War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Sanitized for your protection,” Jimmy said from his spot on the bed.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Seen it before.”

  And had been as astonished by it the first time as Malcolm now was. I unpacked us, turned the window air conditioner on low, and told the boys to prepare for bed.

  They argued, but not strenuously. The drive had tired them out as well. It had exhausted me. After I closed my eyes, I still saw headlights coming toward me. We had been lucky; we hadn’t run into any small-town traffic cops or anyone trolling for unfamiliar faces.

  I didn’t expect our luck to hold for the entire trip.

  * * *

  The next morning, after breakfast, I called Grace. I told her where we were staying and asked her for permission to pose as her ex-husband. His name had been all over the application and other documents that Daniel had filed with the university, mostly as a person who wouldn’t contribute to Daniel’s education.

  “Why would you want to do that?” Grace asked.

  “I figure the authorities here will accept me better as a member of Daniel’s family than as an investigator.”

  “Darrel would never check up on Daniel,” Grace said. “I’m not even sure Darrel remembers he has children.”

  “That might work for me then,” I said. “If anyone calls you and asks if you sent your ex-husband here, tell them you did.”

  She agreed. After we exchanged a few pleasantries, I hung up and called some of the names on the list she had given me before I left. I never reached the people I wanted. Instead I was informed that they were out of town, or in one case, decided “at the last minute” to spend his summer in Venice.

  On my last call, I managed to reach Daniel’s college master. I felt odd talking to someone called a “master,” even though I knew that the name came from the English university tradition and had nothing to do with slavery.

  The master – or special master, as he called himself – would be in his office, and we set up a time to meet. When I hung up, I told Jimmy and Malcolm that we were leaving.

  Jimmy and I would go to the meeting. Malcolm would explore, talk to anyone he met, and hook up with us at a designated spot.

  The special master had given me instructions on how to get to his building. He told me to find the New Haven Green, and his directions proceeded from there.

  The Green wasn’t hard to find. It was the exact center of New Haven, a large square park filled with trees and sidewalks. Three churches dominated the east side of the square, their spires rising into the clear blue June sky. On the west side, Yale University began, hidden behind an ivy-covered stone wall that looked as intimidating as it was supposed to.

  I found a five-story block-long concrete parking structure on nearby Temple street, and left the van inside it. Malcolm went off on an investigation of his own, promising to meet us on the Green in two hours.

  Jimmy and I went in the other direction, through the big Tudor arch that led us onto Yale’s campus. The great stone buildings behind us blocked the traffic noise from College Street, and it felt like we had entered a whole new world.

  Ahead of us lay well-mowed grass and lovely pathways. To our left, a long Colonial building was dwarfed by the mock-Tudor buildings behind it. A statue of Nathan Hale stood outside the Colonial, and it turned out that Mr. Give-Me-Liberty-Or-Give-Me-Death had lived in that Colonial building when he had been a student.

  I wondered how Daniel had felt when he first came here. Like Malcolm, he had never lived anywhere except Chicago’s South Side. Knowing Daniel, he had probably researched Yale, but research wasn’t like reality.

  This place had been designed to intimidate those who didn’t belong.

  There weren’t a lot of students on the grounds. The handful that we saw weren’t going from class to class but instead were lounging against the large trees that gave the area its character. Obviously, there was summer school, but equally as obvious, not that many students attended.

  It didn’t take us long to reach Daniel’s college. Yale followed the Oxford and Cambridge model, dividing the students into twelve residential colleges. The master lived on site, as did, apparently, the dean of that college and a handful of professors.

  We had to ring a doorbell and get buzzed through yet another archway to enter the college. The Gothic architecture and all the stone spoke of wealth to me. It seemed exotic to Jimmy, who couldn’t stop touching the curved walls.

  The archway opened into a wide quad. There were more students on this patch of green grass, many of them sunbathing as they read thick tomes. A game of touch football went on along the far end, the boys laughing and jumping with ease. Someone had hooked a bicycle rack to the stone courtyard in front of one of the doorways, ruining the medieval look. Above us, a stereo blared the rhythms of the Beatles’ “Sergeant Pepper.”

  Jimmy didn’t seem to notice that so far all of the students we had seen were white. Usually this many white people made him nervous, but he was too intent on the university itself to pay much attention.

  The masters’ quarters were in one of the Gothic Towers. We went to the thick wooden door as instructed, and I pounded the brass door knocker. Jimmy had never seen one, and wanted to give it a try. I let him do it once, and then we waited.

  I slipped on my suit coat, trying to ignore the weight of the wool.

  After a moment, a student opened the door. He was short, white, and clean-cut, with dark greased-back hair, and an acne-scarred face. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt that didn’t have spot of sweat on it and black pants with shiny black shoes.

  “I take it you’re the Kirklands,” he said.

  I nodded, and the student led us inside.

  The interior was startlingly monastic. The floor was marble, the walls the same stone as the exterior. The student led us up a flight of stairs that eventually opened onto a carpeted hallway.

