A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  I went home to change and they came later to pick me up. It was the first time since Nelson’s funeral I’d worn a dress. I was so nervous about it I asked Whilomina for her opinion. I was glad I did and wished I hadn’t. Not that I looked awful it was just that I looked, as she put it, like I was hiding.

  The dress I chose was long and cotton, white with eyelet lace trim. Over it was a denim shirt belted at the waist. She was right. Only my head and my hands were uncovered.

  “What’s in your closet?” she asked.

  “Jeans and more of the same,” I answered.

  “You don’t mind occupying yourself do you?” Whilomina asked my dad, then went off to find my wardrobe without asking me or waiting for him to answer.

  My clothes took a small part of a huge closet. Another small part was still occupied by Nelson’s. The two groupings hung well away from each other as if any mingling was forbidden.

  “You still have some of his clothes?”

  “That’s all of them,” I answered.

  “And the rest of yours?” She asked the question like she was asking about religion.

  “That’s everything.” I was embarrassed. My closet made me feel like I was a failure at womanhood. Then the way Whilomina looked reminded me of the scrutiny of my therapist.

  It could have been my imagination too. She didn’t say anything more about them, but she did dig into my hanging clothes and start shoving them aside.

  “The secret treasures are always at the back,” she told me and produced a mid-length floral print dress still in the store dust bag. “See?”

  “I’ve never even worn that,” I said.

  “I can tell,” she answered. “And that’s a sad thing.”

  The dress itself was sleeveless with thin shoulder straps. The only reason I had ever told myself I could wear it was the short matching jacket. Still it showed too much.

  “I can’t wear that.”

  “Your scars?”

  No one had ever so directly addressed the issue of my tattered skin with me. It was as stunning to me as if she had cursed in church. It must have shown on my face.

  “You look shocked,” she said in a way that told me that was exactly what she expected. “People think sometimes that hiding things, not talking about them, keeps the secret under their control. The opposite is true. Take it from a politician. It’s the things that we bury deepest that run our lives.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  “Maybe not,” Whilomina handed me the dress then bent to pick up a pair of heels I hadn’t even known were behind my boots and old sneakers. She used the shoes to gesture at me. “But you can choose to be pretty. Or you can choose to be beautiful. I call that taking charge. What do you say?”

  I say maybe not beautiful, but I looked pretty damned good. Scars did show. From under my left arm and over the top of my left breast curled thick, pinked seams of tissue where the knife had carved into me. The cuts were savage and ragged so the edges had to be trimmed before I could be sutured. It was done in a field hospital. If I had kept my mouth shut and not accused superior officers of raping me, those wounds might have gotten more attention from a plastic surgeon once I was evacuated to Germany. Not that I’m bitter. I do still hold a grudge that there was not a single rape kit in-country when I was attacked.

  I shook my head. I shook it again harder and finally saw myself once more whole and pretty in the mirror. The blowing brown of Iraqi dust receded from the edges of my vision and I let myself breathe normally.

  The phrase that Billy had used earlier popped back into my head—breathe in the sunshine. It made me smile and, for the first time in a long season of chill and darkness, the expression worked in my mirror.

  I went down the stairs of my husband’s house, surrounded by his art and life. Nelson was happy. It’s a foolish, sentimental thing to say, but I was sure he was pulling for me. He was a man who not only wanted me happy during his life, but expected me to be happy through the remainder of mine. It was wonderful to think I was finally ready.

  Dad drove with Whilomina sitting up front with him. I told them about the girls and Massoud and the dead end that we’d hit. When I got to the part where I suggested that the girls were more tool than refugee, the congresswoman shook her head in disagreement. She didn’t look back at me, although she did share a look with my father before promising to make some calls.

  Regardless of the concerns I refused to be brought down. The remainder of the drive I kept my own company in the backseat and watched the passing scenery. Redbud and dogwood trees were flowering. On other trees, new leaves were beginning to color bare branches. Tomorrow would be even greener in a slow march through spring.

