A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  “You’re on leave,” he shouted in my direction as soon as my door opened.

  “I want to talk to Roscoe,” I shouted back.

  A hundred lenses, like one big, compound eye, turned my way. I heard my name and shutters clicking feverishly. Some of the reporters beckoned, me some bellowed questions. I did my best to ignore them all as I marched forward to the big tent.

  “I don’t think you’re going to get that chance today, Hurricane,” the sheriff said with his hand held up at my chest.

  When I got close enough, I could see Reverend Bolin within the tent standing in the spotlight on stage. It looked like a rehearsal. He struck a pose with his arms stretched out in mimicry of the cross hanging behind him.

  “Reverend,” I shouted. “We need to talk.”

  He didn’t answer, not precisely. I doubt he even heard me. However his amplified voice rolled out of the tent. It sounded like joy, suddenly released from a black dungeon expressed in one word. “Hallelujah!”

  It was followed by a murmur of other voices and the flashes of cameras. For the first time I noticed how full the tent was. There were as many reporters inside as there were outside. It wasn’t a rehearsal. It was a press conference.

  From out of the shadows at the back of the tent, four men appeared. They took positions blocking me from getting in or reaching Roscoe. One of them was Silas Boone. He was grinning in a way that would get most people committed.

  “Woo wee—” he sang out. “Look a’—well, look a’ look a’ here. What we got?”

  I started forward with hate and murder on my mind. The sheriff stopped me but Silas put up both hands and gestured me on. The three men behind him put hands on weapons concealed under oversized sports coats.

  “You’re not going in there,” the sheriff told me. The strain in his voice was obvious. I got the impression there was something more going on than me making another mess for the department.

  “No. No.” Silas mocked. “Come on in. Jesus is waitin’. And he’s armed.”

  “Hallelujah.” Reverend Bolin intoned the word again and it sounded to me, again, like joy and being grateful for it. “I asked you here, to share in our celebration of life—”

  “I know all about your little weapon, Boone,” I taunted right back. “You won’t be shooting anyone with that.”

  “Fuck you bitch.” He dropped all pretense and opened his coat putting a shoulder slung MP7 on display. He didn’t buy that at the local Bass Pro.

  “Are you attempting to intimidate a police officer in the performance of her duty?”

  “Katrina . . .” the sheriff tried to calm me but Boone and I were two angry dogs barking through the fence.

  “Children,” Roscoe said and the word struck me. It sounded like a sermon as much as a press event. “Children of war. Children of poverty. Children of innocence sold away, for the price of power. It is a crisis—”

  “But you ain’t a cop now are you?” Silas laughed like the joke was on me. “And you ain’t in performance of any duty.”

  “How’re you gonna be laughing when I make you chew that weapon?”

  He laughed again, harder. Then he jerked a thumb back at the interior of the tent then pointed to the outside gallery of reporters. “They gonna get that on camera? Psycho bitch, going all Waco on the church tent—how’s that gonna look?”

  The sheriff was right in front of me now, pushing hard. At the same time he was restraining his voice, trying to make it seem like a discussion because of the spectators. “Katrina,” he whispered my name. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and shook me saying, “Katrina. He’s working you up. Don’t play it.”

  In the quiet moment of thinking about consequences Roscoe caught my attention again.

  “Christ,” he pronounced, then let the name hang. “Lives in action. Quiet words—are for personal contemplation. Differences in the world—those come from following him, with a hammer in your hand. With a shovel. With clean water and schoolbooks. I want to talk to you of Christ, as a verb. Uplift. Enlighten. Feed. Teach. Free!”

  “What do I care how it looks?” If I could have snarled at that point I would have. I was ready to jump in and damn the consequences.

  “Oh you care, little lady.” Silas was not grinning as he said that. “You care a bushel and a peck. Because life is a hard, hard road without a little music in it. Ain’t it?”

  “The hell did you say?” I was sledgehammered. Boone was telling me he had Billy. “What the hell did you say to me?” That must have come out louder than I thought because quite a few heads turned my way.

  “. . . because we are put into this life to become the people who deserve heaven.” The reverend’s preaching filled the void I left with my cursing. “We earn it every day. Not by prayer. Not by faith alone. We earn—we truly live—by action. Our task is to make the world as close to paradise as we can. And we build from the bottom. Uplifting those who are in need.”

  “We have a letter, Hurricane,” the sheriff told me. “The department has an order from the US Attorney and DOJ to stop our investigation citing homeland security.”

  “He has Billy,” I said.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “He just told me.”

  Boone was grinning again. “You’re gonna to take your orders, missy,” he said to me. His voice was just loud enough to carry. “And you’re gonna keep your mouth shut about it. About all of it. Or the music ain’t never comin’ back. You got it?”

  I reached for my weapon but the sheriff caught my hand. His fingers, bony and callused, gripped as hard as regret. While he held me, he whispered, “Take another road.”

  “We lost one girl to a tragic accident,” Reverend Bolin said on stage. His voice had come down to match the thought. “We mourn her. But we celebrate the thirteen other girls we have delivered into the refugee program. Thirteen girls, safe and protected in secret U.S. locations.”

