Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  A panting breath came from the other side, from the cane stand, and he saw a flash of yellow eye. He swung to the right, pointing the gun at the small cavelike entrance to an animal run in the green, and a voice said, “Darnell.”

  It rang low from the arroyo path. “Darnell!” it came, sharper, like whenever his father called him twice and he hadn’t answered the first time.

  He lowered the gun between his shivering legs, and both hands, still gripping, scraped on the rough trunk at the little fingers. He pressed harder, feeling splinters when he rubbed slightly, rocking back and forth, and his father came around the bank, shoulders hunched in his workshirt, eyes darting around the narrow clearing.

  His father sat a few feet from him on the trunk, and Darnell kept his eyes on the bark. Old pepper tree, gnarled, deep-cracked. “What you huntin?” his father said, staring off into the cane.

  “Nothin,” Darnell said. He looked sideways at his father’s hooked Indian nose, the jaw working. His father nodded.

  “Not much down here worth killin,” his father said. “Raccoons and possum and rabbit, but you don’t need to get none a that. You can buy you a whole chicken at the store. Frozen rabbit, already cut up.”

  Darnell chewed at the inside of his lip, thinking, Here come another Oklahoma story.

  But his father didn’t frown. His face raised up to the top of the cottonwoods further down, and he said, “Game everywhere when I was a boy. Eighty acres, on my uncle’s place. We hunted all the time. And we went all up in the woods. Everything belong to the government out here. You gotta have a permit to catch one fish. Rangers out lookin for you.” He looked at the gun in Darnell’s hands. “You got a huntin permit for that thing?”

  Darnell shook his head, and his father reached out and pulled the gun close to his face, studied the barrel. “Cheap little Raven twenty-five. Made in USA.” He squinted at Darnell. “You know where they make these things, these cheap-shit guns? Chino,” his father said. “Convenient, huh? Go right down the street and you can be with Louis.”

  Darnell stared at his father’s twisted mouth. “You always got a Oklahoma or Mississippi story. But you don’t want to hear no Rio Seco stories, right? They ain’t good history.”

  His father’s knuckles moved like stones under the skin of his hands when he examined the gun again. “Yeah, seen you go out the driveway; I couldn’t believe all the walkin you been doin lately. Followed you all the way down here, and you was walkin like you ain’t rode all your life. All us old men—King, me, Thompson—we plowed with mules, walkin behind them mules, so once we got out on the road, twenty-five miles wasn’t nothin. Shoot, your ancestor walked across Mississippi and Arkansas to get to Indian Territory.”

  “I know, Pops. You told us every time it rained and me and Melvin wanted a ride to school,” Darnell said, trying to make his father shift over to Melvin like usual, talk about Melvin’s lack of responsibility. And his father looked up again, the long nose and cheeks stiff with anger, the flash of lighter, redder skin near his neck.

  “I don’t know what’s goin on with you and Brenda, but I know you ain’t been home. You think marriage is so hard? You never walked twenty-five miles just to visit some girl.”

  “I walked fire lines,” Darnell said. “All up and down the mountains.”

  “And while you was doin that, Brenda was workin hard at the county, waitin patient,” his father said. Darnell flinched, turned his face toward the wavering cane. “You kept sayin if you worked seasonal a few years, they’d hire you full time. It ain’t no mystery what happened. It ain’t no new story. You actin like you the first one ever got disappointed.” He thrust the gun toward Darnell. “What you gon hunt with this piss-ass thing?”

  “I forgot to knock off a coupla rats at Jackson Park for her dinner,” Darnell shouted, looking away from the gun. “I came down here to try and hit some lizards or somethin, so she can cook em up good. Make a stew.” He stared out at the blackness. “I know—I ain’t had no car fulla Oklahoma rednecks racin me down on a country road, throwin bottles at me. I heard that one. I got brothas and vatos steppin to me, cappin hard. Got five-o force packin.”

  His father said, “Speak English, boy.”

