Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “If I were you, I’d shop somewhere else.” And so it started.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I said.

  “No, no.” His tone was gentle. “That’s not what I mean. I’m not threatening you. But there’s no reason that you should fill up your cart. They’ll send someone to chase you out. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  I studied him for a moment. I wasn’t sure how to place him. He’d felt menacing a minute ago, and now he was giving me something that could be taken as friendly advice.

  “I keep trying to change our policies,” he said into my silence, “but it does no good.”

  “The neighborhood is in transition,” I said, using Jane Sarton’s word. “Maybe someone else should try to change the policy.”

  The butcher sighed. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Who else tried?” I asked, thinking of Foster. Maybe he had been here on his way home, just like I was.

  “There’s been a number, but—” The butcher stopped and looked toward his right. A slender clerk, a tuft of hair sticking up on the back of his head, came up the aisle. He was frowning at me.

  “You new to the neighborhood?” the clerk asked.

  “I’ve been looking at houses this morning,” I said, sounding friendly even though I didn’t feel that way.

  “Been a lot of you people here lately.”

  I bristled, but didn’t let it show. “In the store or in the neighborhood?”

  “In the neighborhood,” he said, “driving nice folk out.”

  I didn’t respond to the man. I glanced at the butcher, but he had disappeared into the back, as if he hadn’t wanted anyone to see him talking to a black customer.

  The slender clerk stared at me. He seemed to expect some kind of response. I was tempted to leave the cart and walk away, like they wanted me to. Instead, I went down the chilly frozen-foods aisle, and got some orange-juice concentrate, my hand shaking.

  I made myself continue shopping. I had every right to be there, but that clerk had made me feel as if I had crossed an invisible line. Had this happened to Foster as well? I didn’t see anyone I felt like asking.

  The checkout clerks wouldn’t meet my gaze as I headed toward the line. I was the only man pushing a cart. Every other customer was a white woman, most of whom gave me startled looks.

  Their carts were overflowing with food, except for the woman ahead of me. She had two expensive sirloin steaks, some frozen broccoli, and a package of Minnesota wild rice. By the time her bill was totaled, it would probably equal mine.

  When I settled on a line, the checkout girl looked over the magazine rack and shook her head at me, making it clear she wasn’t about to let me pay for my food. I was tempted to leave the cart in the middle of the store and walk out just like the butcher had advised, but I didn’t. I’d had enough of subtle looks and vaguely worded threats.

  I waited until my turn. No one got in line behind me; a few middle-aged housewives took one glance at me, and got in a longer line.

  When the checkout girl finally finished with the woman ahead of me—and she took her time on purpose—she put a CLOSED sign on the counter in front of her register.

  I handed the sign back to her.

  “No, you don’t,” I said in my softest, calmest voice. “I was patient just like everyone else. You can show me the courtesy of waiting on me.”

  She gave me a look that was one part fear and another part anger.

  “I’m not getting in another line,” I said. “You will wait on me.”

  She raised a hand, signaling for the manager. Apparently he had been watching me, because he arrived almost immediately.

  He was a short man with a receding hairline. What hair remained had been greased and slicked back against his skull. His black horn-rimmed glasses magnified his pale blue eyes.

  “This register’s closed,” he said. “Miss Nelson needs her break.”

  “She can’t wait on one more customer?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then I guess you’ll have to make room for me in another line.”

  The entire store was watching now. Checkout girls had stopped halfway through other customers’ groceries and were turned in my direction. The other customers were clutching their handbags to the handles of their grocery carts as if I were going to run through the aisles snatching every wallet.

  “The other lines are closed,” the manager said.

  “They don’t look closed,” I said.

  “They are.” He crossed his arms over his thin chest. The checkout girl had moved behind him, as if his slight frame would offer her protection from me.

  The anger I’d been feeling all week was coming back, magnified by the frustration I’d felt since the attack on Saul and Elaine. “Let me get this straight,” I said carefully. “The lines are closed…to me.”

  “Yes.” The manager looked relieved that I finally understood.

  “You want me to leave my groceries and walk out?”

  “That would be best for all involved, I think.”

  He was right; it probably would. Creating a scene would do me no good at all, and would probably make this group of friendly white people call the police. Still, I couldn’t stop.

  “This is how you treat all your black customers?”

  “We don’t have such customers,” the manager said.

  “You run them all out?” I asked.

  “People usually don’t go where they’re not wanted.” The manager kept his arms crossed. The checkout girl in the aisle behind him nodded.

  “I’m the only black man you’ve had in this store?” I asked, getting my questions about Foster in anyway.

  “Usually your—girls—show up. We politely ask them to leave.” He was staring at me.

  “Like you’re politely asking me?”

  “Yes.”

  The tuft-haired clerk had come down an aisle, along with another man who wore a black suit. They watched from a distance. So far, no one was near a phone.

  The butcher hadn’t come at all. He had known this was going to happen, and he had warned me. Had I heard a friendly warning as a threat because I was uncomfortable here? I couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t think this is very polite,” I said. “I have as much right to be in this store as anyone else.”

