Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  “Say, man, lemme talk to Donnie,” Darnell said, this voice thin as wire curling into his ear.

  “Donnie has decided to pursue,” the man continued, and Darnell gripped the receiver tight, rubbed the circle on his ear in anger.

  “Yeah, look—you gon represent me when I’m in my hooptie at night? You gon speak for me when I get pulled over for bein under the influence? Look like PCP, sergeant… don’t it always?” Darnell knew the voice didn’t understand him. “Give Donnie back the phone, okay?”

  Donnie’s voice was faded-soft. “D., man, we need to get ours, man.”

  “You get yours, Donnie,” Darnell said, bending close to the phone. “I don’t want no drama.”

  He heard the sewing machine clacking. His mother used to sew at the kitchen table, when he was small, and her radio played the Supremes.

  The trash truck rumbled down the street. Darnell heard somebody talking loud in Spanish in the courtyard. Itchin, man, you start itchin. That’s what Ramon Morones used to tell Darnell about getting high. Ramon would stand around at Jackson Park, selling stolen meat from Lucky’s, shaking his head and saying, “Man, you just start itchin and then your whole body kinda relaxes, you know? Your skin just tingles and shit, like you got a buncha fingers on you. Shit, ese, I can’t tell you unless you already did it.” Ramon was into brown-tar heroin from Mexico, the stuff that they sold down in Terracina.

  Buyin some itch. Darnell pressed his palms over the cloth, tried to force the ants to move somewhere else, but they just went deeper, by his bone, to wait. Mi vida loca, man—Ramon’s favorite saying. My crazy life. Man, I ain’t into gettin high, but I have to move. I gotta get somethin.

  He pulled on his jeans over the thick layers of cloth Mrs. Batiste had wrapped at his calf. Standing made the blood fall into his legs, and he waited until the room stopped tilting. The clacking paused, and he knew she heard him.

  She stayed at the table. “You don’t need to be goin nowhere now,” she said, biting at a thread taut between her knuckles. “Walkin around in here okay.”

  Darnell shook his head. “I need to get some air.”

  She smiled. “If you gon go smell some Westside air, I drive you there. Brenda got the car at work and you ain’t walkin all that way.”

  In her spotless Buick, Darnell kept his leg slanted off the long seat and smelled Armor-All. “How long you had this car now, ten years?” he asked.

  “Eleven. Etienne keep it up. He like that.”

  Darnell watched the holiday banners flapping from the streetlights on Third Avenue downtown, until Mrs. Batiste turned and headed for the Westside. “Ain’t no need to even look for a job till New Year’s is over. I messed up Brenda’s first Christmas with Charolette big time.” Mrs. Batiste leaned forward slightly, concentrating over the big hood with her small self. “Why you didn’t argue with me about goin out?”

  She didn’t look over at him. “You hardhead as your daddy. And you gon get yours, now, payback comin. Your daughter got a head like cement, too.” She smiled, her lips nearly touching the steering wheel.

  His father and Roscoe were cutting wood in the front yard. Darnell saw Mr. Lanier’s big ’49 Ford truck, the hood still shaking because he’d left the motor running like he always did. Mr. Lanier raised pigs, trading the meat for wood with Darnell’s father. He and Roscoe threw bundles of cut wood, eucalyptus tied with cord, into the truckbed.

  When they saw Mrs. Batiste, they all stopped. She pushed the emergency brake down carefully, took off her seat belt, and Darnell went around to open her door. But his father was already there.

  “Geneva,” his father said. “You given up on this boy and brought him here so we can put him out his misery?”

  Mrs. Batiste folded her arms and said, “Roscoe. Lanier. John.” She never called Darnell’s father Red Man like everyone else.

  Now they watched Darnell walk. He tried to bend the leg right, went straight over to the eucalyptus branches they were working on. “Darnell,” Mrs. Batiste said.

  “He all right,” his father said. “He need to do some work, been layin up there in bed like a king. He gon forget how to work.”

  “He don’t have the stitches out yet,” she said. “He just get over the fever.”

  Darnell smelled the oil in the cut wood and steadied himself against the chain-link fence. “See, she the angel of mercy that saved him,” said Mr. Lanier. “He need to listen to her, not you.”

