War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

He sopped up the last of the bright orange sauce on his plate with a piece of sausage. “Could Keith come?”

  “I don’t think the Grimshaws would approve.”

  He sighed. “What about Mrs. Kirkland? If she’s teaching, maybe I should stay.”

  “I’m not talking about moving,” I said. At least, not yet.

  “Yes, you are,” he said. “You don’t like it here anymore. You got scared in April, and you haven’t liked it ever since.”

  I set my fork down. I hadn’t realized Jimmy had been watching me so closely. I shouldn’t have underestimated him.

  “I am worried,” I said. “And, to be honest with you, I’m not sure this is the best place for us.”

  “But we gots friends!” He usually lapsed into bad grammar to provoke me, but I had a sense that this time, the lapse was caused by his distress.

  “Yes, we do. We don’t lose friends because we move.”

  “You did.”

  I looked at him.

  “That nice minister guy in Memphis, we never saw him again. You don’t even call him.”

  Jimmy was referring to Henry Davis, who had helped us leave town. I’d contacted him a few times, most recently from a pay phone when a case had taken me to Indiana, but Jimmy didn’t know that.

  “Maybe that’s our biggest problem,” I said.

  Jimmy frowned at me. “What?”

  “That we’ve begun to feel safe enough to forget why we’re here in the first place.”

  Jimmy looked down. He pushed the last piece of meat around on his plate.

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” I said. “I have to do what’s best for us, and sometimes it’s not pleasant.”

  “I know,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper.

  “There’s no guarantee that we’re moving,” I said. “I’m not even sure we’re going on a trip, but it’s a possibility. I promised you I wouldn’t lie to you, and I’ve kept that promise.”

  “I know.” His voice was even softer.

  “If we do go, we’ll keep the apartment here and tell everybody we’ll be back.”

  “But what if we don’t come back?” Jimmy asked, raising his head.

  “Then we’ll call and explain why,” I said. “It won’t be like Memphis. We can stay in touch with everyone here.”

  “I don’t want to move, Smoke.”

  “Noted,” I said. “But what would looking at a few other towns hurt?”

  He shrugged, not meeting my gaze. “Can I be excused?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He picked up his plate and his glass, carried them to the sink, and then walked, head down, to his bedroom. It was my turn to do the dishes, but I let them sit for a few minutes.

  I sighed. Sometimes this parenting thing seemed like the most complex job I had. I had no idea if I should have told him my plans or not. But I had promised not to lie — and sometimes I even doubted the wisdom of that.

  After a moment, I got up and went into the living room. I called Laura, and asked her to come over the following night, for one more difficult dinner.

  SEVEN

  I spent the next day tying up loose ends. I organized my finances, paying as many of July’s bills in advance as I could. I got traveler’s checks. I had traveled with a lot of cash before, and it made me nervous. I didn’t really want to do it again, even though I worried about cashing the traveler’s checks. I figured I’d be able to find a sympathetic bank somewhere.

  I also traded in my rusted Impala for a panel van. I cleaned out the back, bought three sleeping bags and a cooler, along with a tent. If we couldn’t afford a motel room, I figured we could sleep in the van or, if we found a place to camp, we would pitch a tent.

  I wrote reports, closing a few cases for the various insurance companies I worked for. I told the companies I would be available again toward the end of summer.

  Jimmy spent the time packing and repacking his clothes. The thing that surprised me and pleased me as well was that he wanted to take an armload of books “to read for Mrs. Kirkland.”

  Apparently Grace had given him a summer reading list. Jimmy viewed it as his work for the trip, and I didn’t try to talk him out of it. I made room in the back of the van for a box of books and reminded Jimmy that if we carried the weight, he would have to do the work.

  All too quickly, it was time for dinner.

