Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  “What?” She drew her brows together. He led her out to the backyard and opened the door to the Spider again. She sat in her old seat, her feet flat on the floor instead of drawn up under her like they used to be, and she rested her hands under her belly.

  Darnell leaned over the stickshift. “This is a good place to listen,” he said. “Nothin to clean or fold out here. Nobody callin for AnTuan. Only thing to do is talk or bust some slobs.” She’d always hated it when the boys said that about kissing.

  “Charolette might wake up,” she said, moving her back from the seat.

  “She’ll come to the backdoor if she see it’s open,” he said. He bent down to lift her feet carefully into his lap, awkward because of her weight, but it was almost like when they used to sit at the city lake. The metal was cooling now that it was late, and the slight breeze moved the curls at her forehead.

  “I smell liquor,” she said. “Did Leon drink something?” He nodded. Behind her tight-boned cheeks and small forehead were the edges of another face, lingering at the sides of her jaw, even at her temples. “You didn’t go,” she said, looking through the opaque, filmed windshield.

  “I told you I wasn’t goin anywhere anymore,” he said. “Brenda. Louis got shot. He’s gone.”

  Her head and shoulders jerked involuntarily, hunched, and he knew the cold spasm was twisting through her. He rubbed her knees hard, put his hands on each side of her belly, and it was almost like he couldn’t hear the moist-whirring bullets or smell the rust under the wheel well when he said the words. He rushed on. “Nobody knows who did it. Gasanova and Brother Lobo got grazed. Leon just told me Gas is movin to Vegas. Leon’s goin to Seattle. Everybody’s leavin, except me. I’m right here.”

  Then he let her turn her moon-pale face up, let her get the question out. “You were there when he got… you were there?”

  “I was gettin Charolette’s Barbie,” he said, looking down at her wider knees. He had to. White lie for the good—brotha lie this time. He knew nobody would mention it to her, to a woman—not Victor or Ronnie, no one. They wouldn’t even talk about it again at the park—not like the dog, when they all wanted to discuss him and K-9. They hadn’t been there, they hadn’t seen that. But the noise and dust and shouting were locked behind their molars and belts and kneecaps now.

  He said, “Show me your wrinkle, what you said make you look different.” She stared at him, and then she kissed the air, the line deepening into her upper lip like a knife had just sliced her skin.

  “Did you drink some, too?” she asked. “Did you want to go with Leon?”

  “No,” he said. “Check my breath. Check my hands.” He pushed her feet slowly from his legs and circled her lips with his mouth.

  She slept on her side, a pillow propped under her stomach, her arm curled over her ear again. He looked into the bedroom after eleven, seeing her face slack with weight and exhaustion.

  He peered into the darkness where Charolette lay with her arms flung behind her like she was diving, her wrists limp and fingers almost touching.

  Walking the hallway, the living room, even the porch, he smelled fish and baby shampoo and milk, felt the soft lump of a stuffed porpoise under his foot, brushed a pile of clean towels on the couch. He couldn’t breathe.

  The truck slid out of the driveway in neutral, and he drove the other way, away from the Westside, from the park and Treetown and the grove. He was halfway through the Sandlands, the fast air rushing through both windows, the August pale hills round and weaving past him, when he pulled over. He couldn’t go up the mountain, couldn’t sit at the table with the clicking cards and Fricke’s denim-pale eyes, because he couldn’t say it again. It had felt better to say it the one time, to Brenda. Gone. Louis was gone—everybody was gone. But he wouldn’t be able to say the words in the station, because this had nothing to do with chaparral or packing the right gear or six feet deep to keep enough oxygen above a tight-closed mouth.

  He stared at the undulating hills, the crisscrossing bands of fire roads and motorcycle trails, the burned mustard weed and grasses. The window was still framed with broken glass, and he reached across to touch the metal frame. Metal had framed the hand holding the gun—metal gun, metal bullets. Small, chickenshit projectiles. No knowledge required—no ID for poison oak so the fumes didn’t sear lung tissue, no judging a fire break. No flames rushing over to steal your breath before you even felt the sear of heat—the bullets killed cheap, nasty. All alone. Brothas frozen like puzzle pieces, legs and elbows all bent, necks angling sharp. I ain’t goin out like that. I can’t. Not me.

