“This gun might want to get a body,” Vernon said idly, pulling out the pistol. “I don’t know. I just got it.”
“Man, don’t pull out no piece,” Darnell said. They had called the number and were waiting in the parking lot of a Denny’s. The air smelled sharper, woody, up here. South Lake Tahoe.
Vernon smiled. “Semiautomatic. Brotha. Three-eighty a okay size for today.” Vernon looked over at Darnell. “You don’t know what they got.”
“I don’t know shit,” Darnell said. “Don’t want to know.” He saw the two guys then, driving a yellow Volkswagen bug, motioning to him to follow. “Man, I got a kid.”
“So do I.” Vernon smiled. “So?”
From the backdoor of a wood-shingled house two men came toward him on the dirt drive where he’d parked. Vernon sat completely still, expressionless. “What’s up, bro?” said the taller one, with round wirerimmed glasses and blond hair curled onto his neck. He had wide, talk-a-lot lips like Brad’s.
The other guy was nervous. “Let’s go,” he said. His skin was yellowed like the fingertips of someone who smoked too much.
“I’ma pop the trunk,” Darnell said.
“But once he do, he ain’t for frontin,” Vernon said toward the open window. Darnell stood outside while the taller one picked up the box and carried it inside. He followed the short one into the shabby kitchen strewn with paper plates. The short guy knocked a pizza box dotted with grease spots off the table, and Darnell took the fat manila envelope with money. Before he could say anything, the short one began taking the jeans from the box, saying, “You didn’t fuck with us, right?”
“How’s the Oriental dude gonna get the stuff out of em?” the blond guy interrupted. Darnell saw Vernon leaning against the Lincoln, watching through the open door. “Way too chemical for me,” the blond guy said.
The waxy-skinned man said suddenly, “He doesn’t even know what he’d do if we didn’t take these off him. He couldn’t extract it.”
Darnell folded his arms. “I ain’t worried about it. I don’t mess with my brain cells.” He turned toward the door.
“Opium doesn’t fuck with your brain,” the waxy-skinned one said. “It relaxes the brain, and it’s a natural substance, not like crack. That fucks up your people’s brains.”
The blond guy pushed his friend, and Darnell made himself smile. “I wouldn’t know, man. I’m strictly business.” That was what Leon always said.
In the car, he drove quickly back toward the highway, his temples hot with the disdainful voices. Think they woodsmen and shit, cause they live up here. Come on out to fire camp with me, boys. Me and Fricke burn the hairs off your little cojones. You don’t know shit about me.
Vernon said, “You gotta get back on five, man.”
“I know.”
“We ain’t goin home yet. Brotha. We gotta make one more run.”
Darnell looked at Vernon. “What the hell you talkin about? That was it.”
But Vernon shook his head, slumped low, still wearing the big jacket. He looked out the window, his face just above the edge like a periscope. “I’m tired, man. But we gotta take somethin to Portland. Get some grub at Mickey D.’s and let’s go.”
“Hell, no, Vernon, I ain’t drivin to no Portland. That’s hours.”
“It ain’t that far.” Vernon still stared out the glass.
Darnell looked at his watch. Almost six. “You playin, huh?”
Vernon smiled. “Leon don’t play. Neither do I. Check the map—that’s your job, man. That’s why you drivin.”
Darnell blinked to try and clear his head. “I don’t need to look,” he said. He remembered Corcoran and Fricke talking about northern California, Oregon, about taking five all the way. “Shit,” he said.
“Mickey D.’s up there,” Vernon said, grinning. “Coffee break.”
He went to the bathroom, and Darnell ordered cheeseburgers, fries, coffee to go. He asked for five dollars in change and got a dirty look with the quarters. The phone rang and rang, but no one answered. She must be at Pops’ house. Damn.
Vernon came out behind him. “I don’t drink coffee, man, tastes like shit.”
He stopped at the liquor store. “You buy it, get me two forties,” Vernon said.
“You go in, man,” Darnell said, eating fries.
