A Long Way Back Page 6
When Marvin Hanson caught Anthony’s eye, he slammed money on his table, stood, and stomped toward Anthony’s booth.
“What’s up, brother?” Anthony asked, leaning back in the booth, playing with the straw in his orange juice.
Hanson stopped, looking Anthony over. He stood glowering for a while before nodding as if he had solved a puzzle. “You one a them badasses, ain’t you?” His fists clenched and unclenched, and his voice increased in volume with each word.
“Sir,” a police officer in a far corner booth broke in, “you’ll have to lower your voice.”
“No, brother,” Anthony said quietly, leaning forward and taking a sip of juice. “I just try to take care of my business.”
Hanson stared at Anthony a few more seconds. “This ain’t over,” and slammed out the door.
“Wow. What did you do to piss him off?” the waitress asked as she poured Anthony more water.
Anthony shrugged. “Just boys being boys.”
“You know who he is, right?”
“Yeah. I know.”
After finishing breakfast, Anthony paid the bill and left. At the first red light, Anthony sat for a few minutes, looking in the mirror, contemplating the stern image in front of him. He rubbed his jaw as he studied his face and cocked his head. He held out his hand. It was steady as a rock.
He looked back in the mirror. Who are you?
Means had arranged a jitney to pick Anthony up from JFK Airport. That was cool. The hotel was not. Anthony hadn’t heard so much moaning in the middle of the day since the Kappas had started a porn movie marathon in college. The hotel was definitely not family oriented.
“How’s the accommodation?” Means asked when Anthony arrived at his apartment.
Anthony smirked at Means’s t-shirt saying, I Know I’m Going to Heaven ’Cause I Already Been Through Hell. “Besides asking whether I wanted to pay by the hour or the day?”
“Hey, man. I’m sorry, but it was the closest hotel to me.”
Anthony laughed. “Yeah? Well, you should have told that to the pimp outside the place. He looked at me like I was competition.”
“Foster is one of my boys. He mentioned you seemed cool under the circumstances.”
Anthony grimaced. “Guess that’s what war does to you.”
Means sat on his living room couch, the only other piece of furniture besides a beat-up mismatched yellow chair, and chuckled.
“Anyway…” Anthony pulled out two copies of the list of fifteen men he’d obtained from the rosters. “You recognize any of them?”
Means looked at the names and muttered something under his breath. “Yeah. I think I know two of ’em, but I can’t tell for sure. Wait. Sergeant Willie Stinson! I know his name.”
“How’s that?”
“Everybody knew Sarge. They tell me during the rumble them boys scattered like rabbits when he started bangin’.”
Anthony took notes, then pulled out the pictures he’d taken at the Chinook. “Know any of these guys?”
Means eyes brightened. “I was never good with names, but I remember this brother, and this one,” he said, jabbing at men in the photos. “That’s, uh, The Preacher, The Professor, Tank…”
Anthony stopped him. “Means. I can’t go by nicknames. Match the pictures to their real names,” Anthony insisted as he tapped the list.
Means’s shoulders slumped. “We never dealt with real names, you know?”
“Is Sergeant Stinson in the picture?”
Means squinted, concentrating. “Naw. He ain’t there.”
Disappointed, Anthony nodded but took note of the nicknames and the location of each nicknamed person in the picture. At least he had one name, but there had to be a few Willie Stinsons in Cleveland. Hopefully, he was still alive.
“If Ernie was here, he’d know most of ’em,” Means said, breaking into Anthony’s musings.
“That’s my next move.”
“What?”
“You want to take a ride to Pittsburgh?”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not? It’s Friday,” Means answered. “I got two days off and nothing else to do. Plus, I’d love to see the brother.”
“Cool. I’ll rent a car.”
There were five E., Ernest, or Ernie Daniels in the Pittsburgh phone book. Anthony had checked before he’d taken off for New York. Three of the Daniels had never been in the army. One hadn’t ever answered the phone. An older lady answered the last phone call.
“Ernie Daniels, please?”
There was a long pause. “He ain’t here.”
“Is this the home of Ernie Daniels who was in Vietnam?”
“Yeah.”
Yes! Anthony mouthed. “Do you know when he’ll be in?”
A longer pause. “He ain’t here.”
“Are you his mother?”
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Anthony Andrews, ma’am. I met Ernie in Vietnam. I’m a reporter and wanted to talk to him concerning his experiences there.”
“He ain’t here.”
“Well, could you tell him I called?”
The silence was followed by the click of the phone.
The elation in finding Daniels overrode any concerns about Daniels’s mother’s reluctance to talk. Anthony was on a roll now. He had names, and he had a contact. Things were starting to fall into place. With Daniels’s input, he might hook up with a few of The Seven and Sergeant Willie Stinson.
“So, outside of the OTH, you got nothing positive to say about the Army?” Anthony asked Means as he pulled onto Interstate 78.
“Nothin’.”
“How did you join?”
“They drafted me. I tried everything I knew to get exempted, but they drug my ass in kickin’ and screamin’.”
