“You really miss that firefightin slave you had, huh?” Victor said when they’d been at the church lot for a few hours. “Crazy nigga loved bein up there in the mountains with them cowboys.”
“No, man,” Darnell said. “It wasn’t about the other guys. I just liked it up there.”
“I seen two of your old buddies at that fire last week,” Victor said, and Darnell stopped pulling at a half-buried bottle to look up. “Remember the riverbottom went up?”
Darnell said, “Yeah. It was only a couple of acres.” He hadn’t seen it, since it was late at night. “What were you doin over there?”
Victor made his face a mask. “I had business.” Darnell knew Victor had stayed there for a short time in the summer, before he started sleeping in Ronnie’s broken-down car at Jackson Park. Now he and Ronnie had a room in an old house near the park. Victor said, “I seen the big-mouth white dude and the Meskin guy.”
“Scott and Perez,” Darnell said. “Perez had a busted ankle when we did the field with you.”
Victor nodded. “They was hosin that baby down the other night,” he said. “Workin hard.” He lifted his chin at Darnell. “How come you ain’t doin that?”
Darnell bent and kicked out the thick-bottomed glass. “Cause they’re just paid call—they only make money when they get a job. And they ain’t got people to feed.”
“I told you about usin them jimhats.” Victor smiled. “But you a daddy now.”
They pulled at the skeletal tumbleweeds and disintegrated cardboard in the huge hard-dirt lot behind the church, shoveled bottles and disposable diapers into piles. Darnell saw the rough brush where he’d dug breaks, the red-barked manzanita and dark greasewood. Now and then he let his vision blur while he tore out the dried weeds, and when he raised his head he was surprised to see cars rushing past him on the avenue.
After they’d come down the long dirt road from the dump, Darnell gave Victor $50 and kept $50 for himself. The dump fee had taken the rest. He waited in front of Tony’s Market, and when Victor came out with the gold forty-ounce bottles of Olde English, he said, “I can’t hang out today.”
Victor said, “Take me by Esther’s, on your pops’ street.” His braids were rough, clouded between the rows. Sometimes he let them go for weeks before he could pay Esther to redo them. “You go home to baby bawlin, man, and I’ll be chillin out, eight-ballin.” He took a big swallow.
But when Darnell had strapped Charolette in, Victor came back to the El Camino. “Esther ain’t home,” he said. “Drop me off at the park.”
Darnell let Charolette stagger on the sidewalk near the domino table, and Brother Lobo smiled. “Wasn’t she born premature?” Lobo asked.
“Yeah,” Darnell said. “But she was still walkin before eleven months. Brenda was tellin anybody who would listen.” He stopped Charolette from heading toward the sparkle of broken glass. “Now you a year old, huh?” he said, picking her up. He saw the patrol car ease around the corner, and the men were silent, faces stone, until the brake lights faded and someone said, “K-9.”
Darnell’s breath rasped in his throat. Were they watching him? Charolette elbowed him in the neck, and Lobo watched her struggle. “She’s baby Darnell Junior, with that face. She’s you.”
But Darnell didn’t want to hear. He let her take a few more steps at the curb, and then he called, “Let’s jam, babygirl.” She smacked into his knees, and he remembered when she was round-bellied and short-legged as a horny toad crawling from a rock. Almost a year—another fire season coming. He looked at the whisper-thin dried grass at the edges of the lot.
Back home, he sat on the couch, and Charolette wove herself in and out of Brenda’s piles of clean, folded laundry. After Charolette’s bath, Brenda sang, “I’m goin to Kansas City, Kansas City, here I come. They got some crazy little babies there and I’m gonna get me one.” Charolette screamed when Brenda buried her nose in her wet neck.
“That’s a man’s song,” Darnell said, remembering Boscoe play the record.
“I heard it at your dad’s,” Brenda said. “She loves it.”
Shit, ain’t no need for me to be here, he thought, and he went downstairs to lean against the El Camino in the carport. In the stall used as a wash station, somebody’s clothes circled behind the dryer door, clicking and falling, and he saw a small Mexican woman in a shawl lean over the railings to see if the washer was free. He listened to the passing cars and whisper-whirling clothes until Brenda came out to call him to the phone.