“I’m seventeen, man. I ain’t gettin IDed up here in the boonies and shit.”
Darnell stared at him, went inside and brought out the heavy bag with the fat bottles. When he pulled out of the parking lot, Vernon said, “You went to school with Leon, so I know you twenty-two.”
But Darnell didn’t want to talk. He swallowed the coffee, which tasted like soapy water. I ain’t got nothin to say, Boss. The coffee stung his throat. Coffee part of the cure, too, Mrs. Batiste had said, making him a pot of the strong black Louisiana stuff. Brenda—he gulped more, burning. She gotta come home soon.
Driving north, he tried to keep his eyes steady, breathed in the too-sweet cherry that had faded into their smells. Vernon took out a Kool and pushed in the lighter on the dashboard, raising the glowing circle. Darnell shook his head when Vernon proffered the cigarette. He drove faster, hitting eighty, heading into the gathering grayness. How the hell they get the opium in the jeans? Somebody gon smoke that. Who cares? Just drive. That’s what you do.
The freeway passed thick stands of trees and a few streams, even some standing water in fields now and then. Dead animals were sprawled on the roadside: a needle-bellied possum, several raccoons, one just a flat round of skin with the striped tail full and pretty, like a Daniel Boone hat. The kind Gas used to want. Then he saw the ears of a rabbit, pointing straight up, with the body nearly disintegrated. Finally he saw a live animal poking into a hole by a field. It was hump-round, brown-furred, but he couldn’t see a tail. Maybe it was a beaver, with all this water around.
The gas gauge was low. Vernon still slept, in the front seat now, slumped with his chin hard on his chest. Darnell said, “I’m gettin gas, man. Wake up.”
He stood at the scarred counter inside to pay. An older white man with traces of red veins on his cheeks took his money and said, “Stays light longer now, huh?”
“Yeah,” Darnell said. He wanted to ask the man about the animals. He looked up at the white hairs curved back from the forehead, afraid to say anything. Turning to the door, he thought, Yeah, I can see it when the cops ask about me. Colored boy, drivin a Lincoln, asked me about beavers or porcupines.
At the phone booth, he watched the abandoned farmhouse across the street. No answer. He hung up and got back into the car.
He saw the falling-down barns, the few abandoned buildings, even a brick building that had empty, yellow-boarded eyes. In the twilight, he saw another possum, saw a squirrel sitting on a fencepost. His father and Floyd, all the men telling stories about hunting. “Ain’t no squirrels, no possums, nothin left in the state, man. We ate every movin thing in Oklahoma. No rabbits left, nothin.”
They told stories about mules that wouldn’t plow, about banking sweet potatoes for winter and stewing them with possum. His father’s grandfather had walked across two states when he was freed and bought an abandoned farm. His mother’s grandfather had married a Creek Indian woman.
Darnell looked at the falling wood barns, the gray-wood fences. Yeah, I’ll bring Brenda and Charolette out here, buy me a farm, buy Vernon’s .380 and shoot me some squirrels. What I’m supposed to cook with squirrel?
When Vernon woke up, as the sky finally turned purple-black, it was like he’d heard Darnell thinking. He pulled out the .380 and started shooting into the darkness of the mountain range. They passed over the border to Oregon, and on the long stretches with no lights to pierce the black landscape, he fired off into the trees now and then. “I like how it sound, man,” he said.
“Stall out, Vernon, you might hit a cow or somethin,” Darnell said, peering into the rearview.
“Then somebody could have steak tonight,” Vernon said, smiling.
&nb
sp; “Vernon, man, that ain’t necessary.”
“You never know who could be in Portland, man,” Vernon said. Darnell shook his head. “Clint Eastwood might show up.”
“I ain’t even supposed to be up here,” Darnell said, smacking the window. “Shit!” He looked over at the pistol in Vernon’s lap. “This ain’t LA, man.”
Vernon shrugged. “Portland could be buck wild. Rio Seco might get buck wild, too.” Then he seemed to lose interