Dark Room

by Tom Becker

  “Marnie?”

  Hopper shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “The waitress.”

  “Oh,” said Darla. “That was her name.”

  “Darla…”

  “What? I didn’t say anything!”

  Hopper turned and looked at her. “I swear, darlin’, that if you don’t give me a break we’re going to have some serious words. I’m a patient man but there’s only so much I can—”

  “Look out!” screamed Darla.

  She heard the angry roar of an engine, and a shadow fell across the Buick’s windshield. A red pick-up truck was hurtling along the narrow road in the other direction – headed straight for them. Hopper swore and yanked on the steering wheel, sending the Buick veering out of the way. Darla clung to her seat as the car rattled through the scrubland by the roadside, scraping against bushes and tree branches. As the pick-up hurtled past, through the driver’s window Darla caught a glimpse of a scrawny man hunched over the wheel.

  Battling the Buick, Hopper somehow managed to steer the car back on to the road, coming to a halt in a squeal of brakes.

  “Asshole!” he yelled at the disappearing truck. He turned to Darla. “You OK?”

  Darla nodded.

  “What was that guy doing?” Hopper said incredulously. “He coulda killed us!”

  He punched the steering wheel, and for a moment Darla thought he was going to turn the car around and chase after the pick-up. But then, to her relief, Hopper let out a deep breath and restarted the engine, guiding the Buick in the opposite direction – towards Saffron Hills.

  Chapter Three

  The road wound up a steep hillside before disappearing into a forest of pine trees, their slender trunks like black matchsticks. Darla felt surrounded by a gnarled army standing silently to attention. The sun might have disappeared overhead but it was still baking hot inside the car. Winding down her window, Darla was assailed by a barrage of cricket chirrups. Hopper seemed uneasy, gnawing on his lip as he drove through the trees. Probably still going over their near miss in his mind, she guessed.

  They emerged from the wood without warning, returning into brilliant sunlight. Darla gasped. The trees had been cut back, revealing a breathtaking landscape of rolling green hills. Huge mansions sat behind forbidding iron railings, sprinklers squirting jets of water over the lawns. Sleek sports cars rested in the driveways, polished chrome gleaming in the sunshine. Through her open window Darla heard a loud splash and a peal of laughter; she turned in her seat, and saw the blue glimmer of a swimming pool. Outside the house next door, bare-chested teenage boys tussled beneath a basketball hoop fixed to the garage, whooping as one of them sank a shot from the back of the court. Darla tried to imagine what it was like living in one of these houses, and gave up. It was as though the iron railings marked the edge of another world.

  “Welcome to Saffron Hills,” said Hopper.

  “It’s amazing,” she said.

  “It has a certain charm,” Hopper admitted grudgingly. “In a flashy sort of way. These here houses were built by a local developer called Allan West back in the day; managed to attract some of the wealthiest people in South Carolina – Georgia and Tennessee too. Bankers and businessmen, lawyers, former senators. That’s the thing about money: it tends to attract more money.”

  “That why we’re broke?”

  “Among other reasons.”

  As the Buick followed the winding road through the hills, Darla became aware of a dark-coloured car with muted flashing lights following behind them. Hopper glanced up into the rearview mirror.

  “Now there’s a surprise,” he muttered sourly. “Haven’t been here five minutes, and already the rent-a-cops are on our tail.”

  Darla frowned. “Rent-a-cops?”

  “Local security,” Hopper explained. “People round here prefer to have police they can trust. After all, you never know whose son might be found passed out drunk in the gutter, or caught speeding with a joint in his pocket.”

  He pressed down on the accelerator, urging the Buick towards the intersection at the bottom of the hill. The mansions haughtily withdrew from view, disappearing back behind their high walls and railings. When the Buick reached the intersection and turned on to the main strip the car behind them pulled up, the security guards content to watch them drive away.

