Vernon was gesturing to Leon, he could see in the rearview mirror. Damn! Vernon talked Leon into comin down here, in case Louis is trippin on payback or workin for somebody else. Darnell leaned his elbows on the steering wheel and rubbed his forehead. Maybe Leon had already figured out where Louis was staying; maybe Louis wasn’t even in the grove, and he’d meant something else when he said that this morning. Darnell looked down the pitted asphalt toward the riverbottom and started driving again, slow.
He could turn around now, but he knew Leon remembered the pecan grove and all the paths they’d taken when they were kids. Homeys—Leon remembers that, too. He remembers how Louis was back then, how he’d just start walkin and forget everything.
He turned down the riverbottom road, the sand crunching under the tires, and he saw the tumbleweeds rising like a wall near the pecan grove. No fire over here yet, he thought. This place is ready, too. The pecan grove never burned, he realized, staring at the tops of the trees.
He saw a few cars in the clearing, but they were empty. He heard the Bronco roll to a stop at the far edge, staying near the road, and he got out, walking toward Leon. “You best not trip,” he said. “This ain’t TV, okay? This ain’t cowboy shit. Louis just wants to go back up north, like Donnie.”
Leon scratched the inside of his elbow, nodding. “All our homeys gone mental,” he said, and his voice sounded gentle. “Man, when we started drivin down here, I was laughin, like I could see how skinny and little we was when we used to ride them chopper bikes and get stuck in the sand.” He pushed at Darnell’s shoulder. “Stall out, man. Let’s go.”
Vernon was behind them, silent, when they walked toward the trees. Darnell saw the haze hanging thick around the trunks, and the few tufts of grass under his feet crackled dry. He peered into the grove, where the leaf litter and crushed foxtails were still thick.
Louis came from the path that led from the grove to the riverbottom, and when he saw all three of them, he didn’t turn or even frown. He nodded and called, “If y’all came to talk, you better do it now.”
Leon frowned, and Darnell said, “What you talkin about?”
Louis smiled. “It’s almost bedtime.” He lifted his face to the sky that showed dimmer now through the leaves. “Don’t you remember, Darnell, around quittin time?”
Darnell saw the long legs planted apart, the pale neck thrown back, and he knew Louis meant that the crows would pass over all the yards they’d cut, all the trees they’d trimmed while their fathers watched them and hollered, while Roscoe told Louis to quit wasting time staring at the sky.
“We ain’t into birdwatchin,” Leon said, quiet. “I heard you was back in town and you didn’t even come to tell me what the fuck happened that day.”
Louis put his hands in his pockets and leaned against a tree, crossing his feet. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I believe you was fixin to move product to somebody else,” Vernon said, arms folded, and Darnell looked at Leon.
“Shut up, man,” Leon said. “Then why the nigga still cuttin grass?”
Darnell breathed in hard, felt the smog tighten in a pipe down his breastbone. “Yeah, Louis, I’ma have your money for today’s job when I cash Trent’s check, okay?” He heard the whispering rustle above him and saw the first of the crows circling the grove, and then the flock streamed around the trees, calling and arguing and jostling for place in the sky.
Leon kept his eyes on Louis. “What happened?”
“I came down here to see some birds, and somebody musta thought I was too tall to wander around.” Louis didn’t lift his face again. “The rangers came and then they called the cops.”
“What the fuck?” Vernon said, mouth open, staring at the sharp feet snatching at branches, at the wings flapping when crows changed their minds and moved again, and the noise was deafening now, the birds screaming at each other and then screaming louder at the men below.
“Ain’t nobody usually in here by now,” Louis said easily, smiling at Vernon. “If somebody came for pecans or lunch, they gone. Crows are pissed.”
Darnell felt the air sway from all the movement, and the shadows shifted crazily near his feet. The hoarse calls went jagged into his ears, and he remembered how scared he’d been the few times Louis showed him the flock all together like this. It was like the movie, like The Birds, he’d told Louis, and Louis had said, “Yeah, but you crazier, man, cause fire can kill you for real. That was just a movie. When you took me to that fire, all that cracklin and them trees blowin up, that was scary. The birds are just talkin.”