“It seems like there should have been some positives. What about free education after you leave…and the ability to buy a house with nothing down?”
“You never served, did you?” Means asked.
“No. I didn’t.”
“None of it means shit if your ass is dead.”
“I hear you,” Anthony replied as the bullets hitting the tree punctured his thoughts.
“Plus, it ain’t no different from the real world. Regardless of how well you perform, you ain’t gonna get promoted like they do; you ain’t gonna get the gravy jobs or the money they do.”
“Some became officers, though.”
“Let me tell you somethin’, Mr. Andrews.”
“Anthony. Call me Anthony.”
“Let me tell you somethin’, Anthony. If you made it past major, you gave up somethin’.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Most of the black colonels and generals had to kiss somebody’s ass to get there. They gave up a piece of themselves.”
Anthony had nothing to counter Means’s assertion, so he deferred to his point of view, even though Means the militant probably distrusted any person in authority.
“The stractest officer I knew was a black major—Major Kendall Jamison.”
“Stractest?”
“Strategically ready and combat tough. His battalion had more victories and fewer casualties than any other battalion. His men loved him, but he didn’t take no shit from the top. So in spite of his outstanding field performance, he would never even make light colonel, much less general in a million years because he didn’t play their game. You dig?”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
“The army ain’t shit for a black man. Look at me. Look at us. All we wanted was equal treatment, and we end up OTHs or dead.”
“We’re on ‘The Hill,'” Means observed as Anthony negotiated streets based on a map he had bought at a gas station.
“What’s ‘The Hill’?”
“That’s where our people live.”
Anthony laughed. “Are you hungry, Means?”
“I could eat.”
“Okay. Look out for a place.”
“L
et’s try Mame’s Restaurant over there,” Means said, pointing down the street.
“You sure? Quite a few dudes standing around.”
Means shrugged. “You hungry or not?”
Anthony parked the car so it’d be visible from the restaurant window.
“Excuse me, brothers. Can we get through?” Means asked as he approached the group lounging at the entrance of the restaurant.
“What you need, man?” one of the men in the crowd asked.
“Food, my brother. Just food,” Means responded.
A couple of the men chuckled.
“Where you from that you come here lookin’ for food?” a heavy-set, pock-marked, dark-skinned man with what looked to be a perpetual scowl asked.
Means turned to the man. “You trying to tell me the food’s no good here?”
Sensing hostility, Anthony turned with Means. “Or is this just a restaurant for you brothers?” Anthony asked.
The heavy-set man looked at the two, his eyes narrowed before chuckling. “We don’t see many people got the balls to walk through a group of Purple Knights.”
“I apologize, brother ’cause you see, we ain’t from here. No disrespect,” Means said.
The heavy-set man looked at Means and Anthony once more before turning to leave with the others following. “Enjoy your food.”
The waitress spilled water on the table and nervously cleaned it up. “They must a thought you were cops. They stomped a guy last week when he didn’t buy any dope.”
“I believe it,” Means said matter-of-factly.
“You the police?”
“No, ma’am. Me? I’m the furthest thing from it. Let me have the pork chops and grits. You are buying, right?” Means asked.
“Got you.”
“How’s everything?” the waitress asked about ten minutes after serving the food.
“Great!” Means exclaimed wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and pushing the plate away.
“You’re going to get a stomachache eating so fast,” the waitress admonished Means.
Means laughed. “I know. I’ve heard that before. It’s a bad habit I picked up from the army.”
Upon leaving, Anthony tipped the waitress double. “This is for the excellent food and the motherly advice,” Anthony said smiling.
As the car pulled onto the highway, Means rolled the window down and took a deep breath. “I like how you handled yourself back there.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You woulda,” Means said, then paused. “And that’s kinda interesting because you don’t appear the type.”
Anthony stared at the cars ahead of them. “Yeah?”
Ernie Daniels’s address was an apartment on Herron Avenue. The apartment, with Harold’s Southern Ribs restaurant on the first floor, wasn’t hard to find. The sweet smell of smoked meat followed Anthony and Means up the stairs. Apartment 202 was at the end of the steepest steps Anthony had ever climbed. After catching his breath, he knocked on the door.
“Yes?”
Anthony recognized the voice immediately.
“Mrs. Daniels? I’m Anthony Andrews. We talked on the phone concerning Ernie.”
“I told you he ain’t here.”
Anthony smiled. “Yes ma’am, but it’s important we talk to him.”
“What didn’t you understand about ‘he ain’t here’?” She paused. “He dead.”
Anthony looked at Means in disbelief. “A…I’m sorry, Mrs. Daniels. What happened? When did he die?”
There was silence on the other side of the door before Anthony heard the soft scuffle of shoes fading.
Anthony and Means stood at the door looking at each other.
“Damn,” Anthony muttered as he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s see if we can find what happened.”
Chapter 19
E
rnie Daniels’s obituary was in Monday’s Pittsburgh Tribune and the current week’s New Pittsburgh Courier. Anthony read it. “State track champion. Graduated in the top twenty percent of his class from Carnegie Mellon University in engineering. Did you know this about Ernie?” Anthony asked Means.
