Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  “In the back, man, under the burlap,” Ronnie said, his lips tight.

  Darnell looked at Victor. “Be cool, all right?” Victor only smiled.

  The cruiser had parked, and Darnell held himself still. “Don’t get ready yet,” Victor said, still grinning. “You know he gon take his time.”

  The officer talked on the radio; Darnell could see when he moved his eyes to the rearview. Checkin registration. Okay. The man got out slowly, and he called, “Hands outside the vehicle, please. Move slowly.”

  Darnell dangled his palms from the window; Victor leaned over Ronnie to hang out the other side. The man approached slowly and said, “You guys have been cruising for a while, knocking on doors. You got a reason?”

  Before Darnell could open his mouth, Victor said, “Tools in the back, man.”

  He didn’t care who he was talking to. Darnell felt his neck prickle cool. The cop leaned slightly to look in Victor’s face. “Didn’t you do some time this year?” he asked.

  “I like the government gym,” Victor said. He flexed his arms without moving.

  Darnell said, “We were lookin for gardening work.” The cop transferred his eyes to Darnell’s face.

  “Who’s the vehicle belong to?”

  Darnell stared straight ahead. “It’s in my father’s name.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “John Tucker.”

  “Address?”

  “Twenty-eight ninety-seven Picasso.”

  “You’re pretty far from the Westside now.”

  “We’re working a job up the hill.”

  “I thought you were looking for jobs.”

  “We’re on lunch break from that one. My dad’s up there.” Darnell kept his eyes on the palm tree, tiny new, to the left of the man’s shoulder.

  “Almost one o’clock,” the man said, turning his wrist to check his watch.

  “Thanks,” Victor said. “Appreciate it.” He smiled, his eyes fixed on the officer’s face. The man turned and went back to his car, and Darnell pulled away from the narrow curb slowly. “Have a nice day!” Victor shouted into the glass.

  It was already so hot by 7 A.M. that the pepper branches hung limp, heavy with dust, and the cars where the men rested, sitting up, filled with bright heat. Darnell stood in the dewless weeds, the men squinting at the heat shimmering off the asphalt near their feet.

  “About ninety-five today,” Ronnie said. “That’s what I heard.”

  “And your old man gon be goin hundred miles an hour tryin to finish,” Victor said. “Man, this the last job I want till next week. Don’t you know black absorbs heat?”

  “You know you broke,” Darnell said. “Today’s payday.”

  “Hey,” Victor said. “I get to keep my own money, brothaman. And it last longer. I ain’t gotta work every day, like you, Daddy.”

  “Let’s go,” Darnell said, rubbing the edges of hair behind his ears. He smelled the pink lotion Charolette had rubbed into his ashy forearms. She’d done it every day, and the sweat washed off the faint, rosy scent. “I’m whipped,” he told Victor. “What can I say?”

  Driving, he thought, Let me get today over with, get some dinero in my pocket, and get pink lotion rubbed on me by my two women. He smiled to himself. After Charolette’s tiny palms were finished smearing the drops into his arms, marveling at how they disappeared again and again, he could get Brenda to rub the smell on him with her wrists sliding around his neck.

  The importer hovered around the property, pacing, talking to someone on a cordless phone. Darnell paused to wipe the sweat off his eyes when he’d dragged a long branch to the clearing. He wondered if Trent had gotten the contract to do the landscaping.

  At the dump, he stared at the Mexican men unloading trucks alongside his father’s. Two small men, their eyes slanted toward their temples, their straight hair short, raked roofing material from the bed of their truck. They looked almost Oriental, he thought. He pushed the trash off the gate. Why you trippin? he thought. Accordions—that’s what you keep hearin in the music.

  By dusk, the packed-hard dirt was strewn with wood chips and sawdust, and Victor and Ronnie were sitting in the empty bed of his father’s truck. Roscoe and Darnell stared at the raw land, the stumps. “Dozer comes tomorrow,” Roscoe said.

  Darnell’s father came from around the corner of the house. “You gonna need a new tire for the Apache,” he called to Roscoe.