  Girls?

  I walked back, almost staggering in the trampled pasture, putting some distance from myself and the tent. Then I took a long, hard look around me. None of the girls were there. All the small, frightened girls—children—were gone.

  Finally it hit my reeling brain, Roscoe was talking about the girls from Peru, like Sartaña. He said they were in a secret location. My thoughts were jumbled. Trying to order them was like counting socks while the dryer was running. There was something about the girls, though—a connection not yet made.

  The frustration—the anger—inside me got to be too much for silence and thought. I lashed out at Boone one more time. “I’m going to burn your secrets down around your head.”

  “Katrina!” Sheriff Benson shouted a warning at me.

  Faces turned, along with them came lenses and microphones.

  “Another word—one more word—and I’ll have to take your badge for good,” he finished.

  “You can’t.” I answered weakly.

  “Yeees sir-ee,” Silas yipped. “You made your bed now.”

  Without giving the sheriff that additional word and the excuse to take my badge, I turned, and trod past the reporters without looking anyplace but straight ahead. That was a fortuitous circumstance because crossing ahead of me, creeping in a battered little pickup, was a man, not old, but too old for his longish blond hair and John Denver glasses. It was the guy called Banjo.

  Banjo was an easy tail. He didn’t know, and didn’t seem to care, if he was being followed. Most people don’t when they go to the hardware store. I watched to make sure I didn’t have a shadow. Once I was reasonably certain, I went in and found Banjo with a basketful of lag bolts and measuring out lengths of chain.

  “Building something?” I asked, sounding something between nosey and dangerous.

  He looked at me and I could almost feel him checking me with mental radar. “You’re that cop that has it out for the show.”

  “Who says I have it out for anyone?”

  Banjo started to answer, then seemed to think better of it. I c
ouldn’t tell if it was because he didn’t trust me or his source. He looked a bit like he couldn’t tell either.

  “What do you want with me?” he asked without sounding quite innocent.

  “Questions.”

  “Yeah,” he said, making sure I could hear his disbelief. “It always starts that way.”

  “You’ve been in the system?”

  “I ain’t no big stripe, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

  “What did you go down for?”

  “That the question you wanted to ask me? Or is this just the warm-up?”

  “Just getting to know who I’m talking to,” I told him. “Are you Connor Watson—Banjo Watson?”

  He stared, giving nothing up.

  “I was told about you . . . a friend . . . He said you were a legend in gospel and bluegrass music.”

  He almost smiled. “You a fan?”

  “I . . . have an appreciation.”

  He broke and chuckled a little. “Don’t we all?” Then he solemnly nodded at me and said, “Give it a chance.”

  “My friend is a deputy. He plays guitar, sings old Dylan tunes and Ozark Mountain Daredevils. But he’s in trouble now.”

  “Well . . .” Banjo looked me over with an appraising eye and I think, for the first time, saw something other than a cop. “He’s got good taste in music. But that ain’t what kind of trouble you’re talking about, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Grass.”

  I shook my head, not understanding.

  “I was in a van—on our way to a gig in the wrong part of Arkansas. Lots of wrong things that day. Wrong kid drivin’. Wrong cop with the wrong ain’t-gonna-take-shit attitude. A pound of grass I didn’t even know about, ended up takin’ away almost five years of my life. But I took Jesus in with me and took him out. So I’m suspicious of cops, but I understand trouble.”

  It was a bold and honest confession so I honored it by laying my cards out for him. “Some of the people you work with are not so close to Jesus.”

  His look turned to my eyes, hard and piercing. He was afraid.

  “It’s a strange sort of situation, isn’t it? For the Salvation Show to be carrying guns.”

  “It wasn’t always like this.” After he spoke he glanced around.

  “How is it?”

  “Your friend?” he asked. “Is that the kind of trouble you’re talking about?”

  “I’m not exactly sure about the what. But I’m pretty sure about who. The Boone boys. And a couple of feds, Givens and Keene.”

  Banjo shook his head slightly then paused like he had a thought. “No,” he said. Then he shook his head hard enough to whip his hair. “I can’t. I don’t know what it is; I just know what it isn’t. And it ain’t right. But you got the right folks, mostly. Ol’ Dewey just did what his brother told him and his brother followed his cousin. You know that’s why Silas brought Daniel in, don’t you?”

  It was my turn to shake my head vigorously. “No I—What?”

  “The gay thing. They wanted to pray it away.”

  I think I blushed. Not at the words but the thought. I was ashamed for all of us that such things still went on.

  “Reverend Bolin did that?”

  “There’s the front-of-house religion and there’s the back-of-house kind. That was back-of-house. It was double worse for Daniel being one of the gunmen. He had the Reverend praying over him half the time and the rest he was stuck with the big macho boys. They didn’t pray. They cursed him as less than a man and showed him so much hate he could hardly stand it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He went fishing. He used to catch these big ol’ catfish-looking things that had long noses instead of whiskers. They tasted pretty good in corn meal and fried in lard but he didn’t care about that. He was selling the eggs to the Russian guy.”