“Naw, man. I met him when we were in ’Nam and only for a few months. He was just a down brother to me.”
“But they don’t say how he died.” Anthony read further. “His funeral is tomorrow. Let’s go.”
“Cool with me.”
Calvary Baptist Church was full. Anthony looked around, hoping he might recognize someone who had served with Ernie or Means. He asked Means to do the same.
“See anybody?”
“No.”
Anthony watched as the family came in. A stately lady who appeared to be Ernie’s mother, and who looked nothing like the angry woman behind her apartment door, led the procession.
After the funeral, Anthony tried to approach Mrs. Daniels, but could not get through the throng of family and friends. He gave his business card to the funeral director. “I was in Vietnam with Ernie. I’d like to share my memory of him with his mother.”
“It appears we hit a dead end with Ernie,” Anthony said as they pulled out of the church parking lot.
“Yeah. It was a good try, though. Just a little late,” Means added.
Disheartened, Anthony didn’t respond.
“Did you know a Captain Valentine?” Anthony asked, as he pulled onto the highway heading back to Brooklyn.
“Yeah. He was cool for an officer.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing much, except the other officers didn’t like him much.”
“Why?”
“They say he did too much fraternizing with his men. He was similar to Major Jamison.”
“You know he was missing when his company got ambushed outside of Tay Ninh?”
“Yeah. I heard it from one of my Ranger buddies who was assigned to his company.”
“Ranger?”
“Yeah. I was in Ranger school.”
Anthony laughed. “Means, you are full of surprises—or maybe I should say contradictions. You hate the Army, but you join one of the most elite groups in the service?”
“Ain’t so strange. I was protectin’ myself. If I had to go to war, I wanted all the training I could get. Plus, it would come in handy when I got back to the states.”
“What happened?”
“One week left to graduate and I hurt a guy real bad in a hand-to-hand combat contest. I kinda freaked out. I get like that when it’s somebody I don’t like. They thought I did it on purpose, so they kicked me out.”
“Sounds as if there’s more to the story.”
Means shrugged. “You’d think I’m the kind of guy they’d want.”
“Not if you’re hurting your own men.”
“Yeah. Probably not.”
“So, what did you hear about Valentine?”
“I heard one of his former soldiers was in the fifteen who went out on patrol and never returned. Valentine volunteered to do the recon around Tay Ninh, then took a company to find the remaining men. They were supposed to court martial him for dereliction of duty, but they didn’t far as I know.”
Anthony turned to Means. So Valentine was connected to The Seven. “How come you didn’t tell me this before?”
“We just started talkin’ a few days ago, man. I forgot until you mentioned his name,” Means answered. “Anyway, you the reporter.”
“You know what happened to him?”
“Nope. Here today, gone tomorrow.”
Seems to be a recurring theme, Anthony thought.
Chapter 20
A
nthony sensed something was wrong before he even neared his house. The few neighbors on the street stared instead of waving. Someone must have died.
As he turned into the driveway, he saw his picture window was broken. Even the verbose Mrs. Solomon spoke slowly.
“Don’t know what this world is coming to when a person can’t go away and come back to peace and quiet.�
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“What happened, Mrs. Solomon?”
“Nobody knows. Mr. Calhoun across the street said he heard glass breaking last night and a car speeding away. He thinks it was one of them souped-up jobs from the sound of the engine. You might want to talk to him. He’s the one who called the police.”
“Did they come?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mrs. Solomon,” Anthony said as he turned the key in the lock. He walked cautiously through the kitchen checking the stove because he smelled gas. He passed through the dining room toward the living room, looking left and right until he saw the object that broke the window. It wasn’t a rock. It was a broken Coke bottle with a rag nearby. The spilled liquid smelled like gasoline.
Two thoughts immediately crossed his mind. He was glad Carla and Mali weren’t home, and he had to get things right before they returned.
“Who would do that, Anthony?” Means asked over the phone.
“It must have been this guy Hanson.”
“Hanson. The only Hanson I know around there is a—”
“That’s him.”
“The boxer? How you end up buggin’ with him?”
“We had a fight over a woman. I knocked him down. Actually, out.”
“What? He trip or somethin’?”
“No. But I had been drinking. I don’t remember much except he fell on the floor after I hit him, and he didn’t get up.”
Means chuckled. “Now who’s, uh, contradictory? A quiet, soft-spoken, married reporter knocks out a former light-heavyweight boxer, previously ranked in the top ten after throwin’ down a few shots and walks off with the boxer’s woman. No wonder you were ready to bug in the restaurant. What happened to her?”
“Uh. Nothing. It was his ex-wife.”
Means laughed. “I’m sure there’s more to that story, too.” Means paused. “But to tell you the truth, I doubt it was Hanson.”
“Why?”
“Because throwin’ a bottle, even a Molotov cocktail, through the window of somebody who just kicked your ass is a punk move. And regardless of what happened in the bar, Hanson ain’t no punk.”
“Well. Whoever it was, they meant to burn this place down.”