War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (37 page)

He used one hand to show Whickam the bruise.

“There are scary stories about Mr. Grimshaw,” Daniel said. “He took on an entire gang once in a schoolyard, and won.
You didn’t know that, did you?”

Whickam looked at me in surprise.

“So isn’t it understandable that I feel threatened?” Daniel asked. “Any good law student knows that when a man feels threatened in his own home, he has the right to defend himself.”

Whickam straightened.
Daniel had obviously played the wrong card.
“This is not your home.
It is mine.
So I
can
defend myself here as you say. Do you really want to battle this in a court?
Because to figure out which of us is right would take a shot, and maybe a death.”

Daniel’s smile grew colder.
He wanted Whickam to provoke him.
I was beginning to believe that Daniel wanted to pull that trigger; he was just waiting for the right time.

“Daniel doesn’t want to take this to court,” I said, “because he doesn’t believe in the authority of the U.S.
g
overnment, do you, Daniel?”

He glared at me.
“Does my mother know how violent you are?”

“She certainly doesn’t know how violent you are,” I said.

Whickam ducked under the gun barrel and went into the house.
“Rhondelle!” he shouted.
“Rhondi, honey, it’s Daddy.”

Daniel started to swing the shotgun toward Whickam.

I grabbed the gun, and with one swift wrench, removed it from Daniel’s hand.
Then I unchambered the shells and dropped them in my pocket.

Daniel gave me a look filled with pure hatred.
He rubbed his right arm as if I had hurt it.

“Don’t play with guns if you don’t know how to hold onto one,” I said softly.
I knew how.
I made sure my grip on that gun was unbreakable.

The three white kids hovered around the kitchen door.
They were staring at this whole thing as if they couldn’t believe what was happening.

Whickam hadn’t noticed the violence behind him.
He was peering into the front parlor. “Rhondi, it’s Dad.
Please come out.”

Daniel moved away from me.
He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, pretending that I hadn’t rattled him. He was watching me, as if he were trying to gauge how to get the shotgun out of my hands.

“Rhondi!” Whickam shouted.

From the upstairs landing, someone cleared her throat.
We looked up.
Rhondelle was staring down at us.
She had wrapped herself in a blanket.
Her face was in shadow, the bruise not visible.

“Rhondelle, honey,” Whickam said, and started toward the stairs.

“Stay there, Daddy,” she said.

He stopped.
I wondered if her tone chilled him as much as it chilled me.

“I’m not going anywhere, Daddy,” she said.
“If you want us to move out of here, we will.
But I have to warn you, if we have to leave you won’t hear from me again.”

Whickam held out his hands. “Rhondi, come home. We can talk there.”

“No,” she said.

“Your mother and I have been so worried. That’s why we hired Mr. Grimshaw here.
That’s why we have been searching for you. We were so afraid that something bad had happened to you.”

“Well,” Rhondelle said, her tone flat. “Now you can see I’m fine.”

Whickam shook his head. “This isn’t fine, Rhondi.
You have so many opportunities.
Come back to school.
You can go anywhere you want, and I promise, I will not say anything about your politics or…your boyfriends.”

Daniel snorted, but I was the only one who looked at him.
His gaze met mine, and that cold smile had started to hover around his lips again.

“I don’t want to live that life, Daddy,” Rhondelle said. “I’m not some trained puppet who does what everybody tells her.”

That was true, I thought.
Now she only did what Daniel told her.

“Rhondi, please,” Whickam said, but he didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

“Look at it this way, Daddy,” she said. “You don’t have to shell out for my college any more.
You’re not responsible for me.
I’m responsible for me.
All I’m asking is some time to stay here while we find a place of our own.
Then we’ll leave. We’ll even pay rent if you want it.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, but he was behind Whickam’s back. Whickam couldn’t see the contempt.

“No.” Whickam spoke with deep sadness.
His shoulders slumped.
“You can stay.”

Rhondelle gave him a bright smile.
I had a hunch if Daniel weren’t standing right there, she would have run down the steps and hugged her father.
But she didn’t move.

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said.

He sighed, then looked at all of them.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?”

“We’ve tried,” Daniel said. “You don’t listen.”

“Try me now,” Whickam said.

“I don’t believe in repeating information,” Daniel said. “If you don’t get it the first time, you won’t get it.”

From the smiles around the room and the look of utter humiliation on Whickam’s face, I realized that Daniel was quoting Whickam himself, probably something he
had
said in class.

“I have been worried,” Whickam said to Daniel.

Daniel shrugged. “Sometimes you have to let go, man.”

“I’m all right, Daddy, really,” Rhondelle said.

“So just give us back the gun and you can leave,” Daniel said.

Whickam looked at me.
“Maybe you should give it back.”

“You don’t need the gun,” I said to Daniel.

“It’s mine,” he said.

“Not anymore.” I gave him the same cold smile he had given me.

Daniel looked at my hands, then back at me, as if debating whether or not he could take the gun by force.
Finally, he shrugged one shoulder.
“I can always get another gun.”

