Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  “Please, mister, ain’t nobody coming,” Pria reasoned. “We’re all right here, I promise you.” Her consolations calmed Andridge. Besides, he did not possess the energy to fight her.

  Pria changed the cold cloth on his head. Andridge’s disorientation gave way to profound confusion. Had no one survived the attack? Perhaps word had not yet made it back to Carrollton? He mumbled bits and pieces of such inquiries to himself and then asked Pria what had happened.

  “Eventually, I read it in the paper,” she told him. “Fourteen Carrollton militiamen dead, fifty-three Yankees. Near as many as were out there that day, according to the paper. A few survived. They came back to pick through all that could be salvaged, but nobody came here.”

  “Read it in a newspaper? News travels fast, I reckon.”

  Pria covered her laugh out of courtesy. “That news-sheet’s well past a month old, mister. I’m sure you don’t remember, but you were in a sick sleep, nothing was going to wake you. You been in that bed for exactly forty-nine days. That is why I am so taken with surprise—and joy, of course—that you woke this morning. I prayed every day right by this bed that you should remain with us. Oh, how my prayers came true! I told the Lord, I said you were not ready to go, you had a task of great importance to fulfill, and that, His will permitting, you would rise again and walk the earth for a long time to come.”

  The water stayed down so Andridge asked Pria for a small amount of food. She returned with a basket and threw back the napkin to reveal a fresh-baked blueberry pie. She carefully cut a slice, then used the knife to crumble it onto a small plate that she held in front of Andridge.

  “There you go,” she said. “You need the sugar.”

  The sweetness of the berries electrified his senses and called him back to life. He sat with his back to the wall and a virulent pain traveled down his throat and caught fire in the right side of his hip when he swallowed. Once he recovered from the shock, he recalled falling from his horse, the realization that he had been shot coming later. He spread a palm across his hipbone. “I was shot here,” he said. “Must’ve knocked my head when I fell.” He pulled back the blanket and inspected the wound. Pria had it all sewn up and the stitches were in the midst of being forced out of the skin.

  “This one could have laid me down for good, but you saved me, Pria. I’ll never know how to thank you,” Andridge said.

  “You don’t have to, mister.” She paused and fluttered her eyes before looking back at him. “You know, it’s silly, but I have yet to learn your name.”

  “It’s Andridge,” he told her. “Andridge Sampson.”

  “I like that,” said Pria. “I had been referring to you simply as our guest. Nice to put a name with the face.”

  Andridge smiled warmly. “Were you able to recover the bullet?”

  “That was the easy part. As I said before, you were in a dead sleep, so you didn’t make so much as a fuss about it,” Pria explained. She grew grim and fiddled the ring on her thin finger before placing her palm on top of his, cupping the tender skin around the healing scar. “That was not so much my concern, see. I thought you were hurt from the bullet alone, but when I removed it, your condition worsened. I worried you’d infected, but it wasn’t just fever. After examining you for near three whole weeks, I realized there was something else. I don’t quite know how to say this—I found something in your abdomen. A blockage, it was quite serious.”

  Andridge listened intently. The room, once comforting to him, now held him hostage with anticipation and forced him to abide by the restraint in Pria’s voice.

  She wrinkled her brow and considered how to proceed. “I had to cut you open a second time,” she said. “One across your belly, the second a vertical cut from the first one all the way down to your groin. Thankfully, Robbie and I recovered a medical kit from one of those wagons we found in the field.”

  “How’d you know to do that?” asked Andridge, confused how a girl so young could have acquired even a basic understanding of surgery.

  “I used to work on the horses with father when this was still a farm,” she said, holding back the listless, bitter sting of longing.

  He had not thought of it until then, but Andridge considered how he registered no feeling below his pelvis. In a growing panic, he inspected the sight of the surgery Pria had performed. He wanted to scream. Nausea spread from the weak vestiges of his body. He had no choice but to listen.

  “The cuts were deep, below the tissue. You have to understand, you were unresponsive for weeks. You could not eat or drink, your body was beginning to shut down. I proffered a guess that removing the protrusion from your stomach was going to save your life. It was the only option left to take,” Pria said.

