Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  But he waited until the Kings had left. Roscoe asked, “You get that other chain saw working?” and his father said, “Yeah, might as well knock out that trunk before we go to the dump.”

  “You need some help in the morning?” Darnell asked, stacking Roscoe’s dominoes in their velvet-lined case.

  “What you doin down here anyhow?” his father said sharply. “Season ain’t over.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Darnell said. “It was this morning.”

  “Well, you probably be over Brenda’s soon as the damn sun come up, so I don’t know why you offerin to cut wood,” his father said.

  Darnell touched the red velvet and thought he would get it over with. “I don’t know if her daddy gon be waitin with his .38 or not. Brenda’s pregnant.” He pushed his finger into the thicker plush at the corner and waited.

  “What! Goddamn if you ain’t a fool!” his father shouted.

  “Don’t holler and wake everybody up,” Roscoe said, looking closely at Darnell. “I thought you were being intelligent. Being careful.”

  “I was,” Darnell said. His father was silent, his long nose even longer with his lips pulled in grim.

  “That doesn’t matter now,” Roscoe said. “What are you planning to do?”

  “Her pops hates me,” Darnell said. “That ain’t gon change. He been toleratin me, waitin for me to get burned up or sent to another county.”

  Roscoe said, “Are you? Getting sent to another county? Another job?” Darnell stared at the stem over his hand bones. He shrugged.

  His father shook his head. “You ain’t college and you ain’t Catholic.” His teeth plucked in skin from his lip. “Batiste a hard man. I knew him when we first got stationed out there at the airbase, and I axed him where he was from. Some other cat told me, ‘Don’t ax him where, cause he from No More, Louisiana. All he gon say is “Someplace I don’t live no more.”’ Somebody said his daddy was white, and his mama run away from the plantation where she was born.”

  Roscoe still watched Darnell. “Batiste isn’t going to like you till you get a good job. He’s been at Royal for twenty years now. He was there when they worked on the B-52.”

  Darnell looked at the amber bead of liquid someone had spilled on the table.

  “Yeah, well, Royal’s layin off now, not hirin,” he said. Brenda’s father was a supervisor, and he’d kept his job when a lot of the assembly-line people lost theirs last year.

  Only the dogs barking in faraway yards and the distant whine of the police helicopter hung in the air, until Roscoe said, “How far along?”

  “She said five months.”

  “Louis didn’t even know until two weeks before his baby was born.” Roscoe stood up and put his hands in his pockets.

  “Yeah, but he wasn’t really tight with Geanie,” Darnell said, uncomfortable.

  “Tight enough,” Roscoe said quietly, picking up the domino case.

  “You and Brenda was tight enough, too,” his father said. “God-damnit. Now what you gon do? You can’t stay up there and play at no part-time firefighter gig. You gon have to get you a job.”

  “You think I ain’t been workin hard?” Darnell said. He spread his palms where the dominoes and hands had worn the table smoother, but his father didn’t glance at the burn; he went out the door behind Roscoe.

  Darnell heard them talking in the sideyard, and he went through the doorway into the hall. He walked carefully past the two bedroom doors. His sisters snored in their room, and his mother breathed quietly in the black space that showed at her half-open door.

  Darnell lay down on the couch where he had slept since he was old enough to leave the girls’ room. He remembered when they were born, the raspy crib breaths of Paula and Sophia clotting the air, his mother’s shadow in and out of the room, murmuring with GranaLene, always watching them to make sure they didn’t slip away. His mother sometimes slept curled around one or the other on her bed; he imagined Brenda, lying curved around her belly now. He stretched his legs straight and folded his hands on his chest. When he was small, first sleeping on the couch, he’d fallen off a few times. His mother wanted to put pillows on the floor all around him, but his father had said, “Let him fall hard and he’ll learn how to stay up there.”

  “You sleep like a zombie,” his grandmother used to say, whispering it in her slurry voice from her chair by the fireplace. The brass buttons glowed dull in the firelight. His grandmother stayed in the front room while he took his nap. She came every day then, since his mother had the twin babies. She watched him lie down, saying, “So I keep my eye on you. So no spirit sneak in here take you.”