  We walked into a new-age, log cabin. The building was split down the middle by a long and rustic-elegant lobby. The floor was made of reclaimed hardwood which made it impossible for me to ignore the irregular tap of my feet. Even in three-inch heels I was unsteady. The fact that the shoes boosted me well over six feet tall, made me more self-conscious.

  As we strolled, I could feel my mind, clutching at the memories of the day like an armful of feathers in a zephyr. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have given up. Wisps of brown wind that snaked over a low mud wall in Iraq were still burying me after so many years. Every single time I thought I had a chance at life, the dirt of the grave I’d escaped, called me back. I could have happily turned, kicked off my pretty shoes, and marched barefoot out of there and never returned. In all honesty, I could have run screaming and been relieved that the pressure to live like a normal person was gone. Being happy was a burden I was unused to.

  On separate walls were two very different pieces of art. To the right, beside an arch of burnished walnut, the doorway to the Dogwood Flower Restaurant, was one of my husband’s landscapes. It was full of trees and colors that never existed in the woods but should have. Across the room to my left, framed in barn wood, hung one of his paintings of a pair of worn down boots. It was a famous image both from the bootmaker’s advertising campaign and from the thousands of prints it sold.

  If someone had told me about that moment ahead of time, I would have said it was a little bit crystal ball, on-the-money for a sign from a dead husband. I would have been right, I guess, but knowing could never have prepared me for the feeling of presence that hit me then. My heart was breaking all over again, that time without the devastation. I was caught on the hooks of a bittersweet peace when fate, or ghost husband, or whatever was happening to me that night, decided I needed something more.

  Music.

  It started with a guitar. It was slow and low, but building until the strings sounded like a hundred quiet voices. Then he started singing.

  Billy Blevins.

  It should not have been a surprise. I knew he was playing there. It was the real reason I had come. But I had let myself become distracted to the point that the man and the song stunned me. He was singing the old Grateful Dead tune, “Brokedown Palace.” Again it was just coincidence; folk and country-rock were what Billy always performed.

  But.

  How many people listen to the Dead anymore? Nelson Solomon—that’s who.

  I don’t know how long I stood in my haunted rigor, my eyes staring at the painting and my ears straining for each note. When I finally broke the spell, I turned to find Dad and Whilomina staring at me. It wasn’t until then I realized there were tears in my eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Dad asked me.

  “Yes,” I answered immediately and with a strength that astonished me. It was true. “Yes,” I repeated and smiled. I took the handkerchief he held out and dabbed at my eyes. “It’s just . . .” I shrugged and laughed a little. Then I thought I sounded like a crazy person so I inhaled a long, deep breath. “How about if we have dinner in the bar?”

  We did. During a break, Billy came over and I introduced him around. He was wearing a red satin shirt with embroidered cow skulls and pearl snaps. I teased him unmercifully about i
t. My father was polite but oblivious. Whilomina seemed to understand something without being told. She turned a knowing smile between me and Billy and back.

  After Billy returned to his set, beginning with “Shelter From the Storm,” we were served big steaks with huge potatoes and grilled vegetables. I must have gone through a gallon of iced tea. In a lame attempt to keep up the appearance of my investigation excuse, I asked about caviar. I didn’t find out anything about it that I needed to know but the server seemed to be proud of their product and the sustainable practices that brought the eggs to our table. It made me think he knew less about it than I did. Still, he brought a small sample and we all tried it on a toasted cracker. At least Whilomina enjoyed it.

  It was a perfect evening, the capstone of a near-perfect day and one to remember forever. We need to latch on to those moments and brand them into memory because life is never one single thing for long. Simple, plain, good—cannot last.

  The server came back to ask how we liked the caviar. Before we could answer, she said she wanted to introduce the supplier since I was so interested. She suggested he could answer all my questions. The man who came through the door was, of course, Aton Gagarin.