  “Gagarin,” I told him.

  “I never knew his name,” Banjo shrugged then caught himself, remembering to be afraid. “I don’t know anything for sure except that the Russian had some kind of deal with Daniel about the fish. I always thought that was strange.”

  “Everything about this is strange.”

  “Maybe so,” he said, hefting up a bundle of chain. “But having that guy in charge of kids is the strangest.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “The Russian guy is the one who takes the Peruvian girls once we bring them into the country.”

  “Takes them? Where?”

  “The Reverend told me it was to an orphanage.”

  I shook my head confused and angered by the feeling. Confusion and rage seemed to be the only true emotions I could maintain and they kept feeding off each other. “Roscoe told me it was the other guy, Massoud who took care of the girls.”

  “I don’t think so,” Banjo hefted more chain as he considered the question. “He works with the government. He’s the one in charge of the military contractors.” He looked down and pulled links through his fingers before shaking his head again. “No. The Russian guy worked out the deal with Reverend Bolin. We were pretty small time then. He was the one that said we needed to do mission trips down to Peru and smuggle back the girls. Everyplace we would hold a tent show in the States, he would meet us and take the girls we brought in to his charity camp.”

  “Charity camp?”

  “He said he had it all set up. Relocation, school, a good life for the girls.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I never talked to him. I believed the Reverend.” Banjo’s shoulders slumped. He rattled the chain in his hands. “The cross needs more support. My own money.”

  “Believed?” I asked. “You said you believed the Revered. Don’t you now?”

  “When you say some things out loud it’s hard to say you don’t understand or don’t believe.”

  “What is it you don’t believe, Banjo?”

  “That this is God’s work.”

  “I think you might be right about that.”

  “What do I do now? I’m caught in the wrong van again, ain’t I?”

  “Not if I can help it,” I told him and I meant it. “But I still need your help. Do you think Reverend Bolin is involved?”

  “He’s running the church and it’s running him. As far as I can tell he believes the best and thinks the gun boys are there to protect us from the socialists in Peru and the government here.”

  “The government here?”

  “He said there’s a congresswoman who was going to ruin the whole deal.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. One more thing,” I reassured. “The two other names I mentioned. Givens and Keene—they mean anything to you?”

  “Nope.”

  “All right. Listen, Banjo, I have things to take care of. Can you get to a safe place?”

  “I’ll go back to the show,” he said, although he looked leery of the thought. “Once your eyes are open, you can’t go back to blindness. The Reverend needs me. Maybe just to talk things through with.”

  “Talk through what you need. Don’t share what we’ve talked about, though.”

  “Don’t worry about Reverend Bolin. He’ll come down on the right side when he knows the truth.”

  “It’s not his placement I’m worried about,” I said.

  Back at my truck I called Uncle Orson. He picked up before the first ring completed and asked, “How are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How is she?”

  “Are you really?”

  I thought a long time and he waited without pressuring. Finally I answered carefully. “I’m fine enough for what I have to do.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.” His words were just as careful. They perched on a tightrope trying neither to push nor pull me.

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes. I believe it. I know it’s a foolish belief. Some things just won’t be let go of.”

  “I miss him already,” I said and the admi
ssion sounded like a whisper from far away, even to me. “It’s like there’s a huge crack in the world and everything is falling in except me. I keep standing on the edge, staring into the nothing.”

  “We all miss him.”

  “I wasn’t a very good daughter.”

  Orson laughed and a hot flash of anger burned my face. I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream at him—at everyone because what I felt had to be shared and spread around. Instead I asked quietly, “Why?”

  “Your dad was talking to Whilomina before you met. He was happy and excited to introduce you. He told her you were the best daughter he could imagine a man having in his life.”

  The heat in my face faded. It drained as liquid sorrow from my eyes and started to drip from my nose before I grabbed a tissue.

  “I have to fix this—” I said, then stopped. “I have to make them pay for what can’t be fixed.”

  “I know you do.”

  Then I cried a little bit and my uncle listened without saying a word. When I could speak, I asked, “Where is Whilomina?”

  “She’s on her phone in the kitchen. She’s making arrangements and calling people that she shouts at and cusses their asses raw. I’d hate to be on the other end of those lines. She’s a hot-barreled pistol.”

  I was careful again asking, “Do you have a gun?”

  That time, Orson put all of his care into silence before he finally said, “Not on me. But I can get one pretty quickly. Do I need one?”

  “I think you should have it on you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “I need you to get armed and sit down with Whilomina to have a talk. Tell her that I think Daddy was not exactly the messy accident it looked like. But I think she was the target. Tell her that they were upset about her investigations and the Russian who was shot at Dogwood is the man who has the smuggled girls.” I gave him the few details I had about Gagarin then told him to ask Whilomina to make the kinds of inquiries only a member of congress can. “I’ve already asked her to check on charities and refugees, but everything was slanted toward Reverend Bolin and that guy Massoud. This thing, all of it, is tangled up. It’s going to take someone smarter and more connected than me to pull it apart.”