Ten Thousand Windows
Cosmopolitan Oval, hub of the Chester Park Houses in the Bronx, was crowded with white faces, one peaceful postwar afternoon.
Young mothers rocked gurgling boomers in buggies. Elderly couples decayed. Bored teens hatched plans to return to the foaming fountain after dark and feed Oxydol to the goldfish.
All at once, a black workman passing with his head down let out a whoop and, in full view of ten thousand windows, jumped into the fountain. What his object was didn’t emerge till he waded up behind me and — undaunted by the water spouting from my horns — clambered up onto my shoulders.
“You there!”
He lifted his sodden cap to the patrolman who came charging out of a path between two flowerbeds.
“Pleased to meet you. The name’s Barnett, with two T’s.”
“I don’t care if it’s Harry Truman. Get down off that.”
Instead of complying, Barnett draped one foot over my beard and propped the other on the tablets I was clutching.
“I’ll be glad to, just as soon as they agree to rent me an apartment in this project. I have a wife and kids, so we’ll need two bedrooms.”
Understandably reluctant to get into water up to his knees, the patrolman pulled up short at the lip of the fountain.
“What are you — some kind of comedian? Unless you’re fresh off the boat, you know as well as I do they don’t rent to you people.”
“Then maybe it’s time they started.”
For fear of unpleasantness, I thought it best to intervene. “Give us a minute, will you, officer?”
“Not one second more.”
And, with his billy, he stood by tapping on the palm of his hand while Barnett hugged my neck.
“You being married to a black woman, I knew I could count on you.”
“I only wish,” I said with a sigh, “I could offer you more than moral support, but the fact is it’ll be another ten years before the city bans discrimination, and another twenty before it gets around to enforcing the ban.”
He received this information with a shrug. “If you’re saying that — like you — I won’t make it to the promised land, I don’t care, as long as I can be sure my kids’ll get there.”
“Your kids’ll make it all right,” I had the small consolation of assuring him, “only, before they’ve finished unpacking, the neighbors’ll begin moving out. In thirty years, there won’t be a white face left on these benches.”
“Your minute’s up!”
Barnett refused to budge, and remained defiant even after the furious patrolman splashed into the fountain and hauled him down.
“I’ll pay the fine and be back.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “While you’re gone, I’ll sacrifice a goat.”
Stephen Baily has published short stories in numerous journals, including, most recently, Loud Zoo, Every Writer, and Words Paint Pictures. His novel “Markus Klyner, MD, FBI” is available as a Kindle e-book.