Blood Count

Harlem, November 4, 2008-
Election Night

On a dark side street in Harlem, a silver van suddenly appears out of nowhere. Its wheels spinning, it seems to move with a life of its own, down the empty street, past the quiet brownstones and the old trees shedding their leaves.

I’ve been driving around for a while, looking for a place to park. Election night. A balmy Indian summer night in November. The sounds of the city getting ready to explode with joy, especially here in Harlem. Overhead, long beams from the arc lights on 125th Street play on the sky, the night lit up like day.

From somewhere close by comes the noise of celebration: shouting and laughter, fireworks, sparklers, music. From someplace, music-R amp;B, rap, Dixieland, all-enveloping-drifts through the open window of my car as I turn into 152nd Street, see an empty spot, cut across the street to grab it.

It’s tight. I back in sharp as I can, trying to fit my ancient Caddy, big boat of a car, into the space, and it’s only then I notice the van.

It comes from around the corner, comes up behind me after I’ve parked, I think. Gathering speed, it passes me, rolling down the hilly street toward Harlem River Drive.

Up here in Sugar Hill, on good days, if you’re high up in a tall building, you can see down the broad boulevards to the midtown skyline, almost down to Ground Zero, the hole in the city that’s still empty after seven years.

If I hadn’t found a spot to park that night, if I’d just given up, gone home, watched the election returns on TV, maybe none of it would have happened-not what happened then, not what followed six weeks later.

Parked now, I watch the van roll, seemingly out of control, as in a dream.

It’s new, a slick new Ford just out of a showroom, probably bought cheap now everything’s hitting the skids, car dealers selling off what they can, waiting for letters from Ford or Chrysler, or GM, telling them it’s all over, the good days gone, you’re done for, forget the ten, twenty, thirty-seven years we’ve been in business together.

Stop!

Why doesn’t the driver stop?

I can’t see a driver. It’s as if the van’s driving by itself, nobody in it, just a silvery box on wheels hurtling down to the river.

Maybe it’s the booze. I’ve been out drinking all evening, getting up enough nerve to come here, find a place to park, go over to the club on St. Nicholas Avenue. Is it the booze, a hallucination, this driverless ghost van that rolls by me faster and faster, in and out of the white pools cast by streetlights on a dark Harlem street?

But I know it’s real. I watch until it disappears around a corner as fireworks explode overhead.