The Deepening Shade

by Jake Hinkson

  This culminated when, in the fall of my freshman year at Virginia, he was ordained a deacon. He called me, almost laughing and said, “I’m official now, I guess.”

  I flew down for the Sunday night ordination service and sat alone on the front pew. Dad sat on the stage behind Brother Charles as the old minister spoke of his charity, responsibility, and upstanding character. Once Dad glanced at the back door and then down at his clasped hands. “We know him,” Brother Charles said, “as a man already fulfilling the duties of a deacon. He’s a man known to all who know him as one who loves and fears the Lord and who is faithful to his family.”

  He brought my father to the altar and Dad knelt as Brother Charles called the other eleven deacons together. As the organist softly played, Bother Charles and the deacons laid their hands on Dad and prayed. My father clasped his hands together, praying, and cried.

  Russell didn’t make it, Dad told me later, because he had to work.

  ***

  When school let out that winter, I moved in with Dad and did some apprentice pastoring under Brother Charles. One Sunday, Dad and I went up to the church to arrange tables in the Fellowship Hall. We were rolling out a cart of dark brown folding chairs when he asked, “You talk to Russ since you got back?’

  “A little,” I said. “He told me he’d put in an appearance when I got in town.”

  “Well, he called and said he’s coming over tonight,” Dad said. He didn’t look at me; his small, blue eyes watched the floor as if he were cautious of tripping over something. “I ain’t seen him in a while.”

  We started unloading the chairs two-by-two. “Not since y’all finished the house?”

  “He didn’t help me on the house,” he said with a snort. “He tell you that?”

  “No. I just figured he did.”

  “He didn’t.” Dad pulled out a chair. “I never thought I’d raise a lazy son.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. Everything I could think of seemed self-serving.

  “He tell you he’s got a new girlfriend?” Dad asked.

  “No. He didn’t mention it. He isn’t back with that Walmart cashier is he?”

  “Naw,” Dad said. “This is a new girl. Lily.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “She’s pleasant, I reckon. Episcopalian.” He shrugged. Dad thought that being an Episcopalian was as close as you could get to being a Catholic without going to Hell.

  “He ever bring her to church?”

  “He’d have to come to church first.”

  When Russell came over that night, he looked tired. The weather was turning cold, and when he walked in, he smelled of brittle leaves and cool air. Blond stubble covered his chin, and his eyes were heavy and pink. We sat talking at the kitchen table after Dad had gone to bed, and Russell told me the pitfalls of working for Walmart while we ate cookies and drank coffee.

  I asked about Lily.

  Russell smiled and scratched the table with a forefinger. “Aww, she’s Lily. She works the desk over at Firestone.”

  “Y’all serious?”

  Again, the smile. “I don’t know. I guess we are. I love her, you know. She loves me. But I ain’t buying a ring anytime soon if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I smiled and sipped my coffee. “You mean she’s not the one, or you aren’t ready?”

  Russell’s eyes were as serious as a man contemplating a change of religions. “I love her. I’m just not sure that this…that getting married is something I want.”

  “Well,” I said, “if y’all are serious wouldn’t it naturally lead to marriage?”

  He lowered his head, staring at the table, pulling lightly on the coffee cup without picking it up and said, “Well, we been talking about just moving in together. Maybe getting a place.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Did you tell Dad this?”

  He smirked. “Yeah, Gary, he’s real excited. No, I haven’t told him! I figure I’ll wait…a couple of years…”

  I shrugged. “Care for a bible study on the sanctity of marriage?”

  “Not just now, no,” he said. An unsteady smile crept onto his face. “Look. I know he’s gonna have a problem with this. I know you do. But we’ll be okay. We’ll be fine.”

  I ended up preaching to Russell that night, I guess. But I didn’t say anything to Dad the next day, and neither did Russell. A few days later, Russell called me and told me that he was moving in with Lily.

  Dad never spoke to me about it, but I knew it wounded him deeply. It wasn’t just that Russell was living with a girl he wasn’t married to, although that was bad enough. It was that he seemed so calm about it, so distant from the entire system of faith we had been brought up in.