  “Well,” said the manager, “it’s a privately owned business, and we have the right to choose our customers.”

  “My money is as green as theirs,” I said, nodding at the women standing in nearby lines.

  “We don’t want it.”

  Of course they didn’t. Just like they didn’t want Saul Epstein to kiss Elaine Young, or Louis Foster to buy a house in their neighborhood. They didn’t want me to buy groceries at a reasonable price or send Jimmy to a well-financed public school.

  “Well,” I said, “you are going to get my money whether you like it or not. You can wait on me or not, that’s your choice, but I’m taking these groceries home.”

  He watched in horror as I reached behind the counter and grabbed a bag. I shook it open, and set it in front of him. Then I reached into my cart. My fingers found the hamburger first.

  I read the price sticker to him, then set the hamburger in the bag. Then I picked up the orange-juice concentrate, read that price sticker, added that price to the hamburger’s price, and set the concentrate in the bag.

  I took out each item, added its price to my verbal total, and placed it in the bag. The work took me only a minute or two. The total came to $15.95. I dug into my back pocket, pulled out my wallet and opened it, finding a ten, a five, and a one. I set them on the counter, picked up my grocery bag, and left the cart.

  “Keep the change,” I said as I walked out the door, shaking with fury.

  Even though I knew I had to hurry—someone would have called the police by now—I didn’t run. I wasn’t going to let them see how deeply they’d shaken me.

  I got to the car, set my groceries inside, and started it up. Then I backed o
ut of my parking spot, turning around so that I wouldn’t drive past the big windows advertising FAIR PRICES. In the distance, I heard the wail of a siren.

  Why Louis Foster would want to live in that neighborhood was beyond me. I wouldn’t want to face that every day, or have Jimmy face it either.

  The sirens grew closer. I glanced in my rearview mirror, but no cop car was following me yet. I turned off on a couple of side streets, then headed north, toward home.

  I parked in front of the apartment building and got out. Even though it was the middle of the day, this street had signs of life: a car motor running in a driveway; a woman carrying evergreen boughs out of her apartment building; an old man sipping a cup of steaming liquid while he stood on his porch, watching me as I watched him. Maybe they’d seen something yesterday—my little note-carriers. Maybe my neighbors knew more than I thought they did.

  I took the groceries inside. Marvella’s door was closed and locked, a rolled-up newspaper on the mat. I was disappointed; part of me wanted to talk to her, to tell someone else about the experience I’d just gone through, to get that poison out of my system. Or maybe I’d just been thinking about her all morning, no makeup, the satin robe loosely tied over her long, powerful body.

  It had been a long time since I’d been with anyone. The last time was in March with Laura. It was beginning to show.

  No note waited for me on my door. I was surprised that I had looked for it, and even more surprised at my relief when I discovered it wasn’t there. I unlocked the door and went inside.

  The place was a mess, and smelled of curdling milk from that morning’s breakfast. I set the groceries on the counter, then took a deep breath to calm myself.

  I hadn’t encountered that kind of overt racism since I’d come to Chicago. Usually, in Chicago, people smiled at you and then denied your rental application. Or they looked at you, a warning gaze that seemed well-intentioned, when you walked into a restaurant that didn’t like “your kind.” Sometimes, in Chicago, I couldn’t tell if people were really discriminating against me or if I was being paranoid.

  I’d once said to Franklin that I preferred overt racism. At least then you knew where you stood.

  I now regretted those words. Either kind of discrimination felt bad. Even now, I felt nauseous, a sense of helplessness filling me. My protest hadn’t meant much to anyone, least of all to the store manager. I’d barely gotten out of there ahead of the police.

  What I needed to do now, besides calm down, was to finish my research, maybe do some library work, something that kept me away from other people until my surliness passed.

  I had just put the perishables away when the phone rang.

  “What?” I said as I picked it up, not caring how the person on the other end responded.

  “Um….” That person was a woman with an unfamiliar voice. “I’m calling for Bill Grimshaw.”

  My name is Smokey Dalton, I wanted to snap. I use the other name because a childhood friend was murdered in cold blood by white bigots and I’m hiding one of the witnesses.

  “That’s me.” I wasn’t making the conversation easy for her. Part of me regretted it, and part of me didn’t care at all.

  “I’m, um, Marge Evenrud. I work in the emergency room at—”

  “Miss Evenrud,” I said, pouring warmth into my voice. “I’m sorry. I was expecting another call.”

  She let out a nervous laugh. “Someone you don’t like.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked many people at the moment. “You could say that.”

  “Listen,” she said, sounding more confident, “you wanted to know if someone with infected burns on his face and shoulder come in. Well, we got someone.”

  My hand tightened on the receiver. “Really?”

  “He meets your description. He’s twentyish, white, and he’s got a long burn on his cheek. That one’s not infected. In fact, it’s beginning to heal. But his shoulder and arm show definite signs of scalding, so bad that some fabric from his shirt got mixed into the flesh. He’s got a raging infection there.”

