The Darkest Place

by Daniel Judson

  As he waited behind an elderly woman in the checkout line Kane looked through the tall windows to the parking lot beyond, keeping his eye out. He still wasn’t certain what he was looking for, or who. The kid at the register was young, tall and lanky, clearly still in high school. Around the age Kane’s son would be right now. Of course Kane’s mind went there. A young girl was bagging up the cans of soup and boxes of pasta and jars of tomato sauce that Kane had selected. Winter food, filling and cheap. The girl had curly blond hair, was pretty, with a round face and pale skin. She glanced at Kane now and then. He didn’t know why at first, then remembered the scratches on his face. The girl told the boy at the register that today was the first day of winter, which meant tonight was the longest night of the year. She said that she always thought Halloween would be better if it was celebrated tonight instead of in October. The boy didn’t seem to have an opinion either way, was occupied with counting out the right change. Kane got just under seven dollars back. He wondered if the change he had in various drawers at home, combined with what he was holding in his hand, would be enough for a small bottle of cheap scotch.

  He left with the change in his pocket and three heavy bags in his hands, hurried across Nugent Street, not a car in sight, and entered his apartment. At the top of the stairs he opened the door, immediately heard a voice coming from his bedroom. A female voice, filtered through his phone machine. It was Meg. He dropped the bags in the doorway, left the door wide open, and hurried through the narrow hallway to his bedroom. He reached the nightstand and grabbed the phone just as she hung up.

  His first instinct was to call her back, but he stopped himself. Her husband could be home still, she could have called while he was in the other room, or from a pay phone. Kane hit the play button on his answering machine, waited as the tape rewound, then, after a few clicks, her voice again.

  She was speaking in a hushed, low tone. She was home, he knew then, and so was her husband, somewhere.

  “I’m sorry I missed you,” she said. “He’s still home, will be for two more days. I can’t stand this. I hope you’re okay. I’ll try you again tomorrow. In the morning, maybe. Or maybe later tonight, if I get the chance.” A brief pause, then: “Hope you’re not with another women, though if you are, I guess I probably deserve that. I miss you, can’t wait to see you. I love you. Bye.”

  She hung up. Kane realized then that she had no idea at all what he’d been through these past few days. How odd, he thought. He looked at the machine for a while. Normally he’d listen to the message several times, just to hear her voice. Like a drug. But he didn’t this time. He reached for the erase button, pressed it. Gone. Then he looked out the window, at the back parking lot. Beyond it, a few hundred yards away, was Job’s Lane, and across from that, the entrance to the park where Dolan’s kid had been found in the lake. Kane thought about that for a long time, wondered if Meg, in her house, standing naked in front of her paintings, knew anything about that at least, about what had gone on these past few days in the very town in which she lived. Kane doubted that. She rarely left her house, got all that she needed—all the “entertainment” she needed—from her own mind and her own body. To be so content, if that was even the word. Kane saw her in his mind, imagined her day, from morning to night. She liked to think of herself as single-minded, strong-willed—and yet so willing to compromise. An odd mix, maybe—or maybe, in fact, really very common, Kane thought. She had so much to lose, had made that clear at the start. And yet she had started, took up with Kane, took the risk. So maybe then there was something worse than loss. Not having? Or maybe they were the two sides of the same coin. Whatever the case, there was something greater than the fear of loss, had to be, otherwise why would Meg risk loss at all?

  Eventually Kane looked down at his nightstand, saw the digital recorder Mercer had given him sitting by the answering machine. He picked it up, held it for a while, looked at it, familiarized himself with all the buttons. Then he pressed Record, held the device close to his mouth, spoke into it.

  “A novel,” he said, “about loss.” He paused, thought for a moment, then continued. “About grief and self-destruction and, who knows, maybe even redemption. Maybe. Dark and frightening, set during a week of record cold. Maybe someone trying to deal with a shadow, a secret he has to keep or maybe tell. Shadow Self, all that Carl Jung stuff. Mercer would like that. But definitely about loss, all kinds of loss, all kinds of people dealing with it and reacting to it in all kinds of ways. Maybe the loss of a son to drowning, so a water theme, water everywhere, the hero unable to escape the memory that haunts him.”

