A Dark Path

by Robert E. Dunn

“You’re evading.”

  As soon as she said it, I pictured myself that morning—talking with my Uncle Orson. “Not evading, just. . .”

  “Evading,” she finished for me. “Avoiding. Running.”

  “It’s not the same kind of running.”

  “Running is running. Especially the kind that doesn’t take you anywhere.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Answer the question.”

  I didn’t. I sat and looked at her shoes. They were black, with a moderate heel and a little strap around the ankle that closed with a gold buckle. I looked at my feet. There was no comparison. I was wearing western boots with a soft point at the toe and a two-inch riding heel. They were shined, but not girly at all.

  “You have options,” she prodded.

  “Everyone says that to me these days.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “That brings us right back around doesn’t it? Why is it so important to be a detective?”

  Sometimes I hated that woman more than anything else in my life. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about.”

  “What are you here to talk about?” She had one leg crossed over the other. The foot off the floor twitched.

  “I like your shoes,” I said without any idea where the words had come from.

  “You do?” Dr. Kurtz was surprised. She leaned forward and twisted her ankle to look at the strappy shoe.

  “Is it so amazing?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I never wear pretty shoes. I wear dresses mostly to funerals.” Words came from my mouth unbidden and without thought. Instead of relieving the tension, I felt they dammed my feelings, choked me—both figuratively and literally. Dr. Kurtz watched me. She waited for the next words—as if one of them would be a secret key. I didn’t feel like unlocking. “Do you think how we dress shows who we are?”

  “I think how we dress is who we project.”

  “Who we want to be?”

  She shrugged and half-way smiled. “Who we need to be.”

  “Who do you need to be?” As soon as I asked, my face burned with a blush. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”

  “How come? Don’t you think it’s natural to wonder about the person who listens to all your secrets?”

  “Boundaries.” I turned away and looked at the generic art on the wall.

  “Another thing that is important to you.” Her voice was knowing. I pictured the nodding that went with it.

  “You sound like you’re driving at something.”

  “You sound like you’re driving in wide circles around something.”

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

  “Did you know. . .I’ve always envied you your boots.”

  I looked at her. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Because you buy into the projection of my clothing. I think part of the problem is that you buy into the projection of your own clothing so much that you’ve forgotten there are other things to wear. Other parts of you to dress up.”

  “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”

  “Really?” She uncrossed her legs and put both feet side by side on the floor. “Do you think I dress like this at home?”

  “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “This is my doctor uniform. A skirt, wool or silk depending on the season, light make-up.” She turned her ankles to show off the shoes. “Daytime heels. I keep my nails polished and my hair done. Why do you think that it is?”

  “I always thought you were kind of prissy.”

  Dr. Kurtz laughed. It wasn’t a put-on thing. It pealed like a dropped tambourine and she suddenly seemed human. “That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She laughed again and pointed to herself. “Look at me. What would happen if you dressed like me on your job?”

  “My job would be a lot harder. No one would take me seriously.”

  “I agree.” She leaned back into her chair and re-crossed her legs.

  For the first time I noticed that she had no notepad or pen. It made me think of Earl Turner asking me about making a record, and his mistrust.

  “And if I sat here in jeans and boots looking grim and tough, do you think I could do my job?” The smile was still on her face. The laughter was gone. “No. Who would open up to me?”

  “I get it,” I admitted. “Projecting. But I’m still missing the bigger point. What’s it mean to my life?”

  “What’s the difference between you and me?”

  “There’s not enough time left in the day to write that list.”

  “The difference, the real difference, is that when I go home, I change clothes. I bet you didn’t know I have horses.” I didn’t and it must have shown on my face because Dr. Kurtz started laughing again. “I go home and tie up my hair. I put on boots and the oldest, softest jeans I have—and I’m not fussy about how clean they are. Then I take care of my animals. I talk to them too.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I think you’re really close to taking off your work armor. I think you need to put on a pretty dress and dance with a smile on your face. And—that is terrifying you.”

  “You think I’m afraid of putting on a dress?”

  “I think you’re afraid of letting yourself be happy. I think you believe someone will take it away again. That’s a conflict because you’re so close to losing that giant stick up your behind.”

  “Between the two of us, doctor, you’re the one who’s crazy.” She laughed and I stopped her. “It’s not funny. I came running in here. I was in tears. A man told me a story about his daughter being assaulted and raped, and I lost control. How can I do my job like that?”

  “Katrina.” When I didn’t look at her, Dr. Kurtz said, “Hurricane.” I looked. “Why are you here?”

  “I just said—”

  “Not this moment. Forget that. Why did you start coming to me?”

  “You know why.”

  “It was a condition of keeping your job.”

  I nodded.

  “Because of the violence you brought to the job.”

  I didn’t nod. I didn’t look away either.

  “Not just the job.”

  She waited. I waited. It was impossible to tell if the silence was building a bridge or tearing one down.

