A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  Just as he looked ready to say something I beat him to it. “You don’t have much of a limp.”

  His open mouth snapped shut. Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he asked, “The fuck you talkin’ about?”

  “The limp you ended up with after that IED explosion.” I let it sink in that I knew about the explosion. I watched him wonder what else I knew. “A lot of guys don’t come back from those.” I looked down and made it obvious where I was looking. “It must be hard with so much muscle loss.” And I looked back into his eyes to say, “So much scar tissue.”

  “You don’t know shit. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  I had the hook in his mouth and I set it. “So can you?”

  “What?” He spit the word out. It was a useless exclamation. Silas knew what I was asking and he knew what I knew.

  Still I pressed. “You know. Can you?” Then I smiled. It was small but sweet. Just sweet enough to burn. “You lost a lot more than muscle, didn’t you, Silas?” I wasn’t proud of myself but I said more. “Some might feel like less than a man without their—”

  He broke and the thing in my belly pounced, red of tooth and claw and I loved it.

  Silas didn’t swing. He curled his hand, fingers under and knuckles out and went for a throat punch. If he’d connected he would have put me down. He didn’t because he was sucked into his own trap of rage and humiliation. That and the fact that I was ready.

  As his hand arched in I turned my left shoulder away and raised my right arm. The blow went behind my neck. I levered over my right, trapping his arm with my shoulder and elbow then gripped the hand with my left locking him against me. That was when I had the chance to be cruel.

  I took it.

  With us shoulder to shoulder, Silas off balance, and me set on my planted left leg, I raised my right foot and kicked the stacked heel, aiming for the side of his bent knee. I missed the knee striking higher up the thigh. Even though it came through my boot heel and traveled up my leg in a moment of anger, I knew the feeling was wrong. There was almost no flesh to cushion the impact. I hit his thigh and struck bone. With so much muscle loss it was amazing the man could walk at all. When he screamed and dropped, I had to wonder if I’d finished the job started by the IED.

  It should have been over. There was a little guilt in me about his leg. That was mind thought. Gut thought, the churning lust to spread my own pain onto others, was actually disappointed at how easy it had been.

  That was when Silas gave me a gift.

  He’d reached down once he’d collapsed. I had thought he was nursing his wound but instead he raised his pant leg and pulled a knife from his boot. It was a cheap tactical knife, the kind you can buy at a convenience store for three dollars. He flicked it open. The blade had a sharp point and an edge that transitioned into brutal serrations at the back half.

  I don’t know what he thought he was going to do with it, especially from the ground. I never gave him the chance to show me. When he raised the weapon, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and twisted holding the blade up and away from my body. I had a moment to hope it showed on the camera before I pulled the baton with my right hand and brought it down on his elbow.

  He was strong and stubborn, I’ll give him that. He didn’t drop the weapon. Instead of using the baton again, I jerked my knee up and planted it into his grimacing face. His nose broke with a solid crunch and blood stained my jeans.

  Silas opened his hand and the knife dropped. That time I hoped that the camera didn’t catch the satisfied smile on my face.

  Chapter 6

  Reverend Roscoe Bolin was standing in the common area outside the sheriff’s office speaking in grand gestures to Sheriff Benson when I came in pushing a cuffed and bloody Silas Boone ahead of me. Silas was walking on his own but slowly. His limp had become an awkward one-sided hop.

  Roscoe stopped what I assumed was either a sermon or a tirade and looked at the pair of us. There was a kind of appraisal in his eyes, but I didn’t see any surprise. “Silas,” he called. Then to me, “What happened here?”

  I grabbed several tissues from the box on the reception counter and dabbed at my knee. Then I wiped some of the blood from Silas’s face. I wasn’t very gentle with his nose.

  “Silas Boone, is under arrest for assaulting an officer.”

