Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem

by Gary Phillips

  Henson stopped at a drugstore and made a call to his lawyer. It was still early, and he called him at home. The lawyer answered on the second ring. They exchanged pleasantries then Kunsler filled him in on what he’d learned so far.

  “I haven’t been able to track down Ellsmere,” Kunsler said, “but I’m pretty sure the G-Men have a tail on me.”

  “Same here,” Henson said. “He doesn’t seem to be with me this morning, but could be they’ve got a team on us. Four at least, I figure. You find out anything about those red hots in the animal masks?”

  “Now, there I’ve had a bit more luck. I’ve got a friend in the morgue who let me in to see the body of the one you put the pig sticker in. His name was Clyde Jessup, a known muscle for hire out of Chicago.”

  “Anything on who he was working for?”

  “No, and no one has claimed his body.”

  “Okay, keep at it, Ira, we’ll shake something loose.”

  “Hey, I almost forgot. I got a call yesterday at the office on a more pleasant matter.”

  “What was it?” Henson said.

  “From Paul Robeson’s agent. They’d like to buy you lunch and talk about Robeson playing you in a movie.”

  He chuckled. “That right?”

  “That’s what he said. What do you think?’

  “I’m flattered. But he ain’t gonna have no white woman call me nigger while trying to get me in the sack an’ hack at my privates with a butcher knife. Shit.” He was referring to a scene in a Eugene O’Neill play All God’s Chillun Got Wings that recently starred Robeson.

  Kunsler guffawed. “Christ, I’ll make sure to specify that can’t happen if we draw up a contract. Don’t you worry, old son.” He laughed again.

  “Fact, I wouldn’t be too crazy about that O’Neill fella being anywhere near this if it got going. Nobody will remember my book, Ira. It’s the moving pictures that will be what will stick in people’s minds in the long haul.”

  “Didn’t know you gave your legacy so much brain space.”

  “Ah, you know what I’m saying.”

  “Yes, I do. Robeson’s in London doing Showboat but is expected to take a break in a month or so to come back here and spend time with his wife and new son. I’ll see about setting up a time.”

  “Okay, talk soon,” Henson said, severing the line.

  As he went back outside, he reflected on two things; was the fact the hood was out of Chicago—Daddy Paradise’s base of operations—a coincidence? And on what Ellsmere had said about being held in a big house in Poughkeepsie. About it being near a park and its religious-themed stained glass windows. Poughkeepsie wasn’t that big, and if he could get someone to fly him over its fancy houses, he might be able to find the mansion Ellsmere was held in. And he just happened to know a pilot.

  He made a stop at Mr. Greene’s newsstand. The bullet holes from the machine gun had been patched up, the white plaster in stark contrast to the weathered green paint of the wooden structure.

  “Not that I like getting shot at, Mr. Henson,” Mr. Greene said, “but business has picked up since then. People love them a sensation, don’t they?”

  “Yes, sir, they do.” He bought a copy of the Herald Tribune and went on toward his apartment, but not directly to his front door. Henson stood at the end of his block, scanning both sides of the street before him. He recognized several of the parked cars and trucks, and did not see the tan Chrysler he and his lady friend had passed when they left the RCA building last night. Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t a new man watching him.

  Upstairs he plugged in his electric percolator to make more coffee. In the bathroom, he started the water in his claw-foot tub, keeping it tepid despite the morning coolness that lingered. He stripped down and relaxed, the bathroom window open to the breezes as he read through the Tribune. He smiled at the antics of Walt Wallet in Gasoline Alley and Tillie the Toiler in the funny pages. This and the business with Robeson reminded Henson of the time writer George Schuyler shopped around the idea of a comic strip based on his exploits. Some black papers—and a few left-leaning ones—were interested, but by then Schuyler was criticizing several of his black literati, the “niggerati” as they were jokingly at times referred to by his Harlemite contemporaries, and had burned one too many bridges. By the time Henson was done, the water was icy cold, but he found it invigorating.