  Finally she said, “What happened today is going to happen to you. You know that. Maybe what you don’t know is how to react when the old ways are gone.”

  I shook my head. Then I shook it harder.

  “How would you have reacted two years ago?” The pause she left after the question didn’t leave a lot of room for me to answer. “You would have gotten drunk. Someone probably would have gotten hurt. Am I right?”

  There was no answer in my head, only numb confusion.

  “For the first time in years, you reacted to a trigger by allowing a crack in your shell. It wasn’t self-destructive and wasn’t violent. You cried and sought help. Are you going to sit there and tell me that’s not a reach for happiness?”

  I didn’t buy it. The entire idea that falling apart could be an attempt to be happy, and that happy was something I was afraid of, seemed too easy. And anything easy is something to be wary of.

  We talked it out for a long time. When I—again—pointed out the foolishness of believing that I had a fear of being happy, Dr. Kurtz said, “You’re not afraid of being happy, Katrina. You’re afraid of losing happiness again. There’s a big difference. And it’s a perfectly reasonable fear.”

  I left the session feeling hollow and wasted. The sun was still burning the town. In places where tar had been used to fill cracks in the parking lot, my boots stuck. Each step pulled up a gummy string of blackness. It was easy
to imagine that, if I stood still, I would be glued down forever. There was some kind of ancient Greek myth in there somewhere. I wasn’t the one to find it.

  I had missed my appointment with Devon Birch. Not that I cared. It was good to keep the feds a little off balance. Otherwise, they were always willing to believe they owned you.

  I started the truck and opened the windows while the A/C got to cranking. I’m a windows-down person—except when the thermometer is sitting at ninety-six. Honestly, despite the heat and the feeling I’d made a fool of myself, I felt better. Dr. Kurtz had given me one thing that had nested in my mind. That bit about wearing an identity. She was right. Since I had come home from the Army, I had worn a badge, manly boots, and unflattering jeans as armor against the world. It was a take-me-seriously façade that transitioned easily into a fear-me look.

  I needed to make some changes in my life.

  Chapter 7

  The truck cab cooled and I put the windows up. I turned on the oldies station and eased out of the parking lot. I had visions of hot tar being thrown by the tires against the body. An old song by ELO played, and I drove for the highway—aiming for home.

  I missed. ELO bled into Elton John who became Fleetwood Mac—without me even noticing the transitions. I sang along and drove. The next thing I knew, I was pulling up in front of Earl Turner’s home again.

  That time he met me on the porch with a sad look and asked, “Back again?”

  “We still need to talk.” I tried to sound like nothing had happened. I’m pretty sure I failed.

  “I got a call from your boss.”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t tell him what happened.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Sure there ain’t.”

  “Tell me again about your daughter.”

  Earl looked me over and shook his head. “Nah,” he said slowly. “I don’t think I want to do that.”

  “Why’s that?”

  His face twitched between expressions. It was like the old car radios, before the world went digital. Back then you could put the knob between two stations and get bits of one, then the other. He seemed to be tuned between something cruel and something kind. He gave up trying to decide and turned to the door. “Come on in.”

  The house was dark, even with the open windows. Air was stirred by a ceiling fan. It wasn’t nearly as hot as the outside. That didn’t make it cool.

  “Sheriff called me about. . .” Earl sat heavily on an uncomfortable looking couch. He grunted as he settled and pulled his left arm up to rest in his lap. “You know, I guess. It was dental records. They were sent over first thing in the morning. There’s no doubtin’ it. Tyrell had two fillings right next to each other. His only two. I guess that’s what they look at.”

  “I’m sorry.” I said gently. I meant it.

  “It’s a hell of a thing.” Earl stared straight ahead. He wasn’t really talking to me. “One bad day can ripple out like a big stone in a small pond—until it fills every nook and hole with waves. It’s like certain kinds of wrong never go away. They smooth over. But they are always there—waiting for any kind of disturbance—to set the waves back in motion.”

  “You’re thinking about that day you were assaulted by Johnson Rath.”

  “I’m thinking about Tyrell.” He let the correction sit there without making more of it, an unembellished fact. Then he added, “And I’m thinking of Elaine.”

  “You think something started the day Johnson attacked you.”

  “Ended, you mean.”

  “Ended?”

  “Any chance to live right. That moment took lifetimes of security away.”

  I waited, but he didn’t seem to want to say more. “I’m sorry,” I told Earl again. “We can talk another time.”

  Before I could turn to leave he said, “You know.”

  “Know what?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t. . .” I couldn’t finish. Earl Turner looked at me. His eyes bore a strange light. It was the backward looking gaze of memory, but it fixed me in the then-and-there.

  “You understand.” He stated it simply. “I saw it when I told you about Elaine. There was no missin’ it when you got up to run from her story. You been hurt in that way that changes a person. I could see it. I watched the waves rippling around you.”

