A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  Keene was ready to fight. The smile that died on his lips had rotted into a snarling quiver. I’d seen it before and the sheriff had played it perfectly. Career military officers function like precision timepieces in the confines of their hierarchy. Out in the real world where the roads are bumpy and the lines aren’t so clear, their rusted skills of give-and-take put them at a disadvantage. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

  Givens put a hand on Keene’s shoulder and said softly, “Come on. Let’s not make things worse.”

  Like I’d said earlier, he was the smarter one.

  Givens backed up through the door keeping a hand on Captain Keene’s shoulder. Keene went but he had the appearance of someone who wanted to spit out an old wad of tobacco.

  “Don’t let that door hit you in the ass as you go,” Sheriff Benson said as they headed for the building’s exit. “Or do. I don’t really care,” he added just to me. Then, without much breath between thoughts he said, “I’m sorry about that. I knew that fellow would make it a pissing match. I just didn’t know it would get so . . .” he searched for the perfect word to sum it all up. He didn’t find it so he simply said, “Pissy.”

  “It was bound to happen,” I told him and hoped my tone was more forgiving than it sounded to me. “He was right. The CID and I have a history of issues.”

  “We’re going to cut Silas Boone loose.”

  “What? No. You can’t.”

  “We’ll have to. You know it. The feds will make it happen with or without me. We can let him sweat it out tonight and open the door in the morning. Besides, if he’s already out when the honcho over those peckerwoods calls me, I’ll have a lot more room on my plate for chewing their asses off.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t have to be here to do it. I’m still off duty.”

  “That’s a good thing too. I imagine we’ll let his lawyer think we’re afraid of how that arrest went when we let his boy walk. It’ll look good if you even take a couple of more days.”

  I looked and could tell by the gaze that I got back, it wasn’t a suggestion. I didn’t fight. “Thanks,” I said.

  “For what? Making you a scapegoat?”

  “For backing me up with those two. For always having my back.” I had a thought that had been tingling just behind my ears. It wasn’t a good one and it wasn’t one I completely understood. I just knew that it had to come out before I could really get a handle on it and sooner was better than later. “I’m not sure”—I turned and looked away from the sheriff—“I’m not sure Billy could have done that.”

  “Done what? Send those guys packing?”

  “Stood up for me. Not like that.”

  He laughed. It was a quick and tentative cluck, like he’d never found anything to laugh about before and was just trying the sound on for size. Then he did it again and the cluck bloomed into a full-on hen’s cackle. It was the kind of laugh you associate with old movies and ancient men dancing after they discovered gold in them thar hills.

  “Sometimes—” he started then let the laugh take him over again. When it settled he picked it up. “Sometimes—I swear, girl—sometimes you’re dumber than a box of rocks.”

  “What?”

  “Why do you really think I talked Billy Blevins over with you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said feeling pretty flustered and actually ambushed. “You said—”

  “That boy . . .” Sheriff Benson thought about that then laughed again. “He does look like a boy and that soda pop don’t help things, but he’s a man. And he’s a man who would do anything for you. He’d do the right thing for this department. He’d give his life for anyone of us. But he’d do anything for you.”

  It was a stunning revelation. Not just the statement of Billy’s feeling, but that it was so obvious to the sheriff and I’d never known. Or had I? There had been moments. There had been a time before I married Nelson.

  “No,” I said and I hit it like a nail to fix the truth of it. “Billy and I are friends.”

  “Hurricane—Katrina,” I hated the sound of both names because they were said with such sadness and sympathy. Understanding even, and that only made it worse. “You don’t really have friends, do you?”

  I flushed with heat and I knew a red blush was spreading up my neck and into my face. I kept turned away from the sheriff. I wouldn’t have blushed if it wasn’t true.

  “You know people and they know you, but it’s all on the surface. I’m about the closest thing you have to a real friend and I’m an old man. All the friends you have are old men, me, that old moonshiner, Clare Bolin, even your uncle. How many people in this world do you really trust? And how many of them are men over sixty?”

  “Billy is . . .” I didn’t have anything to put in the end of that sentence. Billy was a mirage to me, a ghost of war as much as a solid person in my life.

  “Billy Blevins is not who you think he is,” the sheriff said out loud what I was thinking. “He’s not what you think or imagine.”

  “How can you know what I think?” It was a weak refutation, a child’s argument against the truth.

  “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you even know what you think?”

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t feeling guilty for sending that note to Marion or sticking my fingers into the sheriff’s life anymore. That was sure.

  “It’s a serious question, Katrina.”

  I remembered a conversation I’d had with Billy in that time before I’d married Nelson Solomon. The world was falling apart and Billy was there to scrape together my pieces and keep me from making all my mistakes even bigger. I’d found out some surprising things about him, he was moonlighting at Moonshines, singing on the outdoor stage. Everything seemed to be changing as I got closer to Nelson. I’d said something to Billy about us being friends but there were so many things I didn’t know about him. He said that I’d never asked. It wasn’t an accusation. Just a fact.

