The dog that pulled me down the sidewalk my first Saturday morning in Philadelphia was funnier looking and less forlorn than old Buck had ever been. Duke was smaller and more manic, sniffing wildly from telephone pole to tree as I turned the corner from Rodman to South Street. Had it hurt Andrew to leave him behind? Growing up, our affection for our dog had been mitigated by the unfortunate fact that--up until the last days of his life—he hadn’t been a housedog but a yard dog. He hadn’t licked awake our faces in the morning or been there to curl up with us on the couch on winter afternoons. There was only so much of Momma’s complaining about his dirtiness and filth that we could listen to before our hearts became inured to the sight of him chained in the yard. But Duke here was another matter; he had obviously always lived among people, and behind his tufted bangs there was a look in his eyes that said he considered himself one of them. He pulled at his leash with a sense of incorrigible autonomy. Though I feared my arm might soon separate from its socket, I liked him immensely.
Before leaving Andrew’s friends, I had mentioned to them the enormous mural being painted around the corner from their house, but the news raised nary an eyebrow. In fact, Aleta informed me that my brother had helped restore another mural vandalized with graffiti the summer before, one painted by a bunch of local kids under the guidance of a New York City pop artist named Keith Haring. Surely, Remy insisted, I must have seen his simple, outline-style crawling babies and dancing people on record covers or in Absolut Vodka ads in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. I confessed I hadn’t, and felt shamefully unsophisticated when he rolled his eyes at my ignorance. Andrew had felt a kinship with Haring’s work, Remy explained, because it was so similar to the iconography he himself had been refining since middle school--the stylized angelic aliens that were everywhere on Andrew’s notebooks and journals and which embellished the bright red Rodman house door. Remy promised to show me the mural down in South Philly sometime. He also told he how the two of them once made a pilgrimage to Haring’s Pop Shop in SoHo, where Andrew managed to meet the artist himself, even got a quick sketch and an autograph. “But that was before Haring kicked the bucket a couple years ago--AIDS,” Remy sighed. The sound of that word made my skin crawl with fear for Andrew, and I prayed he’d always had the good sense to be safe.
“In the meantime,” Aleta had told me, “you can see some other artistic wonders of your brother’s much closer.” Andrew had painted a couple solo murals for the city, one at a dive bar across from the coffee shop where she worked, and another at the far end of South Street above a restaurant. “Where one of the Pep Boys from those stupid auto shop commercials was born,” she said. “But don’t ask me to tell you if it was Manny, Moe or Jack.”
“You idiot,” Remy had interjected, spinning his eyes again--which I was beginning to recognize as his default expression. “It depicts Larry Fine. One of the Three Stooges.”
At least I knew who they were. Back in childhood, the same TV station that had broadcast
Andrew’s late-night monster movies showed black-and-white comedies in the afternoons. Andrew had also painted the sign for a South Street comic book shop, Aleta said, when he worked there a few years ago. I got the sense that they were telling me all this in part to take my mind off my phone conversation with Momma. Before I left, Remy showed me where the Larry Fine mural was on my map. Not too far, so that’s where I decided to walk Duke the dog.
Walking is not exactly correct. Once I got him out the door, Duke loped forward like a semi- retarded deer. Time and again he yanked against the leash, nearly strangling himself. He veered right or left, darting from phone pole to street sign, tinkling here, dribbling there, then shooting forward again like a pinball. Duke would pull me forward, and I’d pull him back, our game of Tug-of-War subsiding only when he began coughing like an asthmatic.
The block of South Street behind their Rodman Street house had the community garden at one end and a row of derelict houses at the other, so at first I had a hard time believing the truth behind the old song lyric Remy had sung to me: “Where do all the hippest meet? South Street, South Street.” The fact that the first store I encountered was a creepy but fascinating hole in the wall called Harry’s Occult Shop did nothing to reassure me, though I couldn’t help pausing to stare at the plate glass window’s display of dusty prayer candles, canisters of dried powders, and what appeared to be a few shrunken heads. Who bought such things, I wondered as I passed a shuttered-up bar called the Bacchanal. But block by block, the sunny street became more hospitable, its decay and dilapidation giving way first to a series of mundane but livable modern brick apartments, chain pharmacies, grocery stores.
Outside a Rite-Aid, we were approached by a woman walking a smaller dog, a long-haired Dachshund. Duke launched himself madly forward, straining the limits of his leash as he reeled up on his hind legs to say hello. The woman scolded me and suggested I buy a choker collar that would teach Duke some discipline. I resisted the urge to respond with a “Fuck you very much.”