  “Mr. Turner. . .”

  “Hate.” The word was as heavy and solid as a cinder block. He dropped it like he was dropping muddy boots on the dinner table. It was to make a point. I just didn’t know what the point was.

  “Earl—”

  “There’s only one thing that will take more away from the people who get touched by it.”

  “I don’t understand, Mr. Turner.”

  “Money.”

  When you’re investigating a murder and someone starts talking about money, it changes everything. I can’t say I understood better, but I sure was listening closer. “What money?”

  “You know what Judas got?”

  “Thirty pieces of silver.”

  “Uh-huh. Silver.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. What about silver?”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “You’re losing me, Mr. Turner.”

  With his good hand he pointed at his limp arm. “This wasn’t an accident. Everyone thought it was. It looked like that big bastard jumped me because he saw me walking next to that white girl. It was his excuse. Not that he needed much of one.”

  It’s a funny thing about the job. No matter how screwed up my life is—and it gets pretty messy a lot of the time—when I start learning the things I set out to uncover, the badge takes hold. Tyrell Turner was murdered. Discovering it was about anything more than race was a revelation. My own pain kept falling further away as Earl told me his story.

  “It wasn’t the first time I’d been confronted by that redneck. A few months before, my daddy had passed. After that, Johnson showed up wanting to buy the low land. Course, it wasn’t always low. It had been hill land, a level spot and a gully, when my daddy’s granddaddy had bought it. Back then, it was a big thing for a black man to own land in these hills—even if the land was just rocks and bad soil. He worked it. And I guess it worked him too. The way land has of workin’ the life out of a man.”

  Earl stopped talking and stared. He gave the impression that he was seeing memories of things that happened a long time before he was born. I was about to prompt him when he asked me, “You ever hear of the Spanish Mine?”

  “It’s a legend.”

  “That’s what people say. Now. You ever hear of a Yocum dollar?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s how great-granddaddy paid for his land. In Yocum silver dollars. They say he had a barrel full of them. They said he found the old mine and coins Yocum had made out of the Spanish silver.”

  “Those are just old stories. They can’t be true.”

  “True’s a thing isn’t it? True enough to throw that big rock right into the pond. True enough to make ripples through generations. First, they said great-granddaddy had silver. Then it had to be that all the black folk were keepin’ a secret hoard of silver. There wasn’t a lot of blacks then. This part of the country was even less friendly to ‘em than most places. But the ones there, around that patch of land, they was doing okay.

  “The talk was about the silver and the sneaky niggers. Seemed it was thought, not right, that black folks had more than their white neighbors. It never could be that they worked harder and longer and wasted less. White people started killing the blacks and working to run ‘em off. The Nightriders came. Bald Knobbers, they called them, ‘cause they had meetings on the clear cut tops of hills.

  Blacks who stayed mostly died. Not even in death were they welcome. Great-granddaddy, then granddaddy, gave up
plots to family who had no place to rest. All our folks, the Turners and Patees, got buried there. Then they had to bury friends with no place to lie. People kept coming and my family kept burying them.

  When my daddy’s daddy passed, what prosperity there was for our folks was no longer shinin’ so bright. For the white people tellin’ the stories, that could only mean that he was buried with his treasure. The land was left to go to seed and the ghosts to go to eternity. No one worked it after my daddy was born.

  “That land stayed in my family until Johnson Rath twisted my arm into a lifeless burden. Not only could I not work, I couldn’t pay the bills I had. Ol’ Johnson thought he was sitting in the catbird seat. I didn’t sell. I let it go to taxes in 1983 just to spite him. By then, the lake had made that old spit of dirt into valuable property. Johnson couldn’t beat the prices developers were willing to pay. And you can’t twist a corporation’s arm. So the land was going to become just another flat space to put up cracker box homes. That was the thinkin’—‘till it flooded. What was hill land had become bottom land—and everybody was fine with that, so long as no black folks were on it and doing well.”

  “That’s an amazing story.”

  Earl looked at me as if I had suddenly appeared in his dim living room. “The truth always is.”

  “I don’t understand something, though.”

  “Only one something? You’re doing better than me.”

  “You said developers were going to build houses on your old land.”

  “It’s no lie.”

  “How could they? I mean if it was a cemetery?”

  “You sound just like the boy. Tyrell asked questions like that. Like he expected the world to make sense and the rules was the rules.”

  “There are laws—”

  Earl laughed. It was a forced cackle, rusty and without mirth. “Laws. Laws work for the pocket book. Don’t you see it? Cemetery is one of those legal words. That land was just a place where dead people was buried. White folks had cemeteries. Wouldn’t a made any difference though. You know how all these big lakes in Missouri and Arkansas were made?”

  “They’re all man-made. Dams and reservoirs.”

  “That’s right.” He nodded like I had gotten a difficult problem correct. “And do you think there were no people and no graves in any of that land they covered with water?”