  “Is he in the hospital?”

  “Oh, yes. He has a fever, which the doctors are trying to bring down, and he’s on penicillin to stop the infection. We got a call into one of our burn specialists to see what the next step is.”

  “What could that step be?” I asked.

  “Surgery, possibly. Or they might just wait until the infection lessens before they make a decision.”

  “Is he being sent home?” My heart was pounding. This sounded right.

  “Possibly. Right now he has a room, but his mother made it clear when she brought him in that they don’t got a lot of money. We told her that we’d take care of him, but she didn’t seem all that interested. She said she was tired of his whining.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “If you get here soon,” she said. “He’ll probably see the burn specialist around two, and then I have no idea what will happen.”

  “I’ll be there shortly,” I said.

  “Should I be calling the police, Mr. Grimshaw?”

  “Let me see him first,” I said. “Let’s make sure this is the right guy.”

  “All right. His name is Bruce Owens and he’s in room four-eleven.”

  The fourth floor. Not far from Elaine. I wondered what genius did that until I remembered that no one else realized who he was—if indeed he was the person who attacked her.

  “I can get in trouble for giving you this information, Mr. Grimshaw. Please don’t tell nobody about my call.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “And thanks.”

  * * *

  I made it to the hospital in record time. The place looked as busy as it had the day before. This time, I didn’t have to argue with the woman at the information desk, and no one looked askance as I hurried across the lobby.

  The elevator seemed even slower than it had the day before. My entire body was humming and I couldn’t seem to keep still. I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet, as jittery as an addict in need of a fix.

  This was the break I had needed. I wanted to question one or both of these attackers about their other activities. I didn’t think they had killed Foster or the boys, but I couldn’t be certain. Maybe this attack had spiraled out of control. Or maybe a single killer had gotten tired of working alone.

  Once I identified him, I would ask Marge Evenrud to call the police. I wouldn’t wait for them, of course. Instead, I’d tell her to lie, saying that she had been told to call them if anyone with these burns had come into the ward.

  I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to ask questions. He had a fever, and his side was infected. He might be asleep, or incoherent.

  He was neither.

  Bruce Owens watched television from his bed beside his room’s window. The privacy curtain was open, revealing a second bed, unmade, a lunch tray with half-eaten food beside it. The chart at the foot of that bed was missing.

  I stayed back, studying Owens’ face. He had a long red burn that ran from his eyebrow to his jaw. His arm and shoulder were not bandaged, but rested on top of the covers, the swollen skin red, pus-filled and cracked.

  An untouched lunch tray sat on the end table beside his bed. Near his right hand was the nurse’s call button.

  The sight of his face brought back that afternoon—the leer he had, the way he held Elaine by the throat as he braced himself between her legs, the bleakness in her eyes.

  I strode inside the room and closed the door.

  “Hey!” he said.

  Then I closed the curtain over the window. “Remember me?”

  His face paled, and he reached for the call button.

  I pulled it out of his grasp before he was able to press it. “We’re going to have a little conversation.”

  “I have nothing to say to you.” He sounded defiant, but his eyes were large, a little dilated—probably from his fever—and his right hand shook.

  “No ‘I’m sorry’? No ‘I didn’t mean it’? No ‘Th
ings got out of hand’?”

  His eyes narrowed. “They got what they deserved. He was necking with that monkey.”

  “Woman,” I said, sitting on the side of the bed closest to his injured arm. “She’s a woman. And you did a lot worse to her.”

  “That bitch needed to learn her place, man.”

  “Really?” I bumped his hand with my hip. He yelped. “She deserved everything she got?”

  His eyes filled with tears, but I was under no illusion. They were tears of pain, not remorse.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Things got out of hand.”

  “Uh-huh.” I was surprised I could sound so calm when what I really wanted to do was grab his fork and burst each pus-filled blister. “I suppose your attack on Louis Foster got out of hand, too.”

  “What?”

  “You and your friend left him in Washington Park so no one could trace him to you. Or did you observe him there doing something you didn’t like? Was he in need of a lesson, like Saul and Elaine?”

  “I don’t know no Foster.” He reached for the call button again, wincing as he did.

  I shoved it onto the floor. “And what about those little boys? What did they do? Look at a white woman wrong, like Emmett Till?”

  “I don’t know no Emmett Till.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Why should you know anything about the history of the civil-rights movement?”

  He had shoved himself away from me, his head pressed against the bed’s headboard. “You’re crazy, man.”

  “Am I? I’m not the one who attacked a couple because their skin colors didn’t match.”

  “So what?” he said. “They were spreading their filth all over the park. But I don’t know these other people.”

  “Louis Foster. Built like I am, well-dressed? You left his body in Washington Park in the weekend before Thanksgiving.”

  “The weekend before Thanksgiving, I was in Springfield with my friggin’ grandmother, man. Ask my whole family.”

  I stopped. He looked as terrified as a man could get. “You didn’t attack anyone else?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He glanced at the door, but no one came in to rescue him. “I didn’t kill no one, though.”