  From there, the complicated house of joy that my mind had built up collapsed in upon itself. It was pushed from outside, the forces of real life came in a panicked look and a crash of stacked dishes. Gagarin, had bolted. He turned, kicking over what the busboy had piled up thinking, I imagine, to delay me. I had not even begun to move at that point.

  I shouted though. “Aton! Stop.” The words were almost like an announcement that I would come after him. Why would he stop?

  But he did.

  He skidded, leather soles slipping on the smooth wood floor as he struggled to change direction yet again. I had risen and was still trying to free my weapon and badge from my purse when Gagarin pulled a short-barreled .38 revolver from behind his back and raised it in my direction.

  Bright flowers of light bloomed with blasting thunder. The bullets sprayed, invisible lines of buzzing death. One ran a tight course along my face, so close I could feel it like I had felt Nelson minutes before—a whisper of reality. It heated the hard pucker of crescent-shaped scar around the orbit of my left eye. I heard it growl like a spinning wolf. For some reason, the thought penetrated my mind, that’s not the sound of a .38. Then I noticed that Gagarin was flailing, his weapon arcing wildly overhead, aimed at nothing and still unfired.

  Another shot. Another bloom of noise and light followed by a new flower. A bullet plowed through the fatty part of Gagarin’s chest, under his left arm. It spit a mist of blood and meat forward. Behind the red haze was Dewey, still firing.

  He was screaming too, but I couldn’t hear him. I heard only the gunshots and the searing whip of bullets passing.

  By the time Gagarin hit the floor I had my weapon pulled and aimed. I couldn’t fire. Behind Dewey was the open entrance to the restaurant. I told myself later that I wouldn’t shoot because it would have put people in danger. I never saw anyone. I did see Nelson’s painting of a colorful forest.

  “Dewey!” I screamed his name between the muzzle flashes.

  He froze. “I had to,” he said. In the absence of gunfire his soft voice sounded like he was speaking through a pillow. “I had to,” he repeated, pleading and explaining. “He killed her. He murdered her.”

  “Put down your gun,” I ordered. At the same time I kicked off the heels.

  “I can’t,” he said before he started running.

  I expected that and started right after him. Without missing a step, I knocked Gagarin’s weapon from his hand and kept running. Once I rounded the wide door and stepped into the lobby I shouted again. “Dewey! I’ll shoot.”

  That time I really meant it. He was no longer in front of a crowded dining room. Dewey Boone stopped and turned with his gun still low. He was standing in front of the building’s front wall. It didn’t matter how many people were beyond that, my bullets could not get through eight-inch logs of southern pine. “Drop the gun,” I shouted one more time as Dewey raised his weapon.

  I hit him twice, high up in the chest, and his gun dropped from limp fingers.

  Violence like that often happens in a vacuum. There is a space in your head where your senses go to try to protect you from distraction. It keeps out the noise and motion that your automatic brain has already filtered out as nonthreatening. That means, though, when things are over, your mind throws open a door and lets the world flood back in. Rarely is what comes on that tide the good news you hope for.

  I heard screaming. There was a lot of it, but one note was clearer and louder to me. Whilomina. Resisting the urge to run back into the bar, I reassured myself that Billy was in there with her. He was much better equipped to handle hysterics.

  “Call 911,” I shouted into the general noise. There had probably already been a hundred calls.

  Dewey was trying to speak. I approached with my pistol still aimed then brushed his weapon back a safe distance with my foot.

  Kneeling beside him, I said, “Help is on the way.”

  “I saw you,” he told me through wet gasps. “I watched you drawing her.”

  “Sartaña? At the lake?”

  “I was hiding. I went to get food. I didn’t want to leave her alone in the camp, but we didn’t want anyone to see her. She was so afraid.”

  Whilomina was the only voice still calling out in terror. An unease crept across my scalp then the question—Why wasn’t Billy here with me?

  “Why would the Russian hurt her?”

