Chapter Eleven
Elwood Curtis spends his evenings on the sill of his third‑floor bedroom, looking out over a trash‑filled Broadway and the closed‑down Sammy’s Shoe Repair. The heat of a New York summer and a city‑wide garbage strike choke the streets, and Elwood navigates piles of overflowing steel trash cans to reach the Statler, an SRO on Ninety‑Ninth Street. The building’s front door is propped open between mounds of refuse, rats darting through the cracks, and the manager hands him a key to a back‑room four flights up that contains a hot plate and a bathroom. After a few days he purchases cleanser at A&P and scrubs the cramped facilities himself, remarking that he’s accustomed to cleaning “dirty johns” and “on his knees in the stink.”
Denise, a tall, Harlem‑tough woman who teaches ESL to Dominicans and Poles, arrives home with a bag of ice, complaining about a rat that ran across her feet. She fights back fiercely when a “muscle‑bound turkey” whispers at her on the street, showing the same fire she brings to their shared apartment. Their living space is a collage of cast‑off New York furniture collected by Horizon Moving, where Elwood works as a mover. He boasts that this is his longest‑standing home after his childhood house, and jokes that he is now “middle class,” noting even the roaches show “noble” manners when the bathroom light clicks on.
Elwood’s back is constantly painful after a wooden bureau toppled on him while he was working extra shifts; Larry, a friend from the moving crew, advises him to avoid the “Danish modern” furniture that caused the injury. Despite the pain he continues to work, eventually cleaning the SRO bathroom and maintaining the hot‑plate area. He spends nights watching The Defiant Ones on Channel 4, quoting Sidney Poitier, and discussing the movie’s themes with Denise, who teases him about “being married to the movie.”
Determined to better his prospects, Elwood enrolls in night GED classes, finally earns his certificate, and feels a rare surge of pride. He sees subway ads promising “Complete Your Studies at Night on Your Own Terms” and, after receiving his diploma, approaches his teacher—a woman with big brown eyes and freckles—only to be rejected because she is seeing someone. A month later she calls him, and they share a Cuban‑Chinese dinner, with Denise bringing rum, Cokes, and sandwiches. Elwood sets up a TV tray left by Mr. Waters, joking about the Nobel Prize for its invention.
The chapter ends with Elwood planning his next move: he will buy a ’67 Ford Econoline van, refurbish it, and launch his own company, Ace Moving, a name he selects as a nod to his time at Nickel. He intends to meet a man at ten the next morning to arrange the purchase, tucking a roll of bills under his bed as his starting capital, while juggling extra shifts with Horizon and side jobs to pay child support to “Larry” and cover expenses. The city’s garbage fires, political gripes about Mayor Beame, Nixon, and the striking sanitation workers swirl around him, but Elwood focuses on building a free‑world “zigzag” path toward independence.