A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  He walked past me and raised a hand to Billy. “There is a bear,” he said. Then, in a whisper that still carried in the quiet and the empty space between the trees and the water, he asked, “What’s her problem?”

  “What happened?” I saw Billy glancing over to me and he saw me notice.

  “I was talking about the fish and she asked me something about a walrus and a carpenter. I tried to tell her, as a friend, maybe she shouldn’t be at work. I mean what are you supposed to say to something like that?”

  “Next time she says anything about ‘The Walrus and The Carpenter’,” Billy said with another glance my way. “Ask her, why is a raven like a writing desk?” After that he grinned and I could tell it was for me.

  That was all it took to open the fist of anger that was clenched in my chest. Someone who gets me. And that set a whole other flock of feelings to stir around my heart. Those feelings were a lot more confusing than anger and honestly a lot less welcome.

  “So what do you think?” I asked as I walked over without stomping. To ignore, I’d decided was the best policy. “Are these the fish you expected? And what do they have to do with caviar?”

  Mike stood straight and tense, waiting, I’m sure, for me to turn back into some female PMS demon. When he didn’t answer right away I asked again, “Mike, what do you think?”

  “Are we good?” he asked. “You know I wasn’t trying to . . .”

  I arched my eyebrows and tilted my head slightly in question.

  “. . . anything,” he finished.

  “No problem at all, Mike. I might have overreacted. And I’m sorry.”

  Billy was grinning, clearly having a good time.

  I nodded in the direction of the tech placing little rulers for scale next to muddy tracks. “Maybe you could make yourself useful,” I told him. “Then we can get out of here sometime tonight.”

  He went but he kept grinning. I thought I was safe but he simply couldn’t help himself. “By the way,” Billy said. “You owe me a soda.”

  Chapter 3

  One thing that truly astounded me about Mike Resnick that night was his reaction to the smell. It’s something that everyone who has to spend any time around death knows—you get used to the smell. When I’d first encountered this scent though, I had my doubts. Dead and rotting fish has its own special place in the pantheon of horrific odors. The river Styx, I imagined, was nothing more or less than the flowing soup of rotten fish. I had been surprised to realize that I had in fact gotten so used to the stink of the pile, I noticed it only when I thought about it. And I tried pretty hard not to think about it.

  Mike never mentioned the smell. He never waved a hand at the cloud of buzzing flies. And in a gesture that seemed to be a terrible temptation of fate, he reached, barehanded, into the pile and sorted through fish carcasses. Once he’d seen all he wanted to see, he casually wiped his slimy hands on the thighs of his jeans. It wasn’t enough even for him I guess because he rubbed his fingers together then took a couple of steps to the edge of the water. There he squatted and dipped his hands in to wash them off.

  “I see you looking,” he said. “I spend half my life with fish guts on my hands.”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “You don’t have to.” Mike stood and whipped his wet arms over the lake water slinging the clinging drops away. “I guess we all have our own quirks.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I never picked up much about poetry.”

  I nodded, understanding the process of easing into being sorry. “And I never picked up too much about paddlefish and caviar.”

  “Then let me tell you.” He extended a still moist and I was certain, stinking and probably sticky hand. “Friends” His grin was bright and challenging—still the awkward country boy I knew in school.

  I took his hand and shook. “Friends.”

  He laughed. “I can’t believe you shook. I was sure you wouldn’t.”

  “Tell me about the fish, Mike.”

  Still chuckling he pointed at the pile. “They’re not all paddlefish. Most are, and since they are a smaller part of the population it was the paddlefish they were after.”

  “Then why have different kinds?”

  “I didn’t see any hook marks and you can’t catch these animals with bait so what I think we have is someone electrofishing.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

  “You need a boat with a small generator or a bank of batteries.” He spread his hands and pointed down with the index finger of each hand. “You have two electrodes and dip them into the water then—zap.” Mike jerked his hands and waggled his fingers demonstrating a shock. “It’s like a stun gun in the water. Fish float up. You net them.”

