Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  Malcolm and Jordan found a blackjack table, where Jordan unfolded twenties on the felt and Malcolm removed his coat and placed it neat on the high back of the chair. He cracked his neck, stretched his hands, and rapidly counted a sequence of numbers on his fingers, recalling the game from memory. As Jordan divided their chips, he remembered Malcolm’s ruthless talent for cards. Baron brought over beers and together they cheered one more time to his wedding, but Malcolm was already focused on the game. It would have been stupid for Jordan to stay at the table, the same as throwing money away. Plus, he hated losing to his brother, so he wished him well and set out on the floor.

  Hours passed and Malcolm built himself a nice stack. He turned the table over not once but twice, bleeding down an overweight Canadian woman and a man who never once looked up from under the greasy curve of a NASCAR hat. He was feeling good and barely noticed when the mild-tempered dealer left at the end of her shift and was replaced by Lucius, a thin, harrowed man with eyes of soot who ran his long fingers through the cards with assured speed. The new dealer straightened his black vest, placed two new decks in the caddy, and flung two cards to each player. At first, the change was slight. Malcolm noticed the quality of his hands decline so he backed off a bit, content to play conservatively until his cards improved. After a while, no ideal opening arose for him to get back into the game. Lucius turned hands at a blinding rate and made the table unapproachable, regardless of the moves he made. His chip count lingered around two thousand, impressive in just a few hours, but now he was concerned with protecting what he had earned. A waitress brought him a scotch and soda. He placed a two-dollar chip on her tray and she dragged the tips of her nails across the top of his hand.

  Lucius raised his brow and asked him what he thought of her.

  “Cute girl,” said Malcolm.

  “That’s a hot little piece of ass, especially for this place,” Lucius said. “I can hook you up, just say the word.”

  Malcolm looked around to find the highback chairs next to him empty, save a pasty twenty-something in a Tapout T-shirt rocking his head to the treble hissing through his headphones. “I’ve got a date to be married,” Malcolm said, swallowing his distaste. “Thanks though.”

  “More for me, then. I used to fuck all the girls at the Queen, you know in KC? Dumber ’an dirt, most of ‘em. The Queen caught me skimming, happens all the time. E’rybody does it, but they like to act like they don’t know. It was one of them bitches that ratted me out. She found out I had got with her friend. Somehow, I got out of there with only a censure from the Commission.” He looked around before leaning in close. “Then I landed here, middle of nowhere, talking to a guy like you about banging middle-of-the-road ass like that. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. No offense,” said Lucius.

  Malcolm cleared eighty and threw him ten, hoping it would shut him up.

  “Obliged,” he said. “So, you’re tying the knot. I ain’t never doing that again, shit. Last girl I was serious on cheated first chance she got. This pill-poppin’ motherfucker that lived on her block. Talking ’bout she addicted, she need help. I went over there one night, told him to crawl his ass out the house and face me like a man, you know. He came out with a gun, so I ran back up in my house and got my fucking gun. My girl run in screaming. I said your dope dick boyfriend out there started it. Go on run over there, I told her. Right then a shot came through the window. I hit the light in the living room and we dropped to our stomachs on broken glass. She yelled for him to get on, that someone was gone get hurt. We was crawling around and she lays into me right there. Can you believe that? How I don’t amount to nothing, how I never finished college, put all my money into racing cars, lost my job at the casino. That’s when I said, ain’t no woman going to tell me what I’m worth. Next day I told her so long. Might have ended up in this forsaken hole, but I got my dignity.”

  Malcolm had lost four hands in a row and leveled off with one that finally beat Lucius. He continued raising Malcolm’s ire. “You’ll see. Last thing you ever think will happen, one day you wake up and that shit is your life. You can be a man, face up to all you done, or do what I did and run. Question is, do you still got nuts below the table. Looking at you, I bet you do. But what you don’t see coming will lay you low in the end. Best keep them eyes open, killer.”

