Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Page 10

“I think you good sir and good madam. Enjoy.”

  She went through a nearby open doorway and as the two-stepped past, they saw people in a wide range of attire—even a tall woman in a beaded Mardi Gras mask.

  “Matthew my man,” a deep voice called out.

  “OD, three times in one week,” he responded.

  “Must be fate,” the big man chuckled. Oscar Dulane was wearing his bowler but missing his cigar. He was in rolled-up shirtsleeves and holding a small plate with food on it, forking it down in a steady rhythm. “I’m getting a good crew together.”

  “I knew you would.”

  Dulane nodded and turned back to continue his conversation with two other men.

  “Come on, I want to introduce you to Sissy.” Stevenson took Henson’s hand and led him further along the hallway. They entered another apartment where a poet was standing in the center of the room in the middle of a recitation.

  “Lo the journey is long, we are bred for the hardship,” he was saying. The poet was stout with a nub of a head and long arms out of proportion to his short torso. “But the balance of justice tips in our favor,” he added.

  “This is Matt Henson,” Stevenson said to a woman in knee-length plaid golf knickers. Her top was some sort of clingy material, and she wore a linen bolo jacket over that. Stevenson’s friend looked Henson up and down.

  “From the way people talk about you in these parts,” she began, a feint Georgia accent coloring her words, “I figured you’d be seven feet tall with a blue ox.”

  “I shrunk some,” Henson said.

  She clapped him on the shoulder. There was a glass of bootleg whiskey in her other hand. “Yeah, well, any friend of my gal is a friend of mine, Mister Polar Bear. Y’all get some eats and hooch, okay? Everybody’s chipped in to make this a humdinger.”

  She winked at Stevenson and wandered off.

  “Where do you know here from?” Henson asked. “Don’t tell me she was the choir leader in your daddy’s church.”

  “You’re not the only one with friends in high and low places.”

  In the kitchen they helped themselves to fried chicken, greens and potato salad. The food along with homemade brew was laid out on a table under an electric clock mounted on the wall. Henson was pleasantly surprised at her appetite.

  “Don’t you dare look at me like that,” she said, a light sheen of grease on her shapely lips. “I haven’t dirtied a plate all day.”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with satisfying your hunger.”

  Her tongue licked at her bottom lip. “Is that so?’ Her gaze lingered on him.

  From the other room just beyond the archway to the kitchen, a raised voice said, “Look, what them Bolsheviks did over there can’t be repeated over here, Langston. They all Europeans and whatnot. And actually, there’s plenty of oriental types over there too, but surprise, surprise, they don’t seem to be the ones in power now, do they?”

  “Nobody’s saying it’s perfect, Florence,” Langston Hughes said to Florence Emery. From Harlem originally, the cabaret singer had moved to Paris and was a fixture at Eugene Bullard’s Le Grand Duc nightclub.

  She continued, “Look at the trials and tribulations that go down trying to bring together whites and blacks on the labor front. More than half the damn time it’s the whites inside the unions who are the worse ones. They like to keep their precious little boilermakers and brick layer clubs white and all, right. ‘Course they don’t mind you New Negroes take some lumps for them on the picket line,”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Hughes said, I’m not saying they’ve created a workers’ utopia, but there are key lessons we can learn from them in our march toward equality here at home. All of us can’t move to Paree you know.”

  “I sure as hell hope not,” she said, head back, laughing, her hands on her hips.

  In another apartment, the trumpet player was joined by a saxophonist and a clarinetist. After a false start, they jammed a rendition of “Black Bottom Stomp,” then riffed into “San,” and from that, a round of improvising solos. By then a guitar player had joined in, and the beat became more melodic as several couples began slow dancing. The couples included women with women, and nobody raised an eyebrow.

  “Not bad for a man who’s been out in nowhere living with the seals and the mudlarks,” Stevenson said, the side of her face on his chest as they danced.

  “I do try.”

  “Yes, you do.” She looked up at him and they kissed.

