Deeper into Darkness

by James, Russell

  It was after midnight when the Southwest Gas technicians finished airing out his house and declared it safe. The gas line to the dryer had split during the day. Thirty minutes later, NV Power had the neighborhood’s electricity humming again. A squirrel had found its way into a transformer early that evening.

  “Good thing your power was out,” the SW Gas tech had said. “One spark from flipping on a light switch and your house here would have been one smoking hole in the ground.”

  The bad luck that had spoiled his milk also saved his life.

  ♦♦♦

  After that kind of day, Timmy slept in the next morning. He rolled over to avoid the desert daylight streaming in between the slats of his blinds. Through his bleary eyes he made out the dark mass of a man sitting in the chair by his bed. He bolted upright, wide awake.

  “Jesus, I thought you’d never wake up,” the man said.

  He sat hunched in the chair, legs spread apart, elbows on his knees. He wore a faded yellow T-shirt from some casino giveaway. The hems of his shorts were frayed into cilia. A red, ropy scar ran down the side of his sunburned neck and under his shirt, only to exit down his right arm. A sun-damaged, tangled mess of hair pointed in multiple directions. The stubble on his chin and cheeks shimmered with premature gray.

  But two more important items grabbed Timmy’s attention. The wide, wild look in the man’s darting eyes, and the coal black .45 he fingered between his knees.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” Timmy said. His mouth went dry.

  “Name’s Harlan Bidwell,” the man said. He waved a lazy salute with the big handgun. “Pleased to meet ya. What do I want? To make things even.”

  “Harlan, y-you must have me confused with someone else. I-I don’t know you.”

  “Ah, but I knows you, Timothy R. Wayne, same way all the pit bosses knows you. You’re the man with all the luck, the man who just can’t lose.”

  Dread landed in Timmy’s gut like a mortar round. He’d always been afraid of someone taking him as a high roller, and thinking he’d be an easy target.

  “It’s really not like that. Look around, you can see I’m not rich. But there’s two grand in my pants there, a few hundred more in a box in the hall closet. Take it all, the plasma TV, whatever you want.”

  “Don’t want to steal nothing,” Harlan said. “Told you, I want to make things even.”

  He smiled like a viper. His eyes bounced around in their sockets. He looked 100% whacked. Timmy realized he was in deep trouble.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Don’t ya never wonder about all your luck, all your good fortune? For every ten men that goes into a casino, five leaves winners and five leaves losers. Thems the odds. But it ain’t true when you join the crowd. You always win. That means for the other ten, one more’s gotta be an extra loser. Stands to reason or the whole applecart gets upset. Do the math, Einstein.”

  Timmy slid back a few inches on his bed. He searched his memory for something, anything, nearby he could use as a weapon.

  “But we ain’t just talking casinos, here,” Harlan continued. “We’re talking life. You just wander around attracting good luck like tuna attracts cats. All that luck’s gotta come from somewhere. Know where that is?”

  Timmy shook his head. Harlan tapped his own chest with the side of the gun barrel.

  “Comes from me, that’s where. Leaves me with parents dead of cancer, a fiancée who inherits big time and runs off, a house swallowed by a sinkhole, and more accidents than a Hollywood stuntman. Anything good that coulda happened to me…” He touched the gun barrel to his breastbone. “…done happened to you.”

  He pointed the gun toward Timmy’s head. Timmy looked straight down the dark barrel and into eternity.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Timmy pleaded. “But take everything here. Please. Make it even.”

  “That ain’t gonna make it even. Luck’s still gonna run downhill to you, lessen you stop breathin’. And damned if I didn’t do my best to make it look like an accident. Jacked up your car. Slit up the gas lines. Even poisoned your damn food as a backup, but the power outage spoilt it. But your goddamn luck kept workin’ overtime. So now it’s down to this.”

  His eyes sparkled with madness. He cocked the pistol’s hammer. Timmy’s jaw dropped. Sweat rolled down his forehead.

  “’Bout a foot ‘tween this bullet and your brain,” Harlan said. “Your luck has finally done run out.”

