A Dangerous Road: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “It’ll kill you, Joe.”

  “Life’ll kill me, Smokey.”

  I stared at him for a moment. I’ve had this moment with friends before. He wasn’t going to change. I couldn’t make him. But I had to try one last time, give him one last chance. “What do I tell Jimmy?”

  “Tell him to stop looking for me. He’s a pest and he don’t belong in this mess. Tell him to leave me alone. If I ever want to see him again, I’ll find him.” Then Joe turned and hurried off.

  I stood in the middle of the path. The scrape-scrape-scrape of the grave diggers’ shovels was my only company. Joe ran to the road and disappeared.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  JOE HAD LEFT JIMMY TO ME, and I didn’t know how to face it. How do you tell a boy whose mother abandoned him that his brother wanted nothing to do with him either? I asked Henry, and he had no words for me except an offer to go with me.

  But I knew it was something I had to do alone. Something I had to do carefully or Jimmy would blame me instead of Joe. I called Selina Nelson while Jimmy was still in school and warned her. She offered to tell him too, and I refused. Better to have him hate me for telling him the news than to have him hate the first people to care for him in a long, long time.

  I went to the Nelsons’ after school let out for the day. The weather was horrible—unseasonably warm, humid, and rainy, with severe thunderstorms predicted for the evening. We’d been having a lousy spring in all ways. The radio told me that Judge Bailey Brown had, at the request of the city’s attorney, granted a temporary restraining order, preventing Friday’s march. He would have a hearing on the matter Thursday morning.

  Henry had told me that Martin’s people would have training sessions in nonviolent techniques Friday before the march. When I spoke to Henry, I asked if those plans had been changed. He promised to get back to me.

  Martin was supposed to fly in that day and give a speech that night. As the clouds in the sky grew darker and darker, I wondered if he had indeed made it or if he had been delayed, just as he had been on the twenty-eighth. But it didn’t matter as much this time. He was arriving early to take care of things before the march started.

  If the march started.

  Henry was right. This time, they wouldn’t need me.

  I wondered if the weather was delaying Laura’s flight as well. Yesterday, she had said she’d take the first plane to Memphis. I hadn’t heard from her yet.

  Of course, I had been out of my office all day. Part of me wondered if that was intentional.

  I pulled up in front of the Nelsons’, and this time Selina was watching out the window. The rain was coming down in sheets, and I ran from the car to the house. When I got inside, I shook the water off and let her take my coat.

  “Is he upstairs?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I haven’t told him you’re coming.”

  I took the steps two at a time. When I reached the top, I went to Jimmy’s bedroom. He was sprawled on the bed, a battered history textbook open before him. When he saw me, he smiled.

  The smile faded when I didn’t smile back.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is Joe?”

  I shook my head. I sat on the edge of the bed, and Jimmy scrambled into a sitting position.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  My heart was pounding. I didn’t know how to tell him. “He’s—with the wrong people,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t. He doesn’t want to see you.”

  Jimmy leaned back as if I had slapped him. “Why not?”

  “He’s afraid. Afraid for you.”

  “But he could come here. He could—”

  “He doesn’t want to leave them. He says he likes being in the group.”

  Jimmy frowned, as if the information made no sense. “But if he don’t want to leave them and don’t want me there, then when do I see him?”

  “When he’s ready.”

  “When’s that?”

  I shook my head. “I tried to talk to him, Jimmy. He doesn’t listen anymore.”

  “No,” Jimmy whispered. “We’re family.”

  “He says you have a new family now.”

  “No.” Jimmy’s voice rose. “I just live here. He could live here too.”

  “He doesn’t want to.”

  “You say.”

  “He says.”

  “He should tell me himself.”

  I managed a small, rueful smile. “That’s what I told him.”

  “And?”

  “He did, Jimmy. By leaving you alone.”

  “No.” Jimmy shoved me, nearly knocking me off the bed. “You lie.”

  I stood. “I’m not lying, Jimmy.”

  “You are too. You hate Joe and you’re lying. You just want me to stay here.”

  “I do want you to stay here. You’re safe here.”

  “I hate it here. I hate it. I don’t want to stay. I want to go to Joe.”

  I shook my head. “He’s in a gang, now, Jimmy, and it’s not safe for you. He knows it. He’s afraid they’ll use you like they did before.”

  “They didn’t use me,” Jimmy said. “I offered. So I could stay.”

  “That’s not what you told me when you came to see me at my office. You wanted me to get you out, get Joe out.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  “That’s right,” I said, crouching so that I was at his eye-level. “I couldn’t help Joe.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, then he slammed his history book shut. “Get out.”

  “Jimmy, I can—”

  “Getoutgetoutgetout.”

  “Jimmy, you can always call me. I’ll try to keep track of Joe—”

  “Get out!” He screamed that last so loud that his face turned red and little bits of spittle caught on his lips.

  I backed away. I didn’t know what else to do. “I’m sorry.”

  But he didn’t seem to hear me. He had flung himself face down on the bed and was pounding it with his fists and feet. Selina was running up the stairs. She shot me an apologetic look and then went to him.

