Sidewalk

Every man flinched as each woman screamed. Each male knew the sound of his mate from the neighbouring delivery rooms like albatrosses that recognise their partner's call.

The tall man took a long drag of his Marlboro when his lady bellowed. The young kid, barely 18, stood up, sat down, stood up, sat down when his sweetheart shrieked. The fat man, with stains on his shirt, chuckled and raised his eyebrows to the others as if to say, “it can’t be that bad?!” But the tears pooling in his eyes betrayed his phoney embarrassment.

Dr Frank Longstone, formally third Reich doctor Frankel Langenstein, flicked his glasses back up his nose when he heard the call of his sophomore student in labour’s wrath.

The only man not reacting to the tumult of childbirth was Sidewalk Washington. He had no woman nearby toiling to bring life into the world. He was there to take a life.

Sidewalk had been in the waiting room for thirty minutes. He liked to imagine that none of the other men had spoken to him because they knew he worked for the Agency. They knew he was there for one of them. But it wasn’t, it was merely because of the colour of his skin. In this stork club, he was the only blackbird.

Every agent had a different code name. The Principal christened each after an everyday item. Camel Cassidy smoked, Spearmint Albright chewed gum and Gasoline Jones had worn too much hair pomade in his first week.

“Washington, I am going to call you Sidewalk, do you know why? Because nobody anywhere is gonna suspect someone who has been trampled on all their life of being a spy. You’re gonna be my finest creation, the agency’s first negro spy. You’ll be as invisible as there ever was.” That was two years ago in 1964.

The Principal had been right. Dr Frank hadn’t even noticed that the janitor who swept outside his classroom was the same man that sat every Sunday morning on the bench next to him in Lafayette Square and who was now the postal worker sat opposite him in a hospital waiting room.

Sidewalk’s Grandma said it best, “They don’t see a black person, they see black people.” Sidewalk Washington skin’s colour made him invisible to the people he hunted. They would never suspect him capable of espionage because they didn’t believe him capable of anything.

Another scream broke Sidewalk’s memory.

Dr Longstone pushed his glasses back up his nose. Mary Carmichael, 20-year old biology major, was two rooms away in the last throws of birthing the Doctor’s latest experiment. Whilst the Doctor appeared calm, Sidewalk knew he was burning with Wagnerian rage inside. It should have been him delivering the child, in his lab, on his terms. But Sidewalk’s sleight of hand, a little bit of chemical magic from the boys in the lab, and a pair of fake eyelashes had induced her labour several days early. The Doctor had miscalculated. Mary, it seemed, was too efficient even for this German.

“Can I get anyone a soda from the machine?” Sidewalk said standing. The tall man looked away, the fat man laughed, the boy grunted, and the Doctor looked straight through him. Still, zero recognition.

Sidewalk took a left out of the waiting room, walked past the soda machine and into the bathroom. Underneath the postal blues, which he dropped in the trash, he wore pristine white porter’s scrubs. He pinned Elijah Miller’s name badge on his shirt and headed towards the delivery room.

Elijah Miller had worked his way up in the hospital over the last few years. It was the proudest day of his life when he started wheeling newborns to the nursery for their Daddies to see. He’d felt trusted. Yet, neither the obstetrician nor the midwife noticed when it wasn’t him who came to take the young girl’s baby away.

Mary Carmichael looked exhausted. Her face blotchy red and already aged by her first child.

“Is his Father here?”

“Yes, Miss. His Daddy gonna see him real soon.” Sidewalk could Uncle Tom with the best.

The girl smiled at her pink-faced six-pound lab rat. She didn’t know it would be the last time she would see him. And then a man who bore no resemblance to Elijah Miller, except the colour of his skin, pushed the child’s cot out of the delivery room and towards the fire escape.

The fire door was a few paces away when Sidewalk heard the ever so subtle German voice twang.

“Where are you going with our future soldier?”

Dr Frank Longstone’s green eyes gleamed in the light of the exit sign.

“Very clever to send a shadow to work in the shadows. But I am afraid I’ve been able to track my boy since the moment I put his embryo in that girl. This device tells me where he is, always.” Longstone held up a small orb with a light which blinked red.

“Sorry, Sir. I don’t know what you mean. I am just taking this here baby boy to the nursery so his Daddy...”

“Enough! That boy has no Father. Only a creator. Me. Now give him here.” Longstone barked.

Sidewalk smiled, “Guess you can take the Nazi out of Germany but not the Nazi out of the man.”

Longstone wasn’t fast enough. His swipe with the scalpel was clumsy at best. He was too old.

In one smooth deflection and arm-twist, the Doctor had seemingly slashed his own throat, and he was slowly slipping to the floor in the calm embrace of Sidewalk Washington.

“Slow. Deep. One final breath, Doctor.” Sidewalk whispered. “Your labour is over.”

The Doctor coughed up blood. No. Laughed blood. His eyes smiling. It was faint but Dr Frankel Langenstein’s final words were unmistakable.

“Er hat Brüder.”

Sidewalk Washington lifted the newborn child from the cot and strode out of the exit into the Georgian heat; this child had a family to be found.