“Dammit,” he muttered, not finding a listing for Henson in the phone book. Back on the street, he saw two men laughing and talking in front of a luggage shop and interrupted them.
“Excuse me, gentlemen, but I’m trying to find Matthew Henson.”
“That explorer fella?” One asked. He was smoking a cigarette.
“Yes, do you know where he lives?”
He looked at his companion who stared blankly back at him. “No, can’t say I do.” He blew smoke into the air.
“Say,” the other one said, snapping his fingers. “Don’t he have that radio show he does?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” his friend agreed. “Talks about different places he’s been and what not. What do you call it, aw, my old lady listens to it.”
“Where does he broadcast this show?” Ellsmere asked. A car screeched around the near corner and he looked at it approach anxiously. It went past without incident.
“Ah,” began the other one, “I think it only comes on once a week or something like that.”
“Where?” Ellsmere repeated impatiently.
The man with the cigarette narrowed his eyes as smoke clouded them. “Why you so eager to find Henson, huh? You, what do you call it, anarchist?”
“I believe that is my concern, sir.”
“Go on with you, old man,” cigarette man’s friend said, swiping his hand through the air.
Ellsmere grunted, departing and talking to himself “Don’t get agitated, keep your head,” he said. “These fools don’t know what I know.”
The professor was overheard by a woman who was placing oranges in their display tray in front of her and her husband’s tidy grocery store. She glared at the gaunt white man whose longish white hair was once again haloing about his head. The woman had just had an argument wither husband over his indulgence in playing the numbers, and not winning, and she was not in a good mood.
“Who you callin’ fool?”
Ellsmere ignored her and kept walking. She wasn’t satisfied and followed him down the street, pointing a finger at him, an orange in her other hand. “I said, who you callin’ a fool?”
The scientist looked around, frowning. “Madam, I have much more important matters to attend to than your prattling. That is unless you can tell me where Matthew Henson can be found. If not, please be away with you.”
“Me, gone?” she yelled. “Seems to me you the one who should be gone.”
Their elevated conversation garnered attention from several people as the woman got closer, gesticulating at Ellsmere. “Who are you to come around here disrupting business and commerce? Why you want with Mr. Henson, huh? What’s he to you? You working for that backstabbing Admiral Peary?”
Wearily, Ellsmere said, “Robert Peary has been dead some eight years, madam, and he was not an admiral. Now really, be off with you.”
“What did you say to me?”
“Be away with you, woman,” he said, raising his voice, too. “Business you say? I am on important business that is far beyond your comprehension.”
“Oh, I’m stupid, am I?”
Ellsmere had already turned back and said over his shoulder, “You said it, not me.”
A man in rolled up sleeves stepped in front of Ellsmere as murmuring rose around him.
“Maybe you figure we’re all stupid up here, with your high and mighty ways?”
“Sir, I implore you, I must be allowed to get on with my task at hand.”
“Oh, I got a task for you.”
“Okay, break it up,” demanded a new voice.
Heads turned toward a black patrolman making his way through the knot of people. The rows of brass buttons prominent on his dark blue tunic. His billy club remained sheathed.
“Office Rodgers, this man obviously isn’t from here, and is spouting insults and nonsense,” the grocer said.
“That is not so,” Ellsmere said. “I have merely come to this community—as I said—to find Matthew Henson. An old acquaintance of mine, I might add.”
“Hmph,” the woman huffed. “Yet you don’t seem to know where your old friend is, do you?”
“A minor molehill you are turning into a mountain,” he retorted.
She stepped toward him and Rodgers got his hand between them. “Look, you come with me, and we’ll see about you and Matthew Henson.”
“Are you arresting me, officer?”
“I’m cooling things off, mister. Now come on.” Rodgers was a good-sized individual, grey eyes in a brown-skinned face. His cap sat square over his close-cropped black hair.
Ellsmere hesitated but what choice did he have he decided. “Very well.”
“And don’t come back,” the grocer said, earning a few chuckles.
“Do you know about Matthew Henson’s radio broadcast?” he asked the cop as they walked away.
“Yeah, he does it from Smalls’ Paradise on Thursdays.”
They passed a newsie hawking copies of the Herald. “Extree, extree, grandmother kills burglar with ice pick. Extree, extree, grandma kills burglar with ice pick. Herald, get yer Herald right here.” He shouted, waving a folded over newspaper over his head.
How’s it going Henry?” the cop asked the newsie.
Okay, Officer Rodgers,” young Henry Davenport said as he continued selling his papers.
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I can’t wait that long for him to show up there.”
“You won’t have to. I’m taking you to May-May’s.”
“What would that be?’
“A hash house where he often has his lunch.” Henson also got his messages there but he didn’t add that.
“Ah, well then.”
Rodgers regarded the odd white man, but this wasn’t the first time some outsider had come uptown in search of the explorer. Less than a month ago, he’d directed a writer doing a “where are they now” story for Look magazine to May-May’s. But this fried egg, he figured it better to escort him personally least he start a ruckus.
On Lenox Avenue near 132rd Street,