  “You’d better go,” she said as she hurried across the floor. And, coward that I was, I did.

  I drove aimlessly for a while, not sure of where to go or what to do. Jimmy’s reaction had shaken me more than I cared to admit. I had thought the boy would at least talk to me. But he didn’t. It seemed no one did.

  The weather was growing worse, and the severe storm warning had been upgraded to a tornado watch. I found myself outside the Mason Temple along with camera crews from the Memphis stations as well as CBS, NBC, and ABC. They were expecting Martin.

  I almost left. Somehow, in the back of my mind, I had thought the crowd would be small because of the rain, and I might be able to talk to Martin, about Joe, about Jimmy, maybe even about Laura. But when I saw the camera crews there, I knew that I wouldn’t get a chance.

  Still, I couldn’t bring myself to drive away. I slipped inside and discovered that the crowd was indeed small. Thunder boomed, and lightening flashed, and a few people looked around nervously. I took a seat toward the back. Henry was up front. He smiled at me, then raised his eyebrows in question.

  I shook my head.

  As I did, Ralph Abernathy walked up to the pulpit, followed by Jesse Jackson. The crowd stared at them. They had been expected Martin. I had been expecting Martin, and I was disappointed. Dr. Abernathy stared at us for a moment, then held up a hand, and went to one of the ministers in the front. Then they disappeared through a side door.

  The pew was wood and unpadded, uncomfortable against my butt. It had been a long time since I had sat down in a sanctuary. Since I was a boy. I used to refuse to accompany my foster mother, saying that church did no good.

  Only I was wrong. In black community, in my community, the church was a power for good. Martin knew that. His lieutenants did too. So did Henry.

  I saw Henry stir, and I knew that
if I wasn’t careful, he would come to me. I didn’t want to talk yet. I was numb. I closed my eyes and saw Jimmy’s angry flop on the bed, Laura’s confusion and disappointment. And her face as she cooked me breakfast.

  Her beautiful face.

  Then applause started around me, happy, joyous applause. I turned and saw a tired Martin walk down the aisle. His stride was purposeful, his manner confident. He’d looked nothing like the man I’d helped escape from the riot only a week before.

  He didn’t see me in the corner. He went to the pulpit and looked out at all of us. Only then did his gaze fall on me. His eyes widened with slight surprise. I was not known for attending Martin’s speeches—at least, not as a simple listener.

  That night, he was inspired.

  He talked about how great it was to be alive, how wonderful life was, even when it was full of trials, and then he spoke to me. Or so it seemed.

  And I remember every word. He said:

  “Let us develop a dangerous unselfishness.”

  And then he told the story of the Good Samaritan, told it in a way I’d never heard it before, full of sympathy and warmth for the men on the road to Jericho who had passed the injured man by. But, Martin said, they asked the wrong question. They asked, ‘If I help this man, what will happen to me?’ instead of asking, ‘If I don’t help this man, what will happen to him?’

  “That’s the question before you tonight. Not, ‘If I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor?’ The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.”

  And his words still ring through my head, not the words that everyone quotes, but his words about helping others in need. People I had been turning my back on. Jimmy and Joe.

  My own community. I had skills that could help them, skills we could use.

  “Let us develop a dangerous unselfishness.”

  And let us do it now.

  * * *

  I left keyed up and full of resolve, more alive than I had been in weeks. I spoke briefly to Martin, but he was tired, and we weren’t able to talk alone. Others crowded him, wanting his time. Reporters shoved toward him, wanting to know how he felt about the march, about Johnson’s announcement, about the future of the Poor People’s Campaign.

  So after a few moments, I moved around the edge of the crowd and walked to my car. Halfway there, I stopped and looked up. The rain was still coming down in sheets. The thunder rumbled, but far away now. Looking up at the rain gave it a whole new perspective: the drops had a symmetry, a beauty I had never noticed before. I didn’t mind getting wet. I liked seeing things anew.

  A dangerous unselfishness.

  I smiled and ran the rest of the way to my car. At first I couldn’t identify what I was feeling, the sensation was so unfamiliar. It wasn’t until I arrived at home that I actually knew.

  I was feeling hope.

  TWENTY-SIX

  BUT HOPE IS A FRAGILE THING. And the next day, as I waited for Laura, the hope slowly faded.

  I went to my office early, full of an energy I hadn’t had since the march a week before. I called the number Laura gave me and left a message with her service to have her contact me. Then I called Selina Nelson and asked how Jimmy was doing. He had cried himself to sleep, she said, and was quiet before he left for school that morning. It would take him time to get over this, but she was sure that it was for the best.

  I was sure of that too. Jimmy was looking healthier and stronger, and Joe’s deepening involvement in the Black Power movement did neither of them any good.

  Then I started to call old clients, touching base and making sure that everything was all right. I avoided calling Henry; I figured if he needed me, he would contact me.

  It was well after lunch when there was a soft knock on my door. I was sorting papers. I didn’t even look up as I called, “Come in.”

  The door opened and Laura entered. She was wearing her rabbit fur coat, blue jeans, and those white kid boots. It was as if she were dressed in a mixture of styles on purpose—the jeans as a nod to me, and the rest to keep her own identity.

