A sound like a faint human scream or a cat in heat came from a building down the block, an unlit warehouse with corrugated metal doors and windows. Mrs. Lewis’s heart beat erratically as she pulled away from the bus station and out into the dark street.
Turning north on Dearborn, she began to count off the blocks to Diversey Avenue and arrange her thoughts. “Private Randolph Peyton Lewis, twenty-two next New Year’s Day, enlisted out of Montgomery, Alabama, just finished up a one-year tour of duty in Germany”... that’s about all she could tell the soldier people.
In a recent article for the Tribune on the opening of the new Veterans’ Assistance Service, Bonnie Caidin had written:
American soldiers who fought in the Vietnam war represent a largely anonymous concept to many fellow Americans, particularly those who viewed that distant slaughter as a kind of impersonal political entertainment on their pre-dinner TV shows.
That war is over, but it is not done with. Those veterans are real, they are our own people. It is lime we welcomed them home. This is the opinion of Dr. Irene Kastner, director of this city’s newly opened Veterans’ Assistance Service, a nonprofit organization, volunteer staffed and funded, and located at 400 Diversey Avenue.
Dr. Kastner, the first black woman to receive a doctor’s degree in both medicine and psychology from the University of Chicago, made her remarks at a sparsely attended ceremony at the service offices on Monday night.
“The emotional and social dislocations of these veterans must be treated on a continuing therapeutic basis. Whatever their problems, we will give them love and acceptance and assistance, with a guarantee of compassion and privacy. We will be here to listen, understand and resolve, never to interrogate or interpret,” Dr. Kastner said.
Bonnie Caidin’s article featured statistics on the number of Illinois veterans who had served in Vietnam, references to various existing state and federal services and budgets, and ended with a statement from the mayor commending the Veterans’ Assistance Service on its aims and stating that if the service were ever short of help, the mayor’s staff could arrange to put in a few hours per month as volunteers.
The article, with the Caidin byline, ran for two editions in the Sunday Tribune, just below the fold, and was then lifted to make space for the story on a shocking and unprecedented act of vandalism, the graffiti spray painting of the giant Picasso sculpture in Civic Center Plaza.
Dr. Kastner had called the newspaper in person to thank Miss Caidin for her fine reporting, and Caidin decided to offer her services as a volunteer on the night staff.
After leaving the luncheonette, Lasari circled back to the corner opposite the storefront office. Almost compulsively he found himself mulling over familiar excuses. He had to work tomorrow, another day or so wouldn’t matter, he should think his whole story through again. He had just about talked himself into giving up for the night and driving back to Calumet City when an old blue car turned into Diversey and slowed down on the opposite side of the street. Almost simultaneously, a new sound echoed from down the block, a staccato of hard-heeled boots. The three Latinos in baseball caps came trotting along the sidewalk out of the shadows, arms linked, laughing and talking to one another in high, excited voices.
A plump, black woman climbed from the car, closed and locked the driver’s side and started to run with heavy steps toward the lighted office.
The three Latinos broke ranks then and rushed the woman like predators, coming at her from the front and from two sides, pushing her screaming and stumbling backward against the brick building. The woman screamed again and hugged her handbag tightly against her brown coat.
Without articulating his thoughts, Duro Lasari knew the lady was his excuse to let loose the rage that fed his indecision, a reason to get to the other side of the street, and finally step into that lighted office.
He left the curb and dashed across the slippery pavement in a half crouch, stopped a moment behind the car, breathing slowly and deeply, flexing his chilled fingers in the pockets of his coat. Then he stepped out in front of the three Latinos, his hands loose at his sides.
“Come on, guys,” he said quietly, “back in the woodwork. Let the lady alone.”
The three boys were rolling Amanda Lewis’s stout body from side to side against the rough brick, pounding on her shoulders and tearing at her crossed arms, thrusting like pack dogs for a grip on the leather strap of the shoulder bag. Her first screams had turned into a moaning prayer. “Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. I can’t give you nothing...”
The door of the Veterans’ office swung open and the male clerks stood framed in the light, not speaking, not moving, staring out at the struggling woman, then at Lasari. At a desk inside the red-haired girl dialed rapidly.
It was the insolence, the unearned honor of those baseball caps that first stung Duro Lasari, and then the animal challenge of the three sullen faces turned toward him.
“Fuck off,” one of the boys said. “Fuck off, prick, before you get yourself cut.”
They were young, twelve or thirteen years old, but slim and wiry and deadly, Lasari judged, with pack strength and pack guts. They had been stalking for prey and they’d found it. The terrified woman’s purse belonged to them because they could take it from her; as simple as that.
One of the trio swung around suddenly and faced Lasari with an open switchblade. He walked toward him in a crouch, holding out the thin, razor-sharp blade before him, carving out his territory with wide swings of his arm. “You asked for it,” he said softly. “I’m comin’ into your space.”
The shining blade, swinging back and forth, cocked the final trigger of rage in Lasari’s head and his speed caught the youth off guard. He feinted left, then right, spun around suddenly on the balls of his feet and swung his right leg in a powerful arc, grunting when the top of his work boot struck the young man’s wrist and sent the knife into the gutter, and the challenger sprawling backward against the hood of the car.
A police squad car turned into the block, siren wailing and lights flashing. The three boys sprinted off toward the intersection, one bent almost double to ease the pain in his broken wrist.
Duro Lasari told the battered woman that everything was all right, and when she shivered and stood motionless he moved toward her and put an arm around her shoulders. With eyes shut tight, she was still praying in ragged gasps.
Amanda Lewis could not stop moaning and stammering until a police officer and the woman in the plaid suit took her inside the office, where she sank into a chair, eyes bright with fear, arms still locked about her shoulder bag that held her car keys, wallet and the five ten-dollar bills she had borrowed to entertain Private Randolph Lewis.
Chapter Three
“I just happened to be walking by,” Duro Lasari told the red-haired girl.
She smiled at him. Her skin was smooth and white and probably freckled when she was young, he thought. Under the high neon stripping in the ceiling, her eyes looked dark and shadowed, almost bruised, as if she were overworked and tired. “But what you did, that was very brave, George.”
He’d told the police that his name was George Jackson, that he was from out of town and they’d let it go at that, hadn’t asked for a driver’s license or other ID. Lasari helped to search the street until they found a four-inch switchblade in the gutter.