  “Rio Seco stories ain’t about shit, right?” Darnell shouted, louder. He felt the back of his neck trembling; he’d never screamed at his father like this, his shouts disappearing into the round, thick stems and rustlings near them. “Young boys don’t know shit, right, got no excuse? Look, Pops, let me do what I gotta do—I’ma kill a possum and cut up some a these bamboo shoots and make my dinner, okay?”

  His father raised the gun and fired it into the cane. The pop-pop sounds Darnell had heard in Terracina, the round explosions he’d heard in the Lincoln, were bigger than this blunt tapping that dissipated fast in the current of air over the riverbottom.

  “That’s what I miss,” his father said softly. “I miss my guns. Followin you, I was thinkin about trackin, walkin miles with my friends to find some game. Just walkin, your thoughts all in your own head cause you can’t talk, like tonight, and then you see it move and all you hear is the shot.” He handed the warm gun to Darnell. “I miss it all the time when I’m workin trees, especially in one a them big estates that almost look like woods.” He nodded to Darnell. “This is what you gon miss—the woods, the fires, bein outside at night. Cause if you start workin yards, you gon be done by dark. Unless you still plannin’ to die soon.”

  “Plannin don’t seem to get me nowhere,” Darnell said.

  “Didn’t look like you planned on gettin into Leon’s loud-ass four-wheel-drive vehicle which he don’t never take further than the liquor store,” his father said, a slight grin forming. “Shit. Boy drivin a Bronco through the rough terrain of his apartment complex.” Darnell felt his cheek go deep to hide his own grin, but he swallowed, looking at the gun. “I wouldn’t pay ten dollars for that,” his father said, nodding at it. “I miss that beautiful twelve-gauge I had.”

  Darnell remembered the huge stock, the rich-whorled, rubbed wood, the fine-meshed etchings on the wide barrel. His father kept the gun hung in the living room when he was small. “I forgot about that shotgun.”

  “I sold it when times got real tight,” his father said softly. “Right after your sisters came. It was antique. I got it in Oklahoma.” He stood up. “What you gon do with yours?”

  The faint smell of cordite was gone, and the gun was already cooler to his touch. Darnell threw it into the cane, and it made no sound for a second. Then they heard it rustle its way to the bottom of the stand. “It ain’t mine,” he said.

  “You ain’t even breathin that hard,” his father said when they neared the driveway. “I guess all that firefightin left you in good shape, for a lazy ex-security guard.”

  “You find out about that teardown?” Darnell said.

  “Not yet.” His father leaned against the truck. “You know what’s down there in the riverbottom, right by your tree trunk? You seen that hollow? Fox—I used to see gray foxes down there all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Darnell said. “And? I gotta go.”

  “They got a new tract up there in Grayglen, call it Fox Hollow.” He folded his arms. “Only canine they got up there is watchdogs for them new rich houses.” He watched Darnell. “You ain’t followin me. Got all kinda yards—I still think you should get you a route.”

  “I’ma get some sleep,” Darnell said, heading down the driveway. “I still gotta walk a ways.”

  He heard his father spit. “You call that little distance a walk?”

  MIGRATION

  HE SAT NEAR THE railing and took off his mud-crusted boots to leave them outside. The apartment was dim when he went inside, trying not to wake them, but he heard something rustle in the bedroom. He paused in the doorway, saw Brenda curled around Charolette’s body. He bent, thinking he could slide his upturned palms under Charolette’s little self and move her to the crib, but he saw Brenda’s eyes already open, staring at him, and she whispere
d harshly, “Don’t.” When she uncoiled herself slowly, not jerking the bed, and slid her legs out carefully, he saw the knife glint in her hand.

  In the kitchen, she put the knife down on the counter and got a glass of water. “You scared the hell out of me,” she whispered. “I thought you were somebody breaking in.”

  He sat at the table, and she sat across from him, like they were going to play cards, he thought. “You were sure I wasn’t comin back,” he said, frowning.

  “Hey—you got your hat again, right?” she said bitterly.

  “What?” He leaned forward, felt the edge of the table in his stomach.

  “I’ma get my hat,” she said, imitating Victor. “I’ma book, man. Time to vacate, homey. We gon jam or what? You ready to roll, brothaman?” The phrases spilled out of her in perfect tones, like she was singing a guy’s part in a song.