  Luis Gonzalez, the self-styled ‘Realtor King of Saffron Hills’, worked out of a bright glass-fronted office in the middle of the main strip. Hopper parked the Buick outside and stepped briskly across the sun-drenched sidewalk into the office. Darla followed behind, her skin prickling pleasantly under the cool breath of the air conditioning. A middle-aged man in a smart suit was working at a desk. He stood up as they entered the office and gave them a broad smile.

  “Good morning, sir. How may I help…?” His smile melted as Hopper approached. “What are you doing here?”

  “Aw, come on now, Luis!” Hopper said warmly, clapping him on the back. “Is that any way to greet an old buddy? How long has it been – ten, twelve years?”

  Luis said nothing. Hopper glanced around the plush office, and let out an admiring whistle. “Life sure has picked up for you since New Mexico,” he said. “You’ve landed on your feet.”

  “I earned every cent,” Luis replied stiffly. “A man can change, Hopper.”

  “No doubt, no doubt.” Hopper nodded. “You were in a different business back then, as I recall.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Luis said quickly.

  “It was a business kinda like this one, wasn’t it?” said Hopper. “You did spend a lot of time going around other people’s houses – only they didn’t know about it.”

  Luis’s eyes flicked over towards Darla. Her family had left New Mexico when she was very young – she wondered whether he knew who she was.

  “How did you find me?” the realtor asked.

  “Saw your picture in the paper,” replied Hopper. “Gotta say, you were the last person I expected to see here.”

  Luis shrugged. “After you left New Mexico I decided to start over. I remember your Sidney saying how rich people were in Saffron Hills, so I thought—”

  “I get the picture,” said Hopper. Darla glanced at her daddy, but he refused to meet her eye.

  “So what do you want?” asked Luis.

  Hopper raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  “Why, we’re looking for a place to stay, of course! This is a realtor’s office, right?”

  Luis held up his hands. “I’d like to help you, Hopper, but I don’t think I can. Saffron Hills is a very exclusive market – some of our properties run into millions of dollars.”

  Hopper shook his head. “That would be beyond our budget, which is modest, not to say almost nonexistent. My darlin’ girl here was crying and fretting and worrying that we wouldn’t be able to find a place to stay but I said to her, ‘Darla – don’t you worry now, girl. My good friend Luis will be able to help us out. He is, after all, the Realtor King of Saffron Hills.’”

  Darla shifted uneasily. It was bad enough having to watch her father put the screws on someone without being dragged into it too. It made her feel like an accomplice.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” Luis said firmly. “You’ll have to leave.”

  Hopper picked up a photograph of a pretty blond-haired woman from Luis’s desk and studied it.

  “She’s real nice,” he said. “Classy, too. Your wife?”

  Luis nodded. “Celeste.”

  “We should meet up some time, swap old stories. Does Celeste know about New Mexico? I bet I could tell her some tales that would make her look at you in a whole new light.”

  Luis slumped down behind his desk.

  “What do you want from me?” he said helplessly. “I can’t just give you a house, Hopper.”

  “I’m not asking for one. Just somewhere we can lay our heads for a few nights.”

  The realtor let out a long sigh. “There’s a vacant house down by the creek,” he said fina
lly. “The old lady who owned it died a few months back and didn’t have any family to claim it. I guess it’d be OK for you to stay there for a few days.”

  “Perfect!” said Hopper, clapping his hands together. “We’ll take it!”

  As the Buick followed Luis’s silver Mercedes along the strip, Darla caught snapshots of Saffron Hills through the window: a busy mall, a tall church spire, the performing arts centre, a row of convenience stores. Gradually the countryside wrestled back the land, the stores giving way to wild fields bordered with trees of sugarberry, sourwood and sassafras. There were no iron gates and grand estates here, just the occasional shack huddling behind a wire fence.

  Hopper glanced over at the passenger seat, and saw his daughter glaring back at him.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Darla.”

  She folded her arms.

  “What?” said Hopper. “I found us a place to stay, didn’t I?”

  “Only by blackmailing that poor man! I thought he was your friend!”

  “If you’ve got another way of finding a place to stay without rent money, by all means go ahead, darlin’,” Hopper said defensively. “I’m doing the best I can here.”