  He raced back down the highway and went over the bridge to the riverbottom, stopping the El Camino at the sandy road leading to the arundo cane, the stands so vivid in the moonlight, so dark compared to the bleached fields and hills all around. Pops came to get me last time, found me and threw the piece in there, he thought. He remembered how small the gun had been in his palm, even smaller in his father’s. Nine millimeter. He breathed in, trying to remember what caliber bullet was in Donnie’s leg. Donnie gone, too. That night I was trippin on the dog, on what I thought was wild dogs in the cane. Pops ain’t comin tonight. Just me. He breathed in the shallow-water smell, the old ashes from a cookfire.

  Glass still glittered near the curb, where pepper berries had fallen new to cover the ones he’d crushed. Victor rose from the sagged couch, his dark face half shadowed, and Darnell pulled to the curb. “I need a ride, brothaman.”

  Darnell went carefully down the narrow drive downtown, where Brother Lobo lived. “Lights are off,” he said. “Maybe he’s crashed.”

  But Brother Lobo had heard the engine, and he peered through the front window of the tiny garage apartment. “Company,” he said. He looked at the bag in Victor’s hands. “Victor brings food, and maybe Darnell brings good news. What’s my smallest queen doing?” His voice was fast, too oiled.

  “All my queens sleepin,” Darnell said. “Dreamin. Almost midnight.”

  “Round midnight,” Brother Lobo said, sitting on the couch. “After midnight. In the midnight hour.”

  “How’s your arm?” Darnell asked. Victor sat in a wooden chair, and Brother Lobo lifted his loose short sleeve to show the raw red crease. “You supposed to have that bandaged,” Darnell said, wincing.

  “It needs fresh air to heal,” Brother Lobo said. Then he looked hard at Darnell. “It needs to close up into a scar quickly. A mark.” He shook his head. “Darnell. This isn’t the kind of tribal mark I need. Scarification…” He paused. “It’s supposed to be ritual,” he whispered. “Show me your marks.”

  Darnell realized Lobo was pointing to his leg. He sat on the couch and pulled up his work pants, propped his leg over his knee so the very end of the shiny, many-legged scar crawled around his calf. He touched it, the skin tight. Brother Lobo stared and said, “Victor?”

  Victor stood up and lifted his shirt, proffering his back. A thin-slanted slash on his shoulder blade, and a perfect grid of squares, small lines that had to be burn scars. “Treetown,” he said. “Some brotha I didn’t even know.” He paused. “And my mama’s old man. The heater.”

  They pulled back their clothes. “There is no ceremony for this,” Brother Lobo murmured.

  Darnell smelled the harsh perique smoke, remembered when the strings tied around his ankle had finally softened, rotted off. He saw Donnie’s face, imagined the bullet flying through his blood, coursing around and around through his heart like a rocket. It got prayers on it—it got bodies on it. He said, “No.”

  But when he got out of the truck and walked through the dark to the pale cement outlines of the old foundation, he squatted in the dirt and scratched the pebbled concrete with a stick. The voices across the alley were quiet, and no fire burned in the heat that still lingered through the night.

  Darnell walked to the wall near the abandoned houses and stripped off a few branches from the wild tobacco bushes, their limber, thin trunks leaning away from the cinder block. He sawed at the wood wit
h his knife, and then sat on his heels in the center of the foundation, setting the branches on fire. They were bending green, not burning but smoking bitter and swirled. He kept his back to the faraway murmurs of the men in the alley, and said to himself, “I got a thousand midnights left to go.” He thought of the new baby’s feet poking out, pulling back, all the nights Brenda would be awake with the howling, nursing mouth. The short-pounding footsteps of Charolette when she padded to his bedside and said, “Daddy, I had a bad dream. I was crying for you.”

  On the couch near his grandmother, when he’d finally fallen asleep, he would sometimes wake past midnight. She always said she couldn’t sleep in the cold, and the fire would still be a low tongue at the embers, a sparkle. She would be asleep, her eyes closed, head bent to the side, and he would creep over to the fireplace, hearing the dry-seasoned plum wood crackle slightly. From a new glow inside the ember he’d see a single tongue of blue curling up the side.

  “Keep you safe,” she’d say, without opening her eyes. “Go on back over there.”

  He rested his wrists on his knees and watched the wild tobacco branches smolder dully, only a faint glow along the stems.

