Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  She saw Roscoe pulling chains out of the Apache, and she brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God, I hope the truck doesn’t tear up the yard. But I guess the other machine leaves wood chips all over. What a mess.” She was almost whispering. “Last year my husband hired two Samoans to trim those, and they brought their families, I mean, the women sat right on the lawn to watch, the kids played in the branches. It was terrifying.”

  Darnell stood awkwardly. Let me get in a plug or Pops will be hot. “Well, we can do all the trees for you next time,” he said, pulling at the hose.

  Soaking, digging for another day, chopping at roots and mud, and then they fit the chains around the stumps. The Apache shuddered, a huge dinosaur with flat nose and metal teeth, the wheels digging hard into the dirt to rip out the thick stumps, their roots grabbing clumps of earth in desperation and then heaving out to stiffen in the sun.

  “Oh, my God,” the woman said, holding her checkbook away from her body like a dripping cloth. “My husband was supposed to leave me new checks.” Her cheeks swelled up toward her eyes.

  Roscoe said, “That’s no problem, ma’am, we’ll pick up the check tomorrow.”

  In the truck, Darnell’s father said, “What does she do all day? He gotta order new checks?”

  Darnell cracked the covers of mud on his knuckles, tapped his mud-rounded boot soles on the floorboard. “Damn! I need this hooptie!” He stared at the thick trees. “Brenda can’t keep walkin to work.”

  Her feet were swollen so her ankles lined up straight with her narrow calves. She winced when the baby kicked. He’d walk into the bedroom, her back to him, and stare at her body quilted with fat. She kept herself covered all the time now, and he saw the bulges at her sides, where her back used to narrow and curve to her behind; the round pillows erased her whole silhouette, even from the rear.

  She whirled around and said, “Don’t stare. Okay?”

  “Brenda,” he said, “I just look at you cause I miss you.” He sat on the bed, but he couldn’t say it: Cause it ain’t no need for me to be here, takin up space, hangin around. And I can’t even make love.

  “I feel bad enough that we can’t do it anymore,” she said, starting to cry, and he let her wet his neck, his shirt. Her breasts were wide, hard-pressing his chest, and he couldn’t even touch them. Yeah, he thought, my love life ain’t what I thought it would be. Got this big bed, all this room, and can’t even get close to her. The guys at the fire station used to talk all that yang. Scott always said, “Who gives a shit about her brain? Show me her tits.” Fricke would shake his head. And they’d check me out. “Yeah, black guys are studly; they get it all the time,” Scott said. Neither of us fittin the form right now, huh, baby? he wanted to say to Brenda, but he was silent. Wait, I’m fittin one form. The brotha with no job.

  Gasanova gave him a ride. “You got time to cruise to Grayglen?” Darnell asked when Gas stopped on Picasso.

  “Yeah, homey, I don’t have to be at the Inn till lunch crowd.” Gasanova drove up the commuter road everyone used to come out of the hills and down to Rio Seco. He bobbed his back against the seat with the bass line, cruising slow. “That’s right, I’m boomin,” he said, smiling into the rearview mirror at the line of cars forming behind him. “Got my Alpines blastin, and I love to drive the speed limit in front of you.”

  Darnell laughed. The cars on this street, the men in Beemers and Broncos rushing to work, rushing home, always roared past as soon as they could. He saw the flash of a face turned toward them.

  “Oh, that’s right, I’m wearin a hat,” Gas said. “And I’m boomin—wait, did you see Colors and did you read about Crips and Bloods? What color was that hat—red or blue? Oh, see, I’m wearin the Angels hat, red and blue. What is this? He’s not bangin or slangin? Just a Westside nigga, plain boomin?”

  Darnell said, “You love to run your mouth.”

  “Man, I can ID you guys, too,” Gas went on. “There go a Grayglen mommy—minivan, blonde, she just dropped off the kids and now she goin to aerobics. Lunch. Don’t be late!” he called to the van.

  His speakers pounded even louder in the silence of the yard, with the two wet-raw holes in the grass. The woman said, “I’m so sorry,” peering over his shoulder at the truck.

  “Thanks,” Darnell said, and in the truck, he waved the check. “This brotha’s goin mobile, man! I’ma get me the El Camino tomorrow!”

  Gas shook his head. “Boring vehicle, man. But you a boring brotha now.”

