War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  I couldn’t be. I couldn’t leave Malcolm and Jimmy alone.

  Not here. Not now.

  I staggered out of bed, opened the metal cabinet, saw my clothes – including my ripped shirt – neatly folded on a shelf, my shoes beneath them. An old man slept in the bed near the window. He snored as if he were congested. A tube ran from his nose to a machine beside the bed.

  I was dizzy, but I managed to get the clothes out of the closet. My wallet still had money; there was change in my pocket.

  I had to sit on the bed to pull up my pants, and I had to wait until another dizzy spell passed before putting on my shoes.

  “Mr. Grimshaw,” a nurse said as she hurried into the room. “You need to lie down. You’ve been through a terrible experience.”

  “I have to go home,” I said. “My son doesn’t know where I am.”

  “We’ll call your family,” she said. “We were waiting for you to wake up.”

  “There’s no phone.” The ringing wasn’t as bad, but the dizziness was awful. “Do I have a concussion?”

  She checked my chart. “No. But you’re not recommended to leave. The doctor wanted you to stay the night for observation. After something like that—”

  “I need to leave,” I said. “My son’s only eleven.”

  “I’m sure your wife can handle it.”

  “I’m not married.”

  She frowned. “Can’t you call a neighbor?”

  I shook my head, had to grab the tray table to catch my balance, and had to choke back the nausea.

  “Will it kill me to leave?” I asked.

  “Probably not,” she said. “But if you have internal injuries—”

  “They’d’ve shown up by now. Even I know that. And if there’s more trouble, then I’ll check back in.”

  “Mr. Grimshaw, you can’t leave.”

  “Can’t a man check himself out in the State of New York?” I asked. “Even if it’s against doctor’s orders?”

  “Yes,” she said, and looked helpless. “But it’s not recommended. You can hardly stand.”

  “I have to go,” I said. “You don’t understand about my son.”

  “Maybe we can find someone to go there.”

  “No,” I said, envisioning the police arriving at the apartment, Jimmy in terror, screaming, afraid they were going to take him away for life. “I’m leaving.”

  I slipped my shirt on, felt for my wallet again, found it, and sighed with relief. Then I stood, cautiously. The ringing grew louder.

  “Mr. Grimshaw, this isn’t recommended—”

  “I know,” I said. “And believe me, if I had a choice, I’d do something else entirely.”

  The door to the room seemed very far away. I would have asked her to call me a cab, but even I knew that cabs wouldn’t go into Harlem. Not with white drivers, not at night, and not from here.

  She left the room ahead of me and went to the nurse’s station, picking up the phone. Probably calling the doctor. But if I wanted to check out, I could.

  “Give me a form to sign,” I said.

  She looked at me, then sighed, and reached into a drawer, removing a form. She filled out the top quickly, and I signed it, barely looking at it.

  Then I staggered toward the elevators, my walk as uneven as a drunk’s. My balance was badly off, the ringing was growing worse, and the hearing was subsiding. Black spots crossed my vision.

  I made myself breathe as I pushed the button for the main floor. That helped the black spots fade. The wall inside the elevator held me up all the way to the ground floor. I tried to walk with determination, but people stared at me. My shirt was ripped and I wondered how much blood and plaster dust still covered my face.

  The subway was only a block up, but that block stretched for miles. Then the stairs went all the way down to hell. I managed to get to the platform, managed to pull myself onto a train, and remembered to check once I was sitting down to see if I was on the right line. Miraculously, I was.

  People didn’t sit next to me. The train wasn’t that full, but people got on, looked at me, and moved to the other end of the car. A few women gave me sideways glances, as if they expected me to hurt them. Some men cringed when they saw me, their gazes sliding away from my face as if they’d seen something hideous.

  I didn’t close my eyes. I had to struggle to keep them open. The ringing had gotten worse, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear the announcement.

  I stared at the door, at the designations, counting the stops to 116th Street, praying I had enough energy to walk the two blocks south to the apartment.

