A Dark Path

by Robert E. Dunn

  I went to church.

  The music was dead by then. All the stomping was over. One voice was occasionally punctuated by shouts of agreement.

  I crept up the sagging stairs. There was no door kicking entrance, nothing so dramatic. My gun wasn’t even drawn. My hand was on the butt and ready. I pushed and the door opened. No one turned. All faces remained turned to the riser at the far end of the room. Johnson Rath stood there within the blaze of a single spotlight. His cold eyes caught light and reflected it back, cold. There were fresh scratches around them—where my nails had dug in. His bold beard caught in the stream of a fan. It writhed like a living thing. For his sermon, Johnson was shirtless. He was in his sixties, at least, but he looked much younger and stronger. His chest was broad and hard—even if his gut lapped a little over his belt.

  Johnson raised his arms in a mockery of the crucifixion. In each hand, he held an open book. One was obviously a bible. The other had a red cover.

  “Children,” Johnson exclaimed.

  “Yes,” some voices answered.

  “The children,” others added.

  Many of the voices raised in reply were female. I looked around and noticed several women who I hadn’t seen earlier. They must have been inside while the men socialized outside.

  “Children,” Johnson called out again.

  Again he was echoed by the crowd.

  “White children born to white families—” Johnson pointed into the gathering with the bible. He raised the red book over his head. It had a black swastika on the cover. “In a world gone brown.”

  There were hallelujahs and shouts of praise. Someone even said, “You’re goddamned right.”

  “Where is their place? Where is our place?” Johnson lowered his hands and put the books down on a table beside him. “Where will the children of the light and the grace live—in a world of mud? Make no mistake—not only is the world being taken from us, the forces of the dirt are doing everything to lower our progeny to their level.

  “So much of that has been our fault. For years we misunderstood. We called them—and I mean Them, with a capital T, the Jews, the nigger races, the sand dwellers, all the Mohammad followers—we called them stupid. We believed them ignorant breeders. But they are more than that. They are not wise, but they are canny.

  “They use the Jewish banks and the Arab oil—they use lawyers and nigger music—not to raise themselves, but to bring us down.”

  “Fuckin’ A!” a voice chimed in. It was followed by applause and more shouts of agreement.

  I’d heard more than enough of that crap. I pushed my way into the knot of National Socialist nonsense and used my fists and elbows to clear a path forward. Hands grabbed at me and I could hear the name, Hurricane, spit out in both surprise and anger. The hands I slapped away or twisted off me. The voices I ignored.

  Before I made it through the mass, it thinned. A bloated brute of a man, shirtless and wearing red suspenders to hold up tent sized jeans, lumbered into my way.

  “Where you think you’re goin’?” He tried for a snarl but only managed a slur.

  I kicked him in the crotch and went around—as he collapsed.

  “Come back for more?” Johnson Rath’s big voice boomed down from the riser.

  Some voices raised again in laughter.

  “Taking on all comers this time?”

  The laughter, cruel in sound and intent, swelled up to fill the space. It was a good time for me to pull my weapon.

  From behind me, a woman shouted, “You got what was coming to you.”

  I turned around and hunted for any smirk of admission in the mob. There were some good candidates, but none of whom I was sure. The woman and I were both lucky. Had she shown her laughing face, I would have killed her without a thought.

  I turned back with my pistol targeted on Johnson’s chest. “You’re under arrest.”

  He, and the crowd, laughed.

  I ignored it all and stepped up onto the riser. “For kidnapping, sexual assault, assault on a police officer—”

  He raised a hand, reaching out toward me.

  “Give me an excuse.” I warned him in a voice so quiet—only he and I could hear. “The only way you’re going out of here alive is in cuffs.”

  “What are you going to do?” Johnson waved the hand out to the assembly and invited their outrage. “Arrest us all?”

  They laughed. Someone grabbed at my pants. They let go when I kicked. Johnson laughed louder than anyone.

  I darted in between his open hands, and whipped the butt of my weapon into his mouth. His blood sprayed. The mob went silent so quickly—I heard one of Johnson’s teeth rattle on the bare board floor.

  Before he could recover—before anyone could react—I shoved the barrel of my pistol down the front of the big man’s jeans. I cocked the hammer.

  He wasn’t laughing anymore. All of his quiet attention was on me. So was everyone else’s.

  “You can’t do that,” a woman protested. “You’re a cop. We have rights.” She was probably the same one who had said I got what I deserved.

  With my free left hand I pulled out my cuffs. “Give me your hand.”

  He twisted. I jammed my 9mm deeper into his pants. Judging from the look in his pale eyes, I hit something important.

  Johnson held up his right hand.

  I slapped the cuff on. “You do the other hand. Behind your back.”

  He complied. I heard the ratchet of the bracelet. That didn’t mean I trusted it. I reached around his body to check the cuffs were secure.

  “You think they’ll let you out of here?” So close, his eyes were halogen bright and glacier cold. “Take a step and you’re dead.”