  “Why did he mention Mom? What’s she got to do with Saffron Hills?”

  “You pay no attention to what he says now, Darla. Luis might look all dressed-up and respectable but he’s a liar and a thief.” Hopper flashed her a smile. “How else d’you think I know him?”

  Ahead of them the silver Mercedes turned off at the intersection and went rattling down a narrow country lane. A creek ran beside the way, black willow trees trailing their delicate fingers through the water. The Mercedes stopped outside a rundown two-storey house and Luis climbed out. He fidgeted nervously with a bunch of keys as the Buick pulled up behind him. Hopper got out, shielding his eyes against the sun as he examined the house.

  “Gas and electricity are paid up till the end of next month,” Luis told him, mopping his glistening brow with a white handkerchief. “But the property has seen better days, there’s no denying it. We haven’t had one person come to view it. People round here prefer to stay up in the hills rather than come down to the creek.”

  “It’ll do just fine, Luis,” Hopper said. “I appreciate it most sincerely.”

  The realtor glanced across at the Buick, noting the fresh dent Marvin’s pistol had left in the bodywork. “What kind of heat have you got on you?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” Hopper replied easily. “There’s nothing to worry about, I swear.”

  He held out his hands for the house keys and Luis handed them over – after a brief pause.

  “Say, there’s one more thing you might be able to help me with,” Hopper said. “I bumped into someone on my way into town, and wondered whether you knew him. Tall, ratty-looking fella, driving a red pick-up like a bat outta hell.”

  Luis nodded knowingly. “Sounds to me like Leeroy Mills,” he said. “A redneck who lives in a trailer a ways on down the creek. I’d steer clear if I were you.”

  “Duly noted,” said Hopper. “Don’t want the good people of Saffron Hills thinking we’re mixing with the wrong crowd, do we?”

  He held out his hand for Luis to shake but the realtor was already hurrying back to his Mercedes. Luis revved the engine into life, and the car bounced away down the lane in a cloud of dust.

  Hopper held open the front gate for Darla and handed her the keys.

  “After you,” he said.

  Darla went up the verandah steps and unlocked the front door. The air inside the gloomy house was musty and stifling. White sheets were draped over the furniture. In the living room she pulled back the drapes from the window and forced open the rusty catch, letting a welcome breeze sweep inside the room. She looked out through the window over a tangle of waist-high grass and overgrown shrubs. The yard sloped down towards the creek at the bottom. A rope swing dangled from the limb of a sturdy cypress tree.

  “What d’you think?” asked Hopper.

  “It’s beautiful,” Darla said quietly.

  She went back out to the car and fetched her sports bag from the trunk, carrying it upstairs. Faced with a choice between two bedrooms, she took the smaller one with the view over the yard. Her own room. Darla couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a space to call her own. She smiled as she closed the door behind her, putting her bag down on her bed and going to the window to stare out over the creek. When she turned back, Darla found herself confronted by a large, ornate mirror on the dresser. Her reflection brought back unwanted memories of the gas station restroom – she shook her head, pushing the image from her mind. It was bad enough she was seeing things, without driving herself crazy over it.

  When they had unpacked and removed the sheets from the furniture, Hopper drove out in search of food, returning with some bags of groceries and two large pepperoni pizzas. They ate in front of the TV, balancing the pizza boxes on their laps. Darla looked up from her slice to find her daddy looking at her thoughtfully.

  “What?” she said. “Have I got cheese round my mouth?”

  Hopper smiled. “Nothing like that,” he said. “I was just thinking… I don’t know, maybe Saffron Hills will be good for us. Give us a chance to start again – turn over a new leaf.”

  Darla grunted non-committedly. She had heard it all before. There had been plenty of fresh starts over the last couple of years; enough new leaves turned over to fill a forest. It never lasted. ‘A man can change’, Luis had told Hopper. Darla wasn’t convinced.

