“What fire?” Darnell kept his spine deep in the cushion.
“Was a big fire in the riverbottom the other night—same night you come home so late. Brenda call me, cause she worry. I tell her who knows.” Mrs. Batiste put the Easter basket on the counter and stood in front of him. “Now I see you still got that itch, try to drown it, maybe try burn it out. You ain’t go to work today?”
“Ain’t no work,” he said. “Job over.” He stared up into the soft chin and flat cheeks, always flushed perfect with makeup, and the eyebrows like commas, dark and neat. Brenda’s eyebrows, he thought. But Charolette got mine.
“Then come on help me for a minute,” Mrs. Batiste said, putting the bottle in the kitchen. “You ain’t done this in a long time.”
She drove slowly and carefully like always, peering over the wheel, and Darnell felt the big bench seat covered with blue velour bounce slightly when they got to the cemetery. Shit, he thought. She bringin me here? She right—been a long time.
They drove off Olive Road, on the other side of downtown near where the freeway stretched over the riverbottom, in the deep, constant shade of Pedregal Hill, named in Spanish for the white rocks covering most of the small hill.
Darnell watched the newer graves, flat-shined squares in the last section closest to the street. He knew Mrs. Batiste was headed down the dirt road winding narrow through the cemetery, to the older part where the pepper and olive trunks surrounded weather-rounded headstones.
When his grandmother was still alive, she brought him here on November 1st, All Saints’ Day, on Christmas, and on Easter Sunday. His mother came then, before the girls were born, and they drove Mrs. Dauphine, who had no car. Here, Mrs. Batiste and Brenda would be waiting, near the row of small white stones.
Antoine James Tucker. Jadette Geneva Batiste. Samuel Pierre Dauphine. Darnell helped Mrs. Batiste carry the little hand shovel and the bucket. He walked over to the tap way down at the far end, and when the water spilled inside, the chalky-white mixture she would brush on the headstones frothed. He stood there, watching it settle a bit. His mother used to pack up a whole bag on Christmas: wrapped toys, tinsel, a tiny tree in a red-foil-lined pot. She and Darnell would arrange the things on his brother’s grave, while Mrs. Batiste and Brenda laid dolls, a tiny necklace, and each year new black patent shoes. Darnell was four or five; he only remembered Brenda as another pair of shiny, dark shoes that eventually gathered slivers of damp grass around the edges. Then Mrs. Batiste would sit her on a blanket.
GranaLene used to whitewash the headstones for all of them in the row, the people from Louisiana, even Mrs. Revelle, who had moved back to Bogalusa. Mr. Theodore Revelle. Darnell passed his grave. He came closer to Mrs. Batiste, bent over the grass, and near his brother’s stone he touched Zelene Marie Dupree. Taking the brush, he scrubbed the pitted stone around her name.
“You mama only come by on Memorial Day now, huh?” Mrs. Batiste said softly, breathing hard from the work.
“Yeah.” Darnell’s father, and all the Oklahoma people, had a big Memorial Day party in Rancheria Park, nearby, and then people visited graves and brought flowers.
“Your daddy never liked us comin here,” she said. “Didn’t like Catholic, either.”
“He and GranaLene used to argue about it,” Darnell said, watching her put tiny foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies on Samuel Dauphine’s grave.
She saw his eyes, and said, “Miz Dauphine so old now, don’t have much money, so I do hers for her.” She paused. “Her boy was only two month—but she was too old then to have a baby.”
He watched her go next to his brother’s grave, and he thought of the evenings here with GranaLene, when his mother would sit silently and GranaLene would say to him, “That who your middle name for. Antoine. So she don’t lose all of him. Oh, but he gone.” GranaLene would pause and stare at Darnell. “Mama can’t think like that, no, and she can’t think on the other one go from her while you still restin inside.”
She knew his father hated her to talk like that, about what she thought was a twin. “Sometime twin call from the other side for they brother or sister to join em,” she would say, holding him tight to her smoky-smelling dress, the skin too soft, like bruised peaches shifting under their velvet. Darnell would hold his breath and wait. “Don’t let nobody call you to go early, you gotta be careful, cause spirit want a beautiful boy like you. Don’t listen.”
