War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (24 page)

I nodded.

“So I wasn’t going back because of money.
Ira, he was having some of the same problems Daniel was, only they were over his religion.
And the girls, all three of them were planning
to transfer to
Yale in the fall, even Rhondelle.”

“She was the first admitted,” Claire said.
“By then, she didn’t give a damn.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“April?” Claire asked Barry.
“Right?”

“But I thought you hadn’t seen Daniel since February,” I said.

“He moved out in February.” Barry sounded annoyed.
“He was back a few times.”

“Then why’d you say that you hadn’t seen him since February?” I asked, pressing the point.

“I don’t know,” Barry said. “I hate thinking about him, man.”

“What happened that angered you so
much
?” I asked.

“Besides the rhetoric? Besides the guns and the bomb stuff and the way he screamed at me when I confronted him?”

“I guess,” I said.

Barry walked away from me.
He flopped on the couch, put his feet up and closed his eyes, as if willing me away.

“Danny told Barry he would never get it,” Claire said softly.
“That last day, they had this hideous fight, you know? And Danny said that Barry was just as much a pawn in the game as everybody else. He’d rebel for a while, then he’d realize that the system benefited him — you know, tall, handsome white kid — and Barry said it wasn’t like that, he wouldn’t sell out, and Danny said that Barry didn’t have to.
That he was already part of the system, being a rich Yale baby and all that.”

I glanced at Barry.
His face was flushed and it wasn’t
from the heat.
In fact, I noticed for the first time that the apartment was cool.
This place had an air conditioner, which surprised me.
It had to be in one of the back rooms because I couldn’t see it or hear it.

“Barry,” Claire said, her voice rising
―o
bv
iously this discussion had made her indignant
,
too
―
“didn’t qualify for some special scholarship.
His parents aren’t rich, either, and they’re really sacrificing to send him to school.
He didn’t have a lot of breaks.
Danny’s throwing his away, but Barry, h
e’s just struggling to hang on, you know—”

“Claire,” Barry said wearily.
“Shut up.”

“—and they really got into it. Danny screaming at Barry that he didn’t know what real poverty was, and Barry screaming at Danny that he didn’t know what real opportunity was, and then I had to get between them because I thought they were going to kill each other, you know?”

I did know.
Those two boys had cared about each other, but their differences had gotten too much for them.
And it sounded like neither one of them knew how to resolve those differences and maintain their friendship.

“Anyway, we all voted, and the decision was that Danny had to leave.
Rhondelle went with him, even though she didn’t have to.
I think for Ira and Louise it was the bomb and gun stuff that made them think Danny shouldn’t stay, but for Barry and me, it was the attitude.
We just couldn’t play the enemy any more.”

“Any idea where he and Rhondelle went?”

“No, thank God,” Barry said from the couch.
“And I don’t want to know.
It’s better if you don’t find them either. Tell Danny’s mom to let him go. He’s nuts.”

Barry said all of that with his eyes closed. Somehow, his relaxed posture and his immobile face added power to his words.

“I’m this far,” I said. “I’ll see if I can find him.
And then I’ll tell her what I think she needs to know.”

This time, Barry did look at me. “What the hell does that mean?”

“His mother is a good woman,” I said
,
“and if you’re right, I don’t want her coming out east to find him surrounded by weapons and talking about revolution.
But I’ve known a lot of guys who’ve gotten in deeper than they expected and sometimes they just need help getting out.
If that’s the case, then I’ll see what I can do.”

That was what had happened with Malcolm.
Franklin and I had gotten him out of the gangs in time.
Of course, Jimmy’s brother Joe had been in a similar situation, and he refused to leave.

Barry snorted.
“Danny never gets in too deep.
He’s the one digging the goddamn hole, man.”

Claire had gone to a nearby table and was looking through stacks of paper.
“I’ve got an address around here somewhere.
I’ve been forwarding mail.”

Finally, I was getting somewhere.

“Did Daniel ever talk to you about the incident with Rhondelle after Coeducation Week?” I asked Barry.

Barry took his feet off the coffee table and hunched forward, losing any illusion of being relaxed.
“No, but Rhondelle did.
She wasn’t sure she was going to apply to Yale after that.
She did eventually, I think because her dad forced her.”

“Did you know who the boys were who threatened her?” I asked.

“Threatened?” Claire asked.
“
Threatened?
”

“That’s what Dean Sidbury said.
He said that Daniel stopped things before they became too serious.”

“Prick,” Claire muttered.

“I wasn’t there, but I heard it was pretty ugly,” Barry said. “Those guys, they trapped Rhondelle in the room, said some nasty things, forced her into a corner, and started going for her clothes. She was kicking and screaming and fighting back when Danny came into the college.
I guess he heard her, ran upstairs
,
and got in the middle of it.”

“Do you think Daniel’s obsession with weaponry could have been caused by that?” I asked.

“It would seem logical, wouldn’t it,” Barry said, “if it’d started there.
But it started earlier.
He’d come back from Chicago with some kind of handgun.
I didn’t know what it was.
Then I found some books on explosives in his room. He said it was for a class, but he didn’t have any real science classes that semester.
I think the Rhondelle thing was an excuse for him to leave school.”