  Louisiana. When his mother was just a baby, Granny Zelene had taken her to Oklahoma. No one knew why, or how, and she just shrugged when Darnell used to ask her. “Just went,” she’d say, never moving from her chair, only her fingers twirling with the silver needle when she sewed.

  “Zombie everywhere in Louisiana. Sometime a spirit just come inside a person head, a spirit dead and don’t want to leave, and he want company in the spirit world.” His grandmother wouldn’t even look at him when she said this; her fingers never stopped pulling thread slantwise above her lap, and her eyes might check the embers in the fireplace. Only when she was finished with the skirt hem would she stare at Darnell and say, “Come in the kitchen and get you some hot chocolate.”

  When Darnell had walked beside Melvin to take Granny Zelene home, he’d watched the smog-shrouded summer sky or the silvery-pale clouds in winter, wondering where the zombies rested while they chose their heads. And when he asked his mother, she frowned and said, “Granny Zelene had a hard life. She talks about things you don’t have no concern with. Ain’t no zombies—only on Halloween.”

  Darnell moved his palms now so that they covered his hipbones, stretching his fingers. The fire his mother must have made that night, where she sat with his father before she went to bed and he joined the men in the back, was only a smidgen of sound, of pulsing ash. Lacing his fingers again, he kept his feet still, touching at the big toe, and his elbows close to his chest. “You sleep like a dead person,” Brenda had teased him, the few times she dozed beside him on the couch or in someone’s borrowed bed. Darnell heard the sparkling sigh of the last embers.

  Before he could see the trucks in the heavy dawn fog, he heard them from all the way down Picasso Street, pounding, booming the bass lines into his ribs. Gasanova’s black Toyota was first, cruising so slow Darnell could read MIDNIGHT painted in curly white script over the door.

  “What up, D.?” Gasanova said, and Kreeper smiled from where he rode shotgun.

  “You got it chopped sleek, man!” Darnell said. The truck was lowered, doors inches from the asphalt, and its bed was full of speakers covered with black canvas. Behind him was Cartunes, and Darnell squinted at the purple flames along his hood and doors. Then the truck bed raised up on the back hydraulics to slant sharply, and the same song poured out of the cracked-open space even louder.

  “Oh, homey—the dump!” Darnell shouted, smiling back. “Check out my boy!” He went to the back of the dump truck to see the hydraulics and the tires. “Y’all up early,” he said.

  “We were out all night, man,” Gasanova said. “These two females in San Bernardino, man, we met em at the car show.”

  Kreeper said, “Gas is in love.”

  “I ain’t playin that. It’s only room in here for two,” Gasanova said. “But then I could throw your ass out, huh?”

  “I didn’t know you guys had these finished pretty,” Darnell said. Gas was a year younger than Darnell, and his brother Leon a year older. Their mother lived at the end of Picasso.

  “You ain’t around, homey. I been had it done,” Gas said. “You were goin into the Conservation Corps when I first bought it, right?”

  “Yeah, I been in and out the hood for a couple years,” Darnell said, looking at the glossy doors trembling in the fog. The mist that had muffled the voices back at the station had shrouded the pines and beaded on Raycraft�
��s truck when he’d parked to tell them it was over. The fog would surround Brenda when she took the bus or drove to work in her mother’s car; she’d read the newspaper, he knew. She’d seen the article about the welcome winter coolness signaling the end of fire season in this sixth year of drought…. She knows I’m home. And I ain’t came by yet—I ain’t called. I ain’t callin until I can say somethin.

  “No!” Gasanova shouted, leaning out to look at the sideyard. “The Spider back there with the terminal patients and shit!”

  Darnell smiled and shook his head. “Clutch started goin out on me, man, comin down from work.”

  “Kickstand gon fix you up?” Cartunes asked.

  Darnell blinked. “I can’t keep puttin all my dinero in the Spider, man.”

  “You gon let her die in your daddy’s graveyard?” Gasanova said, staring at the sideyard, where an El Camino truck and a ’63 Cadillac were nestled in tall grass, wild mint, and used tires.

  “Hey, the Spider’s wheels are still visible, okay?” Darnell said.

  “You should get you a truck, come and boom with us,” Gas said. He looked down the street. “Here come your pops and them.” Darnell folded his arms and let the music hit his knuckles.