He blinked, his eyes stinging from where he’d been staring at the tree bark near Louis’s shoulder, and Leon said, “You lost me five grand, man, and the consultant been usin that shit for a long time, makin me do extra stuff. You owe me.”
Louis shook his head. “You know I ain’t got money if I’m workin for Darnell,” he said, “like a Mexican guy.”
“Hey,” Darnell said, smiling. “It’s worse jobs.”
“Oh, you talkin shit now, too?” Vernon said, his voice higher, and Darnell saw the gash lines appear in his cheeks, not because he was smiling but because he had his mouth stretched wide with anger and fear.
“I ain’t even speakin to you, man,” Darnell said. “Come on, I gotta get home.”
Leon bit his lip stubbornly. “I don’t know, man.” His voice wavered.
Louis said, “It was stupid, man, it’s just gone. Cops got it, okay? They did whatever they do with it.”
“You lost me money, too, motherfucker,” Vernon said, walking away, and then he stopped. “Always sittin up in the car actin like I was a fool. Look at you—hangin out with some goddamn birds. Like you a bag lady and shit. You a crazy motherfucker.”
“And you’re gangsta-loc-insane, man,” Louis said, smiling again. “Like that’s better.” He shook his head, and Vernon’s face went flat and gray around the mouth. Darnell saw his hand reach behind him, and he felt the chemical air all the way in his stomach when he took in breath to leap behind the tree.
But Vernon aimed the small handgun at the branches and said, “Fuckin noise drivin me crazy. They need to shut up. I can’t even hear.” He fired at the crows in the next tree, and when the shots reverberated in the grove, the screaming rose louder, wings pushing down the sound to whirl it closer to their ears. Vernon dropped his head forward and hunched his shoulder, and then Louis was on him, slamming the gun into the sand.
Darnell and Leon pulled them off each other, and Leon held the gun tight when Vernon backed away, his hair coated with light sand, his eyelids shivering and a piece of thin grass hanging from one brow. “Why you play me like that, Leon?” he shouted. “Why you—”
“Get in the car, man,” Leon said. “Birdman, you steady fuckin up. You past insane.” He held the gun loose and walked toward the Bronco.
Vernon stood blinking, then staring at Louis. “Two shots to the membrane, nigga. That’s what you need.” He turned and began to walk away.
Darnell concentrated on holding his shoulders still and tight, not moving his feet, imagining only his veins and arteries working, his capillaries racing in spurts. When the Bronco’s taillights had faded to red pinpricks through the tumbleweeds, Louis laughed loud, and Darnell shook his head. “I ain’t fixin to call you insane,” he told Louis, “but you are crazy.” He sat with his back to a pecan tree. “I don’t know what you coulda said, though.”
The crows’ screaming seemed more conversational now, but when Louis stretched his arms, the birds in the closest tree burst into circles of flight for a moment. Louis laughed again. “I coulda told Vernon the crows used to fools shootin at em.” He stroked his chin. “If you hit one, about ten more come down for payback and buzz you.”
Darnell walked with him away from the grove after his blood had slowed. The cars were still there, and he was surprised when Louis opened the door of the VW. “This one’s my hooptie,” Louis said. “Two hundred bucks, from some dude in Treetown.”
“Why’d you walk all the way home today?” Darnell asked, sitting on the still-hot seat.
“Somebody stole the battery last night,” Louis said, dangling his legs out of the driver’s seat. He kept his back to Darnell. “You didn’t ask what I had to tell you, man.”
“I thought I already heard enough for one day, homey.”
“I seen two dudes down here yesterday, pokin around, and one of em was bendin down like he was gon start a fire,” Louis turned halfway in his seat. “You ain’t lookin out for that, for the guys startin all these fires?”
“I’m not into investigation,” Darnell said. He watched the outlines of the trees and tumbleweeds fading dark.
“You ain’t into firefighting, neither. Never?”
Darnell looked at the blunt toes of his boots, where the mud had turned to powder now. “I’m puttin in my application after the baby comes. Brenda’s due in November. I’ma apply in January, but that’ll be for summer season.” He’d taken out the application and studied it again and again. “Paid call.”
