A Particular Darkness

by Robert E. Dunn

  It was a Cecil B. DeMille moment. I wasn’t drawn in. “So,” I asked in soft counter to his bluster. “You wonder, would I sacrifice one girl to end a war that hurts a million?”

  “That’s the question, Hurricane.”

  “I thought some things were worth fighting for.”

  “Smart words will not wrench you from the jaws of the devil. And make no mistake, the devil is in the questions.”

  “How’s no for a smart word?” I asked him staring right into those flashing eyes. “I wouldn’t take the life of someone innocent to stop your war. I would pick up a weapon and fight.”

  “Your morality is too poor a coat for the Lord to wear. His plans are not those of men.”

  “Maybe so. But I don’t claim to speak for him and my morality is one I can live with. I doubt you can say the same when the accounts come due.”

  “We’ll see, Hurricane. Perhaps you will come see me in the new Kurdistan one day, and we can talk about it again.”

  “How about if we make it a little sooner, like when I walk into your tent show and drag you out in cuffs?”

  “You’ll never get in. Outside, your own department will stand against you. Inside, there are men who already hold a pretty firm grudge against you. You would be a fool to try. And tomorrow, we’ll be gone.”

  “Then there’s only one thing left to do.”

  The Reverend’s smile was part surprise and part victory. “Are you suggesting prayer?”

  “I’m saying, have a talk with your brother.”

  I turned then opened the door. Clare was waiting. I’ve never seen a man look so broken or disappointed in my life.

  He stood aside to let me through and I heard him say, “I don’t have words to tell you how ashamed I am.” Then the door closed.

  * * *

  The moody gloom of the day was draining quickly into a twilight full of threat and darkness. I’ll never be able to say if what I was feeling was about the weather or the situation. They seemed tied together as if one was a distant echo of the other, both amplifying the darkness carried within the other. I watched from behind a display of fishing lures in the window as the SUVs careened up the short road and away.

  “I’m sorry, Clare,” Uncle Orson tried to console his friend.

  “I never expected something like this from him. Roscoe was always the believer.” Clare Bolin spoke into the floor, hiding his face and his mourning. I suspected that the brother in his memory was as dead as my father was to me. Change can be a kind of death. Maybe that’s why we fear it so much.

  “So what are we going to do?” Orson asked with a hand still resting on Clare’s shoulder.

  “Nothing.” The answer came from Whilomina. “We wouldn’t do anything even if they weren’t holding the deputy.”

  “Billy,” I reminded her. “His name is William Loraine Blevins. Everyone calls him Billy and no one has ever made fun of his middle name. He’s one of the good ones.”

  “I understand, dear. And we will fix this. But I’ll do it in Washington.”

  “That’ll be too late for Billy.” It wasn’t an argument. I said it simply as a statement of fact, more to be understood than to be considered in her plans.

  My plans were different.

  “Katrina . . .” Whilomina said my name carefully, like it might be a spark in a gas station. “What are you going to do?”

  I went over to the old television on the wall behind the counter and turned it on.

  “I’m going to check the weather.” The set was an old tube type, very old. It still had dials to turn and said ZENITH on the front. As it hissed and the picture jittered into shape I asked my uncle, “Can you take Whilomina back to Nixa?”

  “I can,” he answered making his suspicions clear. “Why?”

  “Yes, why?” Whilomina added.

  On the television a picture popped into view. I twisted the dial around the few local channels until I found what I needed. One thing you can always count on in the Midwest, local TV tripping over itself to be the first with a bad weather report. “That.” I pointed at the screen. The radar map showed a cycle of morphing blobs that looked to be creeping toward Taney County. “And Daddy.”

  “Your father?” Whilomina looked like she had been caught at something. All the activity had distracted her from the grief she’d been feeling and she was suddenly feeling guilty about it.

  “The arrangements you were making for him. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” It was a lie. One I hoped she wouldn’t catch. I’d made arrangements for Nelson not so very long ago. I was uncomfortably familiar with the routine of death. Before she could think it through I went on. “And your work. You have to get something in motion to slow down the delivery of the cash to Massoud. We need time to stop them.”

  “Stop them and save your friend.” Whilomina said as if I needed reminding.

  “Yes. I want them stopped and I want Billy safe. He’d do it for me.”

  Chapter 21

  Uncle Orson gave me looks that were both knowing and accusatory as he helped Whilomina gather her things for the drive north. He understood that I needed her gone and out of the way so I could do what I needed. He even understood that it was for her as much as me. A member of congress had no business in the mess I was about to kick up. He didn’t understand why I was sending him away as well. Orson needed to bring some hurt for the sake of his brother every bit as much as I needed to do it for my father. The difference was, he wasn’t thinking about failure. I was. It would be impossible for me to survive losing him so close to Daddy.

  They were selfish thoughts, I know. Had I bothered to think about it, I would have known that losing me would have devastated him. My anger and my ego were such that losing my own life was not even a consideration. At least not one I allowed to myself to acknowledge. That doesn’t mean I was unaware of the possibility. The refusal was to care. Had I let myself think about the risk to myself, I would have had to accept that there was more than a little wishing to go rest between my husband and my father.