  He pulled the trigger and the .45 roared.

  ♦♦♦

  An hour later, flashing blue police lights lit Timmy’s house like a carnival ride. Inside, a cop peered past Timmy and into his bedroom across the yellow crime scene tape. On the other side, the head of the man sprawled on the floor looked like a shattered watermelon. The cop gritted his teeth and turned back to Timmy.

  “Unbelievable,” he whispered.

  “I was sure I was dead,” Timmy said. “But when he pulled the trigger, the back half of the gun just exploded in his face.”

  The cop smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Tell you what, you must be one lucky guy.”

  On a trip to Las Vegas, I watched someone win a pretty big pot of cash, and looked at all the people around him who lost. I started thinking about the laws of probability and this story came out in a rush.

  Me? I sat down and dropped a dollar in the penny slots. Fifteen minutes later I was up to $1.25. Losses soon dropped it back to $1.01. I cashed out, determined to leave Vegas a winner.

  Ω

  Man’s Best Friend

  Carlton entered the butcher shop off 23rd Street. Varying cuts of freshly sliced meat, a pastiche in pinks and white, lay displayed in a long, curved-glass counter. Harvey the butcher looked up from behind. His white apron had the usual assortment of red and brown splotches earned through a day’s honest work.

  “Dr. Tressler,” Harvey said, with the smile he reserved for his most prized customers. “I have a line on something special for you.”

  Carlton Tressler wished Harvey’s rare finds really were for him. But most of what Carlton’s butcher shop purchases didn’t go to feed him, or his wife, Holly.

  “Zebra,” Harvey said, like he’d announced the discovery of an eighth continent. “Completely legit, farm-raised in South Africa.”

  “Hate to burst your bubble,” Carlton said, “but we tried zebra about two years ago.”

  Harvey looked disappointed, then confused. “Really?”

  “Yep. In between gazelle and wildebeest.”

  Which was before kangaroo, and after yak. The Tressler household had cycled through an untold variety of creatures trying to feed their dog, Juke. Holly Tressler had mastered cooking meats few knew available.

  “Well,” Harvey said, “if it was two years ago…maybe we could give zebra another try.”

  “Nope,” Carlton said. “Once Juke starts reacting, we can never go back.”

  The veterinarian had characterized it as an extreme allergic reaction. Juke could eat a type of meat for a while, then his immune system created an antibody against it. Then they had to switch Juke to a different shrink-wrapped prey.

  The dog’s allergic reaction didn’t manifest as a case of the sniffles. It was closer to road rage. With each passing day on a specific meat, Juke would eventually get more and more aggressive, and not just to strangers. Carlton and Holly had the scars to prove that.

  “Today, I’ll take a half-pound of flank steak for Holly and me,” Carlton said.

  “And Juke?”

  “Holly’s getting him something.”

  “You’re good owners,” Harvey said with admiration. “There’s nothing you don’t sacrifice for your pet.”

  ♦♦♦

  Carlton tucked the steaks under one arm as he walked the last few blocks to his brownstone townhouse. As he ticked off each memorized slab of concrete sidewalk, the tension in his neck grew. With each step, his inhalations grew shorter and sharper, and he concentrated to keep his heart
rate at bay. By the time he reached the front stoop, prickles of sweat sprinkled his upper lip. He wiped them away and took the steps one at a time. He braced himself and opened the front door.

  The hallway was quiet. He stepped inside, and silently pressed the door closed like it was made of crystal. The omnipresent acrid scent of dog urine drifted by him, and he subconsciously filtered it out. Deep, white scars gouged the dark paneling along the lower half of the walls. A shredded chew bone lay in the middle of the mashed hall carpet.

  Not the recommended first impression to give visitors, but visitors were a thing of the past at the Tressler house. On his best day, Juke still put up an active defense against intruders, and even invited guests were intruders.