  Darnell looked at his father’s frown, the straight brows drawn together over the big nose, the way his father’s long-fingered hands dangled in the air, gnarled, big-knuckled. His head spun, and he saw the fresh scratches on his father’s forearms, the black-dried blood lines.

  Roscoe said, “She knows best, Red Man,” and Mrs. Batiste led Darnell to one of the folding chairs in the driveway. Darnell thought again of Roscoe’s voice when he hollered at Louis.

  “I’m gon visit with your mama,” she said softly. “I didn’t come to argue.”

  Darnell sat on the hard metal, his leg pounding with blood, and his father started to throw wood on the truck again with Mr. Lanier. He heard the screen door and his mother came out to touch his shoulder. “Why you up?” she cried. “You suppose to be restin still. If you were at the hospital, you’d be in bed.”

  His father yelled, “Bed rest only kill people. You see people retire and then they die. He need to get up here and work that leg. Work, period.”

  His mother yelled back, “You ain’t hardly no doctor! Look at your finger if you got a short memory!” They all looked at the short middle finger on his left hand for a second, and then Mrs. Batiste murmured, “Always so hard.”

  His father could have saved the last joint on the finger if he’d gone to the hospital, but he refused. Darnell stood up and walked near the fence, and Roscoe said, “But Red Man did that to himself.”

  Darnell stopped, looked away from them, down Pablo. He didn’t want them to start talking about the cops, about Donnie or the dog or anything else. The women were silent, the men chunked wood on top of wood, and Darnell said, “I’ma go inside for a minute.”

  He stopped at the doorway of his mother’s room. Charolette lay on her pallet, scalp glittering in hot sleep. He headed for the back room and took the bottle of Canadian Club out of the small cupboard his father had attached to the wall. He poured a plastic cup half full and drank it down quickly. He steadied himself at the table, poured more, drank it. Fricke and them up there gettin looped at night, playin cards. Toe up. He lifted his foot, the bad leg. Daddy and them down here playin bones. He stared at the grains in the table, worn faint. Snooter, Mr. King, Roscoe—they would all be different around him now, want to talk about it, and how the hell could he explain? They’d say Donnie was a fool, or the cops were wrong; they’d talk about the K-9 painted on cars, the dogs’ faces surprising you when you pulled up at a red light and stared out at teeth and tongue against the glass. They’d talk about suing.

  One more drink. His head was warm, his ears felt long-lobed, and his stomach full of heat. He couldn’t feel his legs. He walked carefully back through the sideyard and stopped to rest, his hand on the Spider’s thick-dusted hood. Hey, baby. You miss me? You miss Brenda’s ass in your seat? I do, man, I miss it big time. He touched the dirty passenger window. Yeah, the sun would shine through there, and she’d be wearin one a them camisoles. Nipples movin tiny in the cold.

  Her neck, her collarbone, the pools of dark on either side where the hollows in her skin dipped above the bone. Clavicle. She had one hell of a clavicle. And the gold expanse of skin above her breasts, sheened with sweat when she leaned against the car door and he brought his lips close.

  Yeah, now I’m really toe up. Half drunk, horny, fulla tobacco smoke and some kinda voodoo, strings tied on me and shit. He walked to the front, smiled carefully at his mother and Mrs. Batiste. “I guess I better get on back,” he said, standing far from them.

  His father said, “Plenty for you to do around here. Let Mrs. Bati
ste get on back to her work and I’ll take you home later.” He dangled a bundle of wood with one hand. Roscoe held the chain saw.

  Mr. Lanier said, “Make sure you get healed in your heart and your head, too, son, not just in the leg.” His elbow rested on the truck door, and he leaned out toward Darnell.

  See, that’s just the kinda shit I don’t want to hear. Ain’t nothin wrong with my head. Y’all trippin. All I got is some stitches. And the only thing I need to be healin is my dick. He smiled, still careful. “I want to get back home and clean up for Brenda.”

  He kept his face turned to the open window when he exhaled. Mrs. Batiste said only, “Your mama get a lot of orders for curtains lately.” Darnell could tell that she didn’t want to mention his father.

  When she pulled into the courtyard, he had the door part open, saying, “You don’t need to come back up. It’s cool—I’ma rest up, so I can eat with Brenda and Charolette at the table.” He was already outside, letting the whiskey blow off his words, and she held the steering wheel tight.