  After leaving his brother at the blackjack table, Jordan foundered his way through a few rounds of roulette and backed away from the wheel, sure of his unlucky hand. Malcolm had once told him that he was too impulsive and easily provoked to gamble. Judging by the fact that the comment still echoed through his mind years later, he might have had a point. At least he was not cold and calculating like his brother, the robot, Jordan assured himself as he mindlessly tapped the screen of a video poker machine at the bar. Time passed, the money went, and Jordan pried himself away, annoyed.

  As he stumbled across the carpeted floor, he was assaulted by the onslaught of ringing bells and flashing lights. He found a port door and pushed his way outside, pulling the night air in through his nose, exhaling big, deep breaths. It wasn’t only bad luck and noisy lights that were getting to him. He had never tried to explain it to anyone before, but he went through periods of increasing discomfort. These episodes were normal after he had done something wrong, especially if he had hurt himself or someone else, and struggled to bring the tide of anxiety and guilt under his control. But when he had not done anything excessive or violent, he was caught off guard. He grew increasingly hot, skin pricked by needles, his mind racing and paranoid. Jordan flinched and checked over both shoulders, making sure he wasn’t being watched. There was never anybody there, but he could not shake the intuitive sense that at his most vulnerable, when he was all alone and calm enough to let his guard down, he couldn’t do so pinned beneath someone’s prying gaze.

  The deck of the Lucky Laurie was lined with benches and small tables where couples huddled together, sipped drinks and talked. Walking to the front of the bow, Jordan saw a woman staring into the water, her face turned away to hide her sobbing. He asked if she was okay. When there was no response he remained at her side, assuming she hadn’t heard the question. The wind blew on the wide open deck, he leaned closer and asked again. Her damp, reddened face rose in the opaque halo of the lanterns strung over the railing. He sat beside her on the bench. Jordan reached out and placed his hand gently on her back.

  She turned to him and stalled her crying enough to speak. “I lost someone important to me, a year ago this weekend,” she told him. “My friends forced me to come here tonight. They were just trying to cheer me up, I know. It worked for a while, but I couldn’t take it in there, all the lights and the noise and cigarette smoke.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Jordan.

  The woman examined Jordan’s face. “He was a lot like you. Handsome, a wounded sort of boy. You two would have been roughly the same age, I imagine.” She clutched his hand, again breaking into tears. An unwillingly howl rose from her throat as though she had been stabbed in the gut. Jordan closed his eyes.

  “I was running late that day, always in such a rush,” she cursed herself. “If I had not been so selfish, he wouldn’t have been hit, he would still be here.” She let another howl pour over the bow. “Pieces of him were on the road. The police asked me to identify him, but how was I supposed to recognize pieces? You know, the weak bear the burden while killers go free. God is not just. They say he is, but it’s not true. He is vengeful, petty, spurned by his ire, exactly what the commandments were passed to Moses to warn us against.” She wiped the run from her nose and clutched hold of Jordan. “So my son is taken from me and I am left to rot. Still, I’ll pray for him as long as I can. I don’t need anyone to pray for me, it’s too late for that. Pray for yourself, young man, that you see your way clear of this treachery. Ask yourself, am I ready for what the devils have in store?”

  Malcolm washed his face in the sink, changed out of his collared shirt, and secured his money in the safe at the foot of the cl
oset. He had cashed out fifteen hundred in chips from the teller and brought the winnings back to the room in a shopping bag. Jordan stretched out on the other double and switched on the television. He sat up and rummaged around in his bag until he surfaced a bottle of bourbon.

  “Travel with the essentials, I see,” said Malcolm.

  “I’m going to get some ice,” Jordan replied. He flipped the plastic bucket in his hands.

  “If I doze off—”

  “I’ll just hit you in the face, real hard.”

  Malcolm was already closing his eyes, adrift. The television murmured updates from an explosion at a fertilizer plant and alerts about a coming storm. The room fell still, a soothing pattern of rain on the window that aided Malcolm’s sleep until he shot up in bed, heart pounding, startled by a woman’s scream. He heard it a second time and discerned that it came from the end of the hall before it was muffled by sounds of a struggle. Bodies shuffled and strained, two loud bangs followed by silence. The commotion led Malcolm to a metal door with a glowing red emergency sign adjacent to the last room on the floor. He banged his fist below room number 212. A man’s voice swore, then Malcolm heard a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across the carpet. He banged again, jumping back as the door flew open. Russ breathed heavy, intense with menace.