  “That can’t be,” the Reverend said, speaking to the sheriff. “Mr. Boone works for me. He’s the soul of restraint. Besides he would never hit a woman. Sheriff, this is exactly what I was talking about. Detective Williams and Silas had a little brush-up this morning.”

  “How about it, Hurricane?” Sheriff Benson asked me in a tired-sounding tone that still managed to be official. “I’m sure there was a reason behind this.”

  “Isn’t there always?” I asked.

  “You know what I mean,” he answered. “A good one.”

  I pulled from my pocket a small digital video recorder and tossed it over. “Judge for yourself. I think Boone planned on getting me to take a swing at him. Maybe put it up on the Internet? Maybe look for a big cash settlement. But I think that will show that either his soul, or his restraint, needs a little reinforcement.” Then I turned back to Roscoe. “You should see if that lawyer you got for Dewey might give you a two-for-one deal.”

  The Reverend didn’t bother to look at Silas. He looked at the sheriff.

  “Reverend Bolin here tells me, Dewey Boone has disappeared,” the sheriff explained.

  Roscoe nodded. “It’s why we came in. To tell you that he ran off from the show and wouldn’t be here to talk to you.”

  I pushed Silas into a chair then used a fresh tissue to wipe at my hands. “Why’d he run?” I asked.

  “I don’ know.” The Reverend shrugged and ran spread fingers through his thick hair as if in deep thought. “Unless he had a guilty conscience.”

  “Guilty about what?” I asked him still dabbing at my hands. “I thought he was your friend, Reverend. This morning you were taking care of everything like family. Now you’re tossing him under the church bus?”

  “I’m not tossing anyone under any bus. I’m only saying I don’t know why he ran away.”

  “Convenience?” I tossed the tissue in the trash. “Yours or his though . . . I don’t know.” I asked the sheriff to watch Silas and went to the restroom to splash a little water on my face and breathe. When I came out the Reverend was gone and Sheriff Benson had called EMTs. He detailed a deputy to escort Silas to the hospital and to bring him back to jail once released. Then he said, “Let’s have a look at this video.”

  He played it over twice with both of us watching the tiny screen built onto the camera. “You got away with it,” the sheriff said shutting the camera off.

  “What do you mean, got away? He tried to take my head off.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded thoughtfully. “He did.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’re a good cop.”

  “That’s a problem?”

  “I’m just an elected man. You know that.”

  I nodded back at him. It was more to show him I was listening than anything else because I could tell he was saying something he thought was important. I was probably the only one of his subordinates that got the benefit of so much of his wisdom.

  “But I hire good cops.” Neither of us was nodding then. His gaze had a real, come-to-Jesus lock on my eyes. “And I keep them on, even when there is a lot of pressure to”—without looking away, he sliced his flat hand through the air between us—“cut ’em loose.”

  “You saw the video.”

  “I saw the video. I saw a little more too.”

  We both waited for a moment. It was a long moment full of a lot of screaming silence.

  He spoke first. “What do you think I expect of a good cop when I see that video?”

  I remained still.

  “I expect to see a de-escalation. I expect to see my detective make every effort to avoid that kind of conflict. I don’t expect
to see her eager for it.”

  “Not eager—”

  “Oh that dog don’t hunt, Hurricane. I don’t know what you said to him, but it wasn’t any kind of sweetness and light.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I want you to talk. I want you to occasionally soothe some ruffled feathers not pluck the fucking rooster every time it crosses your path.” The stare he hit me with was a dare to say anything.

  I didn’t.

  When his breathing calmed, the sheriff said, “Take the rest of the day.”

  “But—”

  “And tomorrow.”

  “I’m—”

  “You’re what?”

  “I’m sorry.” I was too. Not when I did it but I was honestly sorry I had disappointed someone who believed in me and the better nature I sometimes thought I had given to the dirt of Iraq.

  “You’re goddamned right you are.”

  “But there’s something going on here.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Not with me. Why did Silas Boone try to set me up? And why did a kid we had no reason to suspect, run? I think someone is telling us not to look at one hand and waving a big red flag with the other.”

