Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

by Susan Straight

  “You mind driving up the mountain to the store?” Fricke said, touching the end of his mustache. “I need to restock my beverage supply.”

  “Bring me back some Jack!” Scott yelled from the yard when Darnell pulled around.

  Fricke smiled. “As usual, he forgot to pay in advance,” he said, and Darnell downshifted to head up the curving road.

  Darnell listened to the engine for a long time, Fricke looking out the window, until he said, “So who were those guys?”

  Darnell knew who he meant. “A guy I went to school with and one a my brother’s friends.” The clutch didn’t engage until his foot was almost off the pedal, and he concentrated on the sound. They were almost to the tiny, dark-shingled mountain store now.

  Fricke went inside and came out with a brown bag. He opened the Jack Daniels when Darnell started up the car, fitting his lips around the glass circle carefully, taking small sips like he did with coffee all day.

  “You ain’t gon share that with Scott, huh?” Darnell asked.

  “Scott’s a big boy. He can buy his own.” Darnell looked at the flat bottle wedged between Fricke’s thighs. Open container, he thought. Yeah, drive around with Victor and Charlton, keep that bad boy in my legs, I’d be swingin on road camp crew, too. But Fricke get stopped, he gon be a off-duty fireman, tired and workin hard. Darnell shook his head.

  “You ever been to jail, man?” he asked, and Fricke licked his lips.

  “Nope.”

  Darnell waited for the question, but Fricke was silent. After all these months, this long-ass fire season, he knew Fricke liked him. He was always standing near Darnell, saying something quiet. But he only took another sip of liquor, wiped his lips. Then he said. “You’re the only one not making feverish plans for the off-season.”

  Darnell gripped the clutch and listened again. “Just hopin this car makes it through the spring, man. And you probably goin kayakin or mountain climbin, in Montana or somethin, right?”

  Fricke smiled. “I’m going to Canada with a woman, a marine biologist. We’re going to Baffin Bay. Heard of that?”

  “If you’re goin, all I need to know is it’s way the hell from anywhere else.” Darnell smiled, too, and then Fricke clicked his thumbnails against the thick glass of the whiskey bottle. Darnell saw the brothers at Jackson Park, drinking from curved palm-fit flasks around the trash-barrel fire. “Charlton, the skinny dude you saw, he’s doin two months on road camp cause he got tickets. Open container.”

  Fricke only nodded.

  “Cause he didn’t have the cash, didn’t show up to court,” Darnell went on. “So he gotta push tumbleweeds.” When they came out onto the mountain face and swung around the curve overlooking the valley, Darnell saw the scattered pricks of light below. Hella dark up here, he thought, like always. We could drive all night and never see a cop. Just us and the rangers.

  “Saving taxpayer dollars,” Fricke said now. He was always quoting imaginary taxpayers from the flatlands, the ones who wanted more firemen for less money, in his imitation Reagan-husky voice. “Delegating other responsibilities.”

  Why he gotta pick that word? Responsibility. I can’t wait to hear my pops shoot that gift. “Fricke,” he said, “you ain’t gon get married?”

  Fricke grinned. “Marriage wrecks any decent relationship.”

  “You don’t want kids?” Darnell stared ahead at the steep granite banks glowing spongy by the road. He heard the hollow hiss of lips on the bottle rim.

  Fricke said, “I might change my mind, if the right woman shows up.

  Darnell said, “Man, you done had so many, and you can’t decide?”

  “Decide is kind of a bloodless word, Tucker. Shouldn’t it be like a lightning bolt? Or the equivalent clichéd feeling?” The white lines by his eyes disappeared.

  Darnell shook his head. “Don’t even start that metaphysical shit, okay? It’s gotta be some middle ground between you and Scott.”

  “And that’s where you and Brenda sit. On that comfy middle ground,” Fricke said, whisking off an imaginary cape from the bottle. Like magic.

  Darnell tightened his fingers on the wheel. “Fricke, man, I spent a night in jail.”

  Fricke kept his face set blank. “Probably a long story, and this is a short drive. We’re almost back.”

  Darnell heard the clutch whine, and he said, “Yeah.” Why did he keep thinking about that one night? Ricky Ronrico, an older guy from the Westside, had been in there with him. Sprung dude, been smoking rock cocaine—gray rim around his lips, hair dreading wild. Darnell stared at the total black of the forest slope across the highway. No house light, cigarette glows, headlights.