The job would only last a couple of weeks before Easter, the woman from the temp agency said. Swing shift. At two-thirty he drove the El Camino to the parking lot closest to Brenda’s building and caught the bus to the industrial park out in Terracina, on the south edge of the city.
The warehouse was huge, and they’d hired four guys to move inventory. Darnell carried boxes, waiting for the guy with the forklift, pulled more boxes out of trucks in the windy parking lot. STARCREST ENTERPRISES was painted on the building, in a maze of tiny streets lined with other warehouses and paint stores and wood-product wholesalers and electronic suppliers.
When his shift was over, his arms ached, and he watched the other guys get into their cars. He’d only really talked to one, Jesus Sotelo, but he lived all the way out in San Bernardino, and Darnell didn’t want to ask him for a ride. The bus stopped running way out here at midnight, so he walked toward the stop on Washington, past the long expanses of short-clipped grass and what Roscoe always called “industrial shrubs,” the spindly gray-green junipers and evergreens.
The second week on the job he was walking with hands jammed in his pockets and jacket collar turned up against the April wind when he heard a loud muffler following him. From an old Impala, three Chicano guys stared at him.
“Shit,” Darnell said. “Terracina vatos.”
Most of the walls and warehouses were sprayed with graffiti that said TERRA RULES and LOS DEFIANTES DE TC. He’d heard Terracina was fighting a Westside gang, Sixth Avenue Loc Special. He walked faster and was heading toward an old house at the corner of the main drag when he heard the car rounding the corner again. Starting to run, he fixed on the black wall of bushes, the square where a path cut through to the yard. “Where you from, homes?” somebody yelled from the car. Yeah, like I got time to tell you. Westside—no set, man, just my hood. I ain’t in a set. Let me get there. The pops sounded like cap guns. Twenty-two. He couldn’t count the shots. He threw himself into the gap and fell through the sharp-branched yew, the piney smell all around him, the car still moving and two more shots before they shouted, “Terracina, homes.”
Darnell lay behind the hedge, smelling the dried stems and dead grass under him. He brushed the rough twigs from his ear. “Fuck this shit,” he whispered. “Fuck it.” He turned on his back and looked at the house. The windows stayed dark, and he wasn’t sure if anyone was home or whether they were all lying on the floor. Like him.
When he started walking again, he threw out his arms. “Come on,” he said softly. “Step to me. Come on.” He knew they were somewhere else now, laughing. He passed the bus stop and walked down the long, bright avenue, past all the 7-Elevens and McDonalds and apartment buildings.
It was two o’clock when he opened the door, and Brenda was waiting on the couch, her head thrown back in sleep but snapping up when the jamb cracked. “Where the hell you been?” she said, instantly furious. “Why you didn’t call?”
“I was workin overtime,” he said, feeling the last thready twig of yew fall deeper into his collar. “I couldn’t take a break to call.”
She stood, steadied herself, pressing her fingertips on the wall, and said, “Don’t ever do that again. You got a mouth—you can speak into a telephone. Don’t ever make me live my life around that window waiting for no cop to knock. No. Don’t.” He saw the drapes open, the shadow of high wires striping the wall behind her, and when he went toward her, she moved out of the glare.
“I wanted so bad to just sleep with Charolet
te,” she whispered. “Like I could keep a hand on her back. And I made myself come out here, cause if you gon leave us, it’s just gon be me and her forever.”
Now he caught her and smelled the sweet hairdress at the part in her hair. “Damn, Brenda.” He stared at the headlights raking the wall from the street. The light, high pops of the twenty-two—I damn sure can’t let Terracina take the heat for this one. Sometimes you hold the truth? That what Mama said? Or Melvin? Said a white lie is okay sometime. But this a black lie. “I thought you’d be happy about the extra money,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, baby.” He guided her shoulder to bed.
Gasanova was the only one he could ask. He went to the Holiday Inn, drank coffee, and said, “Man, I don’t want Brenda without a car, in case the baby get sick or somethin. And I don’t want to tell Pops about it, cause he’ll trip and start worryin. What time you get off?”
“We close at eleven,” Gas said. “I’ll come and get you until you save the Spider.”