“Danny, stop,” Rhondelle said. “Daddy’s letting us stay.
Don’t antagonize him.”

“Sorry, professor,” Daniel said with complete sarcasm.
“Didn’t mean to insult you.”

“If you hurt my daughter,” Whickam said, “you’ll answer to me.”

Daniel didn’t move.
He clearly wasn’t intimidated.

“I promise, professor,” he said, “that I won’t hurt her any more than you did.”

Whickam’s light brown skin reddened.
He glanced at his daughter, the look filled with humiliation.

She didn’t jump to his defense.
No one did.

Finally I used my free hand to touch him lightly on the back.
“Come on.
Let’s leave the children to their games.”

And somehow, I managed to get Whickam out of that house.

THIRTY-SEVEN

I cracked open the shotgun, but I still felt
awkward walking into the street
.
The shells clicked together in my pocket.
I wanted to get rid of them and the gun as soon as possible.

Whickam didn’t seem to notice the gun or the lightning still flaring in the distance.
He walked, head down, toward his car.
This time, I didn’t have to struggle to keep up with him.

When we reached the car, Whickam leaned against the door as he unlocked it, looking more defeated than any man I had ever seen.

“I had visions of carrying her out,” he said. “All the way down here, I imagined myself carrying her out like she was a little girl.”

“She doesn’t want to go,” I said.

He shook his head.
“That was the thing.
If she screamed for help, or didn’t say anything, I would’ve been up those stairs.
But she wants to stay in the filth with that boy.
I don’t understand it.”

“She knows where to go if she needs help,” I said.

“She wouldn’t even come down the stairs,” he said.
“She wasn’t even dressed.
It’s nearly night, and she wasn’t even dressed.”

“I know,” I said.

“How did she become this person? What happened to her?” His voice broke. He leaned his head on the car door.

I didn’t move.
I didn’t know what to say, and any kind of physical sympathy — a touch on the shoulder, a hand on the back — seemed out of place.

After a moment, he straightened.
“I owe you.
I owe you for finding her. At least we know she’s all right.
That
i
s more than we had yesterday.”

“I wish it could have been different,” I said.

He reached into his back pocket.
“I brought money. It was going to be for her, but I couldn’t give it to her, not with him there.
They might use it for…the wrong things.
So let me pay you what I owe.”

I didn’t want to take his money at the moment.
He wasn’t in any condition, and it didn’t feel right.

“Let me bill you,” I said.

He shook his head.
“We had an agreement.
Expenses, right, and your rate?
I figure with coming to New York, you and your son, the hotel and meals, expenses are already at least two hundred. Then there’s the rate.”

“Professor—”

“Let’s settle this,” he said.
“I don’t want to have to think about it when I get home.”

So this was where Rhondelle learned her ability to ignore the things she didn’t want to see.
I had suspected as much, but I had never really seen Whickam’s talent in action.

“Two hundred is generous,” I said. “Our expenses haven’t come close to that.”

He handed me four.
I tried to give the other two back, but he wouldn’t let me.

He had planned to give out that money today, and he was going to do so no matter what.

“I can’t give you a receipt,” I said.
“I don’t have anything on me.”

“Mail it.” Then he seemed to notice the gun.
“That’s my father’s, you know.”

“I think it’s yours now,” I said, handing it to him.

He took it as if he had never held a gun before.
Maybe he hadn’t.

“He always said he kept it to keep us safe.
I never thought I’d see it turned on me.”
He shook his head.
“My father would be appalled at Rhondelle.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

Whickam went to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and put the shotgun inside.
At least he was thinking clearly about that.

Then he slammed the trunk, and came back to the driver’s door. “I’d like to ask you to check up on her, but you’re leaving soon, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer him.
That last encounter with Daniel worried me.
When he swung that gun toward Whickam, I actually thought Daniel might shoot.

I no longer had any doubt that he would use those explosives.

“Rhondi never changes her mind,” Whickam was saying. “That’s the problem. She’d go straight into hell if she thought that was the course she needed to take, no matter how many people told her she was wrong.”

Like him this afternoon. When I had pleaded with him not to come, he had anyway.

I wasn’t sure I would be so different.

“You still need to give her the chance,” I said.

Half of Whickam’s mouth rose in a sad smile. The expression was so like his daughter’s that I felt surprise at the resemblance.

“When I first met you, I thought you were cynical,” he said. “But you’re not, are you?
You like to believe the best of everyone.”

“Your daughter’s smart,” I said. “Smart people figure things out.”

“Not always,” he said, and got into the car.
He rolled down the driver’s side window and leaned out of it.
“I should not have let her stay there, should I?
They may think I’m condoning what they’re doing.”

“I’m not sure what they’re doing,” I said. “I sure didn’t like that shotgun, though.”

“I did not like any of it,” Whickam said, and started the car.
It rumbled softly, almost inaudible against the noises of the city.
“Thanks for your help, Mr. Grimshaw.”

“Any time,” I said.

But as I watched him drive away, I wondered if he really was grateful.
Was it better to know that his daughter was living with an obsessed group of young people who seemed out of control?
Or better to think she was missing?