Out of Darkness

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  Lewis hadn’t said how long he was visiting, but with any luck, he’d still be with Skyla now. While his mother was out delivering pies, Wash copied the address from her desk drawer and headed out along the highway toward Tyler. He walked a few miles before a man driving an ice truck stopped and offered him a ride.

  When they got into Tyler, it turned out that the man lived at a boarding house just down the street from Lewis’s lady friend. The driver dropped off the truck at the ice plant and then pointed him toward the right street.

  Skyla lived on the opposite side of town from Wash’s Aunt Jennie, his mother’s sister, who was just as deliberately respectable as his parents. Skyla’s was a typical shotgun house—long and narrow with each room opening into the next. It leaned a bit on its foundations and was sorely in need of paint. A few skinny chickens pecked around the concrete blocks the house sat on. In one of the porch’s three rockers, Lewis sat smoking his pipe and nursing a bottle of Pearl.

  Wash gave him a wave.

  If Lewis was surprised to see Wash, he didn’t let on. He waved him over and called into the house.

  A moment later, a tall woman with her hair wrapped in a scarf came out onto the porch.

  “Son,” Lewis said when Wash came up the steps, “this fine woman is Skyla Pines.” Lewis nodded at her. “Skyla, this is Jim’s boy Wash, the scholar who’s going to be a doctor or something.”

  “How do you do, ma’am,” Wash said. He worked his hat around in his hands.

  “You want some sweet tea, hon?” Skyla asked. She smiled but didn’t show her teeth.

  “Yes, ma’am. That’d be very fine.”

  While she was gone, Lewis cocked an eyebrow at him. “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Wash said, feeling a bit of heat come into his face.

  “You’ve got the look of a runaway. Tell me you ain’t run off or nothing stupid.”

  “No, sir, I ain’t.”

  “But?”

  “I’m thinking about making a change. In the future. Wanted some advice on locations and thought of you.”

  Lewis pulled on the pipe and nodded at the rocker on his left. “Your pa know?”

  “There’s nothing to know yet. Just thinking.”

  “This about a girl?”

  Wash hesitated.

  “Don’t bother answering,” Lewis said, pointing the bowl of his pipe at Wash. “There’s always a girl.”

  Wash brought out the newspaper clipping from his pocket and handed it to Lewis. “You know anything about this? It’s from an old copy of the Defender. Six years ago.”

  Lewis held the paper at arm’s length, squinting. “Eyes gone to hell these last few years.” He studied the column for a few minutes before handing it back.

  Skyla came with the glass of tea then. Wash drank half of it in grateful gulps, feeling the cool and the sugar slide down his throat.

  “I’m fixing to see about supper. You want to join us, young man?” Skyla asked.

  “No, ma’am. I’m set with this, thank you much. I got to be heading back to New London here in a minute. Just a quick visit.”

  When she went back inside, Lewis rocked back hard in his chair, frowning. “Baja California ... It’s been a while since I worked the route down to Mexico City. The way I reckon, anything called California would be pretty far from that track, and I don’t even know I’ve heard of it. Truth be told, I can’t remember seeing more than a handful of black folks down far south, not counting us porters, of course.”

  “Guess what I’m asking is, you think it’d be any better for us there?”

  “Folks are poor. Some of them mean poor.”

  “But will they let you be?”

  Lewis studied him. “What kind of girl are you running with?”

  Wash dodged the question. “Don’t know that there’s going to be any running. Just thinking for now.”

  Lewis sighed and leaned toward Wash. The runners of the old rocker groaned a little. “What do you expect your folks are going to say?”

  “Got bigger worries.”

  Lewis made a round motion with his hand in front of his belly. “This big?”

  Wash gave a short laugh. “Not that kind of trouble.”

  “I’m not giving you any advice, all right, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just happen to be chewing the bone about Mexico.” Lewis turned a careful eye on Wash.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s be clear on one thing. There’s no Promised Land, not like the paper makes you think. Not going up to Chicago or Detroit or even Canada. I’ve been all them places and worked with black folk who’ve gone to more. And there’s nothing to be found going down to Mexico.”