But he couldn’t tell Gas, or anyone, about Brenda’s face. Staring at that window. He had to lie. When Gas picked him up in the parking lot at the warehouse, no sounds booming from his truck’s rolled-up windows, Gas said, “Some dude over here figure if you leavin Terracina now, you must be gettin some hoochie. Some Terracina coochie.”
“Yeah, right,” Darnell said. “I ain’t gettin hardly none at home, and now I gotta get smoked for some imaginary lovin?”
But they both watched the narrow side streets and the red lights. “Dudes wanna smoke somebody just for the hell of it. Got a new piece and want to try it out—make sure it shoot nice.”
Darnell looked at him. “Leon like that?” Leon had always fought, but he’d been careful about his battles.
“No, Leon into dinero, strictly business. But his boys—man, they serious mental, always lookin to gat somebody.”
They drove on Washington toward downtown; Gas kept the music down low so they could hear gunshots or shouts or throbbing pipes.
But the red light came before the quick drone of siren. Gas said, “Here we go,” and Darnell’s breath clotted in his throat. Don’t move. Don’t move. We ain’t packin. Gas was still; Darnell’s shoulder blades were hard against the seat until the p. a. system from the patrol car blared.
“Passenger, display both hands outside the window and get out of the vehicle.” Darnell felt the muscles in his neck, sore from loading, stretch when he dangled his palms over the door edge without moving his upper body.
When he and Gas were lying on far-separated squares of sidewalk, a cop stood beside each of them, looking at their side-turned jaws. In the long silence while Darnell waited for the man to ask for ID, he lay with his cheek against the still-warm cement. The chain-link fence surrounding a parking lot beside him was fringed with green, and he stared at the weeds. Been a drought, he thought, but they came up anyway. He breathed even. Ask me for ID. ID these plants. Okay—the tall one is wild oats, still got green in it, but not much. I see some filaree, makin them corkscrew seeds. If I spit over there, the seeds gon start to unravel in the wet.
“ID,” said the man whose shoes were near. Darnell slid the wallet out of his back pocket. He could hear Gas answering the other cop. “We had reports of gunfire in this area last night,” the cop said, flipping open the wallet. Then he said, “Darnell Tucker.” Darnell heard his voice change, go higher in his neck. “I thought you drove an El Camino.”
Darnell stretched his neck slightly to look up. He saw the pale toothbrush-sized mustache and green eyes, all he remembered from that parking garage, when the cop had leaned over him for a second before he got into the car.
“Why you doin this?” Darnell said, low. “I ain’t suin.”
The mouth was clenched, hesitant, and the face came closer when the man lowered himself into a squat. “I didn’t call this stop,” he said. “This isn’t—I’m subbing for somebody.”
Yeah, Darnell thought. No K-9. He kept his eyes straight at the wild oats now, the stems trembling when cars passed on the avenue in rushes.
“I saw you a couple of times,” the cop said. “I didn’t want to stop you, you know, to try and—because you might not think—” He stopped, looked at the other officer moving toward him. “I feel bad,” he said, low.
Not as bad as I do, Darnell thought, but he couldn’t open his mouth against the porous-heated sidewalk.
The other cop said loudly, “His story match up? This guy says he’s givin him a ride home from work.” He leaned slightly. “Where you work?”
“Starcrest Enterprises,” Darnell said. “Warehouse.”
“Okay,” the older cop said, turning, and his shoes ground the tiny pieces of sand on the asphalt.
He and Gas started up the truck slowly. Midnight. We ridin under the moon, and we blacker than a thousand midnights, Darnell thought. Gas said nothing, either. He blasted the speakers and drove home, the drums loud enough so that they wouldn’t have to talk.
He bought a tiny, airplane-sized bottle of Jack Daniels for his coat pocket. When he started the walk, he stopped behind a hedge after a few cars had passed him, and he drank deep from the tiny glass mouth, the heat pouring onto his tongue. He rubbed the smooth, hard lip right there again. Brenda’s nipple—right there was where it used to rest. He walked down the sidewalk past the warehouses, slipping the empty bottle into his pocket.
She’d be asleep tonight when he got home. This morning, she’d said, “How’s Gasanova?” when Darnell sat at the table, bleary-eyed.