  Back in his living room, he sat in his robe in his one plush chair next to a long ago bricked-up fireplace. There were two photographs on the mantle. One was of Henson standing between two Inuit youngsters, his arms around each of them. The younger one was his son Anaukaq, aged eight, and the older lad, nicknamed Luke, had been in his twenties. They all wore furs and were smiling broadly. That was the last time Henson had been north to see his boy.

  The other was of Henson seated among celebrities like Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., Booker T. Washington, and Assistant U.S. Attorney W.H. Lewis. The occasion had been a dinner at midtown’s Tuxedo Club to honor his “representing the race well.” White America virtually ignored his contribution to exploration, focusing mostly on Robert Peary. For, while he was alive, Peary made sure it was his name, and his alone, be it in interviews or speaking engagements, that was associated with reaching the North Pole. This, despite his forward to Henson’s book, reading, “He deserves every attention you can give him.” Maybe, Henson had considered over time, the humorless Peary did have a wicked sense of the absurd after all.

  Tacked to the wall above the photo was a kaviak, a type of Inuit harpoon made of wood, ivory, and in this case, a tip made of iron. There was no iron ore in Greenland. When they’d first come to the village of Moriussaq, a thousand miles above the Arctic Circle, they couldn’t help but notice the use of iron in the villagers’ tools and weapons. While there had been Danes, Italians and other nationalities in the village before Henson and Peary, the villagers had not divulged the story or location of their sacred stones. That is, until Ootah told Henson, because the Polar Eskimos considered him one of them.

  Henson poured a cup of coffee, absently blowing across its dark surface. He wandered back to then, the harpoon triggering a fond memory of being on hunts with his Eskimo crew— men who became close in the unforgiving icy plains of northern Greenland. Those times had a powerful hold on him. Those times, and the son he’d left behind. He finished his coffee and, after washing up a few plates in the sink, tidied up his apartment. Checking the time, got dressed and headed out to keep his appointment with Nikola Tesla.

  “Edna, how goes it?’ he said to his neighbor coming out of her apartment across the hall in her work clothes, a blue serge skirt and coat.

  Edna Mullins worked in the chief clerk’s office at the U.S. Customs House downtown. A good, solid, government job she might retire from on a modest pension.

  “Oh fine, just fine,” she said.

  They descended the stairs together chitchatting.

  “Don’t work too hard,” Henson said to her when they reached the street.

  “Never as hard as you, Matt,” she said, heading in the opposite direction.

  Outside the tan car wasn’t there and Henson detected no tail on him as he walked along. Nonetheless, he took a circuitous route to his destination.

  The Service Hotel still had its previous name—the Earlington—inscribed in stone in a semi-circle of lettering etched over the front entrance. The Service moniker had been acquired during World War I when the hotel, which had fallen out of the hands of its previous owner, had been taken over for the recuperation of physically and psychologically wounded doughboys returning from the fight. It held some 200 rooms, some of them rentals by the week, and others converted apartments.

  “Yes, Doctor Tesla is expecting you,” said a sharp-eyed woman behind the front desk when Henson entered the lobby and told her who he was. “He’s in the Tower Room at the top.”

  Up Henson rode in a quiet elevator and was let out in a gloomy chamber with a door a
cross the small span of black and white tile floor. He opened it, and a sizzling bolt of lightning boiled the air in front of him. Instinctively, he ducked, reaching for the throwing star strapped to his shin under his pant leg. He also had another star tucked inside his waistband.

  “Sorry, I thought I’d checked all the connections,” a man wi5th a pug nose in a lab coat. A wary Henson rose, empty handed.

  “Stanley, who don’t you and Jean see to all the connections, please?”

  “Yes, Doctor,” replied the pug-nosed assistant.

  “One minute my good man,” the Doctor said to Henson. He and Stanley got busy at a fantastic-looking machine like something of off the cover of Amazing Stories magazine.