  ASHES

  IN THE MORNINGS, HE opened his eyes to white light as soon as he heard birds. He slid his knees from where they were close behind Brenda’s, before she could say anything or Charolette could step into the doorway, and he went to his father’s.

  No one saw Roscoe for five days. Darnell piled dust-heavy branches onto his father’s truck, pushed them out at the dump, and sat in gray silence beside his father in the cab of the Chevy on the way down from Arroyo Grande or Grayglen or the landfill, descending back into the thick pall of heat-darkened smog.

  That first day after the shooting, Victor and Ronnie got off Floyd King’s truck with Snooter, back from a construction cleanup, and they gathered around the sweat-beaded cans on the spool table. Darnell had been surprised when Victor said it, quietly, so only he and Ronnie could hear. “Vernon, that’s Leon’s boy, right?” Victor said, his lips square. “He a LA nigga, think this is the country and he can hoo-ride on us. I ain’t into ballistics. I’ll do that nigga with my boots. Wild Wild West.”

  “You don’t even know who it was,” Ronnie said. “Man, I heard that fool Leon said somebody probably aimin for his brother thinkin it was him.”

  Darnell said, “Ain’t no need for drama now, okay?”

  But Ronnie said, “Some silver Toyota, man. Stolen. They found it today.” Darnell couldn’t hide his surprise. “Tommy Flair came by and told me.”

  Victor spat onto the dry grass. “It ain’t like the cops too excited. But I’ma kick Leon’s ass and his boy’s.”

  “I’m tellin you, it coulda been anybody,” Ronnie said. Darnell looked away; he hadn’t thought they’d talk about it. “Nine millimeter everybody’s favorite. Coulda been for one a those rockheads owe somebody big cash.”

  Darnell’s father stepped out from the sideyard. “Doesn’t matter,” he said harshly. “You think Roscoe cares about who did it? He lost his son. Somebody else’s son did it. Leave it at that, damnit.” He passed them all to throw a shovel on the truck.

  That night, Darnell stared at the article in the newspaper while he sat in the bathtub, hearing Brenda and her mother in the kitchen. The warm water swayed.

  Louis was on page seven. He was a small paragraph. “Westside youth killed in gang confrontation. Police say they have few clues about the drive-by shooting, and it is not clear whether or not the youth was a gang member.”

  He turned back to the front page, which was dominated by a story about a Japanese student on the summer exchange program at the university; he had run a red light on his moped and failed to stop when police chased him. He was in critical condition after hitting a fire hydrant. Darnell glanced again at the picture of the moped lying on its side in a grassy yard.

  “Japanese cops must don’t chase people in Osaka,” he whispered, closing his eyes. He cupped his palms and dropped water on his head, feeling his eyes swell with heat, trying not to shout. Louis wasn’t a banger, he shouted to himself. Why a guy from Osaka a student, and a brotha from the Westside gotta be a youth? He went to college, remember? Y’all forgot to check it out. He ain’t a student now, though, right? He ain’t page one now.

  The day he saw the FOR SALE sign in Roscoe’s front yard, he’d gone to get a gas can filled for his father, and he stared at the gleaming letters leaning sideways in the baked-hard lawn.

  “He movin in with Marietta Cook,” Darnell’s father said when Darnell got to the back room. “He stopped for a minute over here.”

  “He’s sellin the house?” Darnell remembered all the nights of faint bouncing thumps from the driveway, the purple figs dropping from the tree where Louis had always watched mockingbirds and Roscoe complained about their midnight singing.

  “Why should he stay there?” Darnell’s father said angrily. “Ain’t no reason to look at all that now.” Darnell knew his father was seeing the same tree, the trophies in the front room where no one ever sat. “Hollie like it over there at Marietta’s. She hardly know she had a daddy.”

  “He didn’t know it, neither,” Darnell said slowly. “He always said Geanie was lyin about the baby bein his.”

  “Hollie been had Roscoe,” his father said. “That ain’t changed.”

  “Pops,” Darnell said, “been five days, and I ain’t heard nothin about… what’s Roscoe doin about a service?” He’d been waiting, between the roar of the chain saw and the scraping shovels, to ask, but his father only shook his head. “I’ma go over to Marietta Cook’s,” Darnell said, uncertainly, and his father touched a wavery stain on the table.