  “They told me,” Dewey’s speech sputtered with the blood flooding his lungs.

  “They told you what, Dewey? Who?”

  “Katrina!” The shout came from the bar.

  I heard my name. Not the meaning behind it.

  Dewey reached up with his left hand. It was the one I had seen broken and bleeding as he ran into the lake. It was bandaged and splinted. First aid rather than hospital care. I took it and held on gently.

  “They said,” he coughed. Blood spattered his lips and clothing. “I could fix everything, they told me. Get even for Daniel and Sartaña. They said it would all work. I could stop all of it—” He choked and a thick, phlegmy line of crimson dribbled down his chin. “We have rights. The government was messing it all up. They did it all together . . .”

  “Dewey.” I squeezed his hand, probably too hard, but he was beyond feeling it. “Dewey, who did it all?”

  “I just wanted to be with Sartaña. They killed her. They were going to destroy everything.”

  “Who, Dewey?”

  “Katrina!” The call came again.

  “Who told you to do this?” I asked a dead boy.

  “Katrina!” It was Billy shouting over the wailing of Whilomina. Suddenly I understood the creeping dread that had stalked over me. I dropped Dewey’s hand and ran.

  The happy little bar where I’d been having dinner moments before was a scene of carnage. Gagarin was gone. My father was on the floor in a spreading smear of blood. Billy was holding wads of linen against the hole in Dad’s chest. There was another lump of them under him. The bullet had gone through.

  Whilomina stopped her loud crying when she saw me. With one hand on Dad’s face, she reached the other out to me and when I took it, she pulled me down.

  “Let him see you,” she said.

  “Daddy?” My voice was the same as the little girl who had gotten sick in the middle of the night or been teased for being so tall.

  Clement Williams, opened his eyes and smiled at me. He tried to speak, but the lifetime’s worth of love and counsel, wish and regret, would not come. It didn’t matter. I heard it all anyway. Then he reached out, one hand to me and one to Whilomina. The touch was enough for him but would never be for us. He was gone.

  Chapter 13

  Dawn rose in a cold and bloody sky. Over a steady wind, dark clouds dragged as if a black blanket was being pulled northward. Since my father died, I had bee
n at Dogwood, the hospital, and the SO—everyplace but at peace.

  There were a lot of questions to be asked and answered. There were some that no one knew. And there were a couple that no one knew but me. When I could see and think clearly again I saw that Billy was gone. I couldn’t recall seeing him once I’d knelt beside my father. The obvious thought was that he’d gone after Gagarin. That’s what I told Sheriff Benson.

  I didn’t let go of Daddy’s hand until the EMTs had him on a gurney. I followed as he was wheeled out but stopped because standing in the lobby and looking down on Dewey’s body was Timothy Givens. He looked at me without a trace of even mock compassion on his face. His only reaction was a nod as slight as the tick of his gun barrel had been in the café. It was a communication, maybe warning, maybe threat. There was no maybe about the look I returned.

  Givens stalked out the door my father had just been taken through. By the time I got outside the EMTs were loading Daddy into the ambulance. Givens was nowhere to be seen. That, I didn’t share with the sheriff. I was already planning on keeping some things personal.

  I drove my father’s car, back to Uncle Orson’s place as the sun struggled into a sky that seemed to be rejecting it. Whilomina had gone with my uncle after Sheriff Benson had called him.

  When I got to the dock, still wearing my bloody clothes, I had every good intention of taking a hot shower and letting myself cry until sleep took me away. But good intentions and the road to hell and all that . . . The first thing I did was dig behind the counter searching for the last of Clare Bolin’s homebrew whiskey. It wasn’t there. That was when I noticed the liquor shelves were empty too.

  “You won’t find a drop here.” Clare himself was sitting at the table in the corner. He looked like a man waiting patiently for his dinner. “Not liquor, not beer, and not that awful wine your uncle keeps. Orson called me. I came and cleared it out.”