  “Then why a mix of fish? Why don’t you get only the ones you want?”

  “Because all these fish float up and if you’re doing it at night, which the poachers do, you sometimes get the wrong ones. That’s why there was a mix of male and female paddlefish in there too.”

  “How can you tell male from female and what does it matter?”

  “It matters a lot to the fish and to the poachers. To the fish, well, it just makes life interesting. The poachers though are only there for the eggs. They only want the females. If you look at the pile, you’ll see some split open. Female. The smaller ones, male, were just left to rot.”

  “Okay. But what about the whole caviar thing? Caviar comes from sturgeon and Russia, right.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks. Actually there are sturgeon here in the U.S. The thing is though, the roe of paddlefish is basically identical. Maybe there are fish egg connoisseurs out there that can tell the difference but enough people can’t.”

  “Caviar’s expensive isn’t it?”

  “And that’s what it’s all about. Money. Missouri paddlefish roe can go for thirty-three hundred to thirty-five hundred.”

  “For each fish?” I was stunned as I looked over at the pile and tried to do a calculation. If only a quarter of those were female . . .

  “No.” Mike interrupted my math. “Per ounce.”

  * * *

  It was my case. I didn’t want it but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Beware of doing favors for friends. I asked the sheriff if he would put Billy on the clock retroactively from the time he arrived at the scene. It was more than generosity. Having him on duty allowed me to stick him with the chore of impounding Damon’s boat. That was something else I didn’t want to do. There wasn’t much choice. We already had his pistol and the boat needed a much more thorough search than we could do by flashlight. Billy had to take the boat to a landing and have another deputy bring a trailer to get it secured in impound. When I told him, I wondered if he’d noticed the engine. Damon’s boat was sixteen feet long and you would have expected it to have at least a twenty-five-horsepower engine. The things you learn working summers on the dock. It had an ancient Johnson nine-horse engine. It would be slow going to get it to the nearest boat landing.

  I don’t know why but I took a little pleasure in giving Billy the all-night chore. When I did it, I would have smiled and said it was what he got for dragging me into this mess. A few minutes later though I was thinking about his comment to Mike about the raven and the writing desk. It was nice that he understood, but it kind of annoyed me at the same time. More than annoyed, it was like an itch under my bra that I couldn’t do anything about in polite company. I didn’t know why it bothered me and not knowing only made it worse.

  Sticking Billy with the chores left me with Damon. The simple thing would have been to have him taken in and held. Simple and easy but not right. I didn’t believe he killed the man in the lake. Mike didn’t even give him the ticket for fishing out of season. The problem was I’d just sent his home off to impound.

  I could tell by the tilt of his head against the truck window he’d dozed off waiting. I opened the driver’s side door carefully but his head popped up instantly. You have to be car
eful how you wake a combat veteran. Someone is likely to get hurt.

  “You doing okay?” I asked him.

  His response was to show me his cuffed hands.

  “Sorry about that.” I pulled my keys and released the bonds on his wrists. “You’re a suspect. There’s no way around it.”

  “Then why’re you cutting me loose?”

  “I’m not. I just took the cuffs off.” He nodded and I got the impression that he had a deep understanding of the variables of freedom. “There are a couple of ways we can go.”

  “Any of them keep me out of jail?” It much less a question than a resignation.

  “As a matter of fact . . .” I started the truck and let him think about it for a second.

  “Yeah? Well?”

  “The problem is one of situation,” I told him. “Yours.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t have a home because we took away your boat.” I dropped the truck into gear. “Even if we hadn’t, that boat is not the kind of living arrangement I would want to send you back into.”

  “It’s what I got,” he said. “Sometimes we take what we got.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I agreed. “But why?”

  “Why what? Why’s a stunningly handsome, dark-skinned, urban American going homeless in the country music, Caucasian capital of the country?”