  “Clare,” I called him over as Uncle Orson and Whilomina packed up. “I need you to do something for me.”

  When they were ready to leave and I walked out with Whilomina and Orson, she asked where Clare was. She seemed to buy it when I said he had things at home to attend to if there was a storm coming.

  “I’ve never been in a tornado storm before.” Whilomina wrapped her arms around herself against the still rising wind.

  The air was a strange mix, at one point chilled then a moment later, warm. At least it was warm in comparison. Rain trotted out in streaks following the line of gusts. When the wind died, so did the spray of water.

  “I’ll make sure you’re not in one this time,” Uncle Orson told her. To me, he leaned in and whispered, “Be careful.”

  “Nothing to be careful about,” I told him. “I’ll go home and watch the weather. If it gets bad I’ll go for the cellar.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said and he looked hurt to have to say it. “You’ll need me.”

  “Not this time,” I told him trying to sell it with a weak smile. “God grant me the serenity to change the things I can . . .”

  “And the serenity to accept bullshit when I hear it.”

  “Stop it.” It was Whilomina. She had tears in her eyes but a straight and strong back. “I don’t care what either one of you thinks you need to do.” It was clear she hadn’t been fooled by any of the pretense. “I can drive myself.” She stepped forward opening her arms to pull us both into her embrace. “You’re all the family I have now. I don’t want to lose anymore.”

  We stood together for a moment before the clutch had its effect on me and I melted into the hug. Orson’s big arms encircled us both. The warmth and closeness was the best kind of prayer.

  It was too short when Whilomina let go and said, “Take care of each other. Whatever you think you’re doing. I’ll do my part and we’ll make the bastards pay.”

  That was the mome
nt I truly knew what my father had loved about her and I loved it too.

  She drove away leaving me and Uncle Orson standing in the parking lot at the bottom of the gangway. Her car became nothing more than moving headlights quickly in the stirring mire of the weather. The front was approaching quickly. It was pushing air ahead of it like the pressure wave off the bow of an immense ship. The high clouds were invisible but the low ones, the line of snarling vapor was lit from below by the lights from Branson and from within by clashes of lightning.

  “Give me a second to get armed,” Uncle Orson said before heading up the gangway and leaving me alone.

  Solitude in a rising storm seemed to be a metaphor for my life. It was the first time that I’d been alone to my own thoughts since waking up that morning with the bottle in my hands. That had been a million years before. I realized that being alone was overrated. I touched the scar at my eye and for a moment felt grit in the wind that was only in my memory.

  The first thunder rumbled. It was distant but still vibrated my chest. Surprisingly it was soothing. It made me think of the recent sensations of a presence in my life. I suppose thinking about the presence in your life is a form of feeling that presence. I didn’t know and I wasn’t trying to sort it out. I was thinking about two men—Nelson and Billy. For a fraction of a second I felt guilty knowing I was thinking of them rather than my father. Just a fraction—because he was the one who always pushed me to life and living.

  No. I was thinking about Nelson and Billy and I was not allowing any guilt about any of it. There was something there. Something greater than my fear and anger. Greater maybe than that moment in the dirt of Iraq.

  A shimmer of yellow caught my eye and I looked skyward. The clouds looked to me like a giant jar of lightning bugs like those from my childhood.

  Change.

  The thought came to me not in a flash of light, but in a creeping finger of wind that stroked over my scar just as I had done a moment before.

  That was what I was really thinking about. The storm. Not the weather but the storm, the turmoil of my life. If I was honest with myself, I would admit that in a normal life I would not have been married to Nelson. He was rich and vibrant with life. I was a cop defined by the dun color of desert dust. I think I would have loved him given the chance, but we had met when he was already dying and I was wrapped in my own pain and alcoholism. If I was going to love him it had to be quickly and passionately. Could years have sustained that?

  And Billy? I’ve been drawn to him and fighting the feeling for a long time. Why have I fought? Could it be that I loved Nelson because, no matter the pain involved, it required no change in me? In my life perhaps, but not in my living. If I give in to my desire for Billy—that would change everything.

  Lighting flashed. That time it was a crackling bolt that crashed instantly.

  And in between the two men was the storm.

  Uncle Orson started tromping down the gangway carrying an M14 and a metal ammo box.

  One storm at a time.

  * * *

  First we had gone to pick up my truck, then together we’d crossed some back roads and through a field to get to a bald patch of wild meadow surrounded by tangled woods. Behind the screen of trees and vines we found two other vehicles. One was Clare’s old truck, the recent damage from serving as our gate still showed as the only bits of bright metal on it. The other was the little car driven by Riley Yates.

  “It’s not a fit night for man nor beast,” Riley said as we walked over after parking.

  “Nor for any of the rest of us,” Uncle Orson said. “Why is the fifth estate joining us?”

  “I had the same question. Clare said it was important. And that no matter what, I wouldn’t regret being here.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “I asked him to bring you so the story gets told.”