In a garden lot alongside a small church, a dreadlocked black man had just finished covering a folding table with a Jamaican flag and was now arranging boxfuls of small wooden carvings for sale. Not much farther sat a brick building that appeared to have once been a horse stable but was now a recreation center. Its east wall lay exposed to a small alley, and as I passed I noticed a bushy-bearded white man affixing a few loose pottery fragments to an enormous mosaic affixed to the wall’s stucco surface. Pieces of glass and tile curlicued upwards into crude oversized outlines of human faces, their eyes wide and their brows askew. “ART IS THE CENTER OF THE REAL WORLD” the mural proclaimed, and the old man smiled and winked at me as I passed.
As I headed further down, I noticed a marked increase in the number of stores that catered to tastes that were young and trendy. Pawnshops and thrift stores gave way to neon-lit tattoo parlors and adult sex
shops. I looked in the window of the latter. What the hell was a French tickle? I blushed and moved on, glad no one was there to see.
Though it was nearing ten o’clock, South Street was only starting to wake up. As the number of pizza shops, burger joints and watering holes increased, I began to see workers inside setting up chairs and readying tables. I moved on past businesses that sold old toys and Japanese-imported action figures, used record albums, videogames. Finally I spotted the sign Remy had told me about, the one Andrew had painted for Creature Comics. It sported a red script logo and the unmistakable reptilian mug of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The monster wore a red Superman cape and a Double-C emblem on his chest, and he so embodied Andrew’s trademark style of campy caricaturized horror that I couldn’t help but smile.
On up, an enormous used bookstore dominated the corner at Fifth Street, where a few early birds were rifling through milk crates filled with paperbacks that had been set out by the door. On my side of the street stood a new Gap, a store we didn’t have back home, though it had been advertised on TV so often that I practically experienced a Pavlovian response at the sight of its logo. I tied Duke to a parking meter and ran inside to buy a few T-shirts and a fresh pair of sweats so I’d have more than Andrew’s old clothes to try to squeeze into. Jeans were on sale, so I promised myself I’d come back later to try some on. I didn’t want to keep Duke waiting too long.
The moment he saw me emerge, Duke’s tail started wagging a million miles a minute. He had wound his leash around the meter so tightly it was as if he was trying to imitate the picture on the cover of the bondage book we had seen in the shop window a few blocks back. I untied him and headed on, past a pair of workers outside a florist shop who were stocking tall buckets with enormous yellow sunflowers. Across the street stood a punk rock clothing store called Zipperhead whose brick exterior was decorated with enormous sculpted ants like something out of one of Andrew’s monster movies. I watched a girl with a pink Mohawk prop open the store’s door; an ammo belt secured her black stretch jeans to her bony hips.
As Duke and I neared the intersection at Fourth Street, my nostrils caught the meat and grease smell of the day’s first cheesesteaks being tossed on the grill at Jim’s Steaks. Though the rest of South Street was far from busy, here a small line had already begun to form inside at the counter. On the next block, an old movie house called the Theatre of the Living Arts advertised shows by rock groups I had never heard of, as well as Saturday midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The street grew shady here, trees along both sides. Duke looked thirsty, so I crossed the street to Rita’s Water Ice to get him a drink, and to get me my first taste of a mango and lemon ice.
When I stood up from holding the plastic water cup for Duke, I noticed the mural across the street, back at the intersection above a bar and grille. The old Stooge’s black-and-white portrait loomed from a wall on the restaurant’s second floor, standing out prominently from the enormous yellow and black bull’s- eye painted behind it. I stood to better take in the bug-eyed expression on Larry Fine’s face, his frizzy Bozo the Clown hairdo, all rendered in a photorealistic style I’d never known my brother to be capable of.
There was so much about him I didn’t know.
Duke and I headed on, down toward the Delaware River. As we walked, I tried to picture Andrew standing on scaffolding, painting the wall. Had it been cold out or warm? Had he worked alone? Maybe his journals and sketchbooks would fill in the blanks. I resolved to stay up that night and pore through them, looking not only for clues as to where Andrew might have gone but also what his life had been like the last few years away from me.