  Darnell laced his hands behind his head. “Long as Brenda don’t think so, I’m set,” he said.

  He spent a few hours cleaning the cab, taking a toothbrush to the grimy seats and dashboard, and he brought home the car seat Brenda had picked out at Kmart. She was still at work; he stared at the car seat beside him, like a tiny recliner for an old man, leaning cool and padded.

  He was hosing down the ridged metal bed when Louis came into the apartment courtyard. Louis’s face was blank and careful, his eyes fixed on the spray of water and the channels sliding off the dropped gate, but Darnell saw the flat drops of sweat nearly joined at Louis’s hairline.

  “You look thirsty, brothaman,” Darnell said casually. “You stridin?”

  Louis nodded, raising his eyes for a moment. “Got a hooptie now, huh?” he said softly. “I heard the Spider got retired.” He passed behind Darnell to sit on the pebbled bottom stair, his long fingers gripping the rail. Darnell checked the street for Leon, but Louis said, “Just me, man.”

  “You need a soda?” Darnell said, turning off the hose.

  “Yeah,” Louis said. “But I need a ride.”

  Darnell brought two cans downstairs with him, and when Louis stood, his face was level with the balcony. He looked up at the door Darnell had closed. “Brenda still at work?” he asked.

  “I gotta pick her up in a couple hours,” Darnell said, getting into the El Camino. He smelled the hot Armor-All on the dashboard. Louis was silent when he started the engine, and Darnell thought, What I’m supposed to ask him? I ain’t seen him in all this time—ask him how’s business with Leon?

  “Where you goin?” he asked at the corner.

  “The riverbottom,” Louis said, looking straight at Darnell then. “By the pecans.”

  Darnell felt the warmth rise in his throat, the hard yellow shine on the polished windshield against his eyelids. The pecan grove was Louis’s secret place, where the riverbottom met the trees and hundreds of birds sheltered in the branches. Louis had always wandered there, and even when the other boys laughed, he told Darnell about the herons stalking irrigation ditches, the crows and hawks and owls in the groves. Darnell turned toward Pepper Avenue, and Louis said, “I can’t walk now—cause dudes seen me with Leon and they wanna act hard.”

  “I heard you ridin with him,” Darnell said. He stopped.

  Louis leaned back and lifted his knees slightly. “I hang out. I crash on his couch sometimes, eat over there.”

  “What happened with school?”

  “I didn’t feel like playin ball. So they said, ‘Then you don’t feel like goin to school.’” Louis kept his eyes on the glass. “You ain’t in the hills.”

  “I felt like workin. But they felt like cuttin the funds.” Darnell drove toward Treetown, listening to the engine, and when he saw the olive groves, he said, “Why you didn’t get a ride with Leon?”

  Louis breathed in hard; his nostrils widened, and the long fingers flexed on his leg. “His boy gets on my nerves. Vernon. He from LA, and always talkin yang about Rio Seco fulla country niggas, nothin to do.” He paused. “He always sayin ‘Birdman.’ Always sayin it, like he think it’s funny.”

  Darnell drove slowly past the orange trees heavy with fruit, then down the long, unmarked sandy road. “Leon the one started callin you that, way back when,” he said, when he reached the dead end. Across the field of fading wild oats was the pecan grove.

  He walked beside Louis along the faint-marked trail; no one had been through here for a while. The
pecans came ripe in fall. Louis was silent, and Darnell could hear their knees shake the seedheads on the oats. “Leon and them the ones started callin you Nature Boy,” Louis said suddenly, from behind him, and then they came out into the clearing.

  “Mountain Man,” Darnell said. “Leon always talked smack.”

  “Leon don’t want to see no nature,” Louis said, moving fast over the soft crushed leaves and pecan shells. “Leon want green long as it got dead presidents on it.” He didn’t smile, but Darnell nudged his elbow when he passed him to enter the grove.

  “But Leon could talk his way outta anything,” Darnell said, grinning. “And you couldn’t.” He stood, looking up into the curve-leafed branches, seeing the burst brown stars left behind by the pecans. They’d only ridden here once or twice, all of them together, because Donnie and Leon liked to stay closer to Treetown or the Westside. They would holler and argue, and Louis had to come here on his own. Darnell had had to find the sources of rising smoke alone, too. “Don’t nobody care about no damn fire,” Leon would say, astride his bike, and Donnie would yell, “And don’t nobody want to ride down there and look at birds. Both y’all stupid.”