  Carlton knew Juke and Holly were home somewhere. Juke’s oversized, black leather muzzle hung on its post on the wall. Juke looked like Hannibal Lecter when he wore it during his infrequent forays into the outside world. But the Tresslers knew better than to take him out without it. After what happened to that poodle years ago…

  At the end of the hallway, two shining, narrowed eyes appeared in the shadows. An inch at a time, Juke emerged from out of the darkness. First a broad, black snout, next a set of bared, glistening white teeth, then atop his massive head, a pair of ragged ears, swept back and ready for combat. His powerful pit bull shoulders crossed into the daylight. The ebony dog moved as if being born of the shadow, pulling a part of the darkness with it. Juke swung his head and let out a low, rumbling growl.

  Juke stopped and blocked the hall entrance to the kitchen. Carlton slid left into the living room and then through the other kitchen doorway. All the doorways to the kitchen were open, the doors long ago splintered by repeated canine impact.

  Holly sat hunched over the kitchen table, two legs of which sported silver bands of duct tape repairs. Her large glasses had slid down a bit on her nose as she read today’s newspaper. She looked up across them at Carlton. Dark circles puffed beneath her eyes. Her hair seemed a shade grayer, an impression Carlton attributed to the light.

  Carlton entered the kitchen and put the steaks on the chipped, yellowed countertop. On the floor to the right sat the large freezer box. They’d purchased it to save a few dollars buying exotic meats in bulk.

  By the time he’d turned back to the table, Juke had stuck his head in from the hallway. It brushed level against the door jamb’s cobwebbed striker. Juke snorted.

  “How are you, Holly-day?” Carlton asked his wife. He hadn’t called her that in years. It sounded forced.

  Holly shot a sidelong glance at Juke. “The same as usual.”

  Carlton did a quick calculation and realized it had been three years of the usual. Juke hadn’t been home from the shelter two weeks before his true personality manifested. A battalion of doctors, a long list of failed medications and a small fortune passed by before the diagnosis settled on food allergies. As a cute, damaged puppy, they could not bring themselves to return him to face certain death as unadoptable. As a brutal, angry dog, they did not dare try.

  Not that they would consider it. They’d suffered enough loss. After their sons’ murder/suicide pact, the empty house screamed their guilt each day, Juke was to fill that void and bring them out of the darkness. If they couldn’t even raise a dog…

  “Well, I brought us home steaks,” Carlton said. He meant the statement to be triumphant, but somehow it sounded quite sad.

  ♦♦♦

  Carlton and Holly cooked together, the way they had when they were newlyweds, she the meat and he the vegetables. He lit a single candle at the bare table’s center. They ate in silence, never out of Juke’s watchful glare. At the end, Carlton cleared the table as Holly stared off at nothing. Juke let out a growl and a yip.

  “He’s been waiting to eat,” Holly said. “I need to feed him.”

  “You know we don’t need to do it this way,” Carlton said. “We can get someone else to feed him. This is a big city.”

  “He’s my dog,” Holly said. “I picked him out. He’s my responsibility.” She sighed. “I’ll feed him.”

  ♦♦♦

  Carlton rose early the next day and tiptoed through his morning routine, lest he awaken the sleeping. He crept downstairs from the bedroom. At the bottom, he froze as he saw Juke in the hallway, already awake. Time for the test, to see how last night’s dinner settled with the dog. If Juke was already allergic, it would be a race for the front door.

  Juke approached Carlton. He wagged his stubby tail and licked Carlton’s hand. He’d never done either before.

  Another time, any other time, all Carlton would have felt was relief. But his joy was tempered by last night’s memories of what they had gone through for Juke.

  Juke followed Carlton into the kitchen. A spray of blood droplets on the floor had escaped Carlton’s late night cleanup. He popped open the lid of the freezer.

  Inside, frost coated Holly’s hair and fogged her glasses. Her right forearm was missing.

  Every day, I see people going to great lengths for their pets; standing in the rain so a dog can relieve itself, planning vacations around getting a pet sitter, buying toys and even pet furniture. I wondered what the most extreme example of that might turn into. Of course, it got creepy.