“Darnell,” Mrs. Batiste said sharply. “Bring me that.” He carried the brush to her, and she started on her daughter’s grave last. “I know you rememberin, now,” she said. “You go to that fire the other night?”
“No,” he said, his chest full of the whitewash smell and the pepper branches swaying slightly, the afternoon already dark here. “I might as well walk right into some flames,” he said, “might as well go down there, cause I was busy gettin dead anyway. Might as well get it over with.” He walked to the next row, where the stones were dark gray, veined on the blank backs.
“Yeah,” Mrs. Batiste said. “Only men choose to die. Do it to they own self.” She knelt on newspaper, didn’t look up from what she was doing, but she spoke clearly. “Women do that—drink to death or so—they not truly women.”
Darnell pulled his shoulders back hard, squared his collarbone. “Women drink. They smoke rock. They die, too.” He saw the zombies, strawberries, on their porches.
But she went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “A man see a fight, he know he gon die, but he say somethin, the right thing to start, he pull out his knife. He buy a gun.” She paused, brushed grass from her hand, her hair shaking dark. “Somebody else kill a woman. A man kill her. Or he die and she got kids to feed, and she get old too quick.” She looked up at him now, her lips set square, her chest rising hard with breath.
“Your husband ain’t dead,” Darnell said, folding his arms.
“Oh, but that don’t mean he ain’t try,” she said. “In Louisiana, he try whole lotta time. And when we first come here, when he get out the service, he looked for fights in Gray Hollow. Drink every night at the bar—that courtin death.”
“He ain’t dead,” Darnell said.
She let her brows rise slow and her eyelids drop halfway, just like Brenda, and said, “I whup him in my own way.” Then she dropped back onto her palms on the grave, to pull a dandelion from close to the stone, and he couldn’t see her until she stood up to get the last basket. “My first baby,” she said, and red suffused her pale face like a nectarine. “Baby girl. We didn’t have no money for a good crib, and she was sleep. It broke in the night, but it didn’t make no noise, just slid on down and push her so she can’t breathe. My first baby.” Light gathered in the corners of her eyes and slipped near her nose. “We live near your Granny Zelene, and she bring me here. Say you have to keep her like this. Not Etienne, not you father. They never come here. They don’t want to hear. And you ain’t want to listen.” She walked toward the faucet with her bucket, leaving him with the glinting foil eggs near his feet.
TO ASK
“WE FINISHED EARLY TONIGHT,” he said. Brenda was still sitting on the couch, folding washcloths into squares. Charolette was rearranging her own pile of dishtowels.
He went into the bathroom while Charolette ran to bang on the door and yell at him. He splashed water on his face, dried the beads that clung to his hair. He’d told Mrs. Batiste he’d walk home, and she frowned. “Bullets don’t choose people,” he’d said, but it didn’t come out right. “Just don’t tell Brenda I wasn’t at work, okay? Let me tell her.”
When he came back out, he lay on the living-room floor and let Charolette ride the dip in his back that she loved to squeeze until he bucked her off. “Ahee! Ahee!” she yelled, and Darnell said to Brenda, “Sound like she’s speakin Spanish.”
Brenda smiled and rested her elbows on her knees, fingers framing her face. “It took me a while to figure it out. But she points at the pictures of horsies in books, and she goes crazy when the Wells Fargo commercial comes on TV, the o
ne with the stagecoach. It means horsie.”
He bucked Charolette off gently and she screamed with laughter before she raked her fingers across his shirt to climb back on. But he caught her on his chest and said, “What kinda first word is that? I thought you were supposed to start off with ‘Mama.’”
“Ahee!” she shouted, burying her fingers in his hair.
Brenda said, “She says ‘Daddy.’ Pissed me off—I spend all the time with her, and she says ‘Daddy.’ Somebody at work told me ‘Daddy’ is easier to say than ‘Mama.’” She poked Darnell’s leg with her toe. “She calls you, and you haven’t even been home. It’s nice to see you.”
Darnell swallowed through the webbing in his chest. “Hey, Daddy’s supposed to be gone, supposed to be makin that dinero, right?” He turned over with the pushing of Charolette’s tiny palms.