  Jimmy and I planned the meal together and, considering it was so hot, finally decided to barbecue. We had custody of the Grimshaws’ old grill — they hadn’t wanted to move it — and we used it on nights like this. Althea had taught me to marinate the hamburger patties in beer and melted butter before I cooked them, and that gave them an extra flavor that made them seem irresistible. I added Kaiser rolls, potato chips, and a tossed salad. Jimmy declared it a perfect meal.

  Laura arrived around seven. The heat had wilted her blond hair, and she had washed off her makeup. She had also changed into a pair of shorts and a cotton shirt that accented her figure.

  I kissed her lightly, gave her a Coke, and offered to sit outside at the communal picnic table in the back if the apartment was too hot for her. She seemed tempted. Then she noticed that Jimmy had set the table, placing a bouquet of wildflowers in the middle.

  “I think here is just fine,” she said.

  Jimmy grinned. She had pleased him. I went down to cook the hamburgers while the two of them sat inside, conversing about whatever it was that they felt they had in common.

  When I got back, they were laughing. Jimmy glanced at me sideways, as if he were trying to give me a message. I got it. But I had other considerations besides our friends in Chicago. And as I had told him before, Laura could travel. We would see her again.

  I set the plate of steaming hamburgers on the table between the pickle relish and the sliced onions. Jimmy got the ketchup and mustard out of the refrigerator, setting them beside the plate of Kaiser rolls. I tossed the salad, and placed it in the very center of the table.

  “Fancy,” Laura said.

  “Like a five-star restaurant,” I said, and we both smiled.

  “It’s the best,” Jimmy said. “Smokey makes the best burgers in the whole world.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Laura said as she grabbed one of the rolls, split it open, and applied ketchup to the bottom. She added lettuce, onions, and a slice of cheese but no mustard. I served salad to myself and Jimmy, knowing if I didn’t he wouldn’t eat any of the green stuff.

  Jimmy waited, fidgeting until Laura was done, then assembled his own burger, using everything on the table. I went last, my stomach rumbling.

  “You sounded serious on the phone,” Laura said to me.

  “Eat first.” Jimmy spoke with his mouth full of hamburger and bun, barely understandable. He swallowed, and added, “Then Smoke gets to talk to you.”

  “Coward,” I said.

  Jimmy shrugged. “It’s your idea.”

  “What is?” Laura asked.

  So I told her about Daniel Kirkland and Grace’s concern for him. I told her that missing persons cases were tough, and I told her that the case might take the summer to solve.

  She listened closely, then looked at Jimmy, who throughout my monologue had concentrated on inhaling his burger. “And you want me to take care of Jimmy?”

  “He’s coming with me,” I said.

  “On a case?”

  “I can’t ask you or anyone else to watch him for the entire summer.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said, “and he might like it. I’m not far from the lake, and my place is air-conditioned. I still have his room—”

  “No,” I said before Jimmy could chime in. “He’s coming with me.”

  “This doesn’t sound like a good idea, Smokey,” she said. “Your cases aren’t always safe.”

  “The case is an excuse.” Jimmy reached for another bun. He hadn’t touched his salad. I shoved the bowl toward him, and he wrinkled his nose. But he took a bite, just to show me he understood.

  “An excuse?” Lau
ra set her hamburger down. She frowned, then her shoulders sagged. “You’re leaving Chicago.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said.

  “I wondered if that was going to happen. You’ve been so restless since April.”

  Everyone seemed to have noticed my discontent.

  “Chicago’s getting worse,” I said. “Twenty-eight murders in the last six months, most of them only a mile or so from here. Kids, adults, cops, it doesn’t matter.”

  She glanced at me on that last. She knew about my role in one of the deaths last spring. She also knew that it haunted me.

  “You can both move in with me,” she said. “It’s safer at my place, you know that. The neighborhood’s better.”

  “Not for us,” I said. Laura lived in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Most of the inhabitants of that section of Chicago were wealthy and white. They’d always reacted with suspicion when they saw me going into the front door of Laura’s Lake Shore Drive condominium complex. I couldn’t imagine the reaction if we lived there.