  The branches were silent. No crows. Darnell watched Louis pace around in the far end of the grove, then work his way closer. It was four o’clock, and the sky was still gold through the tree trunks. Darnell knew that when the air turned silver with early evening the flock of crows would start to pass over Rio Seco, over the Westside, on their way to sleep in the riverbottom, usually here in the grove. Louis had told him a hundred times, while they were clearing the last of the trimmings their fathers had left in someone’s yard, while the chain saws snarled off the final branches, where the crows went.

  “You still watchin them?” he asked Louis now. Louis had slid his back down a pecan trunk, and his legs were bent, his long feet flat over the bent grass. He nodded, and in the tree’s shadow, his light skin looked almost gray. “Big as you are and them birds don’t see you?” Darnell said, without thinking.

  Louis drew one side of his mouth up hard and said, “Shit. All anybody see is big. Tall.” He breathed hard, stilled his face again. “Like a tree, okay? If you don’t move. Hummingbird pecked on my ring one time.” Darnell stared at the fingers splayed on Louis’s knees, at the red-stoned class ring Roscoe had bought. “Khaki,” Louis murmured. “You see my khakis? Birdwatchers wear khakis, jackets and all that shit. Bangers wear khakis, right? My boxers ain’t showin.” He looked up at Darnell. “You still chasin fires?”

  Darnell buried his thumbnails in his palms; the smell of the warm grass and drying stems rose around him. “I ain’t a free man like you, okay? I can’t cruise around all day. I didn’t quit—” He stopped. “Neither of us doin what we—”

  “What we supposed to be doin?” Louis said. His face was grayer, darker now, in the shade. “Ain’t no supposed-to for you, man. You ain’t six-seven. You ain’t ‘refusin to fulfill your talent’ every time some asshole seen your picture in the paper stop you on the street.” Louis stopped, breathing hard. “It’s about that time, homey. You didn’t never like all that noise.”

  Darnell knew he was talking about the flapping and hoarse cries that filled the branches when the flock descended on the grove. When people came to pick pecans, the crows shouted and dipped.

  “I didn’t like fire, neither,” Louis said. “Scared the shit out of me, man, that one time you showed me.” He looked away, toward the riverbottom where the water was hidden by the wide bank covered with brush and cane and cottonwoods. “I heard you was in a helicopter, up in the mountains,” he said. “Nacho told me.”

  Darnell tried to remember the Helitorch, to explain the only time he’d been in it. He’d been entranced by the liquid Alumagel, the fire loops, and the flight was lost to him—just the smell of damp air and chemicals and Fricke’s voice. He said, “I don’t think it was like a bird.”

  Louis only nodded, and Darnell turned to go back along the trail through the field.

  Brenda came slowly up the stairs after him, holding the rail hard, and Darnell turned at the top to watch her. Louis used to have a serious crush on her, he remembered. Brenda never talked yang to him about the birds; she always listened to him with her eyes steady, and her smile was wide, all her teeth showing, when she watched him play ball. Darnell would sit in the gym, pressed against her shoulder, jealous for a few minutes, but after the games, Brenda would watch Roscoe talking to Louis, and she’d say, “Nobody pays attention to him. Just basketball. I feel sorry for him.”

  Darnell didn’t tell her about the pecan grove, about where Louis slept at Leon’s. He only said, “I gave Louis a ride today. He’s doin okay.”

  She sat heavily on the couch and took off her shoes. “I’m glad he didn’t see me this big. I don’t like anybody seeing me like this. When I used to watch women on the street, and they walked all swayback, I’d be thinking, No, uh-uh, I’m never gonna look like that.”

  He said, “I’m seein you that big.” He leaned against the counter, watching her press fingers into her ankles.

  “You the reason I’m this big,” she said. “And this hungry.”

  After dinner, Brenda’s mother came with baby clothes, just appeared at the door with her arms around two bags, and then they sat in the living room like they’d seen each other only yesterday. Darnell knew her father was at work, but all Mrs. Batiste said was, “I ain’t studyin him,” and she folded T-shirts small as Kleenex squares.