  I barely remember those blocks. Someone asking if I was all right. A small boy running in front of me, then looking at my face in horror. A woman putting her hand to her mouth as she passed me.

  I turned onto 114th, saw the apartment building, the people who had become familiar in the last few days. I staggered toward it, so dizzy that the entire world was spinning. I counted the steps, forced myself to breath with each movement, deep breath, step, deep breath, step, knowing I had to make it, praying I would make it.

  As I tripped my way into the building, I realized my keys were gone. Wallet intact, keys missing. No local address so they couldn’t do anyone any good. But no way to get into the apartment, not if Jimmy and Malcolm weren’t here.

  I didn’t care.

  I fell going up the steps, caught myself, crawled like a child the last few stairs, leaned against the door and closed my eyes.

  I’d made it.

  And that was all that mattered.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  When I opened my eyes again, a woman leaned over me. She seemed vaguely familiar. Her hair, in a modified bouffant, was shiny and smooth and black, her skin the color of dark chocolate. She smiled at me.

  “Welcome back, Smokey,” she said quietly. “You scared us.”

  I had the worst headache I’d ever had in my life. My ears still rang, but the sound was fading. I looked to my left, saw a window with an air conditioner, and Jimmy, sitting in a chair, a book in his lap.

  “How come you always get hurt?” he asked me.

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  “Tuesday,” the woman said. She put a cool hand on my throbbing head. “You weren’t out for long.”

  “Where’s Malcolm?”

  “In the kitchen.” Jimmy stood. His hands were small fists at his side. “You got hurt again. You promised you wouldn’t.”

  Had I? I didn’t remember. “This is the apartment, right?”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “And you don’t know who I am.”

  I swallowed, looked at Jimmy, saw panic on his face.

  “You said he’d know you,” Jimmy said. “You said—”

  “It’s Gwen, Smokey,” the woman said, ignoring Jimmy’s growing tantrum. “A little older, a little fatter, but it’s Gwen.”

  It was Gwen. Her cheeks had filled out. She had crow’s-feet beside her eyes. She used to wear her hair long. She would iron it. And she’d been tiny.

  She wasn’t tiny any more.

  “How’d you find us?”

  “Not hard,” she said. “Although the fake name threw me. I recommended the apartment broker, remember? When he didn’t have a Smokey Dalton, I asked about a man and two boys that he rented to recently.”

  “She come here yesterday afternoon, asking for Smokey Dalton,” Jimmy said. “Good thing she talked to me before Malcolm heard. I told her not to use that name.”

  I shouldn’t have called her. I shouldn’t have used that name. Now someone could put me together with the apartment broker and this place, and then tie Smokey Dalton to Bill Grimshaw.

  So many mistakes.

  “But he didn’t tell me why,” she said. “Are you going to tell me why, Smokey?”

  “You’ve been here since last night?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I got here just in time to see these boys dragging you into the apartment. They were terrified. I wanted them to take you to a hospital
, but they wouldn’t. They wanted to leave town. I convinced them to stay.”

  I looked at Jimmy. He shrugged and looked away.

  “Don’t blame them, Smokey. They needed help. They’re little more than children, and they thought you were going to die.”

  “I said you couldn’t die,” Jimmy said. “I lied. I said you were too stubborn to die.”

  “If it had been life-threatening, they wouldn’t have let me out of the hospital,” I said, and then realized that sentence wasn’t as comforting as I meant it.

  “You were in the hospital?” Jimmy’s voice went up. “And you left?”

  “Because I couldn’t call you,” I said. “I’m just bruised.”

  “And stitched,” Gwen said. “Something got you but good.”

  I closed my eyes again. The conversation was tiring. “Is there a paper?”

  “Food first,” Gwen said. “Malcolm’s cooking up some eggs. He says he’s good at it. You’re going to eat if I have to stuff the food down you.”

  Old flashback: too many nights drinking, Gwen beside me, giving me hair of the dog, making me eat, holding my head while I puked. Poor thing. She always got the worst of this relationship.