For three weeks, he had taken Brenda to work and Charolette to his mother’s. He worked with his father sometimes; other days the men were already gone, and he was glad he didn’t have to keep his face right around his father. When he left, Charolette would cry and cry, pushing so hard at his mother’s chest that her hand sank into the soft front. His mother had said, “She want to be with you all day. You must show her a good time when y’all drivin around.”
“Later, babygirl,” he’d said, watching her tears drip down with her spit to leave a tiny puddle on the cement slab by the clothesline. Now he’d drop the car at Brenda’s job, after he’d put in a few applications.
Driving down the street, he thought, I wouldn’t mind hangin with her all day, but I can already hear Pops and Victor. Women’s work. Oh, yeah.
He saw Leon parking the Bronco in front of his mother’s. “What up?” called Leon, getting out. “I been lookin for you, but you been hidin out.”
“Just workin,” Darnell said.
“Shit,” Leon spat into the street. “Baby bruh told me about Terracina. You need a hooptie, brotha.” He leaned into the window. “So that’s why I was lookin for you. You want to do that?”
“Why you want me to do it?” Darnell said. “You settin me up for somethin?”
“Shit,” Leon frowned. “You trippin or what?”
“No, man, but I was gone awhile, I came back, and you ain’t even hardly seen me.”
Leon said, “Look, Darnell, we hung out a long time ago. But you were smart way back then. Donnie and them never had no brains. You, you hear somethin once and you never forget it, right? Ain’t too many smart brothas left. Half of em been done smoked their parts—remember when we learned the parts of the brain? Cortex and some others.”
“Cerebrum, cerebellum,” Darnell said.
Leon smiled, his teeth small and perfect. “See? You the smartest one outta all of us.”
Darnell stared ahead to the avenue. Yeah, I can name you all the plants that grow after a fire, he thought. I can see where to torch trails. Name you the birds that’ll move seeds. Birds. He saw Louis, neck arched, and said to Leon, “Louis was just as smart.” He’d wanted to visit Louis, to tell him about Roscoe, but he’d been afraid to know what Louis had done.
“Shit,” Leon said, pushing himself off the window. “Louis act crazy and never even smoked no product.”
“So I ain’t interested in doin whatever he was doin for you.”
Leon propped his elbows again. “He wasn’t doin nothin,” he said. “Go see his ass out there in Chino and ask him, man.” He glanced down the street again and said, “Look, Darnell, this don’t have nothin to do with rock or the street.” Darnell held the steering wheel tight. “My man need somebody to make a run, one day is all. He need somebody to figure out the travel, and I told him you been all over fightin fires. I heard you been in a damn helicopter.” He smiled. “See, Vernon and Mortrice and them, they don’t even know where San Diego is. Vernon messed up his last errand big time.”
“I ain’t into carryin product,” Darnell said, putting the car in gear.
Leon smiled harder. “Neither am I, anymore. You movin clothes, man. Look, meet me at Del Taco at ten, man. You ain’t gotta promise nothin. But it’s on me to get somebody good.” He lifted his fingers from the door. “He payin five hundred for one day. Unless you trimmin money trees with your dad, you can’t laugh at that.”
When he and Leon pulled down the long driveway of the house in the historic district, Darnell recognized the bunya-bunya trees. A few grew near the county courthouse, and they made huge pine cones that hit pedestrians on the head. This guy had called Darnell’s father to trim his two bunyas right away; he remembered it from when he was twelve or thirteen.
Darnell stood near the fence, listening to the dog pace, the wide-chested growls sending cold sweat through his scalp. Leon said, “Rottweiler, man, he gotta put him away.” Steps crunched on dead leaves and returned to the house. Leon pulled open the gate. The rest of the trees were huge, gloomy ash and ancient jacaranda. Darnell remembered how dark the house and yard had been, private and shaded. “Let’s go, man,” Leon said, tapping once on the back door, where Darnell had stood waiting with his father for the check. And the same face appeared in the window, holding back the lace curtain, smiling when he saw them.
He wasn’t sure where to look. With Fricke and the others it had taken a long time before he knew enough about them to look straight into their faces. His father always said, Look too hard in their faces, they get nervous. But look away all the time, you’re lying. Darnell was young, and he was never sure how to talk to the older white ladies, the men, the people who watched them trimming and asked questions while they wrote a check.