  “If you need somethin to drink, take that itch away, ask me next time,” she said. “I bring you somethin day after tomorrow.” She didn’t look at him, just backed out slowly, her face lifted to the rearview mirror.

  The itch raced, burst under his skin like the silent fireworks that were always his favorite, the ones that sent sparkles flying outward wildly but didn’t make a sound. He scissored his legs in the sheets and then walked around the apartment, the liquor draining down to his feet, leaving his head large and empty. The cuts seemed to follow him when he walked, the ants swarming until he thought he would scream. He grabbed his wallet and walked down the street to the liquor store, where he usually picked up milk at night.

  The Canadian Club beside him, he lay in bed. Damn, first alcohol I bought for myself since I turned twenty-one. I could always get a taste of Pops’ if I wanted some. He swigged the liquor. The heat traveled down to his leg again, drowned the ants, bathed his leg in numbness.

  When he woke, the room was dark, the door was closed. He stood slowly, his smell rising to his nose. Serious funk, man—I need to take a shower, and Miz Batiste say I can’t get these stitches wet. He put his palms on the door, opened it.

  The front room was ghostly gray. He touched hardened macaroni curves on the table by the high chair. Brenda and Charolette breathed on the couch; he stood over them. Charolette was tucked between Brenda’s arm and side, her open lips at Brenda’s shoulder. Darnell slid his fingers under her stomach and pulled her up carefully; she curled onto his shoulder now, and he went into the bedroom, laid her in the crib that was always empty.

  Brenda was propped up on the couch when he came back, touching her eyes with her knuckles. “How you feel?” she murmured. He draped himself on her, kissed her neck, the padded collarbone, and she put the heels of her hands at his armpits. “You been drinking? I can smell it coming off you.”

  “I can smell you, too,” he said, moving against her. “Come on.” He pulled at her clothes, the wall tight by his elbow, steadying his body on hers, on the narrow couch. Like old times, instead of the bed, when we only had the couch. You gotta stay tight-packed when you ain’t got no room. He sank onto her, felt the warmth and wetness rise around him, but her fingers didn’t pull him down by his neck, gripping the tiny hairs at the base of his head. Her heels weren’t locked around his back, or pushing at his calves. He felt nothing but cool air on his body, his shoulders bare, his leg crawling in the empty space, like he was hanging on a cord from the ceiling.

  When the phone rang, Darnell started, bolted straight up, thinking it was a night fire call. He felt the hard floor under his butt. The ringing cut through the dark again, and he crawled to pick up the phone. Brenda wasn’t on the couch. He fell onto the cushion, said, “What?”

  Donnie said, “Darnell, man. Don’t cuss me out. I know it’s early.”

  “What, man, what you want?” The living-room window was misted silver, but the sky was turning purple.

  “I thought you might be workin a job with your pops, thought I’d miss you,” Donnie said. Then he was silent.

  “What, man? I was sleep.” Darnell knew from the way Donnie’s voice was low and cautious, not his usual smack-talking rush, what he wanted to do. He had called twice before like this. He wanted to go over every detail again, try to figure out what had happened, try to stop that moment when he spun and flashed.

  “How’s your leg, man?” Donnie began. Darnell rubbed his eyebrows, and Donnie said, “You remember when we were little, when they got that first K-9 unit, remember how we used to think that was Rin Tin Tin back there and shit?”

  This was how he started; then he would start asking Darnell the questions about where and how long and then what. Darnell heard him breathing. “I can’t talk right now, Donnie, man, I gotta get ready. I’m supposed to meet my dad, man, I overslept. Thanks for wakin me up, cause you know how he is when somebody late and shit. I’ll check, all right?”

  Donnie pushed air crackles into the receiver. “Yeah, homey, call me, okay? I need to get this straight, for when I gotta tell it.”

  “Cool,” Darnell said, the phone already dropping from his hand. He rested his head against the wall, the cold hard on his skull.

  Brenda came from the bedroom, pulling on her robe over her nakedness. He saw the soft mound of her belly for a second, the half-moon of her breast before she tied the sash. “What’s wrong?” she murmured. “Who called?”

  “Why it gotta be somethin wrong?” he said, moving over when she sat next to him.