  “I don’t think they want to risk the source of so much white pride.” I wiggled the gun in his pants. “I don’t think you do either. You’d best take your chances with a lawyer. I hope he’s Jewish.”

  “Fuck that. Birch will kick me loose.”

  “We’ll see. Walk.”

  Leading Johnson by the pistol in his crotch, I took him through the quiet mob and out to the clearing around the shack. Several men dashed ahead and stood between us and the dirt road. Some climbed into trucks which they pulled around to form a road block. They left the high beams on, illuminating us in hard glare.

  I turned my back on the light—pulling Johnson around with me.

  “Where are you taking me?” For the first time, Johnson Rath sounded less than confident.

  I didn’t answer.

  The mob followed behind as we trudged through the clearing. The grass and weeds were so dry they crunched under our feet. We reached the edge of the cut, where the smoke and hawthorn trees were wound with poison ivy and poison oak.

  “I’m not going in there.” Johnson planted his feet. “Someone get in here and take this bitch.”

  I pulled the pistol from his pants then jammed it back into his crotch and fired a round into the dirt between Johnson’s feet. Before anything else could happen, I returned the smoking barrel to its nest within his jeans.

  Johnson Rath didn’t quite scream. The sound he made was more like a growling moan. He sounded like a wounded bear and was just as dangerous. I worked the pistol in deeper and shook it around making sure the hot opening and the sharp-edged gun sight made plenty of contact with bare skin.

  I pulled the hammer back again. “Do you believe I’ll do it?”

  He didn’t respond, at least not in words. He shut up. When I walked into the woods, he followed. No one else did. The mob crowded up to the edge of the clearing and stopped.

  It didn’t take long before all sign of them was lost.

  Darkness, woody and deep, swallowed us. Our path was by touch, each foot reaching out and finding solid purchase before the next lifted. The ground shifted, roots caught, and rotted wood gave way. Several times,
one of us stumbled. Each time, I could hear Johnson take a hard breath anticipating the discharge that would take his manhood.

  We reached a shallow gully. In a normal season it would have held a trickle of water draining the green space down to the lakes. That summer it was dry. There was a layer of sandstone exposed by earlier waters. It was as good a place as any.

  “Kneel here,” I told him.

  Even Johnson’s unnaturally bright eyes were invisible in the forest dark. I didn’t need to see them to know his reaction. I felt it the way you feel tragedy when you walk by an open hospital room.

  “You’re a cop.” The argument was as feeble as the sound of his voice. I think he knew it.

  “You’re a rapist.” The hope that drained from him was a physical thing. Cold air leaking from the refrigerator on a hot day. “You’re a sadist. And a Nazi. And a murderer.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone.” The refutation was a small gesture. Judas throwing away the silver.

  “Kneel.”

  He did.

  As his legs bent, and his body sank, I turned my pistol so the sight was against his belly. I pulled the weapon quickly, gouging a line of revenge up his skin. He hissed a quick reaction then returned to silence on his knees. I had the gun to his head by then.

  We remained like that, locked together in the moment, stretching it out over hundreds of heartbeats. No matter how I counted time, I realized it was one moment. I understood my mother. I understood how easy it would be to live an entire lifetime right there, in that one segment of uncountable time.

  It wasn’t until I was there, in that moment, that I realized the degree to which I had been living in another one.

  “You don’t have the guts.” It wasn’t bluster or bravado. Johnson was making a simple, grateful, statement.

  “You think it takes courage to kill?” I brought the barrel of my service weapon from the back of his head to the swelling of bone behind the right ear. I pushed. I pushed hard, grinding the pistol against skin and skull. I didn’t stop until his head was bent over as far as it would go. He appeared to be praying. “You had better hope I have the courage not to kill you. Because I’m not sure I do.”

  That moment, elastic and terrible, stretched into an eternity. Sweat rolled into my eyes and I brushed it away. My right hand, and with it, the gun, shook.

  I don’t think I was breathing. I do know I was ready. I tightened my finger. Time slipped into increments of pressure on a trigger.

  “Please.” Johnson spoke so quietly I almost missed it.

  Maybe I imagined it. It didn’t matter. Salvation comes in small words. His and mine.

  I holstered my weapon.

  Together, we waited in the darkness for time to find us again. The moon was out. It beamed bands of light that flitted in the trees and showed like silver stepping stones on the ground. Any other time, any other darkness, and I would never have seen it.

  Chapter 16

  “You did what?” The sheriff’s question burst out at me.

  I told him again that I had arrested Johnson Rath and put him in our jail.

  Sheriff Benson thought about it for a moment. Then he asked how I was. He was calm and kind, the man who was my friend.

  I tried evading the question, and he became my boss again.

  He cursed and pointed fingers at me. He jabbed them in all directions—punctuating his points.

  For my part, I stood quietly and took it as deserved. When he settled enough to tell me to sit, the boss was spent. The friend returned. He asked me what had happened. Anyone else would have meant that as, why had I disappeared for a day? I didn’t have to tell him I had been drunk. And I couldn’t hide it from him either. So I told him. Everything.