“Well, these two guys I saw yesterday, they weren’t birdwatchers, okay?” Louis said.
Darnell smiled. “You IDed em, huh?”
Louis nodded. “Yeah.” He paused, rubbing his neck. “But it’s a lotta guys sleepin down here.”
Darnell looked at the other cars. “In there?”
“No, that’s some Mexican guys lookin for rabbits, and two Vietnamese dudes catchin crawdads.”
“You hungry?” Darnell looked at the hollows in Louis’s face, his shoulders wide shelves under the T-shirt.
“Just give me a ride to Taco Bell, okay? I ain’t sleepin at your crib.”
“Man, I don’t care about Leon.”
Louis got out of the VW. “I don’t either. But I see Brenda over there cleanin, cookin. She works too hard.”
Darnell walked beside him to the El Camino. “Oh, so you sayin I don’t take care of her?”
“Stall out, Darnell. All I’m sayin is, I just see her and it makes me think of how she used to look, and…”
“Okay, okay.” Darnell started the car, thinking of how she looked from behind, how that second outline, that other body, seemed to overlap her hips and even her back. “She still looks good to me,” he said.
“She looks better to me, cause I don’t have her.” Louis kept his eyes straight ahead.
Darnell sat for a moment, thinking of school, when all they’d looked at was the body, the full chest or moving booty, when all they’d imagined was the sex. He sometimes touched the softness of extra flesh at the back of her arm at night, when she lay with her back to him. “It ain’t like before, man, I mean, what looks good. Her face is wider, like… she looks like somebody else sometimes.”
“I wasn’t lookin at her body before,” Louis said, not turning his head. “I was always lookin at her face. Her eyes.”
“I got one wild child,” Brenda said. “I don’t need nobody grown to give me a worrying headache.”
“It ain’t that late,” he said, taking his plate to the table. “I was waitin for this all day.” She’d made red snapper fried with onions, peppered rice, and yellow squash cut in circles.
“Charolette had a good time cleaning out the rice,” she said, sitting down across from him.
Darnell looked at her hair, shining glossy, tight-pulled from her face, and her fingers nervous near her mouth. “I worked all day with Trent, and I had to help out Louis with somethin.”
She cocked her head. “Where is he? Why didn’t he come eat?”
“Cause you aren’t his wife,” Darnell said.
“What’s that mean?”
Darnell shrugged. “I forgot Louis used to keep his eye on you, like he was waitin for you to come to your senses and go out with a ballplayer instead of a nature boy. Especially a broke nature boy.”
She smiled even with her lips pressed together tight, and then her teeth shone in the kitchen light. “I wanted to be with him sometimes—a basketball star, like all the girls used to say. But I couldn’t—I mean, I’d look at his chin, way up there, and it wasn’t like yours, and his eyebrows, and his hands.” She stood up embarrassed, bending her neck, and went to the sink. “So now he’s just somebody in the house to worry about. Like I said, I got Charolette, and this one kicking me steady. Louis disappearing. And don’t let me start about you.” She plucked at his dusty sleeve now, pulling off a burr, and he caught her hand. “No. Uh-uh,” she said. “Cause there was another fire tonight, way over by the Sandlands, and I was sure that’s where you were. I saw it on the news.”
“Not me,” Darnell said. “I didn’t even see the smoke.”
On Picasso Street, while he leaned against the hood and waited for his father, Charolette ran to him. “Gramma Mary nuked me biscuit!” she said, pushing it at him. “Daddy, blow on it!”
“You so bad, blow on it yourself,” he said, and she spit rapidly at the steaming biscuit. “Wet it up good.”
Darnell’s mother stood in the doorway. “Brenda restin?” she said casually, as if he’d just been there last night and not disappeared for days.
“She did too much work in the house yesterday, and now her back hurts,” Darnell said. “She wants to sleep twenty-four-seven anyway, every minute she can.”
“That’s how it is the last three months,” his mother said, getting that dreamy look. “You never rest good, and this heat so strong. When you finally fall out, you sleep like somebody drop a rock on your chest. I remember.”
“She got all day to rest,” Darnell said. “I’m takin Charolette to work.”
