right down on the tracks himself.

Yeah, he saw it coming. Just like I see it coming. Fresh and white and spit-shined, glossy and tempting. Solid paycheck. See the world. A chance to shoot and kill. Nice threads, to boot.

I’ve seen those servicemen in the bars and the nightclubs, working it on all the girls who want that kind of a man. What kind of a man? The kind that goes where he’s told to. The cookie-cutter kind. The kind that lies down when he’s told to. But I’m not gonna lie down for anyone.

Harlem, 1944

The best hustle in Harlem always has been, and always will be, the numbers racket. Everyone plays numbers. The big cheeses who own the various blocks and districts make a killing off it every single day.

As a known hustler, it’s also the easiest game in town to get away with — no contraband for the cops to find if they frisk you. I admit, I’ve always had a hankering to get into this racket, but now I have an opening. One small-time runner we know — goes by Stone — just got drafted. He’s already gone, reporting for duty somewhere upstate.

Sammy orchestrates a reintroduction for me with Stone’s boss, one of the biggest numbers runners in Harlem: West Indian Archie. We wait around outside of Small’s Paradise one afternoon while Archie’s inside.

“Hey, Archie,” Sammy says, when he finally emerges. “What’s happening?” They slap skin.

Archie notices me lurking alongside. Sammy says, “Say, do you know my pal Detroit Red? He’s the cat I was telling you about.”

“This is him?”

Sammy nods. “The prodigy, yeah. He’s a real entrepreneur, if you catch me.”

I’m nervous as Archie studies me. “Sammy says you managed to escape the draft without running.”

“Yes.”

“That ain’t easy. You must be pretty resourceful.”

“I do all right.” Sammy warned me to play it cool. Archie doesn’t like it when people try to suck up to him too hard.

“All right?” Archie laughs. “Yeah, sounds like it.” He claps me on the shoulder like he’s proud of me. A small surge of gladness rises in my chest.

“I remember you, anyway,” he says. “You used to wait tables here.”

“Yeah, that’s me.” I glance at Sammy, who tilts his head, giving me the OK to continue. “I hear you have a spot open for a runner.”

“I might.” Archie looks me up and down. A quality inspection. I stand tall — taller than him. Six foot four and counting. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop growing. Living in Harlem, I’ve had to tone down my flashy zoots, and it’s just as well; those old fancy ones don’t fit me anymore anyway.

“If it turns out you do, maybe you’ll keep me in mind for the position,” I say.

Archie’s dark eyes study me awhile longer. “I might.”

Sammy turns and starts walking away. Maybe I’m supposed to follow, now that I’ve said my piece and all. I nod to Archie and start after him.

“Leaving so soon?” He smiles, out of a face that’s both warm and stern. Instinctively I know: you don’t cross Archie. You obey. And he’ll take care of you.

Archie puts out his hand and we shake. “You’re with me now,” he says softly as I fall into step alongside him. I feel like I’ve crossed into some promised land.

You can’t write the numbers down, Archie teaches me. A thousand numbers, in a particular order, and you have to hold it all in your head. Not just anyone can do it. Got to remember everyone’s numbers, everyone’s bet, what everyone owes and is owed. Some runners use betting slips to keep track, but that’s risky. If there’s no paper trail, you can’t be caught.

Most bookies can’t do it that way; it’s a lot to remember. But I can, and Archie’s pleased with me. I might even be his favorite. “We’re gonna have a lot of fun, Detroit,” he tells me. “With skills like that, you’re going places.”

When he claps me on the shoulder, I feel full. He swings through my area more often than he visits the others, just to chat. “You’re my biggest earner. There’ll be opportunities ahead for you if you keep up the good work.”

I’m keeping it up. Archie has high expectations, but I can rise. Expectation. Opportunity. Between Archie’s nice words and Sammy’s powder and all the cash rolling in, I’m feeling good.

My mind is like an adding machine.
Cha-ching. Cha-ching.
I see a guy coming, gotta search for it. What’s his number? Did it hit today? Does he owe me? I calculate real fast. Fast enough that when he’s close I can go, “Stebbins, you got my fifteen bucks, or what?”

“Yeah, Red. Yeah. I get paid today, man. I’ll be back with it.” Meanwhile he’s skirting across the sidewalk. Like I don’t know what that means.

I follow him. Swagger close. “Hold on.”

He doesn’t hold. Dodges me, trying to get up on the curb and away.

I mirror him.

My moves are smooth. Always have been. I’m smart enough to see what’s coming, and clever enough to turn it my way. All my skills make me perfect for this. The street dance. The hustle.

It’s a hot-as-hell day. The kind when the streets seem to be melting — the blacktop actually sticks to my shoes as I’m walking back to my pad from dropping the bets off to Archie.

“Police shot a black serviceman,” a guy tells me. “In uniform. Never did nothing!”

It starts to get a little heated. A little crazy. People running every which way. Not a purposeful kind of stride, but looking like they’re on their way to nowhere.

People begin rioting against white-owned businesses, and I’m in the middle of it. Around me, folks are screaming and looting and smashing glass and all kinds of craziness. I skirt it, stay above it, but it scares me.

A soldier. A man who’s willing to give his life fighting for what’s right doesn’t deserve to have his life taken. But that’s how it goes. All the time.

So many brown bodies. So much strange fruit.

I slip past the riots, back to the safety of my own pad. Sniff a little powder. Smoke a little reefer. Anything to block out the noise from the street below.

When someone innocent gets struck down, we all look sharper for a day or two. If it can happen to someone like that, it can happen to any of us. Anytime. The cops can say, “It’s you we want,” and they only have to pull the trigger to seal the deal.