  “I can’t—” I started. Then I had nowhere to go with the sentence. “Billy and I aren’t—” I didn’t know where that was going either. “I think you’re mistaken.”

  Sheriff Benson didn’t say anything right out. The look on his face called me an idiot though.

  “He should have said something,” I said.

  “Oh I think he did. I’d say he said about a million somethings, but you’re always inside your own head talking too loud to yourself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He sighed. “It means you don’t listen.”

  Chapter 8

  Sheriff Benson had given me a lot to think about. The gift that keeps on giving and annoying. I forgot it all once I got out to my truck and found six more calls from my father waiting on the phone I’d left behind. I’d lost count of how many times he’d actually called but the number of messages was easy to remember. There were none.

  That time I called him back.

  “It’s about guns and you should stay clear,” he said instead of hello. “CID is sending someone and they are not your biggest fan.”

  “I already met Captain Keene, the feeling is pretty mutual,” I told him. “What do you mean it’s about guns?”

  “Guns,” he emphasized. “Military weapons. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone but there is something big and dirty going on.”

  “Well, what else is new?” I asked because I was always good with sarcasm.

  Or at least I thought I was. Dad didn’t pick up on it. Instead he said, “Something else I need to talk with you about. But also not on the phone.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “I hope you won’t think so when you hear it.”

  He was talking about a woman. The woman from DC.

  My finger was stroking along the ridge of scar by my eye before I was even aware of my unease. “I’m looking forward to it,” I lied.

  “Listen sweetheart . . .”

  “Tell me about the guns,” I said.

  �
��Nothing is clear yet and that’s a message itself. Documentation of military weapons is precise. The fact that some arms are missing is not nearly as disturbing as the intentional destruction of the paper trail.” He paused and I could feel the turmoil of his other thoughts through the phone. “We’ll talk more when I get there.”

  Off the phone I wondered why it bothered me so much that Dad would be seeing someone. And I thought about some of what the sheriff had said to me. When I started the truck and got on the road I was angry. Not simple anger, I was pissed off in the way I had been when confronted by Keene and that file but without the clear target. I wanted to be able to hold my feelings in my hand and examine them one by one in the light.

  Why was I angry at Dad?

  Why was I angry at Billy?

  The truth, and I had at least enough self-awareness to see part of it, was that I wasn’t angry at them. So much of the anger in my life was a gun pointed right at my heart. There was a long string tied to the trigger that led back to the moments of violence that I couldn’t get past. But the hard thing—the dangerous thing—was that the string was tangled through my life, wrapped around thoughts and actions, the furniture of living. Any wrong move would trip over that string and put a fresh round of rage right into my heart.

  As it does so often in my life the world closed in. It was hot, brown, and dirty with hate. The world hated me. Crawled over my skin and into my wounds, a slow burial. It wanted to devour me and spit me into the grave at the same instant. The filthy, crawling mist of sand that drank my dripping blood had the power to make me less. I was less than myself, less than human. I was a woman in the male world that despised me, taking joy in the long cuts the two men had put on my skin. Dirt matted in the gaping wound where a superior officer had run the edge of a KA-BAR knife around my breast, almost severing it. The dust of Iraq, wasted, brown hate, muddied the stab wound in my buttocks. The two men, officers, comrades, had attacked what was woman about me. Their assault was an open door for the dirt of the grave.

  My concentration was on myself, focused inward with nothing left to spare for defending the outer walls or for driving. It wasn’t until the truck was slowing to a stop that I realized how split from my body I’d become.

  Automatic driving, something we all experience when our minds wander to deeper thoughts and the road is easy. All of a sudden we notice that miles have passed since we were last aware of the road and wonder, astounded, how we made it that far. There are some of us though that take it further. The automatic action becomes more of a functional blackout and it shows not the easy road, but the roads we are most desperate for.

  I had pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store.

  I was actually imagining the burn of whiskey down my throat and the wondrous bloom of its heat into my belly. Whiskey was like a religion to me. It offered a transformation, a miraculous change in my gut from heat, to peace. But the peace was a lie. As far as I was concerned, exactly like religion.

  If I hadn’t seen the car parked in the next lot over I might have gone in. God help me, I wanted to go in. But, surprisingly, I wanted to rake Keene and Givens over the coals even more.

  They were in a rental car. A generic SUV that was nothing more than a high-riding station wagon. I never would have noticed them if they weren’t two black men. The Ozarks is kind of a homogenous place. Even Branson, a tourist destination, attracted mostly white faces to country music shows and corn pone gospel reviews. Not that that was a surprise to anyone. It did work against two black investigators being able to surveil me without being noticed.

  My first thought was to drive on. I could spend the whole day if I wanted to, leading them nowhere. I didn’t trust myself though. Not the way I was feeling. Not with the gritty feel of old dirt still on my skin. Besides, I thought, why were they following me? Then I realized it had to be for Damon. They had been surprised that I knew about him, and he was certainly involved in their investigation. Being a live-off-the-grid kind of guy, he had to be hard to keep track of. I was their way of finding him.