  Wash started to protest, but Lewis held up a hand. “Hear me out, son.” He drew hard on his pipe and then released the smoke slowly. “Now, I don’t know a thing about these colonies in Mexico. Who knows if they even got a start. Chances are, the Mexican government shut them out. I’ve heard of that other places. Problem always comes when folks try to go in a big group. Drew too much attention. Tried to do everything legal. Big mistake. You can’t count on anybody to give you permission, see?”

  “So it won’t work.” Wash’s shoulders slumped a little.

  “You’re not hearing me, boy. What I’m saying is that you don’t make it official, you just slip in. Lots of nooks and crannies down there, little spots nobody’d find unless they knew what they were looking for. It’s not a bad place for someone looking to disappear.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They don’t like Negroes, particularly, but they don’t take too much time to care one way or another what anybody is doing. That’s my impression, at least, from where I usually stand.”

  “All right, that’s something,” Wash said, nodding.

  “How’s your Spanish?” Lewis asked.

  Wash grinned. “I’m learning some.”

  “This girl, she white?”

  Wash didn’t hesitate. “No, sir, not white.”

  “Black?” Lewis asked.

  “Kind of cream-and-coffee colored.”

  “She Mexican?”

  Wash shrugged.

  “Lord help you,” Lewis said, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you just find you a nice yella girl and leave it at that? Never knew you to have trouble picking up the ladies.”

  Wash set down his glass and picked at a mosquito bite on his arm. “She found me.”

  Lewis frowned.

  “Can you help us get there?” Wash asked.

  “How can I, boy, when I don’t know nothing about this?” his uncle said sharply. “All I’ll say is that they hire black folk for porter positions. They like strong boys that can dress sharp and talk right. Something for you to keep in mind,” Lewis said. “Not that you heard it from me.”

  Wash stood and held out his hand. “Thank you, Uncle Lewis. I’ll be sure to forget where I heard everything you just said. Give my best to Miss Skyla.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  The next morning, Wash made a detour on his way to school and left Naomi a note in case she beat him to the tree later: “How about Mexico?” He pierced the paper onto the nail that held the ornament Beto and Cari had made him. It was the best future he could come up with for their strange little family.

  He muddled through the day. Already his teacher was getting testy as more pupils vanished out of the classroom to go to work in the fields now that the weather had really and truly turned toward warm. She took it out on those of them who were still in school, threatening to load them down with extra lessons if they didn’t get their minds on their studies.

  When his classes let out at two, Wash ran to the grounds of the New London school. Today he only wanted enough work to keep him busy until he could catch Naomi’s eye. But as he was crossing toward Mr. Crane’s house, the janitor waved to him from the portico that connected the main school building and the cafeteria.

  “I could use your help this afternoo
n, son,” Mr. Stine said once Wash reached him. “Already cleared it with Mr. Crane. Twenty cents an hour like usual.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wash said. “What needs doing?”

  The janitor gave him a rueful grin. “Nothing but checking over every heater in every room.” He paused. “That’s about a hundred of ’em.”

  “Surely y’all aren’t running the heat today!” Wash said. “It’s near about eighty, I reckon.”

  “No, but some kids’ve been complaining of headaches, saying their eyes burn when they’re at school. Mr. Crane thought maybe there’s gas leaking at one of the connections to the heaters. No way to find it but to check every one. We’ll start in the outbuildings and then move on into the classrooms after school lets out here in a bit.”

  Wash’s shoulders sagged a little. It was a job that might not be done till suppertime—or later. He opened his mouth to say that he could only stay until four, but then he closed it. The train tickets wouldn’t be cheap; they needed the money.

  He rolled up his sleeves, picked up Mr. Stine’s toolbox, and followed him into the cafeteria.