  “You gotta wake up the whole damn street?” Darnell’s father said. He got out of Roscoe’s truck holding a paper bag. They’d gone early to the fish market for red snapper, Darnell’s mother’s favorite.

  Roscoe looked at Cartunes’s dump truck. “You from Treetown?” he asked. “You gon waste a perfectly good vehicle like this?”

  “It ain’t wasted,” Cartunes said. “It’s boomin.”

  Darnell watched his father walk around Gasanova’s truck. Every time he and Roscoe heard the fuzzed electronic drums shake the back room, they rolled their eyes. “See, that’s a truck,” his father said, pointing to Roscoe’s. “Nineteen forty-seven Apache with a dump bed. Yours ain’t no damn truck. You can’t haul nothin in it, so the word don’t even apply now.”

  “What you gon call it then?” Gasanova asked, smiling. He loved to bother them.

  “A goddamn nuisance!” Darnell’s father shouted.

  Roscoe and Marietta Cook stood on the curb. Darnell never knew what to call Roscoe’s lady friend; she was almost six feet tall, always serious in the set of her face. “How you doin this morning?” he said, and she nodded.

  “Look like nothin more than a house shoe,” she said softly.

  Roscoe smiled, his eyes slanting off to the air like they did when he thought poetry. “What a metaphor—a truck as little and low as a slipper,” he murmured. But he blinked his eyes clear again, focusing on the tires. “Just like your brother Leon’s four-wheel-drive vehicle—useless for what it’s intended. All he carries around is fools.” Darnell knew he was thinking of his son Louis. “This desire for loud music instead of space can’t be normal,” Roscoe said hard. “Driving around pounding your brains into submission until you shoot each other. I heard gunfire last night up on Sixth Avenue.”

  Gasanova folded his arms impatiently. “That ain’t me,” he said, lifting his chin. “I ain’t Leon. See, you look at the hooptie and think you know. I ain’t into bangin, I’m into boomin.”

  “Speak English, boy,” Darnell’s father said.

  “It ain’t a gang, Pops,” Darnell said, but he could tell that Roscoe was still picturing Louis in the back of another vehicle, staring at Gasanova and seeing Leon instead of his brother. Roscoe took Marietta’s arm and steered her toward the big cab.

  “His son Louis still gettin in trouble with Leon?” Darnell’s father asked.

  Gasanova shrugged. “I guess they tight. I see them in the street, but that ain’t my business. Darnell, man, you want a ride over to see Kickstand?”

  Darnell said, “Yeah, Pops, I’ma go see about this clutch. I’ll be back.” His father frowned hard, like he had at dawn when Darnell’s mother asked why he wasn’t calling Brenda.

  “Don’t come back deaf,” his father said, turning to go into the house.

  Darnell’s shoulders mashed against Gas and Kreeper when he squeezed in, and Gas said, “See? I ain’t got no room for ladies unless y’all walk.”

  Darnell leaned back, feeling the music and the engine and their breath close. This desire for music can’t be normal, he thought. According to Roscoe. I can’t really classify your behavior as normal—that’s what Fricke said. No room for ladies here. No room for babies in the Spider. Damn.

  “You sleep, D.?” Gas said.

  Darnell shook his head. “You still workin at the Holiday Inn?” Gas had been a cook in the coffee shop since they graduated. His uncle had taught him to short-order.

  “Yeah. Eggs over easy every day. But this fine new waitress named Tamiko just moved here from Oakland. She don’t know nobody yet.”

  “Your favorite kinda woman.” Darnell laughed. “She don’t know you ain’t about nothin.”

  “Brenda still your favorite kinda woman?” Gas asked.

  Darnell looked at the clinging fog when they passed Gray Hollow and the arroyo. “Yeah. She’s still my lady.”

  “What up with the firefighter thang?” Kreeper said.

  “Season’s over, man. I’ma get unemployment, but I don’t find out if I get called back to the station till March.” He touched the line on his hand; it had faded to a black, tight-pulled mark. “I need some serious ducats fast.”

  “Ain’t nothin at the Inn,” Gasanova said.

  “Ain’t nothin nowhere,” Kreeper said. “You want some quick dinero, talk to Leon.” Darnell twitched, startled, and Gas spat out the window. Kreeper laughed. “Leon flashin much ducats. Got him a new Bronco, huh, Gas? Sweet black with some fat rims.”