  They were joined by a female assistant also dressed similarly to Stanley. She wore glasses, and her hair was pulled pack in a tight bun. The device was made of metal, about five feet long and two feet in diameter. It was cylindrical in shape with glass tubes and wires protruding at numerous intervals. The thing rested on a tripod and there was wiring leading to a large box he figured was a battery. There were several squat black metal boxes with gauges on them connected to this as well. Finally, the Doctor disengaged from his tinkering and walked over to the explorer.

  “Harlem’s own Mr. Henson.”

  “Doctor Tesla,” he said, shaking the offered hand. “You looking to fry one of your neighbors?” Henson asked, only half joking.

  “If one of them was Edison, yes,” Tesla replied solemn-faced.

  The scientist-inventor was about medium height, with a heavy black mustache and eyes deep-set in an angular face. His white hair was cut as if by a near-sighted barber. The Serbian accent was pronounced, but his English was crisp and distinct. He wore cuffed pants and a shirt that seemed too big on his lean frame. The sleeves were rolled up past his elbows and there was sinewy muscle in those seventy-two year-old arms.

  “But no,” he continued, “I need to make many further adjustments to the Electro-Pulsar. It still has much more work and experimentation to go through to perfect the shocker beam. Essentially make it wield a coherent beam of electricity.”

  “Like a canon, only it shoots lightning bolts?”

  Tesla said, “Exactly. As our penchant for making war and untold death on our brethren is inevitable, what if each country possessed the means to destroy the other? Would that not be a stalemate to such hostilities?”

  “You might have more faith in humankind than has been demonstrated, Doctor Tesla.”

  “Nikola, if I can call you Matt.”

  “Nikola it is.”

  “You may be right, but we shall see. But, come, let’s have our tea and biscuits as we discuss the matter at hand.”

  Set in the center of the roof was an enclosed eight-sided structure that once must have been the penthouse suite Henson surmised. But as they walked around a corner of this, he could see through the windows it had been converted from living space to Tesla’s lab. There were numerous gadgets in various stages of either being built or torn down. Wires, black and grey boxes with tubes and gauges, Tesla coils of various sizes, gears, switches, and an assortment of all sorts of electrical and mechanical apparatuses were also in there on tables and work benches. On top of this was a radio tower of advanced design.

  The two sat at a round glass table. On it was a teapot and European clear glasses set in silver holders. There was also a plate piled with rectangular British tea biscuits, and a pot of jam with a butter knife laying nearby. They sat, and after suspending a cube of sugar over each glass by a toothpick, Tesla poured their tea over the sugar into the glasses.

  “Cheers,” Tesla said, raising his filled glass.

  “Na Zdorovie,” Henson said in Russian, clinking his glass against the other.

  “Do you speak it?” Tesla asked, also in Russian.

  Henson knew the scientist was reputed to speak eight languages. “Enough to get in trouble,” he answered.

  The mustache lifted. “Then we better stick to English.”

  Chuckling, he said, “Maybe we better. You have any idea where the government is holding Henrik?”

  “That’s why I called you, as you were the last one to have seen our friend. I wanted to confirm that indeed he was being held by the authorities.”

  Eyebrow raised, Henson said, “You just happen to be listening to the radio then? Are you a fan of the Clicquot Club band?”

  “I’m not adverse to swing music, Matt. I can still cut a rug,” he said enthusiastically. “But that was my young assistant Stanley. We’d been working late as was not unusual and after knocking off as they say, he turned on the radio just as you were being interviewed.”

  “You knew about me and Henrik getting arrested?” Henson asked.

  “I did.” Tesla bit into his tea biscuit, crumbs accumulating in his mustache. “I have learned from bitter experience in this country, Matt, that one must be prepared for various possible eventualities. That merit is not always recognized. Other factors can intervene.” He wiped the crumbs away.

  He looked evenly at his guest. “Now of course I don’t need to tell you that. But it’s in that regard that I had heard Henrik had surfaced here in town and, well, had certain associates on the lookout for him. That no matter what has happened to him, his understanding of physics is unsurpassed, and I could use his help on several projects.”