  “I think it’s not your problem for a couple of days. Houseman can take over for now.”

  He went into his office and closed the door.

  I went out to my truck but didn’t start it. The parasite inside me was born out of the violence inflicted upon me by two men who were supposed to be comrades. They pulled me out of my bunk in the middle of the night, took me to a secluded spot beside an empty road and raped me. Not content with the simple act, they cut and brutalized my body for the crime of being a woman in the men’s club of war.

  That thing—the parasite—a child of hate and fear, loves only violence. Sometimes I think I need it. Sometimes it terrifies me. Always, when it is sated and curls back to sleep in the pit of my body, it leaves me mired in the past and fearful of the present.

  I didn’t want to drive because my hands were trembling. My eyes were seeing the brown dirt of a wasted country and the dark stain of my own blood seeping into it.

  Brown.

  Browns.

  Misty snakes of wind, sidewinding along patched and broken asphalt, slithering over a mud wall to cover my life as though my presence in the dun-colored world were somehow shameful.

  When I see the world turning to shades of old shit, I have to wait. It’s something I’ve learned. If I got into the truck and drove there was a huge chance I would wake someplace, drunk, with no memory of how I got from here to there.

  That was the price I paid for the pleasure of bringing a little perspective into the life of Silas Boone.

  It was worth it.

  After an hour or so of standing against the washed out winds of my past, I got behind the wheel. There were many safe places for me to go. My home held no liquor. Uncle Orson’s bait shop was filled with cheap pints and beer. It also had Uncle Orson. Moonshines, a bar was equally safe because of Clare. The old men in my life looked out for me. Maybe that’s a pattern but I didn’t want to examine it very carefully.

  I don’t recall what lies I told myself, but I didn’t go to any of the places I knew were safe. Or maybe I simply needed a different kind of safety. When I got out of the truck again the sun was setting, and I was parked in the grass outside the big tent of the Starry Night Traveling Salvation Show.

  In the far western distance, old storm clouds were throwing themselves into a dying sun. Their deaths were rendered pink, purple, and red. All the rest of the sky was a dark gloaming of ancient blue. There was the moon and a single star. Venus? The tent, under impending night, was blazing with light and color. I went in to find a technical rehearsal going on. On the stage Reverend Bolin was striding from corner to corner pointing to theatrical lights high up on support poles. As he went, a man followed him around. Every time they spotted a shadow they both yelled at another man on a ladder among the lighting instruments.

  In the far back of the tent, there was yet another pair of technicians working over a big audio console.

  Everywhere there were young women running in and out doing smaller tasks. Some were hanging bunting. Some lining up chairs. Half a dozen were raking the cropped grass for every last clipping or bit of trash. I counted fourteen of them. In all the activity it was hard to miss the few men who stood around the perimeter. Their grim faces were shaded by sunglasses but they all echoed Silas Boone in aspect. They were ex-military men and they were on the job. The question was, what job?

  If they were hard to miss they certainly didn’t miss me. It wasn’t obvious. They were watching me without looking directly at me. When I wandered to the audio table their bodies shifted slightly. It was a subtle give away. Behind their sunglasses their eyes followed while their faces remained turned to an imaginary middle distance.

  At the front apron of the stage, one of the girls draping red, white, and blue bunting fell from a chair. Her surprised scream caught the attention of everyone inside the tent. I noticed that the men outside didn’t seem to react at all.

  The girl looked to be twelve or thirteen, it was hard to judge—they all seemed small. Two other girls had come to her aid and were already helping her up when Reverend Bolin jumped down from the stage. When he appeared among them, the two girls scattered like bait fish in front of a shark. The girl who had fallen was left alone to face him.

  It was a strange moment. Even from where I was I could feel the girl’s fear. From the Reverend I felt something else but couldn’t pin it down. Roscoe put his hand on the girl’s chin and directed her face upward to his. He spoke softly and she nodded making his arm echo and amplify the motion.