  Darnell went to the bathroom to splash water on his face. Eighty degrees already on March 3rd—fire season gotta be hella early again this year, he thought, looking at the tiny opaque window above the shower. That’s how I’m still cuttin up the year. Hot and bone dry—no Helitorch this year. He remembered the paler grass today in the clearing. Fricke know who’s gettin called back by now. I got the hooptie—I could ride up there and see.

  He dried his face. No news is good news, right. Maybe. I ain’t goin up the mountain until I got a steady-freddy. I’m not goin up there and say I’m still lookin.

  The steady murmur of their voices came through the door. Brenda ain’t said much for days, but she got a lot to say to her mama. I don’t—No, Miz Batiste, I still don’t have a job. I drive around and look at buildings and lettuce and cans, just trip out.

  In the living room, he said, “I’ll be right back.”

  The buildings downtown glared with the low sun. The phone booth was hot and full of cigarette butts. Fricke answered. “Forty-two.” Darnell heard the cowboy guitars playing. “Hello? Yeah?” Fricke hung up.

  Brenda settled back in the car seat on Saturday afternoon. “You want to go to the lake? It’s so nice out. Maybe we could go to the movies.”

  “I have to bleed the brakes first, okay?” Darnell said.

  She smiled. “What, this car is diseased, too?”

  “Why you always talkin smack about my hoopties?” He loved to see her front teeth when she let her whole face open up and laugh.

  “You were always bleeding the brakes on the Spider,” she said. “Just hurry up and give this one a whole transfusion.” Then she was quiet until they pulled into his father’s driveway. “Everybody on the Westside is nosy, and when they see my stomach, I’ma have to hear about what I need to be eating, and why ain’t I bigger than this, and what you fittin to name that boy you carryin?”

  Darnell put his lips under her ear and smelled the baby powder below her neck. “Come on, don’t try to be evil, cause you ain’t good at it. I’ll only take an hour, and Mama’s in there cookin. Let her get excited, huh? She ain’t gon say nothin.” Brenda opened her eyes a little wider and pushed him out his door.

  Sophia and Paula were eating fish and cornbread, and they looked up happily at Brenda. Before Darnell could say anything, Sophia crowed, “My friend Detrice is in love with your brother.”

  Brenda smiled. “Yeah, James is a junior now, and all you little freshman girls think he somethin, huh?”

  Darnell reach
ed over Paula’s shoulder for cornbread. “I feel sorry for the brothas at Fairmount with both y’all there now. Double-barrel mouth, and I know how rough it is.”

  His mother came out of the kitchen, a plate of fried snapper in her hands. “Brenda,” she said, smiling. “Come on get you some lunch.”

  She didn’t say anything about eating for two. Darnell put his arm around her shoulders, so soft after Brenda’s small bones, and said, “Miz Batiste told me she sewin baby stuff. Now you have to call her up and argue about what you gon make.”

  His mother put a clean plate in front of Brenda and leaned against the wall. Her housecoat was dark blue velveteen, the kind she’d sewed for herself since Darnell was small, first tracing the nap and hearing that word: velveteen. Her skin was coppery against the Chinese collar; her earrings, which she put on first thing in the morning, swayed gold against her neck. “Can’t have too many baby clothes,” she said, and Darnell saw her blink and look out the window.

  You gotta take good care of her. That was what his mother had said that first morning he was off the mountain, when she’d seen his feet on the couch. She flicked his soles and laughed, but when he told her about the baby, she’d pressed her mouth tight, leaving a red lipstick ridge on her lips. “She probably scared, and she so small. You take care of her. Don’t let that baby go.”

  Brenda’s head was bent over her plate. Darnell saw his mother put her forefinger into the hollow behind her ear, rubbing slow, staring at his sisters. Their braids swung gently when they laughed. Don’t let that baby go. His mother saw the headstone: Antoine. The boy she’d lost before Darnell was born, the boy between his name. Darnell Antoine Tucker.

  He heard his father’s shouts from the yard. “Y’all bring that thing back Monday.” Darnell touched Brenda’s back and went outside.

  Nacho and Snooter were wheeling out the battery recharger. “You the ones let somebody steal my best dolly last month. Left it in the yard—gave it away.”

  Roscoe said, “They’re stealing hoses, trash cans. Anything for a smoke of poison.”