  The man and woman didn’t rush away to satiate their growing passion but stayed at the party long enough to let it further blossom. Long enough that Willie “The Lion” Smith showed up after playing a gig at a local club. An upright piano was wheeled out of one of the apartments and he banged out several rousing numbers in his masterful stride stylings. A long cigar dangled from his mouth, and Florence Emery was cajoled into singing a couple of numbers with him.

  The cheer and the music filed the building and spilled out onto the streets as Henson and Stevenson finally left the party. It was past one in the morning.

  “I’ll see you to your door,” Henson said.

  “That would be just lovely,” she answered, warm from liquor and lust.

  Her studio apartment was in a building with a butcher’s shop on the ground floor that had a speakeasy behind a wall that could swing open. But the two didn’t stop in for another drink. Soon, they were at the door to her fifth-floor walk-up, Henson’s hand under her skirt, her leg around his waist. The two managed to get inside and tumbled into her bed. She had hold of him by a hand and stroked him as she nibbled on his neck and ear.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  While Henson and Stevenson kept house, Vin O’Hara tossed three kings onto the table. “I believe that beats your two pair.”

  “Shit,” groused another more adept at safecracking than cards. He sat back and lit a cigarette while O’Hara gathered up several loose dollar bills that constituted the poker pot.

  “Always a pleasure doing business with you gents,” O’Hara said, rising and stretching. “But I gotta go see a man about a horse.”

  “You gonna ride that nag all night?” another player leered.

  O’Hara showed even teeth. “Modesty forbids.” He polished off his whisky, folded his winnings into his pocket and after putting his coat on and placing his straw hat on his head, touched the brim. “See ya.”

  Somebody grunted, and O’Hara was out the door and walking along the quiet hallway, the hour was just past midnight. He took the stairs two flights down and out onto the sidewalk, looked around and walked up the street to his car—the company vehicle, as it were. It was a Ford Model A and was among several that belonged to Dutch Schultz that his men used in making their rounds. This included collecting his monies from various illegal endeavors or making a call to break a guy’s arm or stick a recalcitrant so-and-sos head in the wheel well and put a foot on his neck to make him see matters the Dutchman’s way.

  Inside the car, O’Hara had set the spark lever up when he’d parked. He keyed the ignition on, and engaged the gas by pushing its lever to the right of the stick shift toward the dashboard. He gave a couple of squirts of fuel into the carburetor barrels, working the choke and cranked the engine. The car came to life and putting the spark lever down, he pushed the accelerator and gave the car gas. He let the brake off, put on the lights, and pulled away from the curb. Very little traffic was out this time of the morning in Hell’s Kitchen or elsewhere.

  He headed east, enjoying the neon glare of edifices like the Roadway, the Knickerbocker and the Winter Garden. The shows were over, but there were workers out on ladders, using their elongated poles changing the marquees. He turned, winding his way north, reaching Harlem in less than ten minutes. He drove through the so-called jungle area on 133rd, past the likes of the Clam House and Smalls’ Paradise. A few more turns and he was cruising in front of the Cotton Club on Lenox Avenue. Several white patrons lingered out in front. A large ma
n in a double-breasted suit threw his head back and laughed jocularly. The segregated club was run by transplanted Irish gangster Owney Madden backed by Chicago mob money. He and his manager employed black staff, and even had Duke Ellington heading the house band, but negroes did not go there to be turned away. Though, apparently, now and then O’Hara understood, a light-skinned colored gal, maybe the friend of one of the chorus girls, might be let in if she knew how to behave among white folks.

  He parked near an apartment building on 145th and after remembering to put the spark lever down, as he best be away again shortly after the sun was up, locked the car. Tacked to a light pole nearby was a handbill announcing the upcoming presentation at Liberty Hall by Daddy Paradise, entitled, “Equality and Prosperity, the Road to True Freedom.” Word was, numerous notables would be in attendance, including A. Philip Randolph and the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr.—these Harlemites, along with the likes of Queenie St. Clair, and rumor had it, numbers king Casper Holstein. This whispering about his name was far-fetched and had originated with Miriam McNair to boost the gatherings’ allure. He often didn’t venture far from his nest at the Turf Club. Tickets were selling briskly.

