I rose early the next morning to see Philadelphia. I walked out onto Bainbridge Street, one of the city’s great thoroughfares, just adjacent to our office on Ninth Street, and watched the variety of human life, a menagerie of wants, needs, and intentions, teeming in the streets, and it was only 7 A.M. On the other side of the street, I saw a bakery, and through the window I could see a colored man at work. I walked in and was greeted with a sweet smell, the perfect antidote to the fog of the city. On the counter there was a pleasing array of treats—cakes, fritters, and dumplings of all kinds—laid out on parchment. Behind the counter, more still, stacked on trays suspended in slotted shelves.
“New around here, are you?”
I looked up and saw the colored man smiling at me. He was perhaps ten years my senior and regarded me with a look of pure kindness. I must have recoiled at his question, because he said, “Don’t mean to snoop. In fact not snooping at all. I can see it in all the new ones. Just dazzled by the smallest things. It’s okay, son. Nothing wrong with being new. Nothing wrong with being dazzled.”
I said nothing.
“Name’s Mars,” the man said. “This is my place. Me and my Hannah. You from over near Ninth Street, right? Staying with Otha over there? Raymond and Otha—they both my cousin—blood to my dear Hannah—and you with them, so that make you family to me.”
Still I said nothing. How rude I was back then. How wide my suspicions sprawled.
“How about this,” he said. And then, reaching behind him, Mars ripped off a piece of parchment from a roll and went into the back. He returned with something wrapped in the paper. And when he handed the package over to me, it was warm to the touch.
“Go on,” he said. “Try it.”
I opened the paper and the scent of ginger wafted out. The smell evoked a feeling, all at once, sad and sweet, because the feeling was attached to a lost memory that I felt lurking somewhere down a winding foggy path in my mind.
“What I owe you?” I asked.
“Owe me?” Mars said. “We family. What I tell you? We all family up here.”
I nodded, managed a thanks, and then backed out of the bakery. I stood on Bainbridge for a moment watching the city, the gingerbread wrapped in paper still warm in my hand. I wished I had smiled before I left. I wished I had said something to reward his kindness. But I was fresh out of Virginia, fresh out of the pit, Georgie Parks still on my mind, Sophia still lost to me. I walked across Bainbridge, west, across streets that counted up, pondering the absurd size of a town with so many streets they’d apparently run out of names. I walked on until I was at the docks, where I saw a mix of colored men and whites unloading and working on ships.
I followed the river as it bent inward then curved back out. Its banks were crowded with workshops, small factories, and dry docks. The oppressive scent of the city eased some against the cool river breeze. Now I came upon a promenade. There was a large green field dissected by walkways, themselves lined with benches. I took a seat. It was about nine in the morning now. Friday, the end of the working week. The day was clear and blue. The promenade was filled with Philadelphians of all color and kind. Gentlemen in their boaters escorted ladies. A circle of schoolchildren sat in the grass hanging on the words of their tutor. A man rode past on a unicycle, laughing. It occurred to me just then that this was the freest I had ever been in my life. And I knew that I could leave right then, right there, that I could abandon the Underground and disappear into this city, into this massive race-day, float away on the poisonous air.
I opened the paper. I brought the gingerbread to my mouth, and as I ate, something inside me cracked open, unbidden. The path I’d seen back at Mars’s bakery, the one called up by that scent of ginger, now appeared before me again and this time there was no fog, and really there was no path, just a place. A kitchen, which I instantly recognized as belonging to Lockless. And I was no longer