  “Leon slingin cane?” Darnell asked. “That what Roscoe talkin about?”

  Gas sucked his teeth. He was slightly darker than Leon, but both brothers had the same wide mouth, small teeth, and square hairline cut deep over their temples. He said, “He’s crazy. Yeah, he gettin paid, but them guys from LA cruise out here to the country and smoke you if you get in the wrong territory. I don’t even see Leon—he pass by the crib now and then to say hi to Moms and give her some money.”

  Darnell saw the gray-green olive groves and the dry gullies of Treetown. “Man, remember when we used to ride bikes all over here?” Gas went on, lifting his chin at the dirt paths winding through the trees. “You wasn’t around then, Kreeper. Darnell, me, Leon, Louis—”

  “That the tall dude they call Birdman?” Kreeper interrupted.

  “Yeah,” Darnell said.

  “He was a good ballplayer,” Kreeper said. “They call him that cause he could jump hella high, right?”

  Nobody answered. Darnell wondered if Gas remembered how Louis had first gotten the nickname, when they were riding under branches here and Louis was mesmerized by the birds flocking near the riverbottom. “Donnie Harris used to ride with us, too,” he said, glancing at the dried-hard wrinkles in the ditches. No water in a long time. Donnie was always lookin for water back then, and Louis was always watchin for hawks and seagulls, tellin us all the names. And me—I was checkin for smoke.

  “Yeah, Donnie’s back, too,” Gas said. “Him and Birdman both quit playin ball and came back from school.” Gas shook his head. “Birdman’s pops lookin ballistic—I heard he ain’t spoke to Birdman since.”

  “Dude look crazy sittin in Leon’s Bronco,” Kreeper said. “So tall he all bent over.”

  Darnell thought of Roscoe’s face and said, “So Louis slingin, too?”

  Gas said, “I don’t know what he doin. He hangs with Leon, but he never says nothin, he don’t carry no cash. He trippin hard.” He spat out the window. “And your pops think I’m off into that. Shit.”

  Darnell saw the stone barn and old house, Arrow Towing and Repair, and Demetrius Thompson in the barn doorway. “Remember the Thompsons, G., they used to kick everybody’s ass. Always boxin.”

  “They old now,” Gasanova said. “Got big old kids to be nubbin with. Not no
babies. Gray hairs.”

  Darnell ran his tongue around his teeth, thinking, Yeah, I’ma be old, too. “Thanks, homey,” he said, pushing Kreeper out the passenger door.

  “I’ma go check this stereo,” Gasanova called. “I’ll look for you.”

  Darnell said, “How you doin?” to the men in the barn. Kickstand was lying all the way inside the open hood of a Cadillac, his shoes dangling off the ground. Darnell waited, uncomfortable. Kickstand was in a permanent bad mood, and you had to wait for him to speak first.

  “What you want me to do to your piece-a-shit Italian car now, boy?” Kickstand asked, sliding himself off the engine. “If it was a horse and we was in Texas, I’d shoot it.”

  “Lucky we in Treetown,” Darnell said. “My clutch disc is gone, man.”

  Kickstand frowned hard and said, “Man, I gotta get the transmission jack up in there and part the tranny to even get to your little clutch disc. Shit. Two hundred, minimum. And you know your brakes is shot, too, boy.”

  Darnell leaned against the sawhorse, feeling the bones around his eyes ache. “I might have to look for somethin else, man, before I spend that. Somethin bigger, cause I need some more room.” Kickstand raised his eyebrows, and Darnell thought, Might as well get used to it, if I’ma do this. “My girlfriend’s havin a baby, and I gotta think about a backseat.”

  “Look like you already spent some time in the backseat, nigga.” Demetrius laughed.

  Darnell sucked his teeth and said, “Give me a break, man.”

  Kickstand said, “I got four kids. I ain’t changed my drivin habits for they mama.” He pointed at the Cadillac. “Get you one a these, you got plenty a seats, but you better be ready to pay near bout a grand for a new tranny.” Then he gestured out to the back of the huge lot, where cars lay in a dusty patchwork over the dirt to the riverbottom. “But come on back here with six, seven hundred, and I can drop a engine in somethin you find out there.” He smiled at Darnell. “Or bring that much and I’ll let you throw it away in Italian.”