  “Cause every time the phone ring lately, it’s bad news,” she said, staring at him.

  “Just Donnie,” he said.

  “What did he want? Did he find you guys a new job?”

  Darnell smiled. “Yeah, right. Donnie ain’t even lookin now; he’s into this lawsuit.”

  She looked into the kitchen, so he could barely hear her. “You still don’t want to do it?”

  “It’s no need to even bring it up, okay?”

  She stood at the counter. “Darnell, what happened was wrong. They were wrong. Maybe you could get some money. It’ll still be wrong, but…”

  “But I’ll still be me,” he said, turning to face her. “Well, yeah, baby, let’s have our lawyer contact their lawyer.” He made his voice businesslike. “And then I can wait for a year to hear somethin? While every cop in Rio Seco hates me, and I still ain’t got a job cause I’m supposed to be sufferin whatever kinda anguish? Brenda, the only people can wait around for a suit can already feed themselves or they ain’t got nobody to feed. They got the luxury, okay?” He breathed in hard. “If I had leisure time, I’d tried for five weeks of fire academy, okay? Then I wouldn’t even be here,” he murmured.

  “Oh,” Brenda said. “Then you wouldn’t be here with me and the baby.” Her voice was dull, her hands flat on the counter.

  “No! I wouldn’t be sittin here with my leg fucked up. I’d have a job.”

  “And you wouldn’t be here,” she said, in the same tone. “You’d be in the mountains. Or in another city.”

  He walked toward her. “And you’d be there, too,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” Brenda said when he leaned on the counter beside her.

  “Don’t even bring that up,” he said, and she touched the few straggly hairs on his breastbone.

  “That’s where we just started, a few minutes ago,” she whispered. She kept her fingers on his skin, and he felt himself stiffen under the blanket he’d wrapped around his waist when Donnie called. The traces of her from last night, dried now on him, were like a thin web that broke on his tender skin.

  “You always said the Indian in you was why you didn’t have any hair on your face or your chest,” she said. “Must be why you can’t drink, either.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And the whole world gon be partyin tonight for New Year’s. Look, so far I messed up our first Christmas together and our first anniversary. What you want to do tonig
ht?”

  Her hand stopped. “I have to work today,” she said. She tried to move the blanket to see the cuts on his leg. “And you can’t dance now, anyway.”

  “I didn’t have no trouble movin around last night,” he said, pressing close to her to keep her hands away from the wound.

  “No, you didn’t,” she said, into his chest. But he knew she’d move away in a minute to get ready for work. Here we go again, he thought. She goin, I ain’t. Unemployed—all non-void. “Mama’s coming to take your stitches out tomorrow, too,” she said. “I wish you’d go to the hospital.”

  “Gettin stitches out ain’t no big deal,” he said, bringing his hand to his eyelid, where someone had busted him open with a two-by-four in a junior high fight. Probably one of the Thompsons. He remembered the blood, remembered being just as scared to get the stitches out as when they were being sewed into his skin. “It’s a minor procedure,” the doctor had said to his mother.

  Procedure. You didn’t follow procedure. Minor procedure. He moved away, but Brenda touched the tiny zipper—that was what she’d always said it looked like, the thin scar just under his brow. She’d always whispered into his forehead right there, when they stood on her father’s steps. “Be careful driving home,” she used to say, and he would pull her hard against him, her lips at the corner of his eye. Here, in the kitchen, she was small, reaching up to trace the scar, and then they heard the baby.

  When he went into the bedroom to get his pants, all he could see was the back of Charolette’s head and the tiny hand roving from Brenda’s exposed neck to her bare shoulder.

  “Look at her, just slidin off your chest,” his mother said when she saw them, and she hung up the last sheet on the clothesline in the back.

  Darnell hiked Charolette back up and felt her fingers latch onto his ear again. “Nothin for her to hold on to,” he said.

  “Your daddy and them already left,” his mother said. Darnell let Charolette hold the clothesline pole. “She crawlin so good now, tryin to stand up.” She put Charolette in the empty laundry basket and draped her arms around the rim. Charolette laughed, eyes disappearing into her cheeks. “And you shouldn’t be tryin to work yet,” his mother said. “Your stitches ain’t out.”