Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  “Couldn’t have been as nerve-racking as fighting fires,” the consultant said, and Darnell frowned. He smelled the cigarillo smoke rising from the ashtray—that’s where Rob got it. Smoke. No. Darnell glanced at Leon in the other chair; he raised his chin a half inch. The consultant said, “Judgment calls, quick decisions—just like fire-fighting.” He paused. “Those jeans are really hot in that flower-power-revival crowd. My postal connection might get some more soon.” He smiled at Darnell. “Weird to see all those Hmong just down the mountain, huh? Did you know they’re totally different from the regular Laotians?”

  “You learn all that in Vietnam?” Darnell said without thinking, glancing at the Spandex-shimmered breasts on the dancers.

  The consultant’s voice went up. “Who told you that?”

  Leon’s face froze, and Darnell’s back prickled cold. Pops, he thought. Pops was talkin to this dude, about bein a pilot in Nam. The man stared, waiting. “I just guessed,” Darnell said, shrugging. This dude don’t remember no tree trimmers—don’t nobody actually see you when you out there workin.

  Leon spoke up. “Darnell ain’t stupid,” he said. “That’s why you wanted him.” He looked at Darnell. “How’s Rob?”

  So the consultant know about the sugar cane, Darnell thought. Think I’m just like Vernon—a delivery boy; wasn’t no need to tell me about the schedule change. Damn. He lifted his head. “Rob ain’t thrilled about the clientele. Neither was I.”

  “Hey, nobody likes working directly with pharmaceutically deprived individuals,” the consultant said.

  “Sprung assholes,” Leon said. “Everybody hate sprung assholes, except Vernon. He love strawberries.”

  Darnell tried to erase the image of Vernon smiling at the door, eyes narrowing when he held the gun tight. He looked straight at the consultant. “I’d rather take my chances with fire and rattlers than have some pharmaceutically deprived dude smoke me. Or some pharmaceutically drowned dude kick my ass.”

  The consultant’s eyes glowed red-rimmed blue. “You were Marcus Smith then. But you live in Rio Seco, on the Westside. Those things could happen to you at any minute. For free.”

  “Nothin’s free,” Leon said.

  Darnell smiled. “But I ain’t Marcus Smith.”

  “You’re going back to firefighting?” the consultant asked.

  Darnell shook his head. Leon said, “What you gon do for dinero, D.?”

  “I have plenty of odd jobs,” the consultant said.

  “I’ma do some landscaping work,” Darnell said, thinking of the mower, of Trent, of tomorrow.

  “Oh,” the consultant said, leaning back again. “You know, you need a license for that.”

  “Yeah,” Darnell said. His father and Roscoe always complained about the yearly fee.

  The consultant grinned, really enjoying himself now. “As long as you pay, the government doesn’t care what you do. Roofers, painters. Pilots.” He nodded at Darnell. “The market for pharmaceuticals isn’t any better. You have to pay tariffs, just like everything else. My shit isn’t any more dangerous than Halcion or Xanax or Prozac.” Darnell stared at his mouth—now he sounded like a combination of Fricke’s hard-clanging voice when he talked about government funding and Brother Lobo lecturing in the park.

  “Government assholes like those chemical drugs—legal narcotics, you know, college boys with labs and beakers and FDA approval. Same old country-club shit,” the consultant said, dreamily. “They don’t like messy farmer drugs. Poppies.” He looked at Darnell for participation.

  “Coca’s a leaf,” Darnell said. He saw the embers of rock pipes lighting.

  “You’re quick,” the man said, smiling. “Hey, you know how the Hmong grow their crops, right? Slash-and-burn farming. All those flames, all that ash really make the soil rich.” He squinted hard at Darnell. “You guys should really just let the forest burn—that’s the natural way.”

  Darnell stood up. This ain’t the station. This ain’t Fricke. He wondered where the riverbottom blaze had been; from the photo of the tree, he thought it was near Treetown. He focused his eyes back on the consultant’s heavy-lined face, the fifties in his hand.

  “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” the man said, smiling.

  In the Bronco, Leon said, “Why you get into all that palaver if you wasn’t gon do nothin?”

  Darnell shrugged. He knew he couldn’t explain Fricke to Leon. Leon hated most white people, and he said, “I don’t spend no longer in there than I have to. The man yang about anything. Stay up in there and watch cable all day, think he know everything. Always wantin to talk about Bobby Brown and Public Enemy. Palaver.” Leon’s sharp-trimmed hairline was minky black when he turned to look at Darnell. “And you wanna go back to manual labor and shit.”