  Tesla paused, looking into the depths of his tea but not drinking more. He continued, “Still, by the time I heard about the incident and sent inquiries about him to the station house, you both were long gone. And as there was no record of him being there at all, my suspicions were raised.”

  “You think you can run him down? Find him, I mean?”

  “I shall try. As you will too, is that not so?”

  “It is.”

  “And what do you know of his latest work?”

  Henson considered his next words. “Is it that energy is all around us, Nikola? Unseen, but there, nevertheless?”

  “Oh yes, Mr. Henson. I’ve devoted my life to that. I have, to be boastful, discovered the principals for transmitting power without wires. True power I mean. Radio being merely a…” he waved his hand in the air between them, “an expression of the lowest form of that.”

  He took his speared cube of sugar and swirled it in his tea. “And is Henrik onto a breakthrough regarding heretofore undiscovered sources of energy?”

  “Don’t know, all that bookworm stuff is way over my head. But I do want to find out who those guys in the mask were. Maybe this will lead me to where he is.”

  “It is certainly the case that various lines of investigation that start out parallel sometimes cross.”

  “On that, what do you know about the Weldon Institute? This effort by a gee named Renwick at futurism? I understand you spoke at a shindig he had.”

  A bemused look settled on his face. “I speak at a lot of affairs, for a lot of crackpots.”

  “But you do know him?”

  Tesla shrugged. “Hugo Renwick and I have had several discussions about how to better society through technology. I’ve consulted on a few of his endeavors. He knew about my earlier patent on a tilted wing craft that could hover like what an autogiro does. Once in the air, the craft assumes the normal functions of an airplane. He even had me out to his airfield in New Jersey, offering my ideas on his experimental craft.” He picked up the butter knife, lifting it straight up then trailing it along horizontally. “Like so, you see?”

  “Very interesting.”

  “Mind you, his engineers have made substantial progress. I’m not so vain that I won’t admit I didn’t understand that it’s only with a turbine can you solve the problem of stabilizing the airship long enough for the forward motion propellers to take over.”

  “You recall where this airfield is? I understand a friend of mine is putting his plane through its paces.”

  “I am proud to tell you that even at this age, my memory is…prodigious,” he said,
tapping an index finger against his temple. “I was driven out there by chauffer, but I can draw you a most accurate map.”

  Henson bit into a biscuit. The promise of the hunt always sharpened his appetite.

  “You are referring to the young woman, Miss Bessie, is that not so? The first negro woman to get her pilot’s license, yes? Indeed because of the short-sightedness of this my adopted home, she had to go to France for flight school if I’m not mistaken.”

  Henson nodded admiringly. “Yeah, man, she’s something.” He also knew that Robert Abbott, the publisher of the Chicago Defender, a city where Bessie had done some flying, supported her financially in her pursuit of an aviator’s license.

  “I would think so,” Tesla agreed.

  They talked some more then Henson said his goodbye, each man agreeing to let the other one know should they find Ellsmere. Thereafter, Henson made a phone call to Lacy DeHavilin and took a streetcar over to the Supreme Messenger Service on 44th Street in Mid-Town. He walked into the combination garage and dispatch office. Various cars, light trucks and motorcycles were coming and going or being worked on

  “I’m looking for Jerry Culver,” he announced.

  Three white men were inside. They all glared at Henson. One of them in a grease-stained khakis shirt said, “We ain’t hiring no coloreds today, boy. Bad enough we already been forced to add a couple of you all,” he snickered.

  In addition to the throwing star he had strapped to an ankle, Henson had a hunting knife affixed to the other. He approached the man who’d crudely addressed him. The other two tensed. He knew better than to be making a habit of burying knives in white men—but still.

  “I’m not here for a job. I’m here to borrow one of your motorcycles. Or shall I tell Miss DeHavilin just how goddamn rude you were?” His friend owned a fair amount of stock in the enterprise.

  “You’re Matthew Henson,” said one of the others. He was in dungarees and sweat-stained shirt. I’ll be,” he muttered.