  “I’m sorry, Gwen,” I said.

  “I always figured you’d get your life together, Smokey,” she said. “I never figured on this.”

  That took enormous faith on her part, figuring I would get my life together. By the time I’d moved in with her after I finished my master’s, the nightmares controlled me. Sometimes I lost touch with reality; I thought I was in Korea. I was convinced of it.

  I often slept on the couch so my shouting wouldn’t keep her awake. If I drank, I slept, but I could still be startled.

  I woke one night with her son’s arm in my hand, the thought in my mind that a simple snap of the wrist would give me the information I needed.

  He had been six.

  I moved out the next day.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I said.

  I opened my eyes. She was sitting beside me, her figure fine and full. The extra weight looked good on her, made her seem more like a woman than the girl I remembered.

  Jimmy was standing beside us. “So you do know her.”

  I nodded, then wished I hadn’t. The dizziness was lurking there, waiting beneath the headache.

  “Old friend,” I said. “I’d called her from New Haven, asking for help finding a place to stay.”

  “When you didn’t call,” Gwen said, her tone light but forced. “I figured you were too shy, so I would contact you. Had to wait until yesterday when the office reopened. Then I learn that you don’t have a phone. What’s with that?”

  “I didn’t think we’d need it. I wasn’t expecting this.” I moved my left arm to indicate my injuries and wished I hadn’t. The stitches pulled. That awakened all the aches and pains and the throbbing in my thigh from the other stitches. “How bad do I look?”

  “Like it was one hell of a fight,” Gwen said.

  “It wasn’t a fight.” I scooted up. There were a pile of pillows behind me, and one on the floor, along with a blanket. Someone had slept in here, keeping an eye on me.

  “Is he awake?” Malcolm stood at the door. His eyes were sunken into his face. He hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Jesus, man. You said you were going to talk to someone. What happened?”

  I wouldn’t be able to hide it from them, so I supposed there was no point in trying.

  “It was why I didn’t want you along. What I was worried about from the beginning.”

  “Daniel,” Malcolm said. “He hurt you.”

  I shook my head once, and stopped, the dizziness growing fiercer. “He wasn’t anywhere near me. It was an accident.”

  “You got hit by a car?” Jimmy asked.

  Such a simple lie, but it didn’t go with my injuries. And I had promised him, more than once, that I’d never lie to him.

  “A bomb,” I said. And oddly enough, it wasn’t Daniel’s. It had been Jervis’s.

  “The bomb in the Village?” Gwen said. “The one that’s all over the news? The one that killed the cop?”

  It was on the news? Did they report the names of all the victims? Or did they wait, pending notification of relatives?

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Gwen frowned at me. The panic must have shown on my face.

  “What?” she asked.

  But I couldn’t tell her. I glanced at Malcolm. He was watching me. Somehow I had to let the boys know that we were leaving. We had to get out of town now.

  “You’re one of the survivors?” Gwen’s voice went up. “What were you doing there?”

  “Trying to join the cop. I wanted to talk to the guy who lived in the apartment.”

  “For heavens’ sake, why?” she asked.

  “Because I thought maybe he would know who was shooting young people on the streets of New York.” That sentence sounded too harsh, too. I obviously wasn’t myself. I wasn’t usually that blunt.

  “You thought he was the guy who was going after Daniel?” Malcolm asked.

  I almost nodded, but caught myself. “I’m convinced of it now.”

  “But the police are handling it, right?” Gwen said. “There’s nothing more for you to do.”

  But there was something. I just couldn’t remember it. Something that they probably wouldn’t figure out. Something that I had seen.

  I knew better than to force it. The blast had blown away bits of my memory, and I had to trust that those bits would return.

  “How about lunch?” Malcolm asked.

  Lunch. I had been out a long time.

  “Do we have a paper?” I threw the covers back, trying not to wince as the stitches pulled in my left arm.