  Dad and I were sitting in the den talking one night when Lily and Russell came over. Lily had a round face with affable brown eyes that didn’t retain much of what anyone said to her. She and Russell stood in the den with their hands in their pockets and their coats on while Russell tried to act as if nothing were unusual.

  My father said, “Why don’t y’all sit and stay a while?”

  Russell smiled, and they slipped off their coats and draped them over the arm of the sofa. Russell asked how I was, and, as I told him, I watched the way he and Dad glanced at one another, neither listening to what I was saying. This prompted me, for some reason, to babble on at length. When I’d finished, Russell nodded and turned to our father.

  “We’re thinking about building on my acres next summer,” he said.

  Dad didn’t flinch. It was as if he had been waiting for those exact words. “You are?” he replied.

  Russell leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His white face contorted a little as he edged out the words. “Well, we been talking about it.”

  Dad looked at the carpet for a moment, and then leaned forward in his recliner, sitting almost exactly like Russell, and said, “Here’s the deal son. I want to help you but I wouldn’t feel right helping you with a house until y’all get married.”

  Almost before Dad could finish, Russell replied, “That’s a pretty poor reason to get married, ain’t it? To get a house?”

  “I’m not trying to force that. That’s up to the two of you, but I love you too much to support you when you’re doing something wrong.”

  It was, I think, the first time I’d ever heard my father say he loved one of us.

  Lily smirked and shook her head. I thought she was sneering at Dad, but then Russell sat up straight like she’d prodded him and said, “You gave me the land. It’s supposed to be mine.”

  Dad shrugged and his red, sunburned face was strangely calm, as if he were dealing with someone with a mental illness. “Well, it is yours—and you can do with it what you want—but I can’t help you with a house. I can’t support you on that. You know that already.”

  Russell nodded and then, like Dad, he seemed calm. Lily crossed her arms.

  “I understand that,” Russell said. “I can understand that.”

  They both grinned nervously and turned away from each other. Then they each looked at me like I was a cloudy mirror. I smiled and changed the subject.

  ***

  Russell and Lily bought a doublewide mobile home and drug it out to their land that same winter. I walked over to see it when they had moved in, but Dad wouldn’t go. “You go on,” he said, heading into his workshop. “I’ve got things to do out here.”

  The mobile home was paneled with gray vinyl and sat in a tiny, cramped clearing marked with stumps and stacks of tree limbs. The only step into the home was a cinder block. Inside, the walls were periwinkle and the carpet was a walnut-shade of brown. Over the sofa, a picture of the couple hung next to a portrait of our family. Lily acted as the proud host, showing me room to room, pointing out the garbage disposal and the lights on the vanity mirror, but Russell simply hovered around behind me, his fists buried in his pockets.

  ***

  A few weeks later, as I was driving home from a Monday Visitation with Brother Charles
, I decided to drop by Russell’s place. I wound up his narrow path as best as I could and parked next to his navy blue truck. I climbed out of my car and a brutal wind burst through the darkened trees on my land like an attacker and seared into me. I turned my face from its sharp sting, but the winds were so cold they burned my neck and ears.

  It had been a dry, snowless winter, and the moon had disappeared behind a curtain of blue-black clouds. A little illumination escaped from the mobile home, but the clearing beyond its meager reach was a black map of roots and ruts. I stumbled to the door, but before I could knock, it jerked open, and Lily scowled down at me. She had on a lime-green shirt with no bra. Her hair was matted and dirty.

  “Hi, Lily,” I said.

  She glared at me for a moment, and then turned and growled into the trailer, “It’s your brother.”

  I climbed up and she jumped out. Coatless, she stomped over to their truck.

  Russell staggered from behind the door, unshaven and pale, as she climbed into the truck. “Hold on a minute,” he muttered to me, placing his hand on my shoulder. He leaned out the door and the truck’s headlights hit him. He yelled, “The fuck you going?”

