“Ow, Mama,” Irene said as a tangle of hair was brushed upward from her scalp.
“Hold still, okay?” Cora Rodgers replied in a soothing voice. She was sitting on a chair, the four-year-old on a stepstool in front of her, her back to her mother.
“Yeah, be thankful your mother’s hair ain’t got as much kink as us homegrown negroes,” her father joked, forking in a piece of meatloaf. There was also fried okra and corn, his favorite.
“What’s Daddy talking about, Mama?”
His wife shot him a look. “Your daddy thinks he’s funny is all.” Cora Rodgers, whose family hailed from Jamaica, was of mixed heritage, including a white grandmother.
Rodgers laughed, enjoying the sight of the busy mother and daughter. A domestic contrast to the craziness of the shoot out earlier. An incident he wasn’t going to mention to his wife, unless she happened to see it in the newspaper.
“Have you thought more about Battle’s offer?” his wife asked, hairpin between clenched teeth.
“A little,” he said.
She titled her head up at him but didn’t go on.
Sam Battle, the only black sergeant on the police force had been asking him to come around to his Monarch Lodge of Elks. Not only did such an association offer comradery, as there were a few other vets who belonged, but other associations as well—the kind that might come in handy when dealing with the ofays in the department. But nobody did nothing for nothing, and one way or the other, he’d have to be beholden to some preacher or political type. But then again….
“I’m not dismissing it,” he said. Rodgers turned his attention to a cold pot of leftover coffee on the stove and, lighting a wooden match, he got the burner going to reheat the brew.
Hand in his pocket, he looked out the kitchen window at a brick wall. But Rodgers could see through that as he tried to envision what kind of world he was going to leave for his daughter and the other black children of this city. He’d been a Harlem Hellfighter in World War I, a Black Rattler, member of the 15th New York Colored National Guard unit, and had seen war far too up close and horrific at the battle of Belleau Woods under the banner of the French army.
In the couple’s bedroom the Tribune’s coverage that day of the veterans was framed, some in wheelchairs, some on crutches, as they marched from Fifth Avenue winding up on 145th and Lenox Avenue.
The section read: “Up the wide avenue they swung. Their smiles outshone the golden sunlight. In every line, proud chests expanded beneath the medals valor had won. The impassioned cheering of the crowds massed along the way drowned the blaring cadence of their former jazz band. The old 15th was on parade and New York turned out to tender its dark-skinned heroes a New York welcome.”
But how soon the cheering soon became taunts when angry whites reacted to these negro doughboys who dared to dream that giving their bodies and blood for freedom overseas meant they could demand rights as American citizens back home. He remembered vividly that red summer of 1919, less than a decade ago, when colored veterans and other black folk were murdered by rope and gun and knife in white riots across this nation—often at the hands of fellow doughboys. Yet those events are what propelled him to join the force, to be in a position to not let that kind of slaughter happen again, if he could help it. To make sure as much as possible that negroes, be they Matthew Henson or not so famous, didn’t get brutalized when in custody, that they received fair treatment like anyone else. And yes, he’d also signed up to show those crackers blacks would work to keep their communities safe just like the white ones did. The boiling pot whistling on the stove dissolved his reverie and he turned the fire off.
Later, back at the precinct, Hoffman returned, standing in the open side doorway. “I don’t know what your game is, Henson, what it is you think you’re doing. But let me tell you so I’m clear, you grandstanding coloreds always get your comeuppance, hear me? That struttin’ white pussy lovin’ Jack Johnson, the red spouting A. Philip Randolph…you think you’re a symbol, don’t you? The New Negro who done come to show the way to his people by his shining example.”
“I’m just me, Detective Hoffman.”
“Got white folks you call by their first names, having cocktails and finger sandwiches with them when you give one of your lectures, huh?”
“You find that objectionable?”
Hoffman came further into the room. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“What about Henrik?” He purposefully used Ellsmere’s first name just to dig at him.
“Get,” Hoffman said, showing cigarette-stained teeth.
The lock on the hallway door clicked and Henson exited. Out in the main lobby area, his lawyer, Ira Kunsler, was waiting for him. He was a rangy individual in a box coat and loose tie, dark eyebrows and hair going grey. He started at his client, frowning and touching Henson’s cheek.
“They didn’t work you over, did they, Matt?” They shook hands.
“Handled me with kid gloves. How’d you know I was here?” Henson asked.
“May called me. She’d seen the shooting and you and Ellsmere getting trotted off. I remembered you telling me about him once.”
“Remind me to tip bigger there.”
“Let’s get out of here, Matt.”
“They tell you anything about Ellsmere?”
“Let’s get out of here first,” he urged.
Outside the two stood on the lower steps, police and civilians, some willingly and others unwillingly, going past them. Kunsler bent down pretending to tie his shoe. He got back up. “Don’t look, but I think that mug in that sedan up the other side of the