  Mr. Stine showed him the collars that formed the connections between the heaters and the gas pipes. “Check around here on each one, make sure it’s good and snug. If it ain’t, just tighten it up.”

  They worked together through the cafeteria and then the gymnasium. After the bell ending the school day sounded, they headed into the massive main building. The halls were mostly empty, but a few students were still straggling out. Wash was careful to keep his eyes on the floor and mumble his good afternoons when someone passed him. Whites-only buildings always brought back his father’s lessons.

  After a while, Mr. Stine wiped his red, sweating face with a rag. “You’ve got the idea, Wash. We split up, we can get this job done a lot faster. You go on up to the third floor and work your way down. I’ll work my way up and we’ll meet in the middle. My wife’s cooking meatloaf tonight, and I’d sure like to be there to eat it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wash said. He grabbed a couple of wrenches out of the toolbox and headed for the stairs. “I’ll let you know if I find anything,” he called.

  Wash was done checking the heaters on the third floor and the east wing of the second floor when Mr. Stine came lumbering toward him down the main hall. “I’m done with the west wing. How’s it going?” he asked, his breath uneven.

  “It’s going, sir,” Wash answered. “Just finishing up—”

  He had been about to say “with the east wing” when Mr. Stine whistled and exhaled hard. “Swell. Means we can head on home. You ask me,” he said, leaning closer to Wash, “those kids will imagine a headache any day of the week to get out of their classes. I didn’t find a single heater that was amiss.”

  Neither had Wash; chances were, he figured, that the classroom heaters in the second floor main hall were also fine. He thought about asking Mr. Stine if he’d gone down to the basement to check the heaters in the wood shop, but then he snuck a look at his watch. It was half past five; if he hurried, he might still be able to see Naomi.

  NAOMI Down at the river, Naomi sat on her rock and tried to ignore the twins. They were oddly sullen today, Cari especially.

  They’d all hoped to see Wash, but they’d been in the woods for over an hour, and there was still no sign of him.

  “Where do you think he is?” Beto asked.

  “Not sure, love,” Naomi said without looking up from her book, though she’d been reading the same few lines of Macbeth for the past ten minutes. “Probably working.” She tried to sound indifferent, but she was just as eager to hear his footfalls on the path. That was why she was here and not back at the house doing the Friday chores; she wanted to tell him what Tommie had said and try to figure out what might be next. All week, Henry had been mercifully preoccupied with drilling a well out in Smith County, which kept him away for long hours. Soon enough, though, she’d have to talk to him.

  She twisted her braid around her fingers. Breathe and read, breathe and read. She pushed her eyes across the lines in front of her. “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time...”

  She gave up on that bit but kept reading. Anything was better than talking to the twins right now. Since the moment school let out, they had been wheedling and prodding for stories about their mother. She was used to it from Cari, but now even Beto had started in. No doubt following his sister’s lead.

  Cari paced the bit of path at the top of the bank while Beto squatted down by the water skipping stones.

  “It’s not fair,” Cari said, her voice shrill. “We have a right to know about our own mother.”

  Naomi leaned closer to the book. “I pull in resolution, and begin to doubt the equivocation of the fiend...” She tracked the line back to the speaker. Macbeth. She wished the old king would go ahead and die.

  “Are you even listening?” Cari demanded. “Do you ever listen?”

  Naomi snapped the book shut and pressed her face into her hands. Patience, patience, she commanded herself. “You know my stories, Cari,” she said, working hard to keep her voice level. “You two can tell them better than I can, even.”

  “There’s heaps you haven’t told us!” Cari cried, stamping her foot. “There must be.”

  “It’s not my fault that I don’t have more, cariño. I was just a little girl when...” Her voice faltered. “When you were born.”

  Cari narrowed her eyes. “What about when she died? You’ve never told us about that.”

  Naomi heard Beto gasp as if the wind had been knocked out of him. She felt robbed of air, too.

  “Oh, Cari,” Naomi said. “Please, stop.”