  Darnell looked out the window at the Jack-in-the-Box, at the El Camino in the parking lot. “I need somethin steady, man, maybe get me some yards for every week. I don’t know.”

  “License.” Leon smiled. “Gas don’t have a license to cook. He could kill you with some bad meat loaf, cause he thinkin about Tamiko.” He smiled wider, like they were finding pennies in the fountain, and Darnell bit the inside of his lip, seeing them run the sidewalks, the gullies and drainpipes. Louis—Louis had sat here. Working. His chest flooded with cool, and he shook his head.

  “Damn, Leon, you makin me feel old,” he said.

  “Not as old as you gon be when you start workin with your pops,” Leon said. “Man, you a fool; just wait a while and you gon get tired a that.”

  “Homey, you don’t know me,” Darnell said, touching Leon’s palm. He stood in the parking lot. “Hey, like your baby brother just told me: the while has been waited.”

  Pine-sharp ammonia scent drifted down from the balcony. He lifted his face, saw the door open. Damn, it’s almost midnight, he thought. She ain’t sleep.

  She sat on the couch, staring at the window, the mop propped in the kitchen. The checkbook was open on the coffee table, and her fingers twisted a pen cap. She didn’t look up; her hair was glossy flat near her ears, and he saw her give a quick shudder, like she’d been crying.

  “Brenda?” he said, bending near her, and her face, when she raised it, was swollen, her lips twisted square like a mask. “You worried about the money? Look—” He dropped the bills on the table. All I was thinkin about was the Spider, he thought. This my paycheck, and I’m supposed to give it to my wife, like all the guys joke about.

  But her mouth went even wider, and her voice came out rubber-flat around her sobs. “You want to die—go on and do it away from me,” she said. “Take your gun and go, Darnell. I love you too much to see it.”

  He turned to where her eyes went, and he saw his jacket, the small silver-and-brown gun like a chocolate bar lying in foil. “I picked up your jacket to put it away, and I thought you forgot your wallet,” she said. “And Charolette coulda gone in there and found that! Darnell,” her voice gulped air. “I can’t live like this. I wish I hated you. I wish I could sit around with all the other women and talk about how it ain’t no big deal you’re gone. But I can’t see it—I can’t wait for them to bring you home.” She buried her head on her folded wrists.

  “Brenda,” he said, his fingers on her elbow, but she wouldn’t lift her face again. What can I say—it ain’t mine? Hella old line. He knelt, and Charolette’s voice came from the bedroom door, her palms pushing it open.

  “Daddy!” she yelled, and Brenda whipped her head around to look at Darnell, her eyes smeared with tears, her mouth a sharp crescent, tight now. Keeping his face away from Charolette, he grabbed the jacket and dropped the gun into the pocket.

  On the sidewalk, he heard Charolette’s clotted screams, high-pitched as an animal caught in burning chaparral, and then the door clicked shut.

  In the cold corridor between government buildings and banks and law offices, he passed windows and metal railings and garages. The street people were parked near doors with their shopping carts close; they lay in the landscaped a
reas, arms sprawled over their foreheads against the lights. In the winter, they had huddled here for warmth, old white women with street-sunned faces, ashy thin brothers, riverbottom-wrinkled men so dirty they were no color. The security guards looked past them unless they were noisy or on the property. Securing the lines, patrolling the boundary. Following procedure. He knew they watched him walk past, hands deep in his jacket pockets.

  Step to me, he thought. Bangers. Sprung dudes. Po-lice. Whoever. I’m strapped. The gun rubbed against his palm, and he took his hand out. Vernon’s property. Might not even have bullets. I ain’t checkin.

  Brothas don’t need no help—that’s what Lobo and the older men used to say when they read about the three suicides in Darnell’s last year of high school. All white kids, senior boys, faces he didn’t remember ever seeing in the huge streams of passing kids. Brothas don’t do that, Leon and them said.

  Cause we do it to each other, Louis said. Darnell rarely saw Louis then, by senior year. Louis and Donnie were athletes, hanging on the hill with the other jocks. Leon was running weed and pills in the parking lot; Gas was under the hood of someone’s car. And Darnell was off in the corner with Brenda.