  Sure enough, later that evening, after they had finished watching TV and Darla had gone to bed, she heard the telltale creak of the screen door on the porch and the Buick’s guilty cough as the engine started. Hopper had crept out to find a bar. Darla rolled over in her bed, and drifted off into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Four

  Darla must have been exhausted, because it was almost noon before she opened her eyes and got out of bed. She wrapped a thin dressing gown over her T-shirt and padded through the house towards the kitchen. The door to Hopper’s bedroom was ajar, his snores echoing out into the corridor. His car keys were downstairs on the kitchen table, beside a quart of whiskey and a pack of matches from a bar called Shooters. Darla shook her head. So much for new leaves. She emptied the quart down the sink, wrinkling her nose at the smell of strong liquor, and threw the bottle into the trash. Chances were Hopper wouldn’t remember he had bought it anyway.

  Opening the fridge, Darla drank orange juice straight from the carton, a yellow dribble running down her chin. She wiped her mouth and looked around her. Things had happened so quickly since they had fled the trailer park she felt as though she hadn’t had time to take a breath. Twenty-four hours ago she had been running through the rain with gunshots going off above her head, and now she was standing in the kitchen of her new home – for the time being, anyway. Were they really going to be allowed to stay there? How long could Hopper go without screwing everything up?

  Darla shrugged. No point playing guessing games with herself. She went into the bathroom where she brushed her teeth and took a long shower, revelling in the hot blast of the water as it poured down around her. Afterwards Darla wrapped a towel around her body and carefully wiped condensation from the bathroom mirror. Her pale, thin face stared back at her, freckles clustered around her nose and cheeks, and her wet hair sticking to her ears like seaweed. Darla knew she was never going to be pretty – and maybe that would have been OK, if it hadn’t been for the fact her mom had been so beautiful. With her long blond hair, flawless skin and soft, sorrowful eyes, Sidney O’Neill had attracted admiring glances wherever she went. Somehow Darla felt that she was letting her mom down, being so plain. Looking in the mirror had become a small, daily punishment.

  Drying herself off, Darla changed into a yellow tank top and denim shorts and slipped on a pair of battered sandals. It would be hours before Hopper got up and anyway, she wasn’t in the mood for hungover excuses. He could fix his own c
offee.

  She pushed open the screen door and walked down the yard path into the lane. Crickets chirruped in the long grass by the tarmac. Telephone poles stretched up into the sky. It was still hot but the first scent of fall was in the air, a distant smell of burning wood on the breeze. Save for the parked Buick, the road was empty. The houses here were all vacant, ramshackle shells covered in peeling paint. Luis had said that people in Saffron Hills tended not to come down this way. He had also said – before Hopper had hurriedly cut him off – that he had come here because Sidney O’Neill had told him about it. Darla wondered how her mom had known about this wealthy, secretive little town.

  The creek wound sharply to the left, abruptly cutting off the lane. The water was still and black, a dark liquid scar running through the earth. Darla stood on the bank and stared into the creek, her thoughts as murky as the sullen water.

  It seemed that with each passing day Darla’s memories of her mom grew fainter, like a fading photograph. Sidney had been just eighteen when Hopper first saw her, standing in the front row of a gig in a club in Charleston – “pretty as a picture,” he had remarked wistfully. They had tumbled into a whirlwind romance, marrying before the month was out. Darla could never understand what her mom had seen in Hopper; had she been foolish enough to fall for his glib lines? She remembered her mom as a quiet, withdrawn figure, somehow never fully present even when she was in the same room. With her daughter in one hand and a suitcase in the other, Sidney had followed her husband across the south, from one failed scheme to another. She hadn’t argued, hadn’t complained, not even when Hopper came home stinking of beer and women’s perfume, or when he crashed the car drunk. One night five years ago Sidney had simply run a bath, knocked back a bottle of sleeping pills and cut her wrists. Darla – eleven at the time – had been asleep in bed, Hopper out in some bar. It had been his horrified yells that had woken her; she could still hear his ragged voice screaming at her not to come into the bathroom, the door slamming shut in her face. He had protected her from that, if nothing else.