  “Smokey,” she said. “If you’re willing to leave Chicago, why don’t you consider this first?”

  “You know why,” I said. “Even if we decided to live up there, I’d still have to come down here to work.”

  “You would only have to work for Sturdy,” she said. “You wouldn’t have to take all the other jobs—”

  “The other jobs are the ones I enjoy.” I spoke softly.

  “But if you’re thinking of Jimmy, a new place can’t be good for him. He’d have a new community to learn, new friends, new relationships.”

  “Maybe a better school and a nicer house, a safer community – for blacks as well as whites. Chicago is the murder capital of America, Laura. I’m sure we can do better than that.”

  Jimmy was watching us as if we were participating in a tennis match, and it was clear from his expression that he wanted to Laura to win. “Maybe Laura could hire a detective for Mrs. Kirkland. I mean, in trade for me going to school with her and all.”

  “In the same neighborhood we’re trying to leave,” I said. “You’d come back for school?”

  “I couldn’t leave my friends or Mrs. Kirkland.” Jimmy spoke simply. I looked at Laura as he said the words, and for the first time, it was clear she understood.

  No matter what part of the city we lived in, we were tied to the South Side of Chicago. I couldn’t forbid Jimmy to come here; he wouldn’t listen to me even if I felt I had grounds to stand on. We would be better off remaining in our apartment, in our little neighborhood, than going to Laura’s fancy uptown location and having Jimmy sneak El rides south to visit his friends.

  Jimmy set aside half of his second hamburger. To my surprise, however, he reached out and put his hand on Laura’s.

  “Smoke says you can come see us no matter where we are. He says you gots enough money that it doesn’t matter where we live, you can find us. So it won’t be like leaving Memphis and never seeing nobody again.”

  She put her hand over his, then smiled. He didn’t seem to notice that the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Smokey’s right about that. I can come see you no matter where you are. I’d just miss seeing you every day.”

  “You don’t see us every day now,” Jimmy said. “It’ll be okay, Laura, really. If Smoke says we gots to, then we gots to.”

  He was defending me. I hadn’t expected it. I knew how much he wanted to stay.

  She squared her shoulders. “I take it Mrs. Kirkland is paying you?”

  “No,” I said. “I have enough saved.”

  “Then let me pay your fees,” Laura said. “Or at least your expenses. You can fly out east, rent a car, stay in nice hotels—”

  “Laura,” I said.

  “You have to be comfortable, Smokey,” she said.

  “We will be. But we’re driving. I don’t want to rent a car, and Grace and I have already handled the fees. I’m not taking charity.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I hate it when you use that word. Technically, the charity wouldn’t be for you, it would be for Grace Kirkland.”

  “It would be for me. You wouldn’t offer if I weren’t involved.”

  Laura sighed. “You’re not going to let me help in this at all, are you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So if you do decide to move out of Chicago, do you have enough for the trip and for a security deposit?”

  “You’re getting way ahead of the program, Laura.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “You have to be ready for all contingencies. You have—”

  “As it stands right now,” I said, “we’re going to be gone until we find Daniel Kirkland. Then we’re coming home. If we decide to stay in Connecticut or Indiana or Pennsylvania, then we’ll worry about the other details. We certainly didn’t have any money when we came here, and it worked out.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away. Jimmy tightened his grip on her hand. His knuckles were turning white.

  “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “We won’t like no place better. You’ll see.”

  She slipped her hand from his, grabbed his face, and kissed him on the top of the head. Then she stood and looked at me.

  “I don’t make these offers to patronize you, Smokey. I make them because I love you and I worry about you and I want you to be okay. But you don’t seem to understand that.”

  “I understand it,” I said. “I just don’t like the inequality in this relationship.”

  “Which inequality?” she asked. “The financial one? You don’t like me to have more money than you? Or the racial one?”