  “Let me in, Russ.”

  “Man, go back to your room and mind your own busin—”

  Malcolm took one step back and kicked the door straight into Russ’s forehead. He fell on the floor and Malcolm rushed into the room, wired with adrenaline. A faint girl lay topless on the bed, rocking with pain. He drew her hair to one side and discovered the blood that stained her nose and lips, still fresh from a wound Russ had no doubt caused. Malcolm tried to get her to sit up but stopped when she went stiff and cried out in agony. He felt her clammy forehead and asked if she was hurt anywhere else. Nearly unresponsive, she managed to shake her head.

  He stood from the bed and found a tray strewn with weed and cut-up pills on the dresser where Russ’s survival knife sat, unfolded. Malcolm’s eyes went from the knife to Russ, who did the same to him, assessing the danger they posed to each other. Both men lunged forth, but Malcolm got there first. He secured the grooved handle and turned it on Russ, who gripped his wrist with his one good hand before Malcolm slammed him against the wall. Malcolm screwed a fistful of flannel into Russ’s chest, smashed him twice and finally pinned him there with the gruesome blade to his throat.

  “Move and I’ll cut your other arm off,” he warned. The polished metal wavered above the rough skin pulsing at his neck. “How about it? Care to test me? If that girl wasn’t drugged and beat so bad, I would just hand her the knife, see what she’d fix to do with it. Maybe she’d have purpose to cut your balls off. What do you think, Russ? Would you miss them more than your arm?”

  Russ fell silent with fear. He swallowed hard, sweat ran down his cheek.

  “Let’s wait here together just like this and see if she comes around,” said Malcolm. “I got no other plans.”

  The commotion had roused Harrell and the rest of the boys a few doors down. They poured in through the open doorway and filled the room. “What’s going on? You lost your mind, Malcolm?” Harrell grasped to make sense of the situation.

  “Seems Russ here had the virtuous plan of drugging and raping one of the girls from downstairs. Check to see if she’s all right, will you?”

  Baron held her jaw up and braced the back of her neck to check her breathing. She was out cold. “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “She’s a waitress. Julia, that’s her name.”

  Baron sat Julia upright, but when he removed his hand from propping her up she fell backward on the bed, eyelids thick and blue. He draped her limp arm over his shoulder and anchored her against the headboard of the bed, where she managed to stay up.

  Jordan had returned with the ice to find his own room empty, so he followed the shouting. He came in, smoothed back his hair, and studied the pills on the table.

  “Goddamn it, Russ.”

  “Jordan, listen, you know me. Tell your brother to calm down. He’s got it all wrong.”

  Malcolm pressed the knife into a large contracting vein. Russ tried his luck and struggled once more, but Malcolm was planted firm and could not be moved. He curled his knuckles and punched him with the knife hand, spattering blood across the wallpaper. He rubbed his fist into Russ’s teeth and smeared blood across his face in a red cloud.

  “You want to die?” he said. “Move one more time.”

  Jordan could sense his brother growing angrier as he examined every sweating pore on Russ’s sorry face. “How easy it would be to end this piece of shit,” Malcolm reasoned. “What would be lost? The world would be better off.” The more he considered it, the less he found fundamentally wrong with killing Russ.

  “The situation is under control, Malcolm. Come on, end this.” Jordan pleaded with his brother, but to Malcolm the calls were far away, signals jumping the chasm from another realm.

  Malcolm spit as he addressed the terrified Russ. “What if I just did it, though? Have you thought about what it would be like to have all your blood rush out of your body?” He pressed the tip of the blade into one sunken point in his neck. “If you knew you only had one moment left to live, if you were given that gift of knowing you were about to die, what would be your last thought? I wouldn’t waste this precious time, if I was you.”