  “I like the good stories,” Beto began. “I think—”

  “You hush,” Cari snapped. “You want to know just as much as I do.” She pressed on. “You tell us stories about hairstyles and pickles and dance contests, things that don’t matter, but you leave out everything we need to know. Like how come she died and why did Daddy go and what did she want us to know about her.”

  Naomi did not turn. She did not call Cari to her. She did not reprimand her. She did not cry. She sat feeling her sister’s words burrow into her.

  Cari was cruelest when she was right.

  But the past was Naomi’s pain, something she carried and kept to herself. For herself. Somehow, Cari had caught on to that. And what she was asking for was not the kind of story that would lend anybody strength. Naomi didn’t want to feed Cari’s anger.

  That was when he came. The steady tread that they knew so well. Beto dropped his stones, scaled the bank, and headed up the path. Cari hesitated a moment longer, waiting in case Naomi might respond to her challenge. Then she ran, too.

  WASH Wash heard the twins on the path before he saw them. Cari ran fast enough to overtake Beto, and she threw her arms around his legs.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” she cried.

  “Why? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” Beto said.

  At the same time, Cari said, “Everything!” She tugged Wash toward the river. “Naomi’s being a pill!”

  “Your sister’s here today?” Wash tried not to let his voice betray too much interest or excitement. Maybe he could convince the twins to run some small errand. He had to be careful; if they got the sense that he wanted them gone, they’d be stuck to him tight as ticks. It was one of those laws of children, like their tendency to be least grateful when you were trying your hardest to please them.

  “Y’all have any extra bars of soap at home?” Wash asked as they walked the last dozen or so steps to the bank of the river. “I was thinking I could show you how to carve a sculpture.”

  “Do we?” Beto called down to Naomi.

  She cleared her throat but didn’t turn around. “Bottom shelf of the kitchen pantry. In the back.”

  “I’ll go,” Beto volunteered.

  “Go on, Cari,” Naomi said. “You, too.”
<
br />   Cari crossed her arms, gearing up to protest. Then Wash saw the briefest glint of mischief flash through her eyes. “Sure thing, sis!” she said.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Wash tugged on Naomi’s skirt with a grin as soon as the twins were gone.

  “I know,” she said. “But we don’t have much time.”

  “You been to the tree?” he asked, settling down on a log near her.

  She shook her head. “Not since yesterday.”

  “So you haven’t seen my note. I’ve got an idea. Not a plan yet, but an idea.” He told her about the letter in the Chicago Defender and what Lewis had told him.

  “Wash, I’ve never even been to Mexico.”

  “At least you know the language. We don’t have heaps of options right now. I might’ve said we could melt into some faraway backwoods spot. Even know of a few places like that. But I can’t see Henry letting that go now, and there’s the twins to think of, too.”

  “Before the letter, I thought maybe I could take them back to San Antonio, just for a while. Maybe the summer. But that won’t work anymore.”

  “We’ll bring them with us,” he said firmly. “Now what do we do about him?”

  “Henry?”

  “No, the Easter Bunny.” Wash rolled his eyes.

  She shoved him. “Don’t you start being a brat, too. I’ve got my hands full with Cari.”

  “What happened? She had fire in her eyes.”

  Naomi shrugged. “Sometimes she wants things I can’t give her.”

  Wash assumed that she meant something like a dress or hair ribbons. “Girls can be like that,” he said. He cracked his knuckles one by one.

  “That’s an evil sound.”

  “Geez, Naomi, come on. We may not have much longer to talk. Has Henry said anything else?”

  She shook her head. “He’s been out drilling in Smith County. Filling in for a tool pusher who got hurt, I think. I’ve been steering clear as much as I can.”

  “Good.”

  “So.” Naomi ran her fingers along the hem of her skirt. “Tommie gave me an idea.”

  “Okay?”

  “She said Dwayne Stark—that’s her boyfriend—wants to get married, but she’s making him hold off until after graduation. I was thinking I could try the same thing.”