  “They’re both factors, Laura.”

  “Because you make them factors,” she said.

  “I’m not the only one,” I said.

  “I don’t,” she said. “I never have. I’ve stood beside you. I don’t care what color you are or whether you have money. I’m in love with you. I have been since Memphis and you don’t understand that.”

  “I do understand that,” I said. “And I’m not saying you’re the one who makes them factors. Society makes them factors. Other people—”

  “Other people have no place in our business,” she said.

  “No, they don’t,” I said. “But that doesn’t stop them from looking or commenting or getting in the way. I’m in more danger when I walk the streets of Chicago holding your hand than when I’m chasing down some criminal on the South Side. And you’ve never really understood that.”

  She was shaking. One tear fell down her cheek, leaving a light mascara trail on her skin. “I understood it. I always thought you had the courage to face anything. Guess I was wrong.”

  She chucked Jimmy under the chin, gave him a watery smile, and then let herself out the front door.

  I wasn’t breathing, and my hands were clenched together.

  “You go apologize,” Jimmy said.

  “For what?” I asked. “For telling her the truth?”

  His mouth got small and his eyes narrowed. For a minute, I thought he was going to cry, too.

  Instead, he stood up.

  “You’re really stupid sometimes,” he said, as he let himself out of the apartment. I could hear him run down the stairs, calling Laura’s name.

  But I didn’t go after them. I ate the last bite of my cold hamburger, washed it down with my warm Coke, and then stood, putting the dishes beside the small sink.

  Sometimes being courageous wasn’t about walking into the middle of a fight. Sometimes it took courage to retreat, to look for safe ground.

  Sometimes being courageous meant turning your back on everything you knew, and starting over.

  Jimmy and I had done it once before.

  We could do it again.

  EIGHT

  We left on Saturday afternoon, June twenty-first.

  I had chosen my route carefully. I used Franklin’s Chicago Negro Almanac to look for the largest black communities on the way east. That way, I could eyeball them as a prospective new home.

 
On that first afternoon, we drove from Chicago to Cleveland, taking our time along the way. I had been to a number of the places in Indiana, and knew that I had no interest in that state. I also didn’t want to go to Detroit which, news reports told me, had as many problems as Chicago did.

  Before we left, I had set my sights on Cleveland. I hadn’t heard anything bad about the city. I knew it was the first major American city to elect a black mayor, having done so two years before. And Cleveland had the largest black population in Ohio. Those three facts made it my first stop.

  I had also decided, before we left, that we’d stay in a hotel the first few nights. I wanted Malcolm and Jimmy to be comfortable and to enjoy the trip. The ride in the van was more difficult than I expected. The back got hot in the middle of the day, and we’d overpacked it. I had thought Jimmy could ride back there, but as it turned out, he was more comfortable up front.

  It took us a while to find a place to stay. I wasn’t familiar with Cleveland, and I had to drive a bit before I saw a neighborhood with some black faces. I had to drive even more before I found a hotel that looked like a place we could afford and be safe staying in it.

  The hotel was on the corner of Central and Fifty-fifth. It was a five-story monstrosity that anchored the entire block. The neighborhood was rundown, but not alarmingly so.

  Our room was on the third floor. The elevator was cranky, and once we got off, we had to carry our bags the length of the floor. The room itself was square with one square window overlooking the street. The two double beds sagged in identical places, and the room smelled strongly of cigar.

  The beds were covered in thin chenille, and separated by a small end table with a bubble lamp. A table and two chairs stood beside the door, and across from that was a low-riding dresser with a television on top of it.

  Jimmy had the television on before I could set my suitcase on the metal luggage rack.

  “Not yet,” I said. “We need dinner first.”

  I set the suitcase down and turned around. Malcolm was still standing by the door, staring at the room. He looked like he had never seen anything like it before. It wasn’t that remarkable, except that it was cleaner than most and had a little more space.