A Dangerous Road: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Joe won’t listen to me,” I said.

  “You ain’t even tried to talk to him. I know.”

  “You know because you spoke to him?” I asked cautiously.

  “I know because you left.”

  “I had some business that took me to Atlanta,” I said, but my protest sounded lame. It didn’t matter to Jimmy why I had left, only that I had.

  Jimmy said nothing. His small shoulders were hunched forward. For the first time since I had known him, his hair was cropped close and he wore clothes appropriate to the weather. It even looked as if he were finally putting on a bit of weight.

  I took a step farther into the room. There was another bed in here as well, but it didn’t have sheets or a pillow, only a woolen blanket pulled over a stained mattress. Apparently the Nelsons had room for one more child.

  At least Jimmy was getting a little privacy.

  “Have you seen Joe?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. The word was long and drawn. I had never heard so many emotions packed in one syllable. There was anger and terror all mixed together with resentment.

  “Do you want me to find him?”

  He whirled. “You gonna leave again?”

  I almost took a step backwards. The force of his anger was a powerful thing. I hadn’t expected it from a boy so small. “I’m not planning on it,” I said. Of course I hadn’t planned on the Atlanta trip either, but I didn’t explain the details to Jimmy.

  “I think he’s dead,” Jimmy said, his dark eyes alive with anger.

  I didn’t know if that statement was one he was making to punish me or if it was based in real worry. “Have you seen something?”

  “Been a week since he been home, maybe more.”

  More, if my visit to the apartment had shown anything.

  “They throwed all our stuff in the street.” Jimmy’s voice hitched. “One of the neighbors saved some. It’s in there.”

  He waved a hand toward the back of the room. In the growing darkness I saw a closet door.

  “Did your foster parents help you get it?”

  He looked down. The question about them seemed to take some of the fury out of him. “Yeah.”

  “Are they treating you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said again.

  “You sure? Because if they aren’t, I can get Reverend Davis to find you someplace else.”

  “No.” The answer was too quick for this aura of cool he was playing at. He liked it here. It was probably the first time he had anyone ask him how school was and fix him a real meal at the end of his day, the first time he’d ever had fresh baked cookies and clean clothes.

  I remembered how that felt, and I had only been without all those things for a few months when I became a member of the Dalton family. It had seemed like an eternity, and then I didn’t believe it would last.

  I made sure it didn’t.

  “All right,” I said. “But if you run into troubles, you let me know.”

  “Sure, so you can disappear again.”

  I crossed my arms, much as Selina Nelson had, and leaned against the inexpertly painted Sheetrock that separated Jimmy’s room from the one next to it.

  “Did you come to see me and I wasn’t there?”

  “For days!” His hands balled into fists, and I saw him will the emotions back. The tears back.

  The days I was gone. It must have seemed like an eternity to him. “You went looking for Joe after the march?”

  “I thought somethin’ happened to you and him.”

  The only two people who meant anything to him. No wonder he had been scared.

  “I’m sorry, Jimmy. I thought you were safe here. I didn’t think you’d come looking for me while I was away.” And I hadn’t thought of him when I was leaving, except to be glad he was being taken care of.

  “I been safe,” he said in a tone that implied I was the biggest moron he knew. “Joe ain’t.”

  Joe hadn’t been for a long time. But Jimmy really didn’t know that. “Did you see him while I was gone?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I looked too.”

  And I hadn’t. Leave it to a ten-year-old to lay on guilt thicker than any I’d ever felt.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll see if I can find him. What do you want me to tell him if I do? That you’re worried about him?”

  Jimmy’s lower lip trembled. He shook his head once, abruptly. He was getting old enough—or perhaps he had been born that old—not to want anyone to know he needed help.

  “He’s almost an adult,” I said softly. “I’ll have trouble finding him a place like I’ve found you, and even more trouble convincing him he needs help.”

  “They’ve got a bed,” Jimmy said, extending his hand to the bed next to him. He hadn’t mentioned this the first time I saw him here. Apparently the march and the violence had decided him. Jimmy wanted his brother beside him.

  “Have you asked the Nelsons if they want Joe to stay here?”

  He shook his head. He apparently hadn’t considered that at all. “If he don’t stay, I don’t stay.”

  “He has to make his own choices,” I said.

  “’N I make mine,” Jimmy said.

  “And the Nelsons make theirs. Joe has some friends that I’m sure Mrs. Nelson doesn’t want around that baby I saw downstairs.”

  Jimmy bit that trembling lower lip. He clearly hadn’t thought of that. “I still wanna know where he is.”

  “Fair enough. And I’ll see if I can get him off the streets.” I didn’t know how, but I owed it to Jimmy. Joe and I both did.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I suspect it’ll take me a few days to find him. How about I report to you on Saturday?” I put it off long enough to give me a chance to search.

  “I’ll pay you,” he said and opened one grubby fist to reveal a crumpled five dollar bill. “It ain’t much, but they don’t give me much. I been saving it.”

  “Is that your lunch money?” I asked.

  “So what if it is? It’s mine, ain’t it?”

