War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  Sidbury glanced at me nervously. His fingers toyed with the closed file.

  “As you know,” he said, “the experiment worked. Things did go smoothly, although there was an undercurrent of anger from many of the alumni and some of the boys. Students presented a petition for coeducation with more than seventeen hundred signatures on it, the national press corps seized on this, and that, along with the success of the week, made President Brewster decide to accelerate the coeducation of the college.”

  “What provoked Daniel?” I asked. “What caused this so-called incident?”

  Sidbury cleared his throat, clearly a stalling tactic as he figured out what to say next. “There were no incidents, so far as I knew, in Coeducation Week itself. But there were a few afterward, mostly with local girls. We did our best to keep them quiet.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  “Not for the sake of our reputation,” he added quickly. “But because the decision had been made. We didn’t want to scare the young ladies away.”

  “Are you saying that Daniel was involved in one of these incidents with the women?”

  “Yes,” Sidbury said. “Yes he was. But not in the way you’d expect.”

  I had no idea what Sidbury thought I would expect. I knew what he expected. He would have thought that Daniel — angry, black, impolite Daniel — would have hurt one of the women, or done something worse.

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  Sidbury stood. He paced toward the window, then paused, and looked out. Finally, he said, “It seems that Daniel was dating one of the girls who came here from Vassar. She came from a good family in New Haven, and had decided to stay here through Thanksgiving.”

  “The girl’s name?” I asked.

  “Rhondelle,” Sidbury said. “Rhondelle Whickam. Bright young woman. Black, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He gave me a nervous smile. “She came to visit Daniel after the announcement was made. That weekend, as a matter of fact. Emotions were running high. It was probably the wrong weekend to visit.”

  “Because?”

  “There was some concern, particularly among the legacies, that young women would take away slots that should go to them. You have to understand, the number of legacy admissions had dropped from more than a fourth of the class to less than a fifth. The girls would simply bring that down farther, and Yale would not be the school it was.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by legacies. It was a term I hadn’t heard, although I could guess. I assumed it meant students who, because of family history or wealth, didn’t have to go through the same stringent entry requirements as other students

  “What happened is this: Four young men learned that Rhondelle was here and decided to make coming to Yale an unpleasant experience for her, hoping she would let other girls know that Yale could be an uncomfortable place.”

  I didn’t move. I had a hunch I knew where this was going.

  “They didn’t plan their attack well. Daniel walked in on them. He managed to get them away from her before too much damage had been done.”

  “And he nearly beat one of the legacies to death,” I said, finally understanding.

  “It was justified,” Sidbury said, “but when added to his discontent, we simply felt that he didn’t belong here.”

  “Even though he had stopped a rape.”

  “I wouldn’t use such a harsh term,” Sidbury said. “They were merely trying to scare the girl.”

  “Did they succeed?”

  “I don’t know.” He sighed. “You’d have to talk to her father.”

  I hadn’t expected that response. “Her father?”

  “Professor Whickam. He teaches French.”

  “Her father teaches here?” I was stunned.

  “You can see our dilemma. If this had gotten out, so close to Coeducation Week, then all the work we had done to bring young women here would be for nothing. The charges against the university would have been horrifying — with legacies involved, one of our minority professors, a young woman, and a discontented young man.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t see your dilemma. You had four boys gang up on a young woman, threaten her at the least, and assault her at the worst, and you covered it up?”

  “I wouldn’t use that phrase,” he said.

  “You threw Daniel out of school,” I said.

  “We did not. We mutually agreed that he shouldn’t return.”

  “Did you mutually agree that the other four boys shouldn’t return?” I asked.

  “Two of them.” Sidbury’s face had grown red. “We dealt with the other two in a different manner.”

  Suddenly I knew exactly what legacy meant. “The other two. They were the legacies, weren’t they? You can kick out the scholarship students and the students without powerful parents, but you can’t kick out the children of alumni.”

  “It wasn’t my decision.”

  “But you approve of it.” I lowered my voice, trying to take some of the threat out of it.

  He closed his eyes, and shook his head. “There are ways things get done here. One of the boys was beaten badly, as I said. He was one of the legacies. We explained to the parents what happened, and they assured us it wouldn’t happen again. He did not return for the spring semester — ostensibly recuperating — and I haven’t received notification that he will return in the fall.”

  “And the other legacy?”

  “His father is quite well known, and a major supporter of the university. He assured us that nothing like this would ever happen again.”

  “You believed him?”

  “What I believe doesn’t matter.” Sidbury gave me a meaningful look. Someone else, someone higher up, with more authority, believed the father. “His son returned for spring and didn’t get into any trouble. I’ll have my eye on him this fall. He’s being housed as far from the girls in this college as possible.”

  I shook my head and turned away, disgusted.

  “Daniel was as upset by this turn of events as you were, even though we talked the other young man’s father out of pressing charges. Believe me, when a man like that wants the law to go after someone, it happens. We managed to avoid that.”

  “At the cost of Daniel’s scholarship and education.”

  Sidbury didn’t answer me directly. He swallowed, then bent his head forward.