  “I think he’ll be back tonight,” he said. Then he looked up at Darnell, and Darnell saw the air rise in his chest. “You come back, too.”

  The Apache was parked in the street, the huge, blunt hood like a sleeping dinosaur. The light was yellow from the back room. His father and Roscoe sat with only the squat glasses near their knuckles—no dominoes, no cards, no pliers or receipts or drawings of someone’s property. The swamp cooler clattered soft, damp.

  “I don’t want to know who did it, Darnell. Don’t want to know how it happened,” Roscoe said, smearing a moist ring on the table. He glanced up at Darnell, his eyes rust-rimmed.

  Darnell stayed standing. “He was stayin in the pecan grove sometimes and this dude got in a fight with him down there,” he said. “I shouldn’t…”

  “I said don’t,” Roscoe said, and Darnell’s father drummed his fingers soft on the table edge.

  “I owe him some money,” Darnell said, the words sounding foolish. “I still owe you money.” He stopped. “I wanted to help pay for the service.”

  “No service,” Roscoe said. “Sit down, Darnell.”

  Darnell couldn’t look at him. He raked his fingers through the hair at his temples, staring at the scarred wood, the ancient cigar burn like a pitted rose.

  “I’m not from Louisiana, where the headstone’s so sacred. I’m from here, remember?” Roscoe stopped. “Palm Springs. They always had trouble digging graves in the desert. I never went to see my wife when she was buried in LA.” Roscoe stopped, and Darnell could only look at his father’s fingers, web-threaded with oil. “Marietta, she has some saying about the spirit leaving the body,” Roscoe said, hoarse now. “Where she’s from, they think it happens at sunrise.” He stared out the black doorway. “I took Louis to the Neptune Society. Nobody needed to see him and make a big deal.” Darnell stared at Roscoe now, at the lips pulled in hard between sentences. “Nobody figured him out before, least of all me, and no sense in strangers standing around a goddamn hole talking about what we didn’t know.”

  “Roscoe,” Darnell’s father said softly, but Roscoe went on.

  “My child. No mother to ask. No wife. Hollie’s mine, too. Officially.” Darnell heard the words, each small and dull as grains of dry rice in Roscoe’s teeth, not the poemlike lines he usually spun aro
und them. “Official papers—you don’t want to fill out papers on a child. It’s—wrong. Wrongest thing I’ve ever written.”

  Darnell felt the clammy wet gathering in his hair, and he stared at the petaled burn scar, at the thin line on his hand. He dropped his hand under the table and shook; burning, in a cement square? An oven? “Brenda gon be worried,” he mumbled, swaying.

  Roscoe stood when he did, and suddenly he wrapped his arms around Darnell, fists knuckled to his back. “Don’t,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” she whispered, close to him on the couch.

  He’d said the name. “It means he got cremated,” he said slowly, and he heard her hiss in breath. He leaned back on the couch automatically, and she put her head on his chest, head shaking with her sobs, her taut belly hard against his ribs and side. He watched the revolving lights from a passing car. Bones—were pieces of bone left? What was left? It wasn’t like a firestorm. He flinched and Brenda pushed her cheek from his damp shirt.

  “I know you saw it,” she whispered, her eyes so close to his face he could feel her lashes move. “I looked in the car for your shirt. And I found broken glass. I know you were near, Darnell.” But her voice wasn’t accusing; it was asking.

  “I didn’t see anything,” he said, staring at the wall.

  “What does Roscoe call it?” his father asked quietly, sipping his coffee, checking the glare of just-risen sun.

  “What?” Darnell said, his throat dull with heat already, and he saw Juan and José watching him carefully from AnTuan’s truck.

  His father drank again and paused. “Silver morning. He’s been callin it that for years,” he murmured. “We’re waitin for silver morning, for the first one, for a break.”

  Darnell looked at the sharp outline of the mountains, no mist or clouds to soften the dawn, and he remembered sleeping twisted-hot on a mattress in the backyard with Melvin. Every fall, when long days of heat hit a hundred degrees, his father would move their beds outside, and Louis, Gas, Leon, Snooter, all of them would sneak over. And sometime long after midnight, moisture would cloud the sky, not enough to gather in the grass or bead on the clothesline pole near his face, but enough to dim the sun.