“Cool,” Darnell said, resting his head on his arms, pushing his cheek onto the cold table. “He’s cool.”
“Darnell?” she said.
“I’m just tired, baby,” he said. “Real tired.” He spoke into his arms. “You take the El Camino to work, cause I ain’t goin nowhere today. Not till swing time.”
Come on, he thought, walking fast. He felt the heat travel down to his knees, loosen the joints warm with his stride. Even his elbows were full of liquid. Like workin the fire line. Come on. Smoke me—yeah, no flames this time, just that bit a smoke you see from the gun barrel. You got a shottie? Twelve-gauge? They make some nice smoke—bitter powder-black. Come on.
He was down Washington now, past the weed-edged chain link he’d studied last night, and he said aloud, “Come on. Bring K-9. I’m drinkin my intoxicants in public—I done drank em. Come on.”
He’d called Gas, told him yesterday was the last shift and he didn’t need a ride.
Walking so fast, in the night-cool air, made the sweat moisten his back and shoulder blades under the jacket, and he strode long as he could, pushing himself like those women race walkers he’d seen in Grayglen. Yeah—that’s me, just out for some exercise. Lemme hold my arms right. But when the sweat spread to the nape of his neck, he stopped stepping funny and remembered the glow of water across his forehead, his whole back, when he worked a night blaze. The cool hitting heat, under a layer of cloth, the dark air pulled deep into his lungs. By the time he climbed the stairs outside the apartment, his skin felt bubbled with heat and alcohol.
He lay in bed with their breath rising all around him, their night breaths webbing thick in the closed room, and he folded himself into position to lie awake for a long time.
“Okay, guys, thanks. Come pick up your checks in two weeks, or we can mail ’em to you,” the warehouse manager told Darnell and the others. Sotelo shook hands with Darnell and drove toward the freeway; the other two men stood beside their trucks, talking, while he headed for the street.
No tiny bottle. No job, now, he thought. Damn, I ain’t tellin Brenda, not this week, not till I get somethin else first. He stared ahead of him at the sidewalk lit chalky white in the moon, and heard booming bass behind him. Come on, he thought, but he hunched his shoulders, tired from last night.
“You lyin fool, I seen your dad’s truck in the driveway when I got off work,” Gas said from the open window. “Sit your ass in here.”
They drove slow when they got downtown. �
�I need the Spider, man,” Darnell said. “Have some dashboard and glass between me and everybody else.”
Gas smiled. “Man, last dishwasher job they opened, the Inn had thirty guys apply. And you know they hired a Mexican guy, about thirty, with kids, cause he gon work his butt off.”
“I got a kid.” Darnell rested his head against the seat and saw the wrought-iron railing in front of his apartment.
Gas laughed. “You don’t look—I don’t know, you ain’t got no belly. You don’t look comfortable.”
“I ain’t,” Darnell said, getting out.
He told Brenda to take the car in the morning again, and he lay in the empty apartment, smelling Charolette’s milky spit wet on the sheet beside him, feeling the warmth Brenda had left outlined. All day he slept in the hard white light.
At three-thirty, he sat on the couch and swigged from the bottle of Canadian Club he’d bought for the ants in his leg. He stared out the window at the closed door directly across from him. Where I’ma go? he thought. She’ll pick up Charolette and come home by five-thirty. If I get toe up, I can’t drive, but I could walk over to Jackson Park and act like somebody who know how to drink. He put the bottle on the coffee table; the liquor made his head full, right behind his eyes, and when his legs didn’t move, the heat seemed to stop at his neck.
When the face peered in the big window and pulled back, he felt wires shoot tight through his back. But it was Mrs. Batiste, who let herself in with her key.
She went straight to the kitchen and put a foil-covered bowl in the refrigerator. Then she sat in one of the kitchen chairs and pulled an Easter basket, green-plastic grass springing from the sides, out of a shopping bag. “You think Charolette ready to find eggs?” she said casually.
Darnell looked at the bottle and then out the window. “She pretty big. Pretty nosy. I guess so.”
“But you ain’t plan to be around, huh?” she said, still conversationally. “You still got a itch. Brenda told me you come home late now. You see that fire, huh?”
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights Page 19