  “When I saw Daniel after all of this, told him that no charges would be pressed against him, he asked about charges against the others. I told him that it looked like three wouldn’t return, but when it was clear we could do nothing about the fourth, he had some choice and colorful things to say about the way things worked here at Yale and within the establishment. He accused us of discrimination, threatened to go public with this, and I told him, as I had been instructed, that if he did, then the legacy’s father would pursue him with the full force of the law. Daniel understood that he couldn’t survive this man’s wrath, no matter who was in the right.”

  The poor kid. I had been unfair to him. He hadn’t abandoned his education for his so-called political stances. He had been forced to leave by a combination of activism and injustice.

  “Daniel said he wanted nothing to do with an institution that supported such people, that this was exactly what he was talking about, this kind of elitism and privilege, and if we had listened to him in the first place, taught black studies and the other things he had mentioned, showing the result of these attitudes on real people — his words, ‘real people’ — then things like this wouldn’t happen.”

  Sidbury was talking too fast.

  “But, he said, he could see now that he had been naïve. He used that word, not me. And he said that he felt the only way to turn this country around was to start from scratch. The entire system had to be torn down before there’d be any justice, real justice in the world. His last words to me were that he had been stupid for being a believer. The dream, he said, was really just that. A dream.”

  “Mart
in’s dream,” I said, more to me than to Sidbury.

  “Yes. Doctor King’s dream. I think Daniel saw himself as a martyr.”

  I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Daniel didn’t see himself as a martyr. He finally understood that for all your talk of equality and open admissions and everyone having a chance at leadership, it’s still all about the color of your skin, how much money you have, and who your parents are. Obviously, in the eyes of Yale, his parents don’t measure up.”

  Sidbury’s face was bright red and covered with sweat. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for all of this, Mr. Kirkland.”

  “Save your apologies,” I said as I stood and headed for the door, “for someone who believes that you actually mean them.”

  FOURTEEN

  I don’t remember leaving Sidbury’s office. I barely remember collecting Jimmy and heading out of the building. I do remember that by the time we reached oldest part of campus, Jimmy was running to keep up with me.

  “Smoke, wait,” he said, sounding breathless. “Please, wait up.”

  I slowed, finding myself on a path near that statue of the pompous white guy surveying his world. I wanted out of there. I wanted out of there now.

  Jimmy was breathing hard. I hadn’t realized just how fast I was walking. “What happened?”

  I shook my head, still too angry to speak. Besides, I wasn’t sure what to tell Jimmy. There was still a part of me — the martyr part, I guess Sidbury would call it — that wanted to believe in Martin’s dream, a part that wanted to protect kids like Jimmy from the worst of the racism in the hopes that some day it would just vanish.

  “I heard you yelling,” Jimmy said. “Was this guy a jerk, too?”

  I smiled, despite my anger. And then I laughed. “Yeah,” I said. “He was a jerk.”

  “I knew it!” Jim punched one fist into the palm of his other hand. “That lady kept looking at me like I smelled bad. I figured if he let her work for him, he had to be a jerk.”

  The anger was still there, but Jimmy had succeeded in taking the edge off of it. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Malcolm was waiting for us outside the Laundromat, a neatly folded stack of clothes on top of the inside-out duffel bag. It looked like he had washed it too.

  He was reading the morning paper, and leaning against the building, the only person on that side of the street. When we pulled up, he folded the paper, tucked it under his arm, and grabbed the clothes. Jimmy got out to help him.

  As they climbed into the van, Malcolm said, “You read this morning’s paper? They’re rioting in Pennsylvania.”

  Pennsylvania was apparently becoming the symbol of his discomfort with traveling.

  “Who’s rioting?” I asked.

  “We are,” he said. “The cops hurt ten people and arrested even more just because some lady was protesting that she got picked up for something no white woman would get charged with.”

  I sighed. “Where’s this?”

  He thumbed through the paper. “Philadelphia.”

  I shook my head slightly, the lightness that Jimmy had helped me achieve gone. Philadelphia had been on my list of places to stop on the way home. I probably would have to look up the articles myself. One isolated event shouldn’t be enough to stop my search for a new place to live.

  “Smoke’s mad,” Jimmy said.

  Malcolm leaned toward me. “What happened?”

  I told him as succinctly as I could, trying to keep my anger out of my voice. Neither boy said anything, and neither asked any questions as we drove across New Haven. Instead, they just listened.

  When I finished, Malcolm said, “I thought any school could kick you out for any reason.”

  “I suppose legally they can,” I said as I turned the van into the motel parking lot. During the day, there were very few cars. At night, the place seemed to fill up. “But places like Yale like to pretend that everyone who comes here is perfect, and they make no mistakes. After all, how can you expel a student who qualifies for a place like this? That implies that someone got out of control, and an Ivy Leaguer wouldn’t get out of control.”

  “You think Daniel could’ve gotten in trouble from this legacy guy?” Malcolm asked as he opened the van door.

  I got out, and Jimmy slid after me. It seemed even warmer here, but that was probably the effect of the sun off the pavement and the brick of the building. I pulled my suit coat off.