  The walls were paneled. Shelves stuck out at odd angles, and photographs, many of them black-and-whites of professional quality, rested on each. I noted a lot of familiar faces as I went past those pictures: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Senator Prescott Bush, and President Richard Nixon mingled with George Balanchine, Margaret Mead, and David Frost. After a moment, I realized that many of the photographs had been taken at Yale.

  The student pointed toward a set of double doors at the end of the hall. “That’s Master Robinson’s office. He’s expecting you.”

  “Thank you.” I put my hand behind Jimmy’s back and led him forward.

  I pushed the doors opened, half expecting the student to announce us as if he were an English butler. But the student disappeared into one of the other doors along the hallway.

  Jimmy and I stepped into a two-story library that smelled of leather. A large oak desk sat toward the back, an area rug and two chairs before it. Books rose around us on all sides, and Jimmy gaped, just like I wanted to do.

  It took me a moment to notice the man behind the desk. He was small, white-haired, and balding, with that translucent skin some older white people get. He stood when he saw us, and came around the desk.

  He wasn’t dressed for the weather either, although his suit coat was lighter than mine. That’s when I noticed how cool the room was. I couldn’t see an air conditioner, and wondered if the coolness came from the stone and the room’s lack of windows.

  “Darrel Kirkland, I assume?” the man said.

  I stuck out my hand, sliding into my role as the nervous friendly father of a missing boy with more ease than I expected. “You must be Ludlow Robinson.”

  He bowed slightly, but didn’t take my hand. “At your service.”

  Although as he said the words, they didn’t sound subservient at all. More the condescending politeness of a great man to a supplicant.

  “This is my youngest son, James,” I said, pushing Jimmy forward. To my surprise, Jimmy bowed, too.

  Robinson laughed. “It’s nice to see a young man with manners,” he said, and swept his hand to
ward the heavy leather chairs in front of the desk.

  We took our seats as he took his behind the desk. His graceful movements made me realize I had seen him before. Not in person, but on television. I hadn’t recognized his name, but he was one of those experts who were constantly interviewed by the nightly news programs.

  “I understand you’ve come about Daniel.” He elongated the name, gave it some class.

  I nodded. “My ex-wife, Grace, called me when she found out he was missing. She asked me if I could check things out.”

  Robinson took a pipe from the ashtray that sat on a small table beside the desk. He tapped some tobacco into the bowl. “I do hope you didn’t come far.”

  Meaning he didn’t have a lot of news for me. But I pretended I didn’t speak the same subtle language that he did.

  “I took some vacation time I had coming,” I said, not answering him directly, but sounding as eager as I could. “Grace is pretty worried about him.”

  “You’re not?” Robinson moved the pipe away from his face.

  I put my hand on Jim’s shoulder. “May I be honest with you, sir?”

  “Certainly,” he said, and it seemed that for the first time, I held his interest.

  “Grace and I divorced over a decade ago, and she raised my older boys. I don’t know them as well as she does. When she says that it’s not like Daniel to disappear, I have to take her at her word.”

  “Yet you came here.”

  I shrugged. “She couldn’t afford it. And I do owe him. Both my older boys, if you know what I mean.”

  Jimmy glanced at me. Someone watching him would think that he was surprised by my words, but he was playacting as much as I was.

  Robinson used a small silver tool to push the tobacco down. “I do understand. In life, we all make difficult choices.”

  And he clearly didn’t approve of the one he thought I made. I didn’t approve of it either. No one should abandon a child. But that was the role I had taken on, and I would use it as best I could.

  “Grace says he never showed up last semester, but he didn’t tell her. She hasn’t heard from him in a long time, and she’s worried.”

  Robinson pulled a file out of a lower desk drawer. The illusion was supposed to be that all student files were at his fingertips, but he had probably had that student assistant look up Daniel’s case when I called.

  “I can’t tell you where your son is right now, Mr. Kirkland. If that’s what you’re here for—”

  “I need to start somewhere,” I said, adding a touch of desperation to my voice. “All we know is that he was here, and then he left. So I’m starting here.”

  Robinson sighed. “I do remember Daniel, of course. We get to know all of our students in the college. Unfortunately, my first interactions with him were…difficult, to say the least. You do understand our system here?”

  “Four-year school, one of the best in the country, lots of prestige. I know the kid was damn lucky to get a scholarship that covered it.”

  Robinson picked up his pipe again, running his fingers along the stem. “I’m sure you know we’ve been in a state of flux. Universities all over the country are reevaluating their policies and curriculums, and we’re no different.”

  Jimmy squirmed beside me. The initial ruse had been fun for him, but now the discussion was serious and he wasn’t interested. I squeezed his shoulder, then let go.

  “The reason I’m here this year, and not up on the Vineyard—”

  Was the Martha’s Vineyard reference a set-down to me or an unconscious reference? I honestly couldn’t tell.

  “—is because of one of our president’s concessions to the students. Yale has come under fire for being one of the few all-male colleges left. We were going to have a co-educational program with Vassar, but the school refused to move to New Haven from Poughkeepsie.”

  He made it sound like Vassar’s administration wanted to remain in hell.

  “Then we—”

  “What does this have to do with Daniel?” I had expected to hear about the black studies program, not about coeducation.