  He held the check, and Darnell saw his fingers leaving brown smudges on the blue paper. “I’ma head to the bank with those two,” his father said. “Darnell—you goin to get Charolette? I’ll be home soon.” When Darnell turned, his father said, “Wait. This guy’s got a friend on the other side of the hill wants some tree work. Go up there tomorrow and give him an estimate, cause I’ll be here for a few hours.”

  Darnell stared at his father. “Tree work’s yours. I’m workin on a route.”

  His father looked away, and Darnell thought, I don’t want charity. Roscoe said, “Well, do him this favor. You owe him one, right?”

  He checked the address twice, but when he’d parked at the gravel space beside the long driveway that led down into the property, he didn’t see any signs of life. Standing at the curb, he looked across the circular yard to the trees. Maybe just trimming, and he and Pops could knock it out this afternoon. The sun glinted off the broken glass in the steep bank across the road, and Darnell heard an engine. A minivan with a bearded guy at the wheel and two boys in the middle seat came up from the garage, and Darnell saw the surprise on the man’s face. He stopped. “Are you out of gas?” he said cautiously. “Or can I help you with something?”

  “I’m up here for an estimate,” Darnell said, keeping his face blank. “Tree trimming. I tried the bell.”

  The man’s forehead opened up. “Oh, yeah, my wife called. Sorry—we were in the back room.” He yanked the brake on the van and got out.

  Darnell walked across the lawn with the man, who peered up into the branches of a huge old jacaranda. “Did you want them all trimmed?”

  The man frowned. “Well, to tell you the truth, they’re a hell of a mess. We’ve got the three jacarandas here dropping flowers and big seed pods all over the grass, and in the back there are two huge olive trees. We put in a new cement patio and a redwood deck and they’re covered with blotches from the olives.”

  “We can take them all out, if you want,” Darnell said. “But you’d be losing a lot of shade.”

  “Well, we’d replace them, yeah. I’m not from here, we just moved from Orange County. Newport area,” he said absently. “It’s cooler there, and I’m not sure what trees do good here. Some color would be great in the fall—like real New England style.”

  Darnell nodded. “I know liquidambar turns colors. It’s real popular.”

  “Is that the one planted all over downtown, like by the museum?”

  “Yeah,” Darnell said. “They’re everywhere.”

  “But my kids say they make stickery balls, some kind of sharp seed balls.”

  “Yeah,” Darnell said again. He and Melvin used to throw them into each other’s hair while they were supposed to be raking.

  The man shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t want to worry about those with the kids playing in the yard.”

  Darnell smiled politely. So tell the kids to clean em up, he thought. The man said, “You know what would be great? Trees that turned colors but didn’t drop all their leaves. Yeah, like that bush we’ve got over there.”

  Darnell looked at the low nandina bushes lining the driveway—bushes Trent King had showed him at that lady’s house. A landscaper’s favorite, he’d said. “Tell you what,” he said to the man, who was checking his watch. “I’ll check with this landscape architect I know, and I’ll give you a call tonight.” He squinted up through the ferny jacaranda leaves. “But if you buy baby trees, you’re gonna have a long, hot summer.”

  “Well, let’s find some full-grown ones somewhere,” the man said, smiling.

>   Darnell left the steep, winding road and passed the tiny trees along the development block walls. He knew Trent wouldn’t be home now—he could call and leave a message. When he neared the Westside, he saw the dark mass of old trees hovering like clouds over the neighborhood. Everyone had fig trees, lemons, persimmons. His mother had apricots and nectarines. Marietta Cook had the best plum tree on the Westside. Darnell turned down Picasso Street. Trees did things for you, his father would say, so you gotta do things for them. Rake up their leaves, cut their branches, water them. And then his father would frown and throw in an “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” All my life, he thought, in the trees. In the Conservation Corps, we cut down the old ones, the diseased stands that were fire hazards. Burned them sometimes with Fricke. He parked and closed his eyes for a moment. Two fire seasons gone. I’ma be workin in some domestic, tame forests now.

  In the yard, he saw the piles of wood. Deciduous. Trees like the jacaranda, dropping flowers, like the maples and liquidambars that turned spectacular colors and then dropped leaves—they were more work. Like people that are changeable. Full of temper. Me. My pops. Charolette. Harder to get along with, Brenda says. Hey, I’m tryin to be very convenient. Make some money, come home on time.