  I stared at him for a moment. In the dash light, his skin had a gunmetal shine but the angles of his face were hard edged and matched the sullen tone of his voice. “You’re not that handsome,” I said.

  Damon smiled and eased back into the seat. Once he’d made the decision I wasn’t an enemy, the chip disappeared from his shoulder. “It’s a nice truck.” He cast his eyes around the cab then added, “It’s a lot of truck for a woman.”

  “I’m a lot of woman.”

  He laughed. It was short and quiet. The chip was gone but not the caution. “Billy said you were a good one.”

  “A good what?”

  “Person. Nothing weird or gossipy. He’s not like that.”

  “I know. He’s a good one too. One of the best.”

  “I think he’d like to hear you say that.”

  I had the feeling of having been caught in a trap. To get away from it I moved my foot from the brake to the gas and twisted the wheel around sharply bringing the truck back to the road. “So where to?” I asked him.

  “Not jail.”

  “Before I promise that, tell me why. Why are you living on a boat?”

  “The water.”

  “What about it?”

  “I feel better on the water. The motion. The sound. Even the cold and the smells, damp wood rotting, fish spawning, bait . . . It all soothes me.”

  “You served . . .?”

  “Two tours. Iraq. Protecting troops against insurgent snipers and gathering intel.”

  “This is about as far from that world as you can get.”

  “Exactly.” He watched the road crawling through headlights for long moments but I was certain it wasn’t asphalt or the Ozarks he was seeing. “Water is like a moat. Something between me and that world.”

  I let him have the privacy of his memory until he looked up at me with a question in his eyes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Not jail.”

  Once he was relaxed, that is to say once he wasn’t looking at a murder scene, having his home searched, and once he wasn’t heading to jail, Damon was an easy guy to talk with and like. He didn’t want to talk about his service experience but neither did I. Mostly we talked about the lake and Billy. I was beginning to think one of us had an ulterior motive for that when I pulled into the parking lot in front of my Uncle Orson’s boat dock. It was late but the lights within the shop and the bare bulbs strung through the boat slips were on.

  “Come on,” I told Damon pointing ahead to the suspended walkway that tethered the dock to the shore.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked, suspicion rising back up into his voice.

  “You’re going to meet the family.” I didn’t stop at the screen door but I shouted. “Uncle Orson!” The shop was cluttered with shelves and fishing gear. It hummed too, with the sounds of refrigerators and the pumps in the live bait wells. Behind me the screen door slapped closed and the old spring twanged like an out-of-tune guitar string. Damon was still standing on the other side of it looking in. “Orson!” My shout was louder that time and carried out the far side of the shop.

  “You don’t have to shout,” my uncle hollered back at me. “I’m right here cooking dinner.” Through the rusted mesh of a window screen his head appeared from behind the grill top. Grill was a generous description. It was a fifty-five gallon drum halved on its side and welded to a frame. When it burned through Uncle Orson simply cut a new barrel and welded it in. I know he never cleaned out the coals and I kind of doubted that he ever cleaned the steel grating he cooked on. “Chicken,” he proclaimed as though it explained everything that needed to be said.

  “I want you to meet someone.” I turned and Damon was still standing on the far side of the screen door. I had to backtrack and push it open and all but drag him through. “Come on,” I told him, “come meet the black sheep in my family.”

  “Black sheep?”

  “He was a Marine.”

  That was when Uncle Orson pushed through the door on his side. “Do I hear you taking the name of the corps in vain? Who’s this?” He wiped his hands on one of the wash faded shop towels he used when cooking.

  “Damon Tarique, Army Airborne, Ranger, meet my uncle, Master Gunnery Sergeant Orson Williams.”

  Orson put out his big hand, “Retired.”

  Damon shook but his eyes were wary. He appeared to be thinking jail would have been better or at least more in line with what he’d expected.

  “Ranger huh?” Orson shook quickly and dropped the grip. He had a lot of experience with edgy soldiers. “That’s a tough row to hoe. I’m glad to meet you. Chicken?”