  “Well.” He set the pipe down. “President Brewster decided that the school would become coeducational in 1972, and the administration went along with it. That would give us time to build facilities, give the women their own college, perhaps, and allow—”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I still don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps if you let me finish.” He pulled the file closer to him and opened it. “The students protested last fall, and as a result, we will have women attend this fall, as members of the class of 1973. Because of the student protests, these women will be scattered all over the colleges. I’m here to facilitate the changes in this college, so that the women are safe from predatory males and—”

  “You think Daniel was one of the predatory males?”

  “No,” Robinson said. “He was one of the protestors. The first time I met him was at a college luncheon that we held to discuss the women issue, shortly before Coeducation Week, which was in November. Daniel was convinced that Yale would block the admission of black women. He claimed they were the most discriminated class of people in the United States, and unless there was some guarantee that our admissions policy would bring in a specific number of black women, he would make sure that Coeducation Week went badly.”

  “Coeducation Week?”

  Robinson’s lips thinned even more, which was his way of letting me know that if I allowed him his lecture, I might learn what Coeducation Week was.

  “We did an experiment last fall. For one week in November, we had girls on campus. If that experiment failed, then we might not have opened the admission.”

  Which probably would’ve gotten his vote.

  “Or we might have followed the original plan and brought in the first female class in 1972.”

  “What’s wrong with girls?” Jimmy asked, startling me. I had asked him not to speak unless spoken to.

  “Jim,” I said warningly.

  “It’s all right,” Robinson said. “There is much to be said for an all-male institution, young man. You’re old enough to know what a distraction the female can be.”

  Jimmy frowned. He wasn’t quite that old.

  “Add to that their undisciplined minds, and the fact, in truth, we’ll only be producing overeducated housewives, and you will see why this entire idea is so ludicrous.”

  “The girls I know are really smart,” Jimmy said. “And Laura, she runs a business all on her own. So does—”

  “Jim,” I said, and he stopped. I knew where he had been going. He almost mentioned Grace. Only he would have called her Mrs. Kirkland.

  His cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” he said, and bowed his head.

  “Not all women become housewives, that is true,” Robinson said, “and studies have shown that educated women produce intelligent children. But there are other institutions for those women. Yale breeds leaders. We have produced many of the nation’s presidents, senators, and congressmen. Yale Law has been well represented on the Supreme Court, and if you look at the captains of industry, you will see a Yale domination. We don’t need to deny this sort of education to future leaders just to accommodate a few women.”

  I clasped my hands tightly on my knees, concentrating on the pressure in my fingers instead of my building temper. “So let me get this straight. Daniel approved of admitting women, but he was going to disrupt Coeducation Week.”

  “If we didn’t insert some guarantees that black women would be admitted as well.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “But it seems reasonable to me.”

  His lower jaw tightened. “It was his tone. That became the problem with Daniel. His tone. He made pronouncements. He didn’t listen.”

  “So he yelled at you,” I said. “I’ve been reading about schools where students close down buildings. Yelling seems kinda minor in today’s world.”

  Robinson stood, grabbed his pipe and paced toward the books. “This is Y
ale, Mr. Kirkland. Those things do not happen here. As I said, we’re training future leaders.”

  “And Daniel didn’t fit in,” I said. “He was black, he was poor, and he was opinionated, so you guys tossed him out.”

  Robinson gave me an alarmed glance. My voice had more edge in it than I expected.

  “Not exactly,” he said, returning to his chair. “I was merely telling you about my encounters with him. I should perhaps explain my job here. As special master, my main function at the college is to serve in a cultural capacity.”

  “Huh?” Jimmy said, and I almost applauded him. I hated the vague language of power.

  “It means, young man, that I arrange for guest lecturers and special seminars, host luncheons with important guests — I’m sure you saw some of their pictures in the entry — and I throw parties for the more successful students.”

  The richer ones, at least.

  “Even though I do act as the college’s link to the administration, my interactions with the students should be primarily social. Your son, Mr. Kirkland, saw me as someone who made policy, as someone to push against, not someone to work with. And that is what I meant by his tone.”

  “Daniel was thrown out because he was rude to you?”

  “I never said that young Mr. Kirkland was thrown out of Yale. I’m not sure why he’s no longer with us, only that he did leave.” He thumbed through the file. “There are many reprimands here, a few disciplinary actions, and one somewhat egregious incident last fall. According to the file, the university and your son mutually decided that they were not suited for each other.”

  “You make it sound like you weren’t involved.”

  “I wasn’t,” Robinson said. “The dean handles the administrative tasks. You should really be talking to him.”

  “He was on my list,” I said. “I haven’t been able to reach him.”

  “Because he’s been in meetings on this coeducation matter,” Robinson said. “But let me set up an appointment with him. He’ll be better able to answer your questions.”

  “Maybe I could just take a look at the file—”

  “It’s for Yale only,” Robinson said. “Besides, I read you the pertinent language. I’m sure Dean Sidbury will know the exact incidents and probably some of the other precipitating events. I do know that young Daniel wasn’t happy here. That became painfully obvious. We assumed he went home after he left. It was Christmastime, after all. There’s nothing in the file after that.”