  Ω

  The Gift

  The bull water buffalo came out of nowhere, just materialized in the glare of the rising sun. Kayla Jefferson stood on the Land Rover’s brakes, and prayed. The wheels locked. The Rover skidded sideways, and kicked a plume of dirt and rocks in its wake. It lurched to a stop inches from the enormous beast. Kayla’s pulse thundered in her ears.

  The animal stared an impassive look through the driver’s door window, its face so close that each breath fogged a circle on glass. Huge black horns protruded from its head, each ending in a sharp, shiny taper.

  Kayla’s iron grip on the wheel tightened further as she looked into the brown eyes locked on hers. A buffalo could make short work of a Rover.

  The bull gave Kayla a huffing snort, a derisive assertion of its superiority. Then its head swung away, it ambled off the road, and into the savannah. Kayla exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She reined in her racing heartbeat, and drove on. Her Atlanta commutes had been lousy, but at least there were no water buffaloes.

  Her drive from the city each day to the rural township school took her through a lovely stretch of South African countryside. This October, the southern hemisphere spring, the landscape was awash in dark greens and new flowers. The invigorating, sweet fresh scent soon washed away the fear from the buffalo encounter. It felt good to see optimistic green shoots encroach on the country’s pervasive poverty.

  Outside the township, the Range Rover closed on Mbele’s food stand. Built from scrap wood and tin, it was the place to shop for fresh fruit and vegetables. Mbele puttered outside the stand, arranging bananas and cassavas. The African sun had wrinkled his jet black skin beyond his years. Scattered gray speckled his short wiry hair. He wore a loose, faded red polo shirt over tan shorts and sandals. His face broke into a broad gap-toothed grin as the Rover pulled in for their shared favorite morning ritual.

  “Kayla, dear,” he said. “A welcome sight as always.”

  She couldn’t help but smile as she got out of the car. The long print wrap she wore made her look even taller than her 5’9” frame. She’d bought it in the city when she first arrived. It was black with a yellow and orange diamond pattern, light, comfortable, and very African. The last attribute had been the selling point.

  Since graduating from Morehouse University, she felt the need to explore the “African” in her African-American heritage. Her friends landed high-paying Fortune 50 jobs. She followed her heart, and signed up to teach a year of South African elementary school at a fraction of her friends’ starting salaries. While they house hunted in New York and Chicago, she ordered mosquito netting from an outdoorsman website. Almost everyone roundly ridiculed her decision.

  “Jambo, Mbele. It’s another b
eautiful day,” she said to the food stand owner.

  “Are the students mastering their studies?” he replied.

  Kayla got a kick out of the British syntax even the poorest citizen used.

  “They are, for sure,” she replied. “All wonderful children.”

  “The children love you. Your family must be proud.”

  They were. Especially her idolized father, a high school teacher. His example influenced her decision to teach. Confined to a wheelchair by the long-term effects of high blood pressure, there was no chance that he would see what she was accomplishing during her year in the village. She sent megabytes of pictures and video, but she wished he could see her teach, see her do what she did best.

  “What looks good, Mbele?” she asked.

  “Bananas today,” Mbele said, tapping a bunch with a long thin stick. “Fresh this morning from the tree. None better for miles.”

  This was no sales pitch. If Mbele said these were the best, they were. He was a legend in the village for finding the best fresh produce, even during droughts. Kayla dismissed the rumors of witchcraft that swirled around the kind man. Superstition flourished on every continent.

  “Very well,” she said. “Give me six.” These would be rewards for her children today. Best speller. Best in long division. Best behaved. The fruit some American children avoided was a tremendous incentive to undernourished South Africans.

  Mbele took his time inspecting a bunch of bananas. “Rumors are that you broke up a fight last week.”

  “Does all the news pass through your shop?” Kayla said. “Yes, there was a little fight.”

  “Five-on-one is not so little, especially five much older boys.”

  Five high school boys, some bigger than Kayla, had cornered Joseph, one of her boys, after school. She intervened and saved her student from a beating.

  “You shamed the five,” Mbele continued, “for picking on the weak. You smothered violence with words.”