  O’Hara stood atop the stoop, the vestibule unlocked. He continued up to the fourth floor. When he reached there he wasn’t winded. He knocked lightly on the door of apartment 4B. It swung inward before he’d finished, the person on the other side having heard his approach.

  The woman was the arresting-looking Petersen who had made the two-way radio call from the car. She was dressed conservatively, and her hair was brushed away from her intelligent face.

  “Hey, now,” she said, stepping back to let him in.

  “Hey yourself,” O’Hara said, taking off his hat and coming inside. He had met her before, and was again struck at her mixed features. One of those black women who must have Cherokee or something like that in her family, he’d concluded. The door closed.

  Sitting around a square table were three others including Oscar Dulane who nodded at O’Hara.

  “OD,” O’Hara said.

  Dutch Schultz’s man was the only white person in the room. He seemed at ease as he took off his coat and laid it on the arm of a club chair near the curtained window. He joined the poker game in progress.

  “Deal me in,” he said, laying a five on the table. “I’m feeling lucky.”

  “Good to hear,” Petersen said, sitting back down.

  “Dealer antes,” said the other woman in the room, Venus Melenaux. As usual, she was dressed in a man’s suit—or rather a man’s suit tailored for her. She was the banker, and changed out O’Hara’s bill for singles and four quarters. The game recommenced with a hand of five card stud.

  On a sideboard were sandwich fixings, warm bottles of beer and corn liquor. At one point after several hands O’Hara and Dulane stood there. Dulane poured more liquor in his glass and O’Hara cut off a couple of slices of bologna, and, with a piece of cheese, put that between twin pre-sliced bread, packaged loafs of such having recently been introduced in markets.

  “We’re just gonna step out for air and a smoke,” O’Hara announced, holding his sandwich.

  “Don’t be long,” Melenaux joked, “I want a chance to earn my two dollars back betting into your flush that should have been mine.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” O’Hara said, smiling and bowing slightly. He started on his sandwich while descending the stairs.

  Outside, the two didn’t shoot the breeze. They talked about Schultz’s activities regarding Harlem.

  “I don’t know exactly what’s in that crazy bastard’s mind, OD,” O’Hara said, blowing smoke from his cigarette into the air. “But I do know Flegenheimer is focused on the upcoming Daddy Paradise talk at Liberty Hall. Told his man Two Laces to sniff around and see what he could learn.”

  “Okay,” said Dulane, eyebrow cocked. “I’ll make a few inquiries of my own. And let Matthew know if I find out anything hinky.”

  “But careful asking around, yeah?” He took a last puff and, after throwing the cigarette away, dug on the side of his gums for the remains of his sandwich. He then swallowed.

  “Like walking on eggshells,” OD said.

  “Ain’t that the truth.” They both returned to the card game.

  Henson and Stevenson lost track of time and any modesty, and somewhere in the dead of dark morning, got to sleep after their romantic labors.

  “Oh my,” Stevenson said when she awoke in the morning, her mouth cottony and a dull ache behind her right eye. She looked over. Henson wasn’t in the bed. But she could see him busy in her kitchenette, taking items out of the icebox.

  “How you feeling?” he asked, chopping up an onion. He looked at her and not at his hand as he expertly worked the blade to dice the onion as a chef would.

  “Fine,” she said, scooting out of bed and fetching her robe in the closet, aware he eyed her nude form. She exited and used the facilities down the hall.

  She returned to find bacon frying, and the aroma of fresh coffee had her salivating. Or maybe she just wanted more of her guest, fantasizing other wicked things to do with him. Stevenson straightened up the bed, and after folding it back into the wall, went to the table where Henson was serving the food.

  “Is there nothing you can’t do?” She dipped her nose toward the coffee, breathing the smell in deep, seeking to clear the fuzziness in her head. On the table was one of his throwing stars. She picked it up, examining the weapon.

  He grinned at her, tearing off a piece of bacon. “Careful with that.”