South Street opened up at Second into a vast plaza that struck me as quaint and colonial, more like the Philadelphia of my American history schoolbooks. I thought this despite the fact that some of the taller buildings consisted of recently constructed apartments or parking garages atop decidedly non-colonial era convenience stores. Still their red bricks made them blend in with the painted shutters and early American signage of the older structures--little pubs and restaurants--that had survived to this day. In the center of the cobbled square stretched a covered, colonnaded marketplace. Duke and I made our way to it. Inside the open-air pavilion, artists and craft makers had set up two long rows of tables to display their wares and now sat resting in director’s chairs as they made small talk with tourists. My map told me that this area of the city bordered Society Hill, a fancy neighborhood that stretched up to Philadelphia’s old historical area. I finished off my water ice as I dallied among the tables full of beaded jewelry and stained-glass suncatchers. I bought a bracelet I thought I would send to Elizabeth for her birthday next week and a few scented candles for Andrew’s apartment until I could get the electricity turned back on. Another stall sold boutique- style items for family pets. Because Duke’s leash was frayed I treated him to an overpriced new one stitched with “arf arf arf” down the length of it. And because both my shoulders were now sore from his misbehavior, I broke down and bought one of the choker collars the busybody woman had suggested as well. At the north end of the brick pavilion a historical marker explained how people in Ben Franklin’s day once bought fresh produce and live turtles here, as well as such hillbilly-sounding delicacies as bear-bacon and possum meat. I laughed as I worked to get Duke into his new accessories.
Though Duke didn’t like his new collar, he slowly got used to it as we walked for a quite a while longer that day I got to know the city my brother had come to love then leave. Heading north to Chestnut Street, we walked past Independence Hall where I rubbed the shoe-clad foot of the George Washington statue out front, a ritual Andrew once confessed he did every time he happened by. We passed the glass pavilion that housed the Liberty Bell, and a few kids in the line snaking out the door made a fuss petting Duke’s head. We cut over I-95 to the Delaware River, where I got a good look at both the state of New Jersey and the handsome blue expanse of the Ben Franklin Bridge that linked Philadelphia to it. It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that Duke and I made our way back along the antique shops of Pine Street to the gay bookstore where Remy worked. He gave me his house keys to take Duke home, and when I returned Remy was ready to take his lunch break. The long walked had build up my appetite, so I went with him next door
A huge sign hung above the restaurant’s door, depicting an Art Nouveau-style rendition of a pretty, curly-haired woman daintily lifting a strawberry ice cream cone to her lips. Inside, the restaurant featured a cozy parlor filled with round tables and wire-back chairs. A flustered waitress hurried among the tables, taking orders or carrying out platefuls of food, the most astonishing of which consisted of football-sized helpings of apple pie floating à la mode in clouds of ice cream. Remy ordered a sandwich from the waitress, a friend of his. I ordered a salad with grilled chicken and mandarin oranges.
Remy pressed for details about Momma’s reaction to my decision not to return home. It wasn’t enough to simply restate what I told her; now I also had to explain the why behind it. By then I’d given up any last hope that keeping Andrew’s home fire burning might make him return to me—but did I really think I could actually track him down simply by going through all the junk he’d left behind? Despite my misgivings, the truth was, once Duke and I had set out on our long walk, I had felt my old burdens lifting from my shoulders step by step. I might have still been yoked to Andrew in the same screwy way I had always been, I told Remy, but at least the choice to come here had been all mine. I might be in limbo, but I was also beginning to feel free.
“Here’s to your independence,” Remy said, and we toasted with our glasses of water. “As your fairy godmother, I hereby wish you life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
I laughed as we clinked glasses. “Do I get a free copy of the Declaration of Independence with that?”
“Just the key to the city, hon.” Remy dialed his voice back down to its usual register. “And take it from this crazy Cajun—despite all its problems, Philadelphia ain’t such a bad place to find yourself. The local yokels are like southern pecans, tough nuts to crack but pretty nice once you get past the shell. You may not find what you’re looking for, hon, but you just might find what you need.”
“What I need is a job. My money won’t last forever.” “Well, I can’t give you that, but I can give you this.”
He reached into the pocket of his cut-offs and produced a note that he handed to me. I read it as we continued waiting for our food to come.
Yo, Remy—and everyone—
I’m bound for greener pastures. I can’t tell you the whys or the wheres, but by the time you get this I will be gone. I’m sure some reasons will be obvious, such as those concerning He Whose Name I Will Not Speak. But it’s more than that. Just take care of good old Duchamps if you guys can. I can’t bear the thought of handing him over to the Morris Animal Refuge, but I can’t take him with me either. I’m not certain where I’m going or where I’ll end up, but I knew if I didn’t get out of that apartment I would go crazy.