  She sprung from the bedside and left the room. Andridge could hear her talking to someone in the hall, but he could not make out what was being said. After a few minutes, she returned. Pria held open the door and young Robert came in, freckled black hair and worn overalls, gently cradling a swaddling cloth. He stepped to the bed and loosened the thick white fabric to reveal two pure, unimaginable faces, day breaking through thinly opened eyelids, round cheeks flushed red, two identical licks of hair swirling the backs of soft, infant heads.

  “I swear it’s a miracle, Mister Andridge,” said Pria, standing beside Robbie. “I don’t have an explanation for how this could have happened, never would I have thought I would be charged with something so perplexing and so downright miraculous.” She received the babies from Robbie and lowered them into Andridge’s grasp. He cradled them and gently held their heads on his chest. “Mister Andridge, sir, I would like to introduce you to your sons,” said Pria. “Twins, in fact.”

  NINETEEN

  ANDRIDGE PREPARED HIS CABIN for a long period of rest. He shot his goat and set his chickens free, sure the animals would not survive the coming sleep. He toiled behind the cabin through a mess of tools and gas cans, transmissions, and radiator parts rusted among the weeds. He made his way to the propane tank, reached through the towering briars, and wrenched the valve closed.

  The corner of the notched fence marked their boundary from the meadow that cascaded down into Reed’s Gap. Cob peered down into the valley from the warped steel saddle of a decommissioned tractor. Eyes closed, a look of harmonious consideration relaxed the muscles in his face as he attuned to the living conversation of plants, animals, people, and the occasional passage of invisible bodies. A moment before, Cob had caressed the bone cleft between the eyes of the goat, communing him a blessing which the goat commiserated, letting Cob know just how tired he had grown, assuring him he was ready to go. “It looks like both of us are going to sleep then, old friend,” Cob told the goat. He brushed his palm on the knobs of the goat’s spine before Andridge came over with the Springfield.

  Inside the cabin, Cob unplugged the gas pilot for the stove and joined Andridge in dry-stocking the kitchen and shuttering the windows, which drew their quarters in the resolute darkness to which they were accustomed. They came together in front of the fireplace, taking their time removing the ritual objects, charts, and photographs of the Bayne family, placing them in a cardboard box that Andridge stored in a crawlspace in the wall.

  “It is done,” said Cob. “Malcolm actually manifested as the slayer. No conduit, no catalyst to help him along. The boy has a strong will. Jordan was an obvious firebrand all those years, but with Malcolm, I didn’t know how it was going to unfold.”

  “There was less to work with this time,” Andridge said. “The less the spirit was able to achieve direct influence, the more gradually it bent them to its will. In many ways, it was the most pure cycle we have seen yet.” Andridge thought about what he had just said. “I wonder if this means that the myth is changing, progressing in some way. We have seen it grow from simple hatred into more complex forms, as though the myth is perfecting itself.”

  “It’s thinking,” said Cob. He finished packing the last of their belongings and locked the doors. “Do you think it still matte
rs?” he asked Grieves. “I look out there, I am not sure it is as effective as it once was. I can no longer see the effects. There used to be a lull, a calm, a period of pacification as a result of the sacrifice. Then it would start all over again. You say the myth is growing more abstract, more pure, less a product of baser emotions, but I only see the world moving toward disorder.”

  “There are more people on Earth than ever before and they are distracting themselves from what is required in order for them to survive,” said Andridge. “The web of satellites and computers, these intelligent phones, highways, cars, and garbage everywhere, it is so much that I cannot even think as I used to. I used to be able to hear thoughts, now they are all scrambled. I find it unpleasant and loud, but their desperation is most deafening. Pretty soon, no orchestration of ours will matter. There are other watchers with responsibilities greater than our own. Greater gods begin and end worlds at a whim, when they turn over or are roused from their slumber by a terrible dream. At some point, no amount of blood will satisfy.”

  The time had come to part. Cob was flushed with immense relief, allowing the fatigue that had built up over a long wakefulness to wash over him. Neither Andridge nor Cob were ones for sentiment, so Cob stood at the entrance to his bedroom and smiled, a gesture Andridge returned with a bow of his head. He watched as Cob’s tan suit sank into the depthless dark of his room. He pushed the door closed and snapped shut the lock, sealing him into his hermetic chamber until the next time they were required. Andridge sat in his old rocker and lit his favorite cigar. He sucked in the fire from the flare of two matches until a ribbon of smoke dovetailed in front of him. Andridge shook out the matches, turned up a slat on the window blind, and cast his tired eyes upon the night sky.