  There was a pressure coming from the front of the stage. A wall of energy that kept me pushed back and immobile. I feared what I might see, a secret signal of sin or a bursting of rage onto a child. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away. My body remained like a coiled and locked spring, waiting for the trigger that would set me free. I had no reason to believe that Reverend Bolin was mistreating the girls. However, my experiences have left me more ready to believe the worst, than to blindly accept the good intentions of any authority.

  Reverend Bolin released the girl then bent to pick up the chair she’d fallen from. It was an old folding chair made of peeling wood. Nothing like the shining rows of new metal chairs set out for the audience. He hefted the seat as if weighing it against something in memory, then raised it up and shattered it on the stage lip. He raised it two more times, breaking the offending object into shards that scattered from his anger just like the two girls had.

  Roscoe threw aside the bits remaining in his hands then turned his head to the lights and bellowed out a word that made me think he was actually insane, “Banjo!”

  “Banjo!” he shouted again. It was a Charlton Heston sound. The effort made his hair flow around his head and shoulders like mercury.

  The man who had been looking for shadows with Roscoe when I first came in appeared from behind a giant, rough-hewn cross center stage. “What?” he shouted back.

  When Roscoe turned to fix the other man in his focus, his hair shook and caught the light again making it appear that he was radiating light. “Banjo,” he said, still almost howling. “I told you we needed ladders, or stepping stools for the girls.”

  Banjo spread his hands in surrender saying, “I asked for the money to buy some last week. I asked for that, and to buy some sizing and muslin to fix the flats you were yelling about. Massoud sicced Silas on me. So don’t be yelling at me until you figure out who’s running this show.”

  Without waiting for a response, Banjo turned and went back behind the cross. I noticed for the first time that the huge prop was moving. It was being hoisted up from behind.

  Roscoe brushed aside the few remaining splinters that rested on the stage floor before lifting the silent and scared girl up. Then he sat beside her with an arm over her shoulders.
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br />   He spoke to her. His quiet words were eaten up by the distance and general noise of the tent but I could tell she was listening. As she listened she seemed less afraid.

  I hadn’t realized until then that I’d been holding my breath for a long time.

  There was a pop and a sizzle on the sound system, then a piano run I knew instantly as Floyd Cramer, then a slow hum from the backup singers before Elvis launched into the gospel, jubilee number, “Run On.” It started loud before the tech pulled it down to almost a whisper. It was like wind celebrating in the background.

  The girl snuggled under Roscoe’s arm and smiled. He kept talking to her. Behind them the cross continued to grow and rise into the tent’s peaks. Someone I couldn’t see shouted and the stage lights shifted then changed again going through the show cues one by one.

  Wind, cool and clean, rushed in and billowed the canvas out.

  The girl on the stage with the Reverend was laughing.

  That same unknown someone shouted again and a spot lit up the downstage lip where the pair were sitting. The girl grinned and giggled. Her teeth gleamed in her dark face pressed into the Reverend’s black shirt. Her eyes shined.

  Another shift of the lights and everything but the front key and a backlight, focused directly on the pair, went out.

  Elvis finished his song.

  The girl, still grinning, gave Roscoe a hug and hopped off the stage to run out of the tent.

  Then the Reverend, looked up, directly at me. His eyes, even from the length of the tent, crackled with broken-glass sparks. The hair that had seemed to flow, was solidified into a white mane that haloed his head. While his face reflected light, his clothing absorbed it. He stood from the stage, more Reverend than Roscoe and I understood why he had a following.

  “Hurricane,” he said. I heard him clearly even though he seemed to speak quietly again. “Katrina,” He corrected. Then he beckoned. “Please, come talk to me.”

  Another gust of wind came in under the peaked roof and swirled. I went up the aisle.

  When I got close, he asked, “Official?”

  For some reason the word confused me and the only thing I could think to say was, “What?”