  “What do you mean trouble?” I asked as I came around the side of the van to get the laundry.

  “Dunno exactly,” Malcolm said, “but my experience with gangs of guys is that if they get caught for something, they tend to blame somebody, and it’s usually not one of their friends.”

  “I seen that too,” Jimmy added. He had a room key, and unlocked the door for me and Malcolm.

  I let out a sigh. I hadn’t even thought of the repercussions of Daniel’s actions among his peers. And I should have.

  “It’s possible,” I said. “It’s one more thing to investigate.”

  Malcolm slung the duffel over one arm and then lifted part of the clothing stack. I took the rest. We set them on the bed nearest to the window.

  The maid had already been inside the room. The beds were made and the place smelled clean. I liked this feature of motel living. I often wished my apartment could get magically cleaned up while I was away.

  “Nobody’s gonna tell you what happened, Bill,” Malcolm said.

  “I’m not sure they’ll tell you, either,” I said.

  “I meant the kids,” he said, sorting the clothes by owner.

  “I did, too,” I said. “These are rich white kids, and if the controversy turned racial, they’re not going to tell a black kid.”

  Malcolm looked at me sideways. “But if it’s about a girl, they might.”

  He obviously had an idea on how to handle this. I’d let him.

  “If I can have the van this afternoon,” he said, “I can check out both that place on Washington and some of the kids at Yale.”

  “That’s fine.” I wanted to track down Professor Whickam, but I could do the preliminaries from the room. “Let me pick up some lunch for me and Jimmy, and then you can have the van until supper. If you get delayed, call here. The desk clerk should take a message if we’re out.”

  “There’s not a lot of out around here,” Malcolm said.

  “There’s enough,” I said, remembering the park. I could use some time in a peaceful setting. Sidbury, Yale, and Robinson had shaken me up more than I wanted to admit.

  * * *

  The afternoon brought only frustration for me. As the day progressed, I hoped Malcolm fared better.

  Before Jimmy and I left for the park, I scanned the phonebook. Only one Whickam was listed, a René Whickam. I thought René was a woman until I got ahold of the Yale switchboard and asked for the first name of the Professor Whickam in the French department.

  “Wren-ay,” the operator said, as if she had been instructed on the proper pronunciation. Then she put me through to the department.

  Professor Whickam wasn’t due in his office until the following week, which I thought odd, since the following week was the week of the Fourth of July. No one answered at his home, either, and I got a bit worried. I wanted to wrap this case up as quickly as possible, and I had a hunch I needed Whickam to do that.

  After I tried Whickam, I tried all the phone numbers that Grace had given me again, and got no answers. I would try again at odd hours, hoping to reach someone.

  Then Jimmy and I went to the park, ate a bag lunch, and pretended to be indolent. I had bought a cheap softball at an all-purpose drugstore next to the grocery store, and we played a game of catch until I tired of it.

  When we got back to the room, we read until Malcolm returned — Jimmy starting one of the books Grace had sent with him, and me reading the morning paper. The riot in Philadelphia sounded nasty. Things in Vietnam were not going well either, but the paper felt the biggest news was actress Judy Garland’s death f
rom a drug overdose.

  I had finished the paper and was about to start another round of phone calls when Malcolm pulled up. He came into the room, looking tired and discouraged.

  Aside from a few details, he had learned nothing new. He couldn’t even find out the names of the boys who had been involved in the fight over Rhondelle Whickam. It seemed, as I predicted, that no one wanted to talk. But Malcolm had found a couple of crumpled antiwar leaflets with some local addresses.

  That would be tomorrow’s start.

  FIFTEEN

  Morning arrived in an unexpected torrent of rain. The weather was cool, and I found myself wishing that the rain had come the day before, when I had been trapped in my suit. That morning, I wore a short-sleeved shirt and thin tan slacks more appropriate for summer.

  The three of us spent the morning together, going to the various addresses on the flyers Malcolm had found. Depending on how the buildings looked when we arrived, either Malcolm or I would go in.

  I got the reputable and clean buildings; Malcolm got the seedy, run-down ones. The theory was simple: A long-standing peace organization wouldn’t mind seeing a forty-year-old coming through the door. A student-run organization wouldn’t talk to me and would be happier with Malcolm.

  The flyers announced a vigil that had been held the day before to support a University of Connecticut student who had refused to be inducted into the Armed Services. The vigil had been organized by a couple of groups who worked in tandem — a peace organization that had existed since World War II and catered to housewives, and a local branch of the Students for a Democratic Society.

  The housewives were as alarmed by me as the SDS would have been, only the housewives were polite. They gave me flyers for upcoming rallies and reminded me that there had been protests on the Green every weekend since the Vietnam War began. Obviously, not a lot of people paid attention, and as one of the women told me, they didn’t even get press coverage anymore.

  They had only been involved in the vigil the day before because it was nonviolent. The UConn student had wanted conscientious objector status, and the draft board had refused to grant it to him. The women felt justified standing up for him. They had planned the vigil, they said; the SDS had simply been along for the ride.