  Kane thought for a moment more, considered the word hero to be the wrong word, was reluctant to use it, but these were just notes, thoughts off the top of his head. He hadn’t tried to think in this way in a long time, think in terms of emotions and ideas as they might relate to a story. It both did and didn’t feel good. Nothing more came to him—enough for now, take it slow—so he clicked off the recorder and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He looked again out the window. The municipal lot was poorly lit, full of empty parking spaces and the long, tapering shadows of bare trees. Fingery shadows. Eventually, Kane remembered his groceries in the open doorway, turned and left his bedroom, passed through the narrow hall, his mind now full of thoughts of structure and characters and mood. Elusive things, all of them, strangers now—but once they had been all he knew, all he could think of, day and night. Thinking of them again, it was difficult now to put them aside. His old obsessive mind-set was coming back—well, not coming back, it’d always been there, just focused elsewhere: on Meg, on self-destruction. He’d felt like a fraud for the past two years, teaching writing but not once thinking about it. Now his thoughts raced with it—so much for taking it slow—and he found himself trying to imagine a conclusion to this story he was considering, what it was he would be working toward.

  But just as he reached the end of his hallway, his mind full of this, he looked up fast and stopped short.

  Someone was standing in his open doorway.

  Kane’s heart stopped, every muscle in his body flexed. It was a man in jeans and an army field jacket, work boots and a dark wool cap. A tall man, as tall as Clay, though not as wide, not nearly. He stood just outside the door in the darkened hallway Kane shared with his neighbor. Kane looked at the man for a while—rugged, a workman, it had to be, was his first impression—before even seeing the man’s face. It took a moment more before Kane even realized the man’s face was a face he hadn’t seen in years. The face of an old friend, long lost.

  Kane’s heart pumped again, and a surge both of boyish joy and overwhelming confusion rushed through him as he stood face-to-face with his former teacher.

  “Bill!” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

  Bill Young was in his sixties now—early sixties, Kane figured. But he didn’t look any worse for the years, or the wear. A handsome man years ago, he was handsome still—elegant, with alert, piercing gray eyes the color of the Atlantic in winter. Regal, to say the least, even dressed as he was. Still the giant, even after all these years, that he had once seemed to Kane.

  “What are you doing here, Bill?” Kane looked Young up and down quickly, unable to remember ever having seen Young dressed in this manner before. Young had never once, as far as Kane could remember, worn jeans. He was a man of standing and intellect, had always dressed the part.

  “Long time, no see,” Young said. He remained in the doorway, didn’t enter. He had his hands in the pockets of his field jacket, which was zipped all the way to the top. He stood casually, smiling like an old friend, pleased with himself, with surprising his former student like this.

  “I don’t believe it,” Kane said.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go out and get a drink. You look to me like a man who could use one. I heard about you getting fired. I thought you might like to talk about it with someone who has been there.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “I know a
woman in the art department. She’s been keeping tabs on you for me. I’d been meaning to get in touch with you sooner, but things have been crazy. I’ve been on sabbatical, working on a project.”

  “I thought you fell off the face of the earth for good.”

  “I did, for a while. But I’m back now. What do you say to a drink?”

  Kane nodded. Young’s timing couldn’t be better. Kane needed to get out but was afraid to leave. Foreign city, and all. But he’d feel safe with Young.

  “Sounds good,” Kane said.

  Young looked down at the bags. “I could help you put these away.”

  “No, I’ve got that,” Kane said. He walked to the door, grabbed two of the bags. He’d forgotten how tall Young was. Strong, not like Clay, but still strong, stronger than Kane, anyway. Young grabbed the third bag, handed it to Kane, remained in the hallway outside as Kane went to the counter in the kitchenette, put the bags down. Nothing needed refrigeration, so he left them there. He was still in his coat, so nothing more to do, nothing to stop him. They left together, walked down the stairs to the sidewalk.