  Holding it between thumb and index finger, she turned the shuriken. “What if you electrified this thing?”

  Henson raised an eyebrow. “Huh?”

  “It’ll make it much more effective.”

  As they talked, Henson was impressed that Destiny Stevenson wasn’t just a pretty face and a knock-out body.

  “Miriam called me yesterday to glow about Charles’ upcoming speech,” she mentioned. “About how proud I’ll be of him.”

  Henson chuckled. “Guess she’s figuring to be your stepmom, huh?

  She made a face.

  “You’re not much on his ways?”

  “I guess I haven’t really sorted out what I think. My mom was his bookkeeper. She always told me he was my father, and it wasn’t like he was a complete stranger to us growing up. But I’m not his only out of wedlock child.”

  “Have you met any of your half-brothers or sisters?”

  “Two of my sisters, yes. I also think there’s a son out there somewhere. Now, one of the half-sisters I met is a big believer in Charles’ mission. Has some kind of position with his organization. I’m sure she’ll be out here for the event.”

  “You think what he does actually, you know, uplifts the race?”

  “Or is he just a huckster?”

  Henson shrugged as he poured more coffee for both of them. “Plenty say he provides hope, tells us not to fear the white man, do for self—and, as he admitted the other night, in addition to the ones he runs outright, invests his money in other peoples’ businesses.

  The official name for Daddy Paradise’s organization was the Peaceful Grace Ministries. They operated restaurants, a freight line, moving companies, gas stations and even a string of roadside motels for the negro traveler in the segregated south.

  “Ministering to the body and the soul. Now if I’m not mistaken, he himself has said he is not a Christian in the traditional sense. He mixes in Catholicism, Buddhism and Santeria among other spiritual teachings.”

  She cocked her head. “You looking to join the cause, Matthew?”

  “Just trying to get a sense of the man.”

  “Doesn’t the New Negro have to be responsible for more than just themselves?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, lost in thought.

  She rose, letting her robe fall open. She straddled his lap, putting her arms around his neck. “Maybe right now you best concentrate on getting
a sense of the Daughter. Or are you out of too worn out from last night, Mr. World Explorer?”

  “The Arctic got ice, baby?”

  She kissed him, working her hand under his shirt. Like before, she marveled at the scar tissue her fingers caressed. The overgrown skin crisscrossed his body, testament to years of hard living.

  Their lovemaking on the chair had it creaking and wobbling, but it didn’t break.

  Fremont Davis stood across the street from Matthew Henson’s residence in the brisk morning air. He was in a topcoat and gloves, smoking a thin black cigar. Passersby gave him the once-over but kept on. Probably some he assumed thought him a landlord out seeing about one of his properties. Such a notion brought a small smile to his face as he puffed away, his keen eyes fixed on the window he knew looked out from Henson’s livingroom. He’d brought one of his hunting knives with him, contemplating simply walking up to the man’s place, knocking and putting the blade to him when he opened the door, the sleep not yet out of his eyes.. Not a kill strike at first, for he needed that sumabitch alive to tell him where he’d hidden the Daughter. He’d skin him slowly to get him to talk. Henson might, he also considered, be quick enough to evade the knife thrust and counterattack. Well, he concluded, matters were in motion for him to realize his goal. He’d made certain of that. Davis tossed the cigar away and strolled back to his parked car.

  When they were done, Henson and Stevenson said their goodbyes. Downstairs he walked along, hands in his pockets. A group of kids, none of them no more than twelve, ran past him laughing and goofing with each other. What Stevenson didn’t know was that he did have to be responsible for more than himself. Since his breakfast with Henrik Ellsmere it had been on his mind he needed to make things right with his son Anaukaq, Ackie he’d called him. He hadn’t seen him in what, almost six years? Their only communication were infrequent letters back and forth. Was living his life, being rootless and taking off for parts of the country or the world whenever he felt like it so important? Sure, he’d rationalized that his kind of life was dangerous and no place for a child. But how could he visit on the young man being fatherless like he was early on in his own life. He caught a glimpse of his haunted eyes in a storefront window.