  “What?” Damon almost choked on the word, but at the same time his face sharpened into something you didn’t want pointed at you.

  My uncle ignored the look. “You like barbecued chicken? I hit it with my own spicy cayenne rub on the skin and slip garlic butter with rosemary and parsley under it. I’m roasting some ears of corn too and summer squash.”

  “It sounds pretty good.”

  “Oh, it’s better than pretty good, Ranger. It’s damn good. But if I’d of known you were coming it would have been a T-bone.”

  That seemed to break a spell. Damon smiled and laughed a little.

  Uncle Orson pointed him to the table and chairs in the corner and almost shoved him in. “Beer,” he said then pointed at me and added, “and a soda pop.” Next he pointed to Damon. “You a beer man?”

  “Oh hell yeah,” Damon answered and for the first time that night sounded almost happy. Once the beers were open he loosened up even more and followed Uncle Orson out to the grill to help. They talked and got along easily the way a lot of veterans do. It was more than that and exactly what I’d hoped too.

  Orson had a way with other vets. He recognized wounds that were sometimes so deep the sufferer didn’t even know they were there. Then he did the best thing. He found a way to talk, and get them to talk, without preaching. Shared experience. Orson was haunted by the glow of flaming hooches, entire villages he’d set alight with a cigarette lighter. Occasionally he talked about the waves that rippled through elephant grass in the downward wash of Huey helicopters like they were the ripples of the lake he continued to live on. When he got drunk enough, not a rare occurrence, he would talk about the call-and-response nature of an ambush. Two different voices, the AK-47s barking and M16s popping, in firefly flashes across an invisible trail in a jungle of black.

  Both he and my father had gone to that war and come back changed. Uncle Orson—Gunnery Sergeant Orson Williams, USMC, drank and remembered. My father, Lt. Colonel Clement Williams, US Army, Retired, a Phoenix Project intelligence offic
er, went to reunions and stood at the wall. Sometimes I think Orson’s way is healthier.

  “We have a problem,” I said as Damon and Uncle Orson returned with heaping plates of food.

  “What’s that?” Uncle Orson asked, setting down his platter of chicken and lifting his beer.

  Damon set down the corn and squash and some foil wrapped potatoes. He didn’t ask anything or even look at me.

  “Damon needs some things I thought you could help him out with.”

  “Yeah, I saw that comin’ ,” Uncle Orson said once he swallowed his gulp of beer.

  “I’m not askin’ for anything.” Damon looked at the food as he spoke, not at either of us.

  “I’m asking. And not just for you.” I speared a chicken quarter and plopped it on Damon’s plate. “Uncle Orson, you need some help since I took Clare off to work at Moonshines.” I reached across the table and dropped a quarter chicken on his plate. “Damon needs not to be in jail.”

  “Jail?” Orson was more curious than worried. He dropped a corncob in front of Damon.

  “He found a body tonight on the lake. Technically he has to be a suspect but”—I looked at Damon and gave him an exaggerated shrug—“that seems unlikely. However we did have to impound his boat.”

  “You can’t just let him go home? Or get bail or whatever you do in cases like this?”

  “The boat is home.” Damon was staring at the food in front of him like a teenaged boy presented with his first girly magazine, as though he knew it was an illusion but hungered for it all the more because of it. “It’s all I have.” The statement was as naked as the hunger in his eyes.

  That was when I realized that he’d probably not eaten this well in a long time. Still he was listening to us talk with his hands in his lap. A perfect guest.

  Uncle Orson noticed the same thing at the same time but he acted quicker. “Dig in,” he said tearing the leg from the thigh and lifting it to his mouth. He wasn’t that hungry. He was making it okay for Damon to eat, and he did. He bit into the thigh meat without bothering to separate the sections. Before he’d even chewed it he had the corn to his mouth grinding away at the cob with his front teeth.