  “Yeah, I know all the ways to say it,” he said. “I hear em all the time.”

  “I know you do,” she said, rubbing the sweat from the glass. “I gotta make a run, baby. And then the guy never comes home.” Her thick braid ended in a sparkly elastic from Charolette’s collection, and a wedge of bangs leaned sharp over her forehead, where it had been pushed by sleep.

  “I’m here, right?” he said.

  She shook her head. “You guys have so many ways to talk about leaving cause you got so many ways to do it. But you—you just do it half-assed, Darnell. You can’t make up your mind.”

  “I left my boots outside,” he said. “I’m home.” He stood up and went to the kitchen to get something to eat, and the knife gleamed on the counter. “This for me?” he said, trying to joke!

  She didn’t smile. “I was by myself at night. Somebody told me to keep hairspray by the bed, cause I could get him in the face.” She raised her chin to look at him. “But I felt better with the knife. I’ve cut up a lotta chickens and it didn’t bother me at all.”

  “Thanks for sparin me,” he said, leaning on the counter, but she still didn’t smile.

  “I hope you made up your mind this time,” she said. “Cause I was getting ready to make it up for you.” She went back into the bedroom, and he stood in the dark kitchen for a long time.

  He emptied his pockets in the morning, getting up from where he’d slept on the couch, when Charolette slapped him in the face joyously. “Daddy!” she yelled into his ear, pulling at his eyelashes.

  Brenda sat at the table, trying to get a knot out of Charolette’s shoelace. “Hey,” he said. “I’m still here.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Thrilling,” she said, but she smiled slightly. “Who wouldn’t stay for breakfast?” She saw Charolette picking up the things he’d put on the coffee table—some loose change, four dollar bills, the Baggie with the flyer and rock inside. He frowned at that himself—he still had that? “I can’t believe you gon let her hold two things anybody could tell you a child shouldn’t have,” Brenda said when Charolette clutched the dollars and Baggie. “Money’s dirty, and Baggies could choke her.”

  “Mummy,” Charolette said, holding it tight to her chest. “Mine!” Darnell watched Charolette take the blackish rock out, put it back inside the Baggie. “She ain’t gon put it in her mouth,” he said. “She’s too smart.”

  “Come here and put some food in her mouth,” Brenda said, going to the kitchen. “If you’re really going to stay.”

  “Shoot, every dude with a truck and a mower runnin around callin himself a gardener,” Floyd King said in the driveway, sipping his coffee. “Lotta competition for all them new tracts up by Grayglen and past the hills. That’s why we gettin more into the construction cleanup.”

  “More money per hour anyway,” Nacho said, nodding at Darnell.

  “He could start, though,” Darnell’s father said. “Build up a clientele like we did.”

  Darnell let Charolette pull him toward his mother, in the doorway. “I gotta go; my boss says break is over,” he said. He avoided his mother’s eyes, handing her Charolette’s diaper bag, and Charolette held tight to the rock, Baggie, and dollar bills. “Can I keep my pennies?” he asked her and she cocked her head to look up at him.

  He waved at Mrs. Tribeleaux, sprinkling her grass, the sun glinting off her rhinestone-framed glasses, and at Snooter, standing in someone’s yard talking. “Grayglen,” he said aloud.

  The circling streets, houses all laid out in curves of red-tile roofs behind sandy block walls, were baking in the heat. At one intersection, Darnell saw a crew of Mexican guys building new walls around the raw-scraped land for another tract: five short Indian-looking men with bowed legs and straw hats loaded blocks and laid them in place, while a white guy with thick, sun-reddened forearms watched.

  Grayglen Heights was Trent’s tract, he remembered, going into the single entrance through the walls, past the sign. The lush gardens of these established homes were immaculate, and Darnell knew these people already had gardeners, but he wound slowly up and down a cul-de-sac and said, “What the hell—gotta be some shaggy grass and dandelions somewhere. Gotta be one yard somebody forgot in this maze.”