  Young led Kane around to the back parking lot, walked with his head down. Kane wondered why the wool cap; it wasn’t that cold, at least not like it had been. Young had thick white hair—women had loved it, Kane remembered—but none of it, not that Kane could see, showed from under the edges of the cap. Maybe Young’s hair had fallen out, Kane thought. Maybe he had taken to wearing hats, whatever hat the season allowed, to hide his baldness. Young was as vain as he was brilliant. But it didn’t matter now. The hat, the workman’s clothes, they didn’t matter. Ten years can change a man. Kane was different. Very different. Young had to be different too. But Kane didn’t think too much about that. He felt a spring in his step, liked the coldness of the air on his face suddenly. Moments ago, Kane was a rat in a hole. Now, an old friend had returned, just in time.

  A five-year-old Crown Victoria was parked next to Kane’s Jeep. It looked like an unmarked police car, not the kind of vehicle Kane would have expected Young to drive. Young had always owned sports cars, was obsessed with speed. Drunk, he had once crashed an old MG and miraculously walked away. This was in Kane’s third year of college. The Crown Victoria was in good condition, clearly well kept. Clean on the outside and in, no sign of crashes. Again, men change, are sometimes forced to change. Kane knew this. Still, it was the last car Kane would have expected Young to be driving.

  They got in, Young steered toward the western exit of the municipal lot, through the long shadows, pulled out onto Windmill Lane, headed west, away from the village. He held the steering wheel with two hands, was wearing expensive-looking leather gloves. Kane noticed a sticker on the windshield, on the upper corner of the driver’s side. It was the same sticker he had on his Jeep—a Southampton College parking permit. Same sticker but different color. Student stickers were red, faculty blue, administration green. This sticker was green.

  “Is this your car?” Kane said.

  “No. I borrowed it for tonight.”

  The first left turn off Hill Street was Captain’s Neck Lane. Young took it. The road was wide, ran south for about a mile to the ocean. The streetlights that lined it were positioned far apart. Ahead, a pocket of light, a pocket of darkness, then another pocket of light and another of darkness. It went like that all the way to the end.

  This was a residential neighborhood, wealthy. No bars or restaurants down here. Did Young live here now? Had he recently gotten lucky with a book deal? Was he living in a gardener’s cottage? Was a woman he was in love with waiting for them somewhere down this road?

  “Where are we going?” Kane said.

  “I need to stop somewhere first. I need your help with something. It won’t take long.”

  Young drove slowly, carefully, passing under a light and then into darkness. On the dashboard stood a plastic Jesus. Young was a famous atheist, had written books with atheist heroes, men forced to make their own justice in a godless universe. His novels were frank, hard-hitting, had been all the rage for a while in literary circles. But tastes changed, Young fell out of favor, lost his confidence, then lost everything, had gone out of his way to lose it, like Kane had.

  “You hanging out with the holy now?” Kane said.

  Young glanced at the Jesus, then looked forward again. He smiled. “No.”

  Kane waited a moment, then asked the one question that mattered.

  “Are you writing?”

  “Sort of,” Young said.

  Kane smiled. “What do mean, ‘sort of’?”

  “You’ll see. You’ll understand.”

  “You still at the community college?”

  “I’m on sabbatical. But, yeah, I’m still there.”

  Kane couldn’t imagine that, a man like Young teaching at a community college, a man with his credentials, his ego, teaching Freshman Composition and Introduction to American Literature. But the community college in Riverhead was the only other college in the area, and maybe Young, like Kane, had a reason to want to stick around the East End. Kane wondered, too, if that was where he was headed, if that college was where he himself would go now that he had been fired. It would be a fall, certainly, not as bad as the one Young had taken, but bad enough. Still, it beat tending bar somewhere.