  “What story’s that?” He asked.

  I pointed over to my truck and said, “The one I’m about to tell you.”

  Even though he had a tape recorder Riley took notes on a little pad in a tight, fast script I doubted anyone else could read. He asked surprisingly few questions and those he did ask were mostly to clarify something. Riley listened as I told the story of the past week leaving nothing out. I made sure to emphasize the DOJ injunction against the sheriff’s office keeping them from acting and that I was no longer a part of the department. Everything I did from that point on I did as a private citizen. The last thing I wanted was to cause problems for the Sheriff Benson or the SO.

  “Why tell me all this?” Riley asked after almost half an hour of my narration.

  “I won’t let them win,” I said. “If a nation—our nation—is going to stand for anything, it has to live by its own laws.”

  “Fair enough,” he answered. “But why out here—in a storm? And what makes you think any story I write can make a difference?”

  “Difference or not,” I said looking out the window at the rush of leaves in a gust of wind that shook the truck. “Tell the whole story.”

  “The whole story? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  “It hasn’t ended yet.”

  Out of the woods and into my burning headlights came Clare. He was carrying the old M1. I rolled down the window as he approached. Once the glass was down, a small typhoon of wind and mist filled the cab.

  “It’s happening,” Clare shouted against the currents. “Just like you said, the sheriff’s deputies and the city cops are all being called off for storm patrols. The clouds are lowering more, too. When the lighting flashes to the south, it shows a deep green sky.”

  I nodded thanks then put up the window. Riley was still writing in his pad. I started the engine before leaning over past Riley to open his door.

  “You should get out of here or become part of the story. Some of the other reporters are still at the tent show. I think there will be plenty of witnesses.”

  As he climbed out I shifted the big truck into four-wheel drive and considered for a second dropping the transmission into low. There was no road where I was going. The extra power could help me ease through the overgrowth.

  Screw it, I decided. Nothing about this is going to be easy.

  I killed the headlights, leaving only the running lights, and hit the gas. The GMC slung four muddy rooster tails from the tires as it shot from the meadow into the brush. I bumped into a shallow ravine then back out as I gained speed. Small trees bent under the frame of the truck. Larger ones broke. Ropes of grape vine caught the grill and bumper. They snapped then coiled like snakes in a fire before dragging under the tires.

  As soon as I could see some lights through the foliage I switched off my own. The last hundred feet was a maze of dark trunks in a dark night, but I wasn’t trying to find my way through. I was knocking down the walls.

  Growling like a demon snarling at the storm, the working truck’s powerful engine shot me through the last of the dense brush. Between the final trees and the pasture that held the Starry Night Traveling Salvation Show was a four-strand barbed wire fence.

  I went through one old post. Several more broke away from the drag of the steel wires that sunk rusted teeth into the body of my truck. Finally everything gave way and my path through the pasture was smooth compared to the trek through the woods.

  From the fence to the tents of the show was about two hundred yards—two football fields. Halfway through, the storm broke. There was a flashing blast of lighting and a sound thousands of times louder than the cracking of trees under my truck. Immediately after the sound faded, the rain fell. It was a colorless sheet of water thicker than Irish melancholy. The drops banged the metal hood in an impossibly fast cadence that more than doubled when the hail added in.

  I turned my lights back on. It didn’t matter at that point. No one would be looking for me. When I did, I saw two sets of lights behind me come to life. Orson and Clare were following.

  I got close enough to see people within the lights of the main tent. They were scrambl
ing to ropes and poles. Some were running away. Out in the darkness I noticed the headlights of cars headed across the hail-speckled grass aiming for the roadway. There must have been some faithful stragglers who didn’t believe until the last moment God would rain on their revival.

  When I got closer, I could see a knot of people on the stage at the far end of the tent. They looked to be having a party.

  That was something I’d seen before. People, with no idea what a storm like this could bring, hoping to see a tornado in person. Sure enough I could see bottles in hands raised in salute. A couple of people ran to the flapping edges of the tent to look out at the sky, then back in to the party dripping wet.

  I wasn’t expected. Why would I be? I’d been warned and there was a storm raging. They must have seen my lights headed toward the entrance. I was close enough then I could see the trucks and RVs parked around the tent. There was still one satellite truck that had not been called away for storm coverage. Around it were nervous-looking engineers and celebrating reporters.

  In a moment they’ll have something to celebrate.

  Then I hit the brakes. They grabbed the discs but the locked wheels kept sliding on the wet grass carrying me right into the tent.

  The stunned paralysis of the contract men lasted only until the truck came to a stop and I stepped out.

  Like roaches scattering when the lights come on, they ran for their guns or to put distance between themselves and the men at the center of the stage. Reverend Roscoe Bolin and General Massoud Masum.

  I raised my weapon and pointed it at Massoud. In the time it took to clear the holster and aim, the hail then the rain stopped its patter on the canvas. In the sudden quiet I screamed, “Where is he?” My rage was darker than the storm.