His father came out, T-shirt fresh-bleached, his chin stubbled with sparse hairs. “You get Victor and Ronnie?” he said.
“Here’s my crew,” Darnell said, pointing to Charolette in the truckbed.
“You in trouble now,” his father said, palming her head. “All her talkin blow the tumbleweeds to the river.” He leaned against his truck door, facing Darnell. “Who else you got?”
Darnell knew what he was asking. “I told Louis he could meet us over there. He’s still workin now and then.”
Darnell’s father knuckled at the chin hairs. “People been tellin Roscoe they seen his boy walkin, or they passed by when y’all workin somewhere.” Darnell waited. “All Roscoe says is he hope he ain’t stayin around here. Doin time never teach you nothin new that’s good.”
“I’ma get started,” Darnell said, swinging Charolette down to the driveway. “Not no leisure hours, right?” His father curved up one side of his mouth.
When Victor and Ronnie got out, Darnell told her again about what she couldn’t touch. The cab was her favorite place. She jerked the steering wheel hard, frowning. “Why you dawdlin?” she said, sounding exactly like his father.
He wondered if Louis would show up. Darnell had parked on the dirt lot, under a carob tree, and he leaned inside to ask her, “Where you goin?”
“To Mexico!” she said, as if he were foolish not to know. “And Honolulu.”
They forked the tumbleweeds that rolled up the riverbottom each year to pile along the fences. “Long time ago, huh, brothaman?” Victor said, grinning.
Darnell knew what he was thinking. “Fifty years,” he said. He watched Charolette in the cab. When she rubbed her eyes, he went to spread her blanket and Barbie on the seat.
“It’s too hot,” she complained.
“Check this out.” He took some of the downed carob and olive branches they’d trimmed to pile them high on the windshield. “Hide in the forest,” he said, and she stared at the leaves pressed tightly to the glass. The interior was cooler green, with tiny shaded slants of light and muffled sound.
“You crazy, man,” Louis said, standing there when he got out.
“Hey, you do whatever you have to when you want em to crash,” Darnell said. “Anything.”
Louis joined them to pile the tumbleweeds and branches and trash on the far corner of the property. The Thompsons hated paying dump fees, and nobody
cared about burning in Treetown. But when Darnell was about to throw the last load of fallen carob pods and strike a match, Demetrius came out of the house and hurried over to where they stood.
“We can’t burn today, man,” Demetrius said. “You know they lookin hard for this arsonist, and my mama said don’t take no chances.”
“Just like last summer,” Victor said. “Fire every week, man.”
“I’m tellin you, Darnell, I seen those guys,” Louis said. “One big Mexican dude and a white dude with blond hair.”
Darnell frowned. “You saw Scott and Perez,” he said, nodding. “They work the fires, man; they’re paid call.”
Louis shrugged. “I didn’t see no fire engine near em.”
Victor pointed. “You bein paged, Daddy.” Darnell saw Charolette’s head poke out the open window.”
He held her, still sleepy, while Demetrius talked to them all near the avenue. “I have to drop her off at home and hit the ATM for some cash,” Darnell told them. “I gotta pay you for that other job, too, Louis.”
Louis looked up the street. “Ain’t that Gasanova?”
Gas was looking for a truck part from Demetrius, and when he came back, the men piled into his truck, Louis hanging out the window. “Speakers in the back, man,” Darnell said, laughing. “No room for brothas.”
“It ain’t far to the park,” Victor called. “Hurry up, man, you know my condition.”
“He’s thirsty,” Darnell said to Charolette, strapping her in. She looked straight out the window when he drove, staring fixedly ahead at something, and he said, “What’s wrong, babygirl?” He squinted into the glare, where the smog-held sun caught in his eyes.
“It’s the sparkly time,” she said, pointing to the sides of the road. On the bare sandy shoulder, thousands of glass shards reflected in the hard light.
“You been hangin out with Uncle Roscoe too much,” he said.
“Who made those rainbows?” she asked, dreamily.
“Where?”
“Window rainbows.” The windshield was dirty, as usual, and Brenda must have turned on the wipers and cleaner. Two perfect arcs, striped by the frayed wipers, shone in the glare.
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights Page 40