  He parked at the end of the next cul-de-sac and walked. In the already-hot morning, no one was out in yards, on driveways, even in open garages. All these garage doors were closed, the slatted mini-blinds tight, and the grass was blank. No wagons or toys or shovels or firewood or kids. “They must got hella big backyards,” he said to himself, ringing the first doorbell.

  But no children yelled from backyards, either; central air hummed at each house, so the windows were closed. He waited, hearing the echoes of bells inside each door, but all he saw were occasional shivers at the blinds or drapes. Nothing as obvious as a face peeking out or retreating, but a faint trembling. He kept going, trying all the homes, and at the last corner house, he saw a station wagon with vacuums and buckets in the open rear. He rang the bell, knocked, and was about to turn away when a woman bumped into him coming out of the door.

  She was small, brown, with tilted-up eyes, and he said, “Excuse me, I was wondering if you had anyone doing your yard already?”

  She shook her head, looked down at her mop, and said, “No ingles. Please.” She went back into the house, leaving the mop, and returned to pass him, picking it up and carrying it straight before her to the station wagon. Another woman stood in the doorway now.

  “Hi, I’m a gardener and I wondered if you needed your yard done today or on a regular basis,” Darnell said. He remembered his father’s words, back when Darnell had been small enough to stand on cool porches and listen.

  “I gave you five dollars yesterday,” the woman said impatiently, looking back into her house, and Darnell raised his eyes from her ankles. She was about forty, her lips more invisible than most white women’s—no lipstick, he realized, just when she said, “I can’t afford another donation.”

  “I wasn’t here yesterday,” Darnell began, but she was adding loudly, “And I don’t need anything done today.”

  “You didn’t give me five dollars,” he said into the sudden silence, finally looking at her eyes, rimmed with dark green shadow.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I—your hat,” she said, fingers holding the collar of her robe. “A man came by yesterday, he said he was out of work, and I—he had a hat.”

  “Yeah,” Darnell said, hard. “Another Raiders fan.” He walked back down the pathway, this one brick, and stopped by the fancy iron mailbox to wait for the maid to back down the driveway.

  The white-painted cast-iron mailboxes were lined up and down the street. Where had he stood next to one before? The Bridgeport Casting Company—where had he read that? On the U.S. mailbox, he remembered. So who makes these? Who gives a damn? He didn’t look up at the station wagon or the still-moving miniblinds.

  He drove, swerving through the streets, trying to find an opening in the block walls. Uh-oh, let me get on out before goddamn armed response hear about me. Lookin for a job? Yeah, right. The tires slipped on loose dirt at the corner when he headed back up another street
, and he remembered all the times on the mountain when Scott would piss him off and he’d race the Spider through the sharp curves to blow the words away with rushing air.

  Three new custom-built houses were going up on this slope, and the bellied, blond construction workers hammering and laying brick looked up at the El Camino when the tires screeched again. Born that way, he thought, his tongue hot. Come out with hair like that, trucks with toolboxes behind the cab, stomachs already big enough. They get the job—just like I can dance. But Charolette’s car seat rattled empty against his elbow when he scratched the tires on the asphalt at the stop sign, and skidding around the corner didn’t make him feel any better. He looked at the crumbs crushed deep into the corduroy chair.

  Driving down the hill toward the Westside, he pressed the crumbs to his tongue. Graham cracker. He thought about going by Jackson Park, talking yang with Victor, but he slowed at his father’s street. “Daddy here!” Charolette screamed from the tiny porch, and his mother looked up from her hand sewing. “Ain’t this crazy?” he thought.

  “They wasn’t in a hurry all these weeks we been waitin to hear on the bid, and now it’s June, hot as hell, and they want it done in a week.” His father stood looking at the lemon trees, the huge elms and overgrown hedges, the pile of junk behind the small wood-frame house.

  Darnell followed his father and Roscoe around the house. The contractor was in back with the guy who’d bought the property. It was an old home buried in the side of the hill on Grayglen, and Darnell thought that somebody had been just waiting for an old man to die or move out so they could build a big new house on the land. The man held a roll of plans down on a picnic table and bent his head over the writing Darnell glimpsed, squared like miniature graffiti.