  “I think the Nelsons want you to eat with that money.”

  He waved a hand at me. “I’m stuffed. They give me plenty.”

  And from his perspective that was probably true. I stared at that crumpled bill.

  “I don’t want your money,” I said. “I owe you this. I should have been there.”

  “I wanna pay.” His chin jutted out stubbornly.

  I shook my head. “I need to find Joe. For me. All right?”

  After a moment, his chin moved back into place. He closed his fist on the five. “All right,” he said.

  “I’ll report to you on Saturday, whatever I find.”

  “Jus’ tell me when you find him,” Jimmy said.

  “I will,” I promised.

  * * *

  Somehow I managed to smile at Selina Nelson and wave as I said good-bye. Somehow I managed to seem as if nothing was bothering me, even though Jimmy’s anger had shaken almost as much as my discoveries in Atlanta.

  Still, I couldn’t stop moving. I was tired and discouraged. I felt as if the bottom had dropped out on me in the last few days, and I was afraid that I was hitting freefall and unable to stop.

  I went to Henry’s office. He was alone at his desk, the desolate view of the garden behind him. When he saw me, he started to smile, stopped, and said, “Tell me about Atlanta.”

  And so I did.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  HENRY GOT ME HOME that night. He didn’t literally drive me there, but he calmed me, talked to me of things I wouldn’t have normally listened to, such as God’s plan, and The Way Life Should Be.

  After I told him what I had discovered and its relationship to Laura, my client, he had said, “Aren’t you glad you finally know?”

  “No,” I had answered.

  He had given me one of his looks, one of his don’t-lie-to-me looks, and said, “Smokey, something has always eaten you alive. Perhaps it was this.”

  Perhaps it was,
but I was unwilling to admit it. But I had heard him when he said that God gave us trials for a reason. Normally I would have scoffed at that, but this night, I found comfort in it.

  I said nothing about the fact that Laura had been my lover, but it was clear Henry knew. He had known before I left. He, good friend that he was, said nothing about it either, but he gave me that extra strain of compassion, something I sorely needed.

  I went home and slept for the first time in two days.

  * * *

  The next morning, I got up and decided to fulfill a promise. I went searching for Joe.

  I didn’t have a lot of energy, but I knew I’d never forgive myself if I failed Jimmy again.

  Finding Joe proved as difficult a task as I had thought it would. I went to the apartment building first just in case he had shown up to claim his stuff. He hadn’t. In his former apartment lived a new family who didn’t look like they could afford rent either. Already the place was squalid and filthy, smelling of baby poop and unwashed sheets.

  Downstairs I found the landlord, who informed me that he had gone through all the city’s eviction procedures before throwing the Baileys’ stuff on the streets, which meant he had followed a five-month program. He did let it slip that Joe and Jimmy’s mother had sent a rent check two days before. Unfortunately it had covered only one month, and he applied it to the amount due. I convinced him, using Jimmy’s talent at guilt, to give me their mother’s address, figuring if nothing else, the state could use it to officially declare the woman unfit.

  But the landlord hadn’t seen Joe or any of his friends. I left my number with him just in case, promised him that he’d get more of the money owed him if he called me when he saw Joe, and let it go at that.

  Then I went to all the wrong corners, the places where I knew drugs changed hands, from the riverfront to Handy Park, searching for Joe. A few of the dealers knew me, and so did some of the vets. Most of them had seen Joe, but not recently. He had let his little brother handle deliveries, but even that stopped over two weeks ago. Joe had been doing small-time dealing since January. When the deliveries stopped, most everyone figured someone else had caught up with him. Being druggies, they didn’t bother to go find out.

  Still, I thanked them for their time but did not give them money since most of them would use it to shoot up or buy weed. Instead, I promised them a good meal and a place to bunk if they showed up at Henry’s church, and I mentally made a note to myself to let him know of that promise.

  I tried to find out more about the Invaders, but all I learned was that I was too old to be told where they were. Their headquarters, such as they were, shifted from place to place, as did their roster. No one would tell me if they were really being run by the Black Panthers, as some said, or if some of the national figures like Stokely Carmichael had indeed shown up. I was a brother, yes, but I was an older brother, and dressed like I wasn’t cool, so no one trusted me.

  It was a strange position to be in, and a shift even from the summer before. Everything in this town had changed and I didn’t know exactly when that change had happened.

  I decided to drive around the city one more time and then go home. Martin was coming back to town. He was giving a speech tonight, and then he would lead a nonviolent demonstration Friday. Henry wanted me there, not as security—this time Martin was providing his own—but for me.

  This time I was free to say no.

  Henry also said that Martin met with the leaders of the Invaders. They promised him there would be no violence this time. They promised him that he would be the one in charge.

  Finally, I saw Joe in a place I didn’t expect to. I was driving past one of the cemeteries when I saw a familiar figure leaning against a tree. Joe. As I pulled closer, I realized he was watching two grave diggers cover a coffin in dirt.

  I didn’t have to get close to know that the coffin belonged to Larry Payne.