  A spectral aura permeated the deep wood. Jordan rustled through brush, mind not so much clear as void. He had left the scene at the house, the consoling and weeping awe. With Malcolm in shock, Elizabeth and her mother made arrangements for the body. He assumed they had moved him by now. Minutes were hours that bore tortuous weight. To have stayed would have meant a grief without end, so Jordan slipped out the back and walked into the trees. First he staggered aimless and half-hearted, but soon he found his step and the way appeared before him.

  Jordan came to the center of that lowly glow. With the field before him, he was confounded by what he saw. The night he and Malcolm had found their way out there, the grove was wild and overgrown. Now it was cut clear to the stands of trees that rose in each direction. The call of the culling had been answered. Jordan carved a path across open ground to the pond beneath the shadow of the elm. Where moonlight parted the water, a set of stairs descended into the depths of the earth.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my editor and brother-in-arms, Guy Intoci, for his vision and hard work in bringing this book to print, as well as Michelle Dotter, Michael Seidlinger, Steven Gillis, Dan Wickett, and the entire Dzanc Books team for all they do for independent literature. My agent Lukas Ortiz at the Philip G. Spitzer Literary Agency, for his unwavering support for this book and my career. Jonathan Evison, for being an early reader, mentor, and friend, and for the many late-night writing sessions, beer, and ping-pong matches out at the cabin on the Olympic Peninsula, where sections of this book were written. Peter Geye, Kristen Millares Young, and Harry Kirchner, who read early drafts and provided thoughtful notes that greatly improved the book. I would also like to thank Harry for his friendship and partnership in Pharos Editions, the imprint we were fortunate enough to found and operate together until it found a new, happy home. Max Kirchner, the best friend and screenwriting partner anyone could ever hope for. Jenn Risko at Shelf Awareness for her smart, generous, and gracious years of friendship.

  Aaron, Rhyan, and Rohan Augustus Talwar, my closest friends and extended family. My actual family: Rick, Debra, Brett, Claudine, Liz, Evan, and Sara, endless love to you all. Lastly, my wife, Rachel Dorothy Blowen. Scales of justice and fairness, cosmic skunk, warrior of Ukok and Astarte, welder, sculptor, mystic, carrier of the light. Thank you, love, for making this life so beautiful.

  In no particular order, I would also like to thank: Richard Hugo House, Cheap Beer & Prose, APRIL, Seattle Fiction Federation, Dock Street Salon, Lit Fix, Lit Crawl, Seattle7Writers, Doe Bay Resort on Orcas Island, Elliot Bay Book Company, Third Place Books, University Bookstore, Phinney Books, Village Books, Powell’s Books, Publishers Group West (PGW), David Dahl, Cindy Heidemann, Kevin Votel, Gary Lothian, Kathi Kirby, Larry Olson, Marilyn Dahl, Paul Gjording, Kris Meyer, Craig Young, Andre Dubus III, Garth Stein, Jennie Shortridge, Donald Ray Pollock, Brian Evenson, Benjamin Percy, Nickolas Butler, Tim Horvath, Sean Beaudoin, Joshua Mohr, James Greer, Lidia Yuknavitch, Kate Lebo, Sam Ligon, Brian Young, Ian Denning, Mia Lipman, Dane Bahr, Jeanine Walker, Robert P. Kaye, Christine Texiera, Jill Owens, Elissa Washuta, Matt Revert, Tyson Cornell, Pat Walsh, Tobias Carroll, Matthew Simmons, Paul Constant, Karen Maeda Allman, Emily Adams, Paul Hanson, Tom Nissley, Lindsey, David, and Delilah Joan Stone, Ben Yuse, Carolyn Beagan, Jacquelyn and Dan Benson, Jared and Erin Millson, Kyle and Sara Haakenson, Andrew Rea, Allison MacManus, Ashley Nelson, Erin Bradt, Ian Ciesla, Patski Lonergan, Deborah Farrell, Chris Jessick, Mike Jessick, Chris Conant, Neil Mooney, Andrew Legendre, John Carroll, Laura Keating, Benjamin Van Pelt, and all the writers, artists, readers, and booksellers who keep the dream alive.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Halftitle

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Acknowledgments