  He called Trent’s house, thinking, What the hell kinda tree is convenient? “I need your help, man,” he said to the answering machine. “Come by my pops’ crib soon as you can and lend me some knowledge. Oh—this is Darnell. Peace.”

  He musta been pissed when I said he wasn’t normal for a brotha, Darnell thought hours later when Trent still hadn’t come by or called. Darnell had cut up the eucalyptus wood, stacked the blind-eyed branches and logs. Charolette held up a cracker for him from the blanket by his mother’s feet in the front room. “Go on up there, cause your father gon want that estimate done,” his mother said.

  He was surprised to see Trent’s dark face look up from his driveway, and he stopped in front of Trent’s white mailbox. Shit. The drapes on your street gon be jumpin now, brothaman, he thought, seeing Trent’s blank, neutral glance.

  He was unloading the PVC pipe from his truck. “Hey, Darnell,” he said, counting sprinkler heads, not looking up.

  Darnell leaned on the heavy head of the mailbox and saw flyers poking out from the slit, a whole handful of colored pamphlets and folders and paper. He pulled them out and pretended to study them. “Hey, Trent,” he said, “just stopped by to see your crib.” So if he ain’t gon mention I called, I guess he don’t want to do me this little favor. Cool. Victor and them always say he grinnin and skinnin in your face, turn around and act like he better than you. “You got a lotta mail here.”

  Trent reached down into the truckbed again awkwardly. “That’s not mail—just ads. We get em every day, since we’re in a new house.”

  “Latvian housekeeper,” Darnell read. “Neat, clean, reference. European cleaning.” He looked up, and Trent had to smile at his accent. “That better than Mexican cleaning? Cause I seen a maid just now looked like she was workin hard.”

  “I guess it depends on who you think you are,” Trent said, folding his arms and smiling wider. “Latvian, huh?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Darnell said. “I don’t need a maid. Here—Custom Miniblinds. Custom Pool. Home Security—Armed Response. Say, brothaman, you need this one, cause everybody in your neighborhood seen a shaggy-lookin black guy driving around knockin on doors yesterday. Real suspicious.”

  Trent frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I went door to door tryin to get some yards,” Darnell said. “Pops been on my ass for weeks to do this. I’ma have to break it down to him that on memory lane white ladies always opened the door.”

  Now Trent had to laugh. “So you didn’t meet all my neighbors?” he said, mocking surprise. “And it’s such a homey neighborhood. Come on in and get a drink, before we’re two black guys in a driveway and they call it a gang.”

  In the entry, on a table, Darnell saw the phone, saw the red lights blinking. “So why you didn’t call back, man?” he asked Trent, who pushed the button.

  “You called?” Trent said, frowning, when the first voices began to play. After two calls about home loans, Darnell heard his voice, his message, and Trent laughed again. “That’s why. Cause Brichee was already here, she’s been home, but when she heard your message, she stopped listening to you after the words ‘help’ and ‘lend.’ She didn’t call me on my pager because she thought you were someone like Snooter.”

  “Like?” Darnell said, looking at the tiled floor of the entry, the marble fireplace.

  “Like Snooter, who always calls to borrow money.” Trent looked at the pink notepad beside the phone. “Brichee went to the gym and then she’s going to some accountants’ meeting, about new tax laws.” He looked up. “So what did you want?”

  “Hey, all I need is some names of clean trees,” Darnell said.

  Outside, Trent got in the El Camino, saying, “Clean trees, huh? He must have jacarandas. Or carobs.”

  “Yup,” Darnell said. “Jacaranda and olive.”

  Trent shook his head. “You know what? You can’t get another tree with the look and the dimensions of jacaranda, that light, airy quality. And these new guys hate em. The landscape crew comes once a week, you know that, and they want the grass pristine every day.”

  “They payin for it.” Darnell shrugged.

  Trent said, “Yeah, I remember mamas used to go out every evening, rake up the carob pods or the jacaranda pods, the figs. They’d keep an eye on us, talk to everybody, stand there. The grass would be sharp.” He looked out the window, then back toward Darnell. “Now everybody’s in the house. Ghost town.”