  Joe wore a battered leather jacket and no hat. His jeans were torn and dirty, his brown shoes scuffed. He didn’t look like someone strung out on drugs. He looked like a boy who hadn’t eaten well, yet who had found something to consume his life.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Joe,” I said softly, but I startled him. He jumped, then turned.

  “I heard,” he said, his practiced nonchalance so clearly false after that involuntary movement.

  “You could have come to see me. Jimmy’s been asking after you.”

  He had the grace to flush. He looked down, toed the edge of his shoe against a crack in the dirt path. “Guess I owe you for that one, man.”

  “He’s been worried about you.” I decided to go for the guilt. If I went for blame, Joe would be gone in a heartbeat.

  “He’s doing good now. You got him with some decent folks.”

  “It would have been better if you had seen to him yourself.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t take care of no kid.”

  “Maybe you can’t,” I said, “but you are the older one. It was—”

  “My responsibility. Well, fuck that. It was Mom’s responsibility and where the hell is she?” The words burst out of him. He grabbed a crushed beret from the pocket of his leather jacket and put it on, as if daring me to comment.

  “Still in Florida. She finally sent a rent check.”

  “Too late.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Jimmy salvaged what he could of your stuff. You were evicted, you know.”

  Joe shrugged. “So what? Everything’s fine now. You got Jimmy three squares, and I got my place, and Mom’s got hers. Ain’t nothing to worry about no more.”

  “Jimmy wants to see you.”

  “Fuck that,” Joe said. “He don’t need me.”

  “Tell him that.”

  Joe leaned into me. He was as big as I was, but leaner. Still, the movement was threatening, and the feeling I had—that this boy actually had a chance against me—startled me, even though it passed quickly. “Who the hell are you anyway? You ain’t got nothing to do with us.”

  “I do now,” I said. “You put me in that position when you had your little brother running drugs.”

  “It wasn’t drugs,” he snapped.

  “Then what was it?” I tried to sound like I believed him, but it was clear I didn’t. He had been running drugs, and we both knew it.

  Joe leaned back. “You don’t listen, do you? You see it all, but you don’t get it. It ain’t about drugs. It’s about whitey and taking away his world. Damn near did it too, Thursday.”

  “Got your friend killed,” I said. “I didn’t hear of any white men dying.”

  Joe glanced at the grave. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t care. His presence here showed he did.

  “It was a start,” he mumbled.

  “A bad one,” I said. “The businesses that were destroyed were mostly black-owned.”

  “We was planning to move out of downtown.”

  “Well, you didn’t move fast enough,” I said.

  “Next time we will.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” I said. “The leader of your group promised Dr. King.”

  “Dr. King, Dr. King. Je-zus.” Joe’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t get it, do you? Dr. King don’t speak for nobody. He had his chance. It didn’t work. Now it’s our turn. And we’re gonna make this whole thing work.”

  “Who told you that violence would work? The men I saw you with? Thomas Withers? He was in the service with me. He’s FBI.”

  Joe laughed. “And I am too.”

  “I mean it, Joe. They infiltrate, try to ruin something and put the blame on the rest of us.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t matter. He’s gone now.”

  I felt a shiver run down my spine. So he had left after all. “He was willing to leave you on your own?”

  “Said we know what we’re doing now. Said we done good.”

  “Yeah, if you wanted to discredit the strikers and Dr. King.”

  “Dr. King. He ain’t nothing but an old man with old id
eas.”

  “He’s as old as Withers.”

  Joe’s eyelids narrowed. His skin was sallow and his fingernails dirty. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a long time. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he still was doing drugs. “You don’t know nothing, man.”

  “I know trouble when I see it.”

  “You keep saying that, but you don’t do nothing. That’s what you’re all about. Not doing nothing.”

  “Except taking care of your brother,” I said.

  Joe raised his chin. He was slightly taller than I was. I had to look up. “I ain’t got a brother no more.”

  “But you do, Joe, no matter how much you deny it.”

  Joe’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time, I saw the bluster fade. He glanced over his shoulder as if he thought he were being watched, then he leaned into me again. Only this time, there was no menace about it.

  “It’s better for the kid to stay away,” he said. “Smokey, this is bad shit. It ain’t no place for Jimmy.”

  “It isn’t any place for you either.”

  “Yeah, it is. It’s the first place I belonged. But that don’t make it right, what they was making Jimmy do.”

  “So he was delivering drugs for you.”

  “I told you, man. It wasn’t about no drugs. It was about money.”

  “You’re selling drugs to make money?”

  He shrugged. “It’s quick.”

  “It’s no place for Jimmy.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, man.” He glanced behind me, as if he were trying to make sure we weren’t being watched, and leaned just a bit closer. Then he whispered, “That’s why I don’t want to see Jimmy no more. They want little kids to run the stuff because little kids don’t get stopped.”

  “You’re protecting him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you don’t think this is bad for you.”

  “I’m old enough to make my own choices. And this is my choice, Smokey.” Then he leaned back and glowered again. “You got that, man?”

  “I do,” I said. “I could haul your ass out of here, get you some help.”

  “I’d jus’ come back. I’m telling you, man, this is where I belong.”