This dude used to Leon. Vernon, too. Come on. Chill, look around like it ain’t no big deal. Darnell saw the man sit deep in his leather couch; the huge living room was dark, with mahogany-paneled walls and heavy drapes. A wide-screen TV flashed colors on the walls, and the consultant watched Darnell. “I love MTV,” he said. “Each video is like a little movie, and you can watch a hundred of them in a hell of a short time. Some of them are riveting, and the bad ones are much funnier than sitcoms. Faster, too.” He sat with his knees wide, palms over the round bones that poked through his khakis.
Darnell glanced at the consultant. To consult—to ask, to inquire. Like the guys hired by the county. He was afraid to inquire why the man called himself that. He’d only said, “Darnell, right? I’m a consultant for several entities, and Leon tells me you might be interested in a part-time position.”
All the right words—the same words he heard in the personnel offices. But this man said them like a joke. Darnell nodded now, took a sip of the mineral water the consultant had offered him. Leon drank a Seagram’s Wine Cooler, but Darnell didn’t want any alcohol.
I can’t be drinkin no more, anyway, he thought. Makes me trip too much. He blinked. You trippin now, just like Pops says. Thinkin about the wrong thing. He looked at the consultant, at his yellow-gray teeth, square in his tanned face. His eyes were not as blue as Fricke’s. “Well, Darnell, the word is ‘peripatetic.’ Do you know what it means?”
Darnell looked at Leon, remembering Brother Lobo. “Yeah. Travels around a lot. A great deal.” Leon smiled and turned toward the TV again, and Darnell could tell he was glad the consultant was surprised.
“Good. Are you ready to fulfill the definition?” the man said, his brows pale-bristled. “Jeans. I have some jeans to deliver.”
Darnell waited, tried to look relaxed. He looked right into the man’s eyes. Some famous actor—that’s who he looked like. Square ridges of heavy skin starting to fall slightly, nudging inside the eyebrows, at the corners of the mouth, under the neck. Robert Redford. “Jeans,” Darnell said.
“I need a—I guess it would be an odd-job man,” the consultant said. “And Leon tells me that’s what you’re doing right now.” When Darnell frowned, the man went on. “But you used to be a firefighter, up in the San Jacinto Mountains, right?”
“Yeah.” Darnell picked up the glass of mineral water, but at the metallic smell he put it back down.
>
“I don’t see how you can stay down here after that,” the man said. “I used to have a cabin up in the Garner Valley—you know where that is?”
Darnell nodded. He and Fricke had gone out there a couple of times. “I used to have some Matilja poppies up there,” the man said. “You know them?”
Darnell smiled, flared his fingers to stretch them. “Yeah, like a bunch of fried eggs noddin in the sun,” he said, and then stopped, embarrassed, when Leon shifted impatiently by the TV. Darnell saw the huge, flat flowers, white petals with a large yellow center.
“I have to get them at the nursery here, because you can’t start them from seed,” the man said.
Yeah, Darnell thought, they need fire, too. They only germinate off ashes and heat. He stayed still. He’d forgotten for a second why he’d come, thought he was sitting at the station, around the table with Fricke telling him something. He said as evenly as he could, “Look, man, we here to talk about poppies?”
The man smiled wide. “Yeah, I guess we are. A poppy product, sort of. Did you know there are hundreds of Hmong tribesmen down there in Banning? You had to drive through there on your way home?”
Darnell shook his head. The consultant’s mouth was straight, and the ridges of skin nudged harder toward his chin. “You know the way, though. It’s so rare that I get to talk to someone intelligent. Leon told me you were quick.”
Leon said, “I don’t play. Not after Birdman.”
“Birdman is a strange one,” the man said, his knees bobbing gently now. “What does Vernon say? Mental—he cost me money. He cost Leon money.” He paused. “Leon brought you here. If you fuck up, it’s Leon’s problem. Immediately.” He smiled.
Darnell let his chest rise slowly. “Yeah. Mine, too.” He looked at the dark blue eyes. “Keep talkin money.”
The consultant said, “Yeah. Leon told you. You’ll be gone a few hours. Rented car, okay? Mountain scenery—you’re going up north.” He grinned. “But payment’s when you get back. Hey, you might like that landscape and bail, so we’ll check you on this one, and then we can talk about future jobs.”
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights Page 20