  “Somebody busted my taillights,” he said to Fricke. “Went to warrant after I got a ticket.”

  “And you spent the night in jail until somebody paid.” Fricke raised his palms and shrugged.

  “My pops.”

  “He paid for the tickets, you got out, end of story. Familiar story,” Fricke said, and Darnell pulled into the yard, saw the blue light from the TV shifting, the yellow porch beam steady. Fricke slid the bottle under his armpit. “The government gets its money in cash or work. End of story. But if Scott assaults me for my beverage here, we’re talking felony, right?” He smiled, and Darnell had to grin, at the way Fricke’s voice always clanged when he changed the subject. Always tryin to make me laugh, get me to lighten up. Yeah—lighten up. Nobody gon say that out loud.

  But he sat back after Fricke had slammed the door, his knees under the wheel, neck against the seat. Ricky Ronrico? Five months—Brenda said that’s how far along she was. He knew the night now. It wasn’t a broken Trojan or Brenda forgetting her diaphragm.

  July: Ricky Ronrico had shot two deputies, and the cops had hunted him all over the Westside. Crazy saturation, somebody had called it, and Brenda was caught at his house. “Call your daddy, Brenda,” his father said. “You ain’t goin off the porch with my son till they find that fool.” They’d slept tight-pressed on the couch, his father in a chair by the front door, the helicopter clattering endlessly over the roof. He’d smelled her, felt himself against her miniskirt all night, knowing he’d be back up the mountain for at least a week. On Sunday night, after Ronrico was caught and the streets had grown dark again, without the wide glare of copter search beams and red patrol strobes, he felt her fingers pull him down in the car, away from the windshield, in a parking lot.

  That was it. That night. “Don’t bring home no babies. You wait for them babies.” All the older voices from doorways and porches, above folded arms, watching him and his friends pull away from the curb, had chanted that like absent-minded humming. He breathed the sharp scent of the bay tree near the station and felt thin air at his elbow.

  All he made was coffee, and then he went to check the bathroom. Leaving the door open, he crouched in the shower to pick up rogue pieces of soap.

  Thrown-away ovals of Dial were cemented to the floor. Perez and Corcoran were slobs, and everybody was in a bad mood today, tossing clothes and dishes around, talking shit to Fricke, because they wanted to go home. When Corcoran said his grandfather was a fire chief in New York, straight from Ireland, Scott yelled, “So fly his old ass out here and he can take my place!” Darnell rubbed the chips like chalk in his palm. This morning, they’d all been waiting for the visit from Raycraft; they thought he’d say the word and they could pack. But he hadn’t shown yet.

  He heard boots, and the pot lid clanked hollow. Scott said, “I thought Tucker was whore of the day.”

  “He is,” Fricke said.

  “Nothin here. Man, I thought he’d make fried chicken or somethin, one a their hot-weather specialties.”

  Darnell moved toward the door, and Fricke said, “Specialties?”

  “Yeah, you know. Fried chicken, watermelon.” Scott laughed.

  Darnell stood in his face. “Ho, ho, ho. When you gon learn to say it right, man? Ho of the day. That’s how I say it. Speak so I can understand you, boy, cause yo attitude is to t
he curb. Shoot that gift on my street and you might get smoked.” He pushed Scott against the counter, and Fricke’s forearms slid up his sides and pulled.

  “Dude, what’s your problem?” Scott said, his upper lip rising square, incredulous, the way Darnell hated. Don’t show me your gums, man. “It was a joke, bro.”

  “I’ma kick your ass all the way to the Colonel, home boy,” Darnell said. “Buy you some Original Recipe.” He jerked his shoulder away from Fricke. “But then again, I ain’t normal, huh, Fricke? So I guess I can’t be a normal nigga either.”

  Scott was out the door. “What difference does it make?” Fricke said, his voice even. “It didn’t apply to you, anyway. Fried chicken is a southern dish, and you’re a native Californian. Scott’s a little ignorant about regional cooking, but he’s handy with clichés.”

