Melky Leaves the Hole // A Short Story
Sep 14, 2010 
Melky Leaves The Hole // Brooklyn's Black Cowboys and the Old West Revitalized
Fiction by Jesse Jarnow
Photos by Musa Alves
A few months back, I stood in New Orleans, talking to two guys I assumed to be outright liars. There's a neighborhood in Brooklyn, they told me, where black cowboys mosey around on horses, living out the long dead dreams of the Old West. An area that once served as the dumping grounds for John Gotti's ill-fated colleagues -- and on occasion, the new school's as well. I kept up a suspicious guard, contesting no such place existed, waiting for them to crack a smile. Instead, they told me the place is affectionately referred to as "The Hole," and that something called the Federation of Black Cowboys is very real. Its members have names like "Saddle Tramp," "Dirty Dog" and "The Arkansas Kid."
Courtney Fathom Sell and Billy Feldman were the two guys gradually convincing me that horse-trottin' sheriffs could be found sporting a 718 area code. In fact, the two would soon be traveling to Brooklyn to shoot an entire documentary on them, racing the clock against a major cable network scheduled to do the exact same thing. First instinct was to tag along, documenting what I saw. But like gettin' hit in the head with a horseshoe, it occurred to me that giving a non-fiction account of a non-fiction account would be a straight waste of time. So instead, I asked writer Jesse Jarnow if he'd do the taggin' along, see for himself and spin up a surreality all his own. Cut to now, Sell and Feldman's doc, aptly-titled The Hole, is complete and poised to hit the festival circuit. Here, to accompany its release is the fictional counterpart to--try and naysay all you'd like--a very non-fictional part of New York City.
-Ben Zoltowski, Editor
Melky followed the road too far, and the shoulder disappeared into the rushing boulevard cars. He walked against a chainlink fence bordering an undeveloped development and was exhausted. Anywhere outside The Hole always exhausted him. First it was Staten Island for three days with a girlfriend, foreign sleep in a foreign bed, and then Anita wouldn't answer her phone. He lunged across the street, into the wide depression of tall grass separating the six massive lanes, wide enough that it still almost felt like a real field. He hated being on foot.
It was hopefully too hot for the dudes to be at the stables. And almost too hot for Melky. The city sun had already melted the names from the bottles in the kit he'd left outside while at his girlfriend's. The grass brushed his face, and he almost felt himself relax.
The signs at the stable entrance needed touching up. Two horses grazed in sight of the road. A low plane cut the heat, silver against haze. One sign was for the cowboys, leasing themselves out to street fairs and birthday parties, where they'd sweep in on their horses. Melky joined them once, on Freeze, and even liked it: the looks as they passed further and further from familiar territory until Carl piloted them onto a tree-lined block.
The father wore a plain white tee-shirt and had messy hair. Colorful tattoos of waves and vines and mythical birds covered his arms, ending in straight lines at his wrists. His son stood next to him, a birthday boy with a cowboy hat, watching as the three horses and their black riders appeared in front of them. Melky would do it again.
Anita's sign was covered in car-soot. She called her store a "boutique." He ran the word over his tongue like a fancy party snack. He followed the dusty road towards the shop. Two cowboys emerged from the white metal barn. He tucked the limp collar back into place.
It was Marshall and Blue, headed for Marshall's truck.
"Anita around?," Melky asked.
"Nah." Blue was Carl's cousin. They'd kept horses in The Hole too, until they couldn't anymore.
"When's she back?"
"Think she's at the mall." Blue laughed. "What you need?" The shop was shuttered, Melky saw. He didn't say anything.
"Got two saddles for sale. Need a saddle?"
"I'm straight."
"Need a horse first." Blue winked. They got in Marshall's pick-up. Melky waited for them to drive away, eying Anita's double-locked grates, wondering how he could get to the freezer, and its precious bottles. He wished for a minute he could be at the Mall, too, the fountain sounds reflecting and cool from the food court's vaulted glass. He headed home.
Back across the boulevard and around the boulevard cars, the road sloped back into his neighborhood and the earth softened under the cement, scheming towards water. There was a metal spring by his feet, coiled into a long, flat helix of sun-dulled metal. He'd never seen one like that before. The road was an ever-changing surface, constantly made new. He'd heard the neighborhood was sunken because of an underground river, which he thought of running secretly under the city, under the birthday parties, depositing here, for him.
The summer was only going to get hotter. He was getting desperate, ready. He wished it was dark. But, even at night, he could no longer ride Freeze. He'd always liked night riding, even before he told the dudes he'd sold her to a family in Staten Island rather than bunk her out of The Hole.
Sometimes, every few months, he'd come across the mobsters, a town car or SUV pulled up next to the shivering bulrushes. They'd look up as he passed, quietly accepting him, before Melky and Freeze moved into the night or the mobsters slipped back into the rushes. Later, one of them was arrested at the diner on the boulevard, the police tape breaking up and hanging in the bushes for nearly a month after. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen them.
He filled a pan with cool water from the hosetap at the side of the house and stopped inside the door of the garage. When his own breathing and the sloshing of the water slowed, he could hear Freeze. Still alive. They were already below the water plane, and the moss-covered garage roof gave the place an undeniable must that Melky had loved at first. A place of total comfort. As Freeze had grown worse, though, the smell had too, shit and piss and sickness.
Freeze barely moved. When he tried to lift Freeze's head to the pan, she lolled to the side, even heavier. A substance escaped her lips and dripped onto the cement. He looked again in the medicine kit, and brought it outside. Next to the garage, he squinted at the text on the plastic tubes, trying to determine which was which. It had to happen that night, he knew. If he waited too long, not even the right bottle would help. Anita hadn't responded to his text. She might be on a date, Melky knew. He needed to wait until well after dark anyway. He tried again to give Freeze water and left.
He went into the main house and slept on the living room couch, the exhaustion finally catching up with him. When he woke, it was dark. There was a text from Anita. "don't have either, maybe by sun?" It was just after two am. He went outside. In the direction of the weeping willow, drooping into a wide puddle from the last storm, he saw a beast-shape in the shadows, and the accompanying shaking of the rushes as it ducked away. He couldn't tell what it was. Maybe another new one.
Then, just crickets, provably louder inside the Hole than out. Either, Melky thought, he would have a dead horse on his hands, posing its own set of problems. Or, maybe, she'd get up. And they'd go. Maybe in a few minutes, they would be going. From the boulevard, a distant subwoofer.
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