  Captain’s Neck Lane ended, and Young made the right onto Dune Road. A narrow road on a narrow strip of land, it extended west for a few miles, the Atlantic on one side, Shinnecock Bay on the other. There were houses along this road, on the ocean side, built on the dunes, grand summer places, some looking like European villas, others old, sturdy New England homes. Others still were modern, bland-looking geometrical structures of wood and glass. This strip of land was visible from the college, and at night, with the streetlights and houses lit up, it had always looked to Kane like a long, glowing bracelet of green stones.

  Up ahead was Road D, a short paved road that ran perpendicular to Dune Road for a hundred or so feet and stopped at the edge of the dunes. Young made the left turn onto it. In the headlights, at the very end of the road, sat a black Volkswagen Jetta.

  Young drove to it. Kane glanced at the side of Young’s face, didn’t understand what was going on. Young parked beside the Jetta. No one was inside, as far as Kane could see. He looked at Young again.

  “What are we doing?”

  Young shifted into park, reached down for the door handle, jerked it up and opened the door.

  “You’ll help me, right?” he said.

  “With what?”

  “An old friend in a jam is asking you for help. Do you help him?”

  “What are you talking about, Bill?”

  “Do you help an old friend in a jam?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Young nodded. His mood was suddenly serious, the friendliness that he had displayed back at Kane’s apartment now seemingly long gone. “Follow me then.”

  He got out. Kane waited, then got out, too, and met Young by the back of the car. The wind was blowing out here, it was a different world from back in the village, colder, wilder. Young reached into the pocket of his field jacket, took out a pair of cloth work gloves, handed them to Kane.

  “Put these on,” he said.

  Kane looked at the gloves, then up at Young.

  “It’s really cold down by the water,” Young said. “You’ll need them.”

  Young walked to the end of the pavement, stepped onto the sand. He took a few steps, turned when he realized that Kane wasn’t following him.

  “It’s okay,” Young said. “Just follow me.”

  Before Kane could say anything, before he could ask again what the hell was going on, he saw Young’s line of vision shift suddenly toward the road. Kane looked over his shoulder and saw the headlights of an approaching car on Dune Road. After a few seconds a beat-up pickup appeared, passed by without slowing down. There wasn’t anything beyond Road D except a few more beach houses. Dune Road came to an end a few hundred feet down, at the inlet that gave acc
ess from the ocean to Shinnecock Bay. Where did the driver think he was going? The truck disappeared from sight quickly, and, from what Kane could hear over the wind and the sound of the ocean beyond the dunes, kept on going.

  Kane turned forward and saw that Young was already walking toward the ocean, had decided, it seemed, not to wait for Kane. By the distance he had already traversed, Young must have turned the instant the pickup had appeared. Kane didn’t follow but just stood there for a long moment. Finally, though, he pulled on the cloth work gloves Young had given him and walked to the edge of the pavement, crossing onto the sand. His curiosity had gotten the better of him. And his sense of loyalty. Young had taught Kane everything Kane knew. Young had been his friend when Kane had needed one the most, when the woman he had met during his second year got pregnant, and then, during his third year, when she gave birth to his son.

  Kane saw Young’s footprints, and another set of prints running alongside them, smoother than the ones Young was now leaving. Kane figured someone had been here earlier and the wind, constant here, though sometimes gusting, had begun to erase them. Was that person still here? Was Young walking to meet whoever had made these prints? Kane followed, stepping every now and then into Young’s footprints. He couldn’t avoid that; the path leading between the dunes was narrow. The sand was soft, seemed to get even softer as he walked. It wasn’t long before Kane’s calf muscles started to burn from the effort. So out of shape, Meg his only exercise. He was twenty feet behind Young but didn’t hurry to catch up. He still had no idea what they were doing out there, so he walked cautiously, his eyes on Young up ahead, his ears open, though all he heard was the hiss of the ocean and the roar of the wind. Young stepped out from between the two dunes onto the open beach, heading straight for the dark water. After a moment Kane was on the open beach, too. He looked up and down, east to west, saw nothing in either direction but beach and dark houses. He looked toward Young again, saw him standing at the edge of the ocean, his hands in the pockets of his field jacket, his head bent forward, as if he were looking down at something at his feet.