  The truck backed up and tore down the dirt path.

  “Shit.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” I asked.

  “Fucking bitch,” he muttered. He shut the door and plopped down on the sofa. The room smelled of burnt toast, but I didn’t see any. He picked up an old plastic cup from an end table cluttered with magazines and dishes. The cup was decorated with the faded image of a superhero and was full of some mixed drink. After a sip, he bared his teeth and made a biting motion.

  He looked up at me. “Sorry,” he sighed. “That, you know, that you had to see that with Lily and me.”

  I sat down beside him “What’s wrong with you, Russell?”

  “What’d’ya mean?”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Vodka.”

  He smiled, but I just looked at him. “Gary,” he said, “this is just shit between me and her. It don’t mean anything. She just went up the road to get some cigarettes. She’ll be back in five minutes, though, ’cause there’s her wallet on the table. Stupid.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Russ. It’s not just this, not just tonight. You’re in pain. You’re living in pain.”

  “Living in pain? Ain’t that a little much?” His face was puffy and his eyes were pink. He took a breath in through his nose and lowered his chin to his chest. He stared up at me for a long time. Then he shrugged. “You remember how we used to wrestle with Dad when we were kids?”

  “Yeah,” I said, annoyed that he was dodging what I said.

  “That’s…if I had to choose, I’d say those were my favorite childhood memories. Him chunking us all over the place. You remember that? Throwing us on the couch or, you know how he’d flip you off his back real quick, but right before you hit the ground he’d sit you down…” He smiled. “I’ll do that with my boys, if I ever have any.”

  I shook my head. The sound of the truck crept up the road.

  “She’s back, I guess,” I said. “I might need to leave.”

  He nodded, and I stood up. I wanted to say something profound. I’ll pray for you. Think about what I said. Or maybe, I love you. I settled for, “Give me a call.”

  Outside, Lily was climbing out of the truck. I walked to my car, and she stalked past me but turned around.

  “He awake still? Or is he passed out?”

  “He’s awake.”

  “Swell,” she said.

  I drove with the window down over to Dad’s house and let the air burn my face. The empty woods between Dad’s land and Russell’s land, my five acres, were dark, but when I pulled into Dad’s drive, his big, high-powered porch light fell across the lawn. The grass sparkled, covered over in a silver mist. When I came in, Dad was watching Red River on television. He turned it off, and we sat at the kitchen table and talked.

  I told him what had happened.

  His hair was dirty gray, and his wind-burned face was dry and flaked. He rubbed his thick lips with his knuckles and stared at the table. “Russell…” he said. He closed his eyes. “That kid…I don’t know how I raised two sons so different. I wasn’t a perfect father. I was far from that. But it doesn’t make sense that I could raise one right and one wrong. That doesn’t seem possible.”

  I looked down at the table. My reflection was a soft smudge.

  Dad rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Maybe if your Mom had lived...that might have changed it all. Maybe I was too easy on him. Or I didn’t show him the way to… be. I just wanted him to do what he was supposed to do. I didn’t need him to be a preacher.” His eyes were pink and, against a face marked by bits of dead skin, they looked painful and hot. “I don’t know,” he said, but his words were lost in a pounding on the front door.

  We frowned at one another and stood up, and I followed him into the den.

  Lily stood shaking on the welcome mat, blood seeping from her mouth and soaking her shirt.

  Dad put his arm around her and brought her inside. I ran into the kitchen and emptied an ice tray into a yellow hand towel and cleaned off Lily’s mouth. Two of her bottom teeth were missing. Her skin was cold and thick, as if the night air had seeped into her. “That son of a bitch,” she said. Her pink lips trembled.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I hit him. He hit me back a couple of times. Asshole! He’s drunk and pissed.”

  “About what?” I asked.

  My father stood behind her as stiff as a corpse while she rubbed her mouth with a bloody hand. She said, “He’s just pissed and I was raggin’ him about quitting his job.” Her fingers shakily probed her gums, and she began to cry. “He’s such a asshole.”