  Darnell shook his head, gripped the sharp metal strip at the edge of the counter. Fricke always tried so hard; under that Willie Nelson drawl, there was something whenever he talked to Darnell. Fricke touched the ends of his mustache again, not twirling the tips like some guys did to call attention to the hair. He just liked the feel, Darnell could tell. “You always want me next to you when we’re on the line,” Darnell said. “You’re always tryin to tell me somethin.”

  “You’re a demon on the line,” Fricke said, “and you’re the best at chopping rattlers. I don’t know where you practiced that.”

  Darnell saw the snakes rushing ahead of the flames, and he thought of how he loved to slice the Pulaski blade at them, but he knew what Fricke was trying to do. “We’re not talkin about my talent, man. I’m not gettin called back next season. I know it. If anybody’s cut, it’ll be me. Scott ain’t about nothin, but I’ma tell you somethin—I hear Raycraft when he talks about me, I listen. Every time he says my name, it’s a hesitation.” He stopped, not knowing how to explain. Fricke didn’t care about cars, so he couldn’t tell him—but it was Raycraft’s voice stopping, like a transmission that wasn’t working right, leaving the gears hanging. It was his name—that was what Raycraft didn’t like.

  “What are you talking about?” Fricke called, but Darnell was already back in the bathroom. He’d heard Raycraft say, “Darnell, Carell, Martell. You watch the NBA and half the names are ridiculous. Colored give their kids a burden in them names.”

  Darnell threw water on his face, looked at his hair in the mirror. I need a haircut, he thought. Can’t get a serious fade—then Raycraft and the rest of em really trip. His skin was reddish brown, darkened from all the working outside just like his father’s. His nose had an Indian bump like his father’s. He touched the scar on his forehead from a rock fight when he was a kid—the thin line etched up into his hairline like the beginning of a razored-in part. Yeah—let me get a few lightning strikes shaved into the temples here—they’d all love that.

  Fricke’s voice followed him. “If you don’t get called back, and I’m saying if,” Fricke said, and Darnell sucked his teeth, “it wouldn’t have anything to do with your ability. In fact, you know Scott’s the other guy on that training grant for low income. It’s just a matter of funding, for both of you. If it happens.”

  Darnell turned from the sink. “Save that shit, too. I’m goin down the mountain early.”

  The wind had cleared out the valley, so when the Spider came out of the last curve and Darnell looked east, he could see the string of cars stretching to the desert. Wind—still high alert, and I shouldn’t even be half an hour away from the station. What if Raycraft comes by? Damn, what can he do? Fire me? Name a canyon after me.

  But what if I miss the next fire? The last one. He drove faster past the empty field where the tumbleweeds had been. The air smelled peppery with ash. Victor said, One more nigga down. No surprise. It was a surprise to me. Darnell left the highway at the Morongo Indian reservation, where the lights from trailers and houses were. He parked along one of the narrow roads, where he could hear the cattle hum at each other now and then when they stepped over the prickly cactus and stones.

  The slopes of the hills above were cut in on each other, a series of V’s as soft as the creases under Brenda’s breasts, the fold between her thigh and hip. How would she look with a curved belly? She was so small. Itty Bitta Yella—he hadn’t heard that in so long. When they were kids, Brenda heard it all the time. And once, in the seat where he rested his boots, she’d whispered, “They heard Mama say it. She used to call me Itty Bit. She’d say, ‘I gotta watch you good, cause you a Itty Bit of a child.’”

  The sound of the cattle made him remember his father’s stories of mules and bulls in Oklahoma, of hunting. “Ain’t no game left in the whole damn state,” his father and the other men used to joke. “We ate whatever moved.”

  So I can feed Brenda some rattlers, right? Chop down that deer runnin from the flames. If I see any more flames.

  After the hunting stories, sometimes an older man would say, “Plowin with them damn mules. Hoein the ground. Damn. What they used to say? God put two packages down on the ground and told the white man and the nigga, ‘Pick your pick.’ Nigga rushed over there and grabbed the big one. He got the hoe and shovel. White man got the small one. He got the pen and paper.” Melvin and the younger men would roll their eyes and say, “This brotha don’t need neither one.”

  Damn, Darnell thought, watching the hills turn red with the low sun. I don’t mind the Pulaski and the gear. I’ll take it. The air’s still dry. One more.

