Fiction

David Frank

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The Robeson Connection 

We were parked on the street, at a sharp angle to the curb. It was the only street I knew where you could park this way. It was as if you had just pulled into place in front of a wide sand beach with rolling waves. Except this was in the middle of the city in the middle of the winter, a parking meter in front and streetcars clattering up and down the tracks behind us.

I was sitting in the back seat, waiting for my father and looking out the side window at a pile of snow speckled black from the city smog. It was not as cold as you would think in February, and I was starting to feel overheated in my winter jacket. I watched the sunlight dance in the wet shadows on the sidewalk, and I wondered how long it would take for the sun to melt all the snow and how dirty the puddles would be after that.

I was daydreaming like this when I became aware of a shadow at the window. A hand in black leather was knocking on the window, right at my ear. When I looked up, I saw a black uniform— buckles, red trim, white helmet. It was a policeman, one of the kind who wear sunglasses like mirrors on the front of their face and drive motorbikes covered in chrome. He was motioning for me roll down the window.

            –– Where’s your Dad, son?
            I didn’t really know, so I didn’t say anything.
            –– Did he go inside? Is he coming back soon?

 I nodded silently, watching as he climbed on the running board of our old car. He held onto the roof and peered in at the front seat.

There was a neatly folded coat there, a long black coat. It belonged to the big man who arrived at our house late last night. From my bedroom I could hear hushed talk about stupid hotels and some fuss about pillows and blankets, so I knew we had a visitor settling down to sleep on the davenport in the front room. This was nothing unusual at our place. Sometimes you wouldn’t hear a thing and you would just find someone in the morning, fully awake and neatly dressed, sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of oatmeal and raisins and milk just like everyone else.

The policeman was interested in the coat. He opened the front door of the car and fingered the fine wool and looked closely at the label.

            –– He must have his friend with him, the policeman said. I’ll leave something for them.

Then he opened one of the zippered pockets on the front of his leather jacket and produced a small paper bag. He lifted it up and placed it carefully in one of the outside pockets of the coat.

            –– It’s a surprise, the policeman said, pointing a finger at me and touching his glove to his mouth. Don’t say anything.

A few minutes later my Dad got in the front seat, and Paul was with him, carrying an armload of newspapers. A few people on the sidewalk stopped and stared. A big black man seemed to be out of place in an expensive suit and a shirt and tie and a silk scarf on a Saturday morning when everyone else was going to the market or the rink or the barber or the library or somewhere else you usually went on Saturday mornings.

Then we drove through the traffic and Paul looked at the papers and laughed a little, folding one of them open and shrugging as he showed it to my Dad. We bumped along the city streets and I saw we were going past the park with the steep slopes where we sometimes went tobogganing after classes at the red stone hall across the street. I was usually dropped off at the front steps, but this time we drove right past and around the corner. We turned up in a narrow alleyway and stopped in front of a small back door under an iron fire escape. 

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