  Twisting the rearview mirror around to see what was around, I found my answer. The lot they were parked in belonged to one of the older shows. Imagine Hee-Haw and the Lawrence Welk Show having a baby raised by George Wallace. I called dispatch to look up the number for me.

  They weren’t friends as the sheriff pointed out. Not that I would have claimed the two men who came out of the theater a few minutes later and approached the rental car from front and behind. But I had known them for a while. Kyle and Keith were two brothers who barely made it out of high school and firmly believed that white men could no longer get a fair shake in America. They were security guards at the Ozark’s Hillbilly Road Show and I’d had to deal with them more than once because of their enthusiasm for the job.

  There was a moment when I felt bad using race against the men. More than that, I’d stacked the deck when I called the box office and said there were two black men in the parking lot who had made suggestive comments to my teenaged daughter. I had done almost the same thing to another CID officer a while back when I ditched him at a redneck bar and told the locals he had been following me. Is race-baiting in self-defense racist? I didn’t really know the answer to that, but I was willing to use the tools at hand. Still I felt bad enough that I didn’t stick around to watch.

  It did lift my spirits to see a ball bat-sized club shatter the headlight of the rental car as I drove away. Off-handedly I hoped everyone would be all right, but the truth was, both groups could stand lessons in tolerance. I turned on the radio and actually danced a little in my seat to an oldie from KC and the Sunshine Band. I was feeling pretty good by the time I parked in front of Uncle Orson’s dock ramp.

  This time Mike was not visiting and I found Damon netting dead minnows from the live well. He was in an even better mood than I had been getting into.

  “Never seen a man smile so big about scooping dead fish from a tank before.”

  “A happy man can be happy no matter the task,” he answered broadening his smile. “And it’s something I thought I had lost forever.”

  “The happy?”

  “Yes. I was sure I had left it in Iraq.”

  I nodded and looked over his shoulder where the edges of my vision were hazing up with creeping dirt. I shook my head trying to physically throw off something I knew was not physical at all. It worked—to a degree.

  “That country has stolen a lot of happiness.” I shook my head again and reached up to stroke my scar. My mood, the exuberant, car-radio good feeling, was blowing off my skin in a wind only I could feel. But I was fighting it. “I’m glad you got yours back. And I have an idea about the source of this new spirit.”

  Damon stopped and stood up straight. In his hand, the net with several shining silver fish, dead and dying, dripped. He didn’t look so happy anymore.

  “It’s all right,” I spoke to him gently and remembered the sound of the young medic telling me I would be all right in the back of a Humvee. That was when I noticed that my head was roaring with the sound of hard tires on broken asphalt. “Everything will be all right,” I said again and slipped away into my own memories.

  There, in the remembering, the medic is Billy Blevins. More and more I hope that memory is true. And hoping is the answer to the question of why I never asked him if he was the one who cleaned my wounds and reassured me with a kind voice that everything would be all right. His presence makes the memory better. I can’t bear to give that up to the truth.

  “Everything will be all right.”

  My words echoed Billy’s and for a moment I saw my filthy sliced-up body through his eyes.

  He’d cut my clothes off. I was naked except for my boots but there was no sneer or contempt from him. Medics are the best people in the world.

  “What?” Damon’s question came from years and miles away, pulling me out of the vision.

  “Everything will be all right,” I said again but there must have been something in my voice or my
face that conflicted with that thought.

  Damon dropped the net. I watched it fall and the spilling of the small fish. They fell away like tiny, crystal meteors splashing into the tank and scattering the living minnows. Most floated back up, silent and motionless, but a couple, as if given hope by the return to water. Tried swimming.

  Damon had his hands on my shoulders and was urging me around the tank to an old kitchen chair that stayed in the corner. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to see if the wounded minnows came back to life. It seemed important at the moment.

  “I’ve been where you are,” Someone was saying. It must have been Damon. “An’ I still go there too. You’ll be fine, Hurricane. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Everything will be all right,” I said, correcting him. Then I asked, “Billy? Is it really you?”

  After that I don’t remember much except crying. I’m pretty sure I asked for some whiskey. Uncle Orson still had some jars of moonshine that Clare had made before he went straight and worked for me. I wanted it. I wanted to drink until Iraq and everything that happened was sweated out of my skin.

  They told me later that Damon had called Orson in from where he was working on the dock. Together they moved me into the bed on the houseboat. The next thing I knew was that the sun was setting. I knew that because of the bloody-knuckle sky I saw out the window that always faced west. I didn’t know which sunset it was. Was it the end of the same day or had more passed?

  The sky went from fresh blood, to old, to black as I watched; I didn’t move until I heard footsteps on the dock outside. Through the floor of the boat I felt as much as heard Uncle Orson’s heavy step aboard. It was followed by a lighter step. That was when I finally sat up.

  “You can come in,” I called through the door. “I’m awake.”

  The door opened to show the silhouettes of my father and Uncle Orson. They were like a scalpel paired with a rusty hammer. They always had been, Dad joined the Army and had gone into intelligence. Uncle Orson had become, and always remained, a Marine. He was definitely the hammer.