  He saw the green of go arrows, the same green as Brenda’s letters and arrows on her computer, pointing him ahead in the last street before the buildings gave way to stucco apartment boxes. Like the one where they lived. Where Brenda live—I ain’t payin rent, I ain’t nothin but a guest. He walked faster, like he had somewhere to go. Was Brenda asleep now? Was Charolette curled into her ribs, calm, dreaming?

  Death wish. Same thing her mother said. Brenda think I want to go out like that. He walked down the incline to the cemetery’s gravel road. He’d always thought Brenda was scared. She was afraid of Marlene and most of the Westside girls, and she refused to let him park too close to the fires; she glanced at them nervously, the glow reflecting in her pupils. But she was tougher than he was now—going to work, taking care of Charolette, watching him. When I start trippin, I drink somethin nasty, drive around, act useless. She get upset, she clean the house. She never stop workin.

  He walked slowly along the line of headstones until he saw the faded glow of the ones Mrs. Batiste had whitewashed. The eggs and gifts were gone, but remnants of shiny green grass had gathered in the brownish blades of lawn, and the silk flowers were still bright.

  Here I am. Antoine. GranaLene. All the spirits she said were callin me. She said my twin was callin me. Sometimes twins only share one soul between them, his grandmother had whispered to him sometimes. You keep you soul tight about you. Don’t let it wander.

  He sat there for a long time, listening to the faint wind in the branches. This gotta be dangerous—I’m in the graveyard after midnight. If zombies want me, they can come on, too. I already called everybody else. Step to me.

  His brother’s headstone was nubbly-warm against his back. He hadn’t slept for days, and the leaves rubbing and turning made a whispery sound that echoed in his head. He let his chin dig into his chest until a stick high above him broke sharply and he jerked awake. Bird. He widened his eyes, moved his shoulders. GranaLene said your soul wander at night, when you dream.

  Pops always hated hearin that. He was always yellin, “If the boy work hard enough during the day, his soul be too damn tired to crawl.”

  He stood up and hunched his shoulders. Yeah, I know Pops could have me come along every day, keep gettin me these side jobs. But that’s less money for him and Roscoe. All the Samoans and Mexicans doin trees now, he got serious competition. He don’t need deadweight.

  He looked back at the headstones, stepped over the new glossy markers. Yeah, Moms and Pops want Sophia and Paula to go to college—that way they can run their mouths even better and faster, Pops always jokin. Have more to say. Pops don’t need to be feedin me, too.

  He tried to walk fast toward the Westside, to keep awake and moving. At the street that led to the bridge over the river, a voice came up behind him. Darnell wheeled around to see a Mexican man in worn-heeled boots and a straw cowboy hat. “Excuse—the freeway sixty is this way?”

  Darnell slipped his fingers off the gun. They’d fallen there without his thinking, noticing. He breathed hard. “Pretty far.”

  The man nodded. “How far?”

  “About three miles,” Darnell said, nodding down the avenue.

  The man smiled with one side of his face. “Oh—so not far.” He ducked his head in thanks and started walking. Darnell watched him for a minute and headed the other way.

  The fire at Jackson Park was only a smear of orange hanging below the barrel rim, and the cars were all dark, with men sleeping on the seats. Darnell saw two women peer out from one of the porches, and he looked away. Their faces slipped back into the darkness under the overhang. The domino table was pushed close to the pepper tree, and the chairs were all gone for the night, stored in the ancient wooden shed one of the men kept locked.

  He stood in the lit phone booth at the stone-walled store, the metal shutters blind over the windows. She answered the phone quickly, her voice thick with sleep.

  “Like high school, huh?” he whispered. “When I used to call you all the time and try to rap.”

  “You okay, Darnell?”

  “Brenda, I ain’t dead.” He stopped. What to say—wait for me? Tired rap. I’ll be home soon, baby? He heard her rough breathing in the receiver. “Sssh,” he said when she started to speak. “Don’t wake up babygirl.” He hung up and walked again.

  Crawling into the cab of the Chevy, he lay curled on his side to breathe in his father’s Tareyton smoke and sugared coffee and motor oil.

  When the wrought-iron screen clanged hollow, he sat up quick, trying to look fully awake. His father walked to the curb and looked at the slice of risen sun, and Darnell opened the door, set his shoulders casual. His father turned, eyes narrow, and then he nodded. “You finally ready to work, huh?” he said. Darnell threw his jacket into the Spider and went inside.