  Dad turned and walked to the coat rack and pulled on a heavy jacket. He opened the door and walked out onto the porch.

  As she watched him walk out, Lily’s face went slack. “What’s Mr. Doan gonna do?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  A few minutes later, Russell staggered across our father’s front lawn and stood a few feet from the porch. His T-shirt was splattered with blood and dirt, and his right hand was bleeding. He shuddered and crystallized breath shot from his nostrils.

  “Get out of here,” Dad said. He stood rigid, his hands at his sides.

  Russell didn’t look at him. “Lily!” he yelled. “Get your ass out here.”

  “Go on,” Dad said.

  “Lily, get your ass out here!”

  Lily ran to the front door. “Go to hell, you son of a bitch!”

  Russell’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t believe you’d track this up to my daddy’s house.” He tilted his head back. “Oh God…”

  Dad waved his hand at Russell. “Go on, son. Get out of here.”

  Russell lowered his head and cleared his throat. He looked past Dad and stepped onto the first step. He hadn’t looked at our father once. “I’m coming in there, Lily!”

  Our father took a step toward him and punched Russell in the face. Russell spun off the step and sprawled on the grass. He pulled himself up, breathing hard and swearing, as if to try for the house again, and Dad stepped down, teeth bared, and struck him twice in the face. The second time, he had to pull Russell up by the shirt to hit him. Russell collapsed as Dad’s shadow spilled across him. Then our father stood over him, hands still packed into fists, and Russell began to cry.

  I wanted to move, to go help him and hold him. But I didn’t. I’ve always been a coward, but standing there in the doorway watching my father’s broad back as my brother cried at his feet, I shamed myself. I did nothing. Whenever I think of sin, I think of that moment.

  Lily cried as Russell crawled away on the crunching grass and climbed to his feet. He swayed a moment and then staggered off, his figure bleeding into the trees.

  As Dad stood there watching Russell, he seemed oddly thin. Against the trees and the wide lawn, he was tiny, and after a w
hile I could tell that he too was shivering in the frigid night air.

  After about ten minutes, we saw the fire. It appeared suddenly out of the forest, the popping of the wood echoing over the rush of incinerating leaves. Orange flames swirled out of the tops of the trees while a quivering, yellow stream of heat poured through the brush and grass. We called the fire department, knowing they could never arrive in time, and we would have to abandon everything and escape by the back road. Lily hid her face and cried in the back seat as we wound through the woods. Tears fell from my father’s eyes, but he stared ahead, his body rigid and lifeless. As we fled, we could hear trees snap and fall. I alone turned to see their blackened tops plummet to the earth, their burning red ashes spiraling up into the night sky like the last bursts of confetti at a homecoming celebration.

  About the Author

  Jake Hinkson’s newest novel is The Big Ugly. He has contributed essays and reviews to several publications including The Los Angeles Review Of Books, Mental Floss, Mystery Scene, and Noir City. His novels Hell On Church Street and The Posthumous Man will be released in France in 2015 by èditions Gallmeister. Born in Arkansas and raised in the Ozark mountains, he currently lives in Chicago. For more visit JakeHinkson.com and TheNightEditor.blogspot.com

  Acknowledgements

  Previous versions of some of the stories in this collection have been published in the following places:

  “Maker’s And Coke” and “Night Terrors” appeared in BEAT to A PULP: Round One and BEAT to a PULP: Round Two respectively.

  “The Big Sister” appeared online at Mystical-E.

  “The Girl from Yesterday” appeared online at Crooked.

  “Cold City” appeared as “A Cold Night in Murder City” in issue 3.5 of Crime Factory.

  “Aftermath” and “Good Cover” appeared online at Flash Fiction Offensive.

  “The Serpent Box” appeared online at Fires On The Plain. I should also note here that this story is a reinterpretation of the Scandinavian fable of “Töre’s Daughters In Vänge,” most popularly adapted by Ingmar Bergman in the 1960 film The Virgin Spring.