  “Your town,” Darnell said. “You’ve bought what, three cribs up here?”

  Trent stared out the window. “These people want beauty all around them, but they don’t like all the work,” he said suddenly. “I do.”

  Darnell shifted. “Long as you get paid big dinero for what you like,” he said. But he looked out, too, at the tall palm trunks turning dark, the narrow tunnel of road. Seem like I’m drivin up some Grayglen street every day. I miss my old landscape—drivin home through the Sandlands, seein Rio Seco all laid out for me. Brenda waitin, the palm trees all up and down the streets.

  “Looks like nobody’s home,” Trent said when Darnell parked in the street. “Sprinklers are on timers. Windows are dark.”

  “Hard to tell,” Darnell said. “It goes way far back.” The water misted in circles under the trees. He walked down the shined cement drive toward where they’d come out this morning, and the Doberman lunged at him from the shrubbery before the wrought-iron gate, the deep-throated snarl trailing slowly from the teeth when he missed Darnell’s thigh. The chain pulled him back at the neck, and he leapt again and again, his saliva flying toward Darnell’s fingers, where they were splayed on the concrete. Darnell was on his knees, seeing his fingers fanned wide, his face getting closer and closer to the sweet ozone smell of watery vapor.

  “Man, I’ve never seen a guy faint,” Trent said, still breathing hard. “I didn’t think I could get you up here and in the seat. Damn!”

  Darnell felt the seat back sticky against his neck. He heard the dog’s high-pitched barks. They’d been sitting here for a few minutes now. He’d thrown up in the bushes—the grassy-hay smell of the dog’s mouth so close to him.

  Trent’s voice was still different, higher, not so careful. “Damn, Darnell, you just fell. That ain’t normal for a guy. I’ve seen women faint.”

  Normal. “What’s normal for a brotha, man?” Darnell said, feeling his stomach fill with warmth now, when he tried to laugh. “Brothaman.”

  But Trent only frowned. He didn’t remember. “You okay now?”

  Darnell breathed the damp air wavering from the yard. “Yeah.” He sat up and saw the patrol car cruising. He shook his head. “Here we go.” The car drove past them, the lone officer bending his head to stare, and then he turned slowly into a driveway up
the street to come back the other way. Darnell leaned back to wait. At least Trent wouldn’t talk shit like Victor.

  But Trent’s mouth opened wide and he started yelling, pounding the dashboard with his fist, his other hand gripped around the edge of the vinyl. “I am a goddamn fucking resident!” he screamed, while Darnell saw the officer squinting. “Okay! A fucking resident of the area!

  “Trent, man, stall out!” Darnell said. “He’ll see the equipment. Me and Victor and Ronnie got stopped up here yesterday, I told you, it ain’t no big deal if you stall out.”

  But that only made Trent’s voice higher, and he screamed, “I’m not Victor, goddamnit! I am a fucking resident!”

  Darnell grabbed Trent’s flailing hand at the forefinger, at the last knuckle, and pressed hard enough to cause pain. “I’m not gettin shot cause you don’t like gettin GPed,” he said quietly, watching the cop pull away and head down the street. Every brotha looks General Principle up here.

  Creamy—the whole house was creamy. Cold. High ceilings, open space. The bathroom was the color of apricots. Brenda’s skin. He had to call her.

  Trent sat on his beige couch, two empty Coronas in front of him. He poured from the silvery bottle of vodka. “Man,” Darnell said, “you thirsty, huh?” Trent didn’t smile.

  Darnell picked up the clear bottle and said, “I saw guys drink Stoli up in the mountains. Way too hard for me.” He could tell Trent was getting drunk fast. Toe up. He looked at his boots, knocked them gently together on the rug. Toe up. Normal behavior—Fricke didn’t think so, back at Seven Canyons.

  Trent said suddenly, “See?” He’d been leafing through papers, and he handed Darnell a printed flyer. “Mannheim School offers Protection Dog Training! Handlers will train members of the public and their dogs! Your trained dog protects your family and property better than a gun! Also, imported trained dogs for sale.”