  My friend the sheriff was one of the few people who knew exactly what had happened to me in Iraq. He knew about the problems I had with the Army—after reporting my assault and rape at the hands of two superior officers in a war zone. If anyone was going to cut me slack when I allowed violence and my distrust of protocol to raise their ugly heads, it was him.

  “I should have your badge.” There was no slack in his voice.

  “I’d heard you’re already planning on it.”

  “You’re goddamned right, I am planning on it.” He kicked back in his chair and put dirty boots up on his desk. “And not just for my sake.”

  “For Billy’s.”

  “For yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “How long do you think it can go on like this?”

  I had no answer for that.

  “The only reason I don’t take your gun and badge—the only reason I don’t pin a pink slip to your chest right now—is it would probably be a free pass for Johnson Rath. He’s had enough of that. And I’ve had enough of that son-of-a-bitch to last a lifetime.”

  It went on like that for a while: the sheriff cursing and railing against a world that had people like Rath in it.

  “You should get out,” he finished up. “Leave this awful business.”

  “I’m a woman with options.”

  “You are that. More than that. You have a life ahead of you. One that does not need to be so full of heartbreak and gunfire.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to tell me something more?”

  “Birch will be here in the morning.”

  “Who’s to say the DEA has to know? Maybe Agent Birch can find out in the newspapers like everyone else.”

  “I’m saying it. I can’t say I like it, but there’s the way things should be done—and the way things have to be done.”

  “What about Earl Turner’s phone?”

  “What about it?”

  I gave him a synopsis of what I had discussed with Turner, and my fears of using the tracking feature.

  “I’d say you were right about the legal issues. With no one to give consent, it seems murky to me. I’d say you were as wrong as fur on a frog to let him keep using it himself. And, I’d sure as shit say you were wrong not to just pick up the phone and ask for a warrant.”

  “Things got a little busy.”

  “Don’t they always?”

  “He called me several times.”

  “Yeah, well that’s something you’re going to have to live with.”

  * * * *

  At home I showered again. Then another few times.

  Night became early morning as I was sitting on the big leather couch in the living room. Light from the dropping moon passed through the lakeside wall of glass. It rested easy on my eyes—not so easy as to let me close them.

  The knock came after 1 a.m. Billy was at the door. The gentle rapping called without demand. A request I couldn’t honor.

  When he left, I was both lighter and heavier inside.

  * * * *

  My phone rang not long after the sun rose—like a hot rocket into a sky so heated and lifeless—it seemed like blank paper. I was already awake and dressed.

  “Devon Birch is on his way here,” the sheriff said, without any greeting.

  “I’ll be there.”

  I skipped breakfast that morning. I did not go straight to meet the sheriff and Agent Birch. Instead, I went to the jail. Duck was already there.

  “You’re here early,” I said.

  “I figured you’d get a quick start on things.” He didn’t want to meet my gaze directly.

  “How’s that?”

  “You got Dando sitting in there with no charges filed. You got Rath wrapped up in everything but the flag. Still, he keeps talking about being out for lunch.”

  “Is that it?”

  He got a look, but turned it to the floor before I could read anything. “Thanks.”

  “What?”

  “Thanks.” He looked at me, then away. “For trying to help Roland.”

  “He told you?�
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  “He’s not a bad kid.”

  “I’m not sure that has anything to do with it anymore.”

  “He’s in trouble?”

  “You’re not that stupid, Duck.”

  “Okay. I know he’s in trouble. I know he thought he was a big man. He wants to do it all his way. And he wants the privilege of being ashamed of his daddy—while asking for my help at the same time.” Duck still didn’t look right at me. His face was showing pictures like a drive-in movie screen. Fear. Shame. Desperation.

  “You know what he’s gotten into?”

  “It more what has his hooks in him. Or who.”

  “The Nightriders?”

  “Not that easy.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “The Nightriders aren’t independent anymore. They tucked themselves under the wing of the AB.”

  “I know that. You still could have shared it earlier.”

  “Hey, I’m walking a line here, and my balance ain’t so good.” Color flushed up his jowls and under the big Elvis sideburns he’d probably worn since he could grow them.

  “Then help me out, or join the circus.”

  “He’s my kid, Hurricane.” Duck dropped his defenses like a man throwing off a heavy yoke. His wide, flabby body merely sagged. His face crashed. “He’s my kid. And everything I say to you about it puts him at risk.”

  Suddenly a connection sparked in my brain. “He’s your kid. Maybe he’s the kid.”

  “What kid?”

  “What has all this got to do with the old days?”

  “I’m not talking about any old days. I’m talking about my son and these days. Right now is his time. Ancient history has nothing to do with him.”

  “We’re going to talk a lot more about all of this.” I pointed down the corridor of cells. “Open the door and kick Dando out. When my mother comes to pick him up, maybe the three of you can talk about how the past has a way of coming home to roost.”

  * * * *

  “Put him out.” Agent Devon Birch made the mistake of letting it sound like an order.