  “None of your buddies with you? No Jack Daniel’s? Not even Yukon Jack?”

  Fricke shrugged. “Still high alert. I have to be especially sharp when one of my best guys takes off.” He watched Darnell sit down.

  “You tell the boss man I left?” Darnell raised both hands. “No—wait. It doesn’t apply to me anyway, right? Cause I ain’t gettin called back.”

  Fricke said, “You ever want to toss a match? When you were a kid, waiting for a fire, you ever throw a match just to see?”

  Darnell met the pale blue stare. “No.” But he’d wanted to; he’d stood in the riverbottom, in the brush, hearing his friends call him.

  “I did,” Fricke said. “I was thirteen. Got caught, ended up in Juvey. Bakersfield.”

  Darnell heard the other guys pull into the lot in Scott’s VW. “So?” he said, but then he held his lip hard with his teeth. “So now somebody else throws cigarettes. And you’re the hero.”

  They waited for the phone to ring.

  Spindly yellow grass and shaking-tall wild oats. That’s all there was to catch and crackle. No—this ain’t acceptable. This don’t even qualify, Darnell thought. The fire flew with the breeze and barely touched down, hanging just moments, like orange cobwebs on the stems, never burning hard but skittering across the slope.

  Darnell clambered up the hill behind Fricke, watching the thin flames jump across the highway. This roadside went up every year, Fricke had said, and Darnell remembered it from last year. He’d been here with the Conservation Corps, and most of this same stuff had burned off. Now the cars idling impatiently on their morning commute down the mountain highway thrummed in the air; their exhaust shook above the hoods, and Darnell could see faces turned down to newspapers, or looking in rearview mirrors, or glancing at the men and trucks and hoses. It had been so dry for so long that cigarettes started these all the time. Fricke saw him looking at the cars, and said over his shoulder, “Hell of an inconvenience, right, Tucker? Let’s get this over for them.”

  Scott and Corcoran were on the east side, in the smooth-furred flat area near the asphalt where the fire had begun. Darnell followed Fricke with the hose to the scattering, moving flames up the hill.

  The blaze disappeared instantly under the water, but little patches of the silence the flame made, the quiet of sucked-up oxygen and reaching heat, landed like rags. Then they were gone.

  Disappointment washed hot below Darnell’s throat. No—this don’t even qualify, hell, no—we’re just half-steppin here and this is the last one. Not hardly acceptable. He h
eard the hiss of smoldering ground. Victor was the one always sayin that back in school. Acceptable. But he was talkin about women. Not fires. He’d laugh silly if he heard me.

  “Tucker!” Fricke called from down the hose. “Quit sleeping! Don’t get that glazed look again, all right?” He laughed and inclined his head toward the ridge of boulders a few yards away. “Go,” he said, hard. “This is it.”

  Not lacy, knee-high flames. In the pocket behind the rocks, where moisture collected to grow the brittlebush in a clump, the fire caught and burned hard. Darnell dragged the hose, and when the gold turned orange and sound clotted for a moment, he dropped onto his knee to feel the heat on his face. He pulled his hand from the glove to stretch out his fingers, and the breeze blew a glowing stem at him; the twig breathed in when it flew and lit hotter, and before he could feel Fricke’s boots behind him or lift the water, he turned his palm to the ground. The stem fell on the back of his hand, etched itself into his skin, thin there over his bones, a slanted pain he let burn before the black shrank and cooled.

  SPRUNG

  WHERE THE HIGHWAY SNAKED through the pale hills everyone called the Sandlands, Darnell felt the clutch grinding harder, seizing up, felt his own breath puffing cold on the raised burn line across his hand. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and the swollen skin throbbed a little.

  He’d waited until night. The beige hills, with their sparse tufts of dry winter grass, glowed in the high-desert moonscape. The fog wouldn’t work its way here for a few hours yet. The mist had been so heavy in the morning that Raycraft’s silvery hair blended into nothing where he stood beside his car, telling Fricke it was over.

  Somebody in the Conservation Corps had called these the Hooter Hills—a white guy from Sacramento who’d ridden to Rio Seco with Darnell and some others. Another man who said he was part Indian told them there was a Sleeping Woman Mountain where he was from. Darnell remembered Brenda’s chest larger, harder, the last time he’d touched her.