  I took in all of that in an instant. I stopped when I saw her—all of me, literally, from my breath to my heart to my legs. It took me a moment to recover.

  During that moment, she didn’t move.

  “I was beginning to think I’d never hear from you again,” I said.

  “You had severe weather,” she said. “I couldn’t leave Chicago until this morning.”

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “A little cold,” she said. “The hallway’s chilly.”

  I looked pointedly at her and then at the door, and she got the message. She closed it softly and stepped inside.

  Despite the fluffy rabbit coat, she looked as if she had lost weight. Her face was haggard and drawn, her skin sallow. I was torn between the desire to touch her and the need to punish her parents.

  As usual, my office was an oven, waves of heat spilling from the radiator. But she didn’t remove her coat. She was hugging it to her body as if it were a lifeline.

  “You’ll melt,” I said.

  “I’m not planning on staying long enough.”

  I set down the papers I was holding. “You might want to.”

  “You were very clear on that phone call—”

  “I was angry,” I said. “I just found out why my parents were lynched.”

  Her cheeks were bright red, her eyes glistening. Her hands crept up to the collar of the fur and held it closed. “Because of me.”

  I shook my head. “Because of your parents. Your adoptive parents, or whatever the hell you want to call them.”

  “How can you be sure?” Her voice was high and wispy like a little girl’s. “How can you know that they did it?”

  Instead of answering her, I went to my safe, spun the combination lock, and clicked the door open. I took out the accordion file, took it to my desk, and pulled out the clippings file. Then I spread that on the desktop and searched until I found the article I was looking for.

  It was the one with the photograph of her parents, her real parents, Ross and Susan Ratledge. I handed it to her.

  Laura let go of the collar with one hand, and kept the other around her neck. She took the yellowed newspaper and stared at it for a moment. All the color left her face.

  “That looks like me,” she whispered.

  I nodded.

  “But Smokey…” she took two hesitant steps to the desk and placed the clipping on top of the file. She shook her head and her eyes welled with tears. “Smokey, God forgive me, but how do we know that your parents didn’t take me and my parents somehow—”

  “Rescued you?” The words came out harsher than I wanted. “My parents didn’t run. They had two days. They thought they would be fine. Does that sound like guilty behavior to you? My parents didn’t change their name. My parents didn’t have a criminal record. My parents hadn’t vowed revenge on the Ratledges. My parents—”

  “All right,” she said, her voice breaking. “You’ve got to understand how hard this is for me.”

  “For you?” I leaned forward on my desk. “For you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I don’t even know who I am any more.”

  I almost went to her. Almost took her in my arms. Almost held the woman whose parents, the people who raised her, took my parents’ lives and tried to give me a pittance in return.

  But I couldn’t. Despite what I’d felt during Martin’s speech the night before, despite my new resolve, I couldn’t comfort Laura.

  “You’re Laura Hathaway,” I said, my voice cold. “Daughter of Earl and Dora Jean Hathaway, one of Chicago’s richest couples.”

  She shook her head. “You can stop that. You could let me go on and then blackmail me.”

  “Who fed you that shit? One
of your advisors?”

  “No.” Her free hand had gone back to her collar.

  “You thought that up all on your own?” I was more offended than I should have been. “Don’t you remember the promise I made you? I said you could walk away at any time, and only the two of us would know. I promised you that.”

  “But things are different now.”

  “Not those things, not for me,” I said. “I keep my promises.”

  She looked longingly at the file on my desk. God, I could read her. I could read her like I hadn’t been able to read anyone in my entire life. She didn’t want to believe me. She wanted to examine the material for herself, and even then she wanted me to be wrong.

  “Go ahead and look at it,” I said as I rounded the desk, keeping my distance from her. I grabbed my coat. “It’ll take you a while, so I’ll step out. Remember something else, though. I promised the man who gave me this file that I would bring it all back to him. All of it. And I keep my promises.”

  She nodded. She was miserable, and I was doing this wrong. Only I was miserable too. I didn’t really want to soothe her. I wanted her to know what it felt like, to have the world shift and change without a moment’s notice.

  I slipped on the coat and left the office, slamming the door behind me. I wasn’t hungry, but I went to the King’s Palace anyway. They usually left me alone there, and I wasn’t in the mood to chat. I ordered coffee and a piece of pie, then proceeded to pick at it while I brooded.

  I had never felt like this before, so confused and tangled that I couldn’t find any way out of my own emotions. Most of them were directed at Laura. Part of me wanted to take her back to my house and keep her there forever, telling her that this didn’t matter, we’d see it through, and part of me wanted to hurt her so badly that she would never look at another man again.

  I was frightening myself, and I didn’t know how to stop.

  I gave her an hour. Then I went back to the office, shaking with a caffeine high and the cold.

  Laura was still at my desk, but she had her head buried in her arms, her golden hair spilled around her shoulders. Her coat was in a pile on the floor. She didn’t raise her head when the door opened, and for one heart-stopping moment I wondered if she had done something foolish.