“It bothered her, though,” Claire said. “She would never say why.”

“I was wondering if Daniel and Rhondelle still felt threatened by those four boys,” I said.

Barry shook his head. “One’s still in and out of hospitals, the other two are out of Yale, and the last guy, he’s the kind who’s not going to bother you if you’re not in his face.
Unless Danny goes to Yale, he’s not in any trouble from them.”

“But would he believe that he was?”

“Who knows?” Barry slipped down on the couch again.
“Like I said, Danny’s crazy.”

Claire had gone back to digging through the papers.
She finally pulled out a slip with magic marker writing on it.
“Got it. Let me write it down for you.”

She bent over the desk, grabbed more paper, and wrote the address for me. Then she handed the paper to me.
Her handwriting was neat and well
formed, not at all like the magic marker writing she still had clutched in her hand.

“Don’t tell Danny that we told you where he was,” she said.
“I don’t want him or his new friends to know that we ratted on them.”

“New friends?” I asked.

“You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Barry said.

At the time, I had no idea what he meant.

TWENTY-ONE

I was late meeting Jimmy and Malcolm.
I had warned them that I might be, that our early evening meeting time was a bit flexible, but still I worried as I drove to the Green.
Jimmy panicked when I was late picking him up from the Grimshaws’.
I had no idea how he would react in a strange town with no friends at all.

I needn’t have worried.
Jimmy and Malcolm were sprawled on the green grass, leaning against one of the big trees.
A group of folding chairs had been set up in the middle, and a college student was walking among them, setting out music stands.

Jimmy and Malcolm were watching as if they had never seen anything so fascinating.

“You guys ready for dinner?” I asked as I crouched beside
them
.

“Not really,” Jimmy said. “We don’t want to lose our spot.”

“Your spot?” I asked.

“Free concert,” Malcolm said.
“We thought maybe we’d stay for it, if you don’t mind.”

“What kind of concert?” I asked.

“I dunno,” Malcolm said. “The kind my mom would’ve liked, I guess.”

I studied him for a moment. He rarely mentioned his mother.
He was still devastated by her death.

“What kind of music would that be?” I asked. “Jazz?”

“Classic,” Jimmy said.

“Classical music,” Malcolm said softly, as if he were embarrassed by it.
“My mom made me listen.
I kinda…
I
t’s snotty, but cool….Mom always wanted me to…”

His voice trailed off.
I wasn’t going to push him to continue.
I remember what it was like mourning parents; sometimes the memories became too much to deal with, and so you just had to stop.

But Jimmy didn’t have that compunction.
“Your mom wanted you to what?”

Malcolm looked up at Jimmy as if he had forgotten that Jimmy was there.
“She, uh, loved music, and wanted me to be as musical as she was.”

“Were you?” Jimmy was interested.
So was I.
I suddenly realized how little Malcolm talked about himself.

“I liked church choir.” Malcolm shrugged. “I taught myself a little piano.
I’d heard that college…”

His voice trailed off again.
I was going to put my hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, to silence him, but didn’t reach him in time.

“You heard that college what?” Jimmy asked.

This time Malcolm didn’t look at him.
This time, he was staring at the makeshift stage.
“College sometimes loaned you instruments, so that you could learn. At least for piano.
Drums
,
too.”

There was so much longing in his voice that even Jimmy heard it.
Jimmy looked at the chairs, lined up on the
G
reen, then back at Malcolm.

“How come you never told Althea? She’d get you into choir.”

A little boy’s solution, with a little boy’s simplicity.
Malcolm gave Jimmy a fond look, and that seemed to break the spell.

“Could you imagine me practicing vocal scales in that house?” he asked. Then he sang one, revealing a voice that had incredible purity.
“You guys would’ve laughed me out of there.”

“I wouldn’t have.” Jimmy was looking at Malcolm with as much awe as I felt.

I’d had musical talent as a child, enough to sing a solo at the very last concert I’d performed in, the weekend my parents died, but I’d never had the dream that Malcolm seemed to.
Malcolm seemed to have set aside that dream and accepted that he would never achieve it.

Yet here, sitting on this long lawn, with trees three times older than all of us combined, and churches hundreds of years old along the edge of the common, Malcolm’s dream resurfaced.
I couldn’t deny him an evening of music.

“I’ll get some takeout,” I said.
“You guys stay here.”

They did.
I left, and stood in a long line at a nearby diner that offered a Concert on the Green picnic special.
I brought it back, and we spent the warm summer evening listening to the New Haven Symphony Orchestra playing
,
mixing crowd
-
pleasers like Anderson’s “Bugler’s Holiday”
and
less common pieces like Gottschalk’s “Night in the Tropics.”

For the first time, it seemed like a vacation, even though I knew the feeling wouldn’t last.

* * *

On the drive back, I asked Malcolm if he thought Daniel was violent.
Malcolm leaned his head against the back of the seat, as if he was thinking hard.

Then he shrugged.
“I’ve never seen him do anything violent.
But then, the thing about Daniel is that he’ll do what it takes.”