  His mother heard him in the kitchen and came in frowning. “I didn’t hear Brenda—she don’t want no breakfast?”

  He shook his head, and she looked at his face, his neck, his boots. He turned to reach for monkey bread on the counter, and his mother was in his face when he turned back, bumping the coffee cup against his chest, spilling a few drops to burn his wrist. “Brenda the best girl you ever find,” his mother said, dead quiet. “You best not mess up. Cause if you do, you ain’t comin back here. No. Uh-uh. I won’t let you get out of it that easy.” She glared at him and left the room.

  He hadn’t heard the Apache rumble up to the curb. Roscoe and his father were looking at the load of branches and refuse, and Darnell said, “You need some help? I see y’all didn’t make it to the dump yesterday.”

  “Get up in here,” Roscoe said, motioning with his head to the Apache’s cab, and Darnell climbed into the huge, high cave he’d always loved when he was small. The engine stuttered, and the truck shuddered up the back roads to the county landfill, where the bulldozers nudged the trash up into graded hills. Darnell looked for the shack near the edge of the dump, just over the county line, where an old man with skin dark as tires used to live. Now five or six trailers and shacks crowded the property, and Darnell had seen Mexican men combing the piles when no one was looking.

  A short line of trucks waited to be weighed. Darnell kept his eyes on the exhaust pipe in front and said, “You and Louis’s mom broke up before she died.”

  Roscoe nodded. “I wasn’t doing what she thought I should. I didn’t want to work a nine-to-five, every-day gig. I wanted to write poems.” He waited, knowing Darnell had heard the story. “You didn’t go home last night, right?”

  Darnell shook his head, watched the trucks move up. “Man, if I could get a nine-to-five, I wouldn’t even think about the mountains. I’d try. But I go to the damn offices, fill out the papers. A hundred other dudes in the waitin room and the parkin lot.”

  Roscoe frowned. “You never heard of the Depressi
on? Black folks didn’t even know it happened—your dad’s told you that one many times.” But he touched Darnell’s wrist. “But marriage is the same for every generation.” Darnell turned away again. “Yeah, it’s all about compromise. You don’t believe me. You think it’s about money and sex. Compromise. I couldn’t do it, even though we had Louis. But you need to think long and hard. When you go home, you have to bargain. And when you two start hollering, don’t forget you can’t really take spoken words back.” Roscoe gripped the steering wheel harder. “When your daughter gets older, you’re gonna see it’s the same with children. Compromise. When they’re little, it’s food, clothing, keeping them safe. Then they get grown, and you fight about different things.” He waited for Darnell to look at him. “I heard someone say you can only be friends with your kids once they get grown themselves. I can’t see that—Louis is gone from me.”

  Darnell put his laced fingers behind his neck. “I’ma go see him.”

  Roscoe set his lips. “What could you tell him now?”

  “I want to ask him somethin,” Darnell said. Roscoe held his eyes, and Darnell saw the tiny pieces of mica from the floating dust sparkling on Roscoe’s forehead. He thought of Charolette’s cheeks, the makeup sheen Brenda left there. “Roscoe. I can’t talk to Pops like this. And I’m grown. Damn, I got a kid.”

  Roscoe slanted his head and shrugged. “The parties involved are hardheaded. Your dad and I have known each other a long time. Maybe you need to have Brenda for your friend.”

  “You and Marietta Cook friends?”

  “Yeah. Never thought I’d say that about a woman.” Roscoe put the truck in gear. “Not in my life.”

  They pushed off the tight-stacked eucalyptus branches, the leaves and scrap cement and wrecked plastic slide from yards. Darnell swept out the ridged bed. On the way down, Roscoe took the lower road through the wealthy part of Hillgrove, where Darnell saw the historic houses with huge sloping lawns. He and his father had trimmed some trees here, when he was just eleven and learning to use the chain saw. He saw the porches shaded and cool, wrapped all the way around the houses, remembered the smell of sap in his father’s shirt, the wicker furniture while they waited for someone to answer the door. At one old yellow house, ivy hanging over the porch and roses thick beside the walkway, he saw three Mexican guys ripping out a huge circle of ivy on the lawn. They talked, chopped with machetes—big curve-bladed machetes that swung loose. Their radio blasted Mexican music, horns and swinging voices going so fast Darnell imagined them playing at 78 speed. He saw a shadow at the front screen, a bent gray-haired lady coming out to watch the men from the porch, and Roscoe pulled away from the stoplight.