  “I always knew you were an evil fuck,” Russ managed to get out. “You turned your back on your brother, everything you came from. You’re a rich wannabe, no better than the rest of us. No lie you tell yourself can change that, Malcolm. Remember that.”

  Julia had woken and Baron and Josh rushed to move her to the hallway, where she vomited. Baron held a cold towel on her forehead and poured small sips of water into her mouth. Josh told her that they were going to get her to a hospital.

  The rain beat the window behind the curtain. “Let go of him,” Jordan begged. “The girl’s going to get help. You are getting married, for Christ’s sake. That’s why we are here, Malcolm. Think of Elizabeth.”

  The overhead light and the lamp on the bureau went dim and the air around Malcolm collapsed in an absence of light. In that flash, Jordan was looking in the mirror when he saw Malcolm’s eyes go black. His brother’s reflection doubled and then there were two of him standing side by side. The skin on his face and arms was shocked white like the ash from a fire. Darkness spread from his pupils and grew in deep hues around his eyes and mouth. The lights flickered in the room and in those flashes Malcolm’s bare chest was covered with strange markings.

  The power surged and brilliant light spread throughout the room. Malcolm’s eyes flipped back to normal and darted over to meet Jordan’s horrified stare in the mirror. As they looked at each other, the surface of the glass began to creak. Lines spread to each corner and split the mirror with a loud crack, glass falling in shards.

  Malcolm lowered his arm and released Russ. Staring off with a vacant, empty gaze, he walked up to Jordan and dropped the knife in his hand.

  THIRTEEN

  JORDAN THREW WATER OVER his face and bare chest and returned to Leah’s bed to watch the vaporous clouds dissipate after last night’s storm. Leah received his call after work, too tired to raise her guard. At first, she wasn’t going to answer. She had already started to hate him less, but it was still not natural for him to enter her mind without being torn to shreds. She stared at his boots untied and kicked on the floor, then watched him lie beside her on the bed. Even still, he was like a wounded animal. He would shrink away from her when they talked, sit on the farthest end of the couch, keep himself contained and quarantine his body, careful not to afflict or infect her. She was reminded of her rescued lab, Louise, when she was just a puppy. When Leah first brought Louise home, she sat sleepy-eyed with her head in the corner, her thin brown coat quaking with fear, doing her best not to attract anyone’s attention. It took days for Leah to draw her out of that corner, weeks to ge
t her to recognize what kindness looked like, and months for her to trust that it would not be ripped away.

  Leah admitted she had built Jordan into somewhat of a monster, a villain comprised of hurt and embittered passions he was mostly not responsible for. Now to touch his worn skin and kiss his tough lips, she fought against it still. She resented that wounded distance of his because it was her defense as well and she was not used to someone else lumbering around with it. She had confronted being alone, but she was not prepared to face how ordinary her anger actually was. Leah had been angry her entire life and the thought of losing that anger terrified her. She broke into a low cry and scooped herself onto the breast of the boy she loved to rage against, who had vanished and returned, not denying anything, accepting everything, her only possession the quiet demeanor of the survivor that forced her to admit, rather simply, that whatever she had faced in life, she too had survived. She too would be okay. Leah wept with consuming rapture. Not against a ruinous force, or a familiar bereave, but for the first time yearning to let go toward the unknown, instead of letting it scare her to death.

  She swallowed gulps of air as though she had surfaced from a well and wandered around her house touching surfaces to various parts of her body—couch fabric to her thighs, the plastic television remote to her forehead, the hewn curves of Jordan’s fingers on her breasts. Long-obstructed passages in her began to break until she exploded. They wrapped their bodies around each other so tight the air squeezed out of her lungs. A trail of clothes littered the way to her bedroom, where they cried and laughed and pushed into each other, tending to the invisible sites of each other’s wounds.

  When they woke that afternoon, Leah made coffee and listened as Jordan told her about the confrontation between Russ and his brother at the Lucky Laurie. She never knew Malcolm well, but knowing he was Jordan’s twin, she was not all that surprised. “The guy with one arm,” she said. “He was going to rape that poor girl?” Jordan nodded. “So your brother did the right thing, then.”