  “Yesterday’s,” Malcolm said as he hurried to my side.

  I waved him away. I was wearing only boxers. The wound on my leg looked red and angry.

  “We’re going to need some hydrogen peroxide,” I said. “And some cotton balls. Would you mind getting that along with a paper?”

  “What for?” Jimmy asked.

  “I don’t want to go back to the hospital with an infection,” I said. “I’ve still got things to do.”

  “You don’t gotta do nothing,” Jimmy said. “They arrested Daniel.”

  I looked at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Radio news,” he said.

  I glanced at Gwen. She seemed somewhat oblivious to the conversation. She had moved to the side of the room and was looking through my pile of clothes for something for me to wear.

  I had seen her do that a hundred times. Having her here was a flashback, an unpleasant one. I hadn’t treated her well.

  Malcolm vanished into the hallway. “I left the eggs on the stove,” he said. “There’s toast, too. I’ll be right back.”

  “Do you have money?” I asked, but the door closing was my answer.

  Gwen had found a shirt that was still folded. The pants I had worn yesterday were ruined. They were in the garbage, along with the remains of my shirt.

  “I can get it, Gwen. Thanks.” My tone was gentle.

  She smiled at me. “I’ll set the table,” she said, and left the room.

  “I’ll help,” Jimmy said, and followed.

  I put on the shirt she found, moving my left arm cautiously so that I wouldn’t reinjure it. My leg was sore, but I managed to get pants on over the wound. The cotton rubbed against the stitches, making them hurt.

  My ears still rang, but my balance was back. I got up slowly, feeling the blood rush to my head. The headache was fierce. I had to use the wall to support myself.

  Before I went into the kitchen, I used the bathroom. I washed up, careful to avoid the stitches — it helped having had them before; I knew how to take care of them — and then I looked in the mirror.

  My face was covered with scrapes and scratches. A thin cut ran across my right eyebrow — too small for the doctors to do more tha
n tape shut. Another cut ran under my browline, and still another along my right ear. No wonder I had felt so much blood. A lot of it had been mine.

  I left the bathroom and walked slowly into the kitchen, feeling like an old man. The headache combined with seeing Gwen in a Harlem kitchen felt like a flashback — a moment from my past that I didn’t want to relieve again.

  Flashback. Something floated across my brain and vanished again. Close. Almost there. If I didn’t push, the memory would return.

  “I’m sorry, Gwen,” I said as I sat at the table. “This couldn’t have been what you expected when you came here last night.”

  She set a plate of steaming scrambled eggs in front of me. My stomach growled. They smelled fantastic. Two pieces of heavily buttered toast rested on either side. Malcolm’s days as a short-order cook had served him well.

  “I had hoped for more,” she said as she went back to the stove. “You always had so much potential, Smokey.”

  She sounded like my adopted mother.

  “I been telling her, Smoke, that you’re not always like this. That we got a home and a job, and that you take real good care of me,” Jimmy said.

  “He’s been quite the defender,” Gwen said, setting a place in front of him. “You have a wonderful child here, Smokey. I hope you realize that.”

  “I know it,” I said.

  “He’s homesick, and trying valiantly to live with whatever crazy idea you got into your head this time.” Gwen took a small plate of eggs for herself and sat across from me. “Going after murderers and bombers? What were you thinking, Smokey?”

  “I work as a private detective, Gwen,” I said.

  “And bringing your son along—”

  “Gwen, you haven’t seen me in a long time. Don’t pretend to understand my life.”

  Jimmy raised his eyebrows at me. I had just done something I always yelled at him about: I had snapped at someone, seemingly without provocation.

  But the provocation — and the embarrassment — with Gwen was more than a decade old. We fought a lot, mostly about me, and she had mostly been justified. I had been a mess in those days. The war still haunted me, and so did some of the work I had done afterward.

  I wasn’t sure if I had been entirely sane in those days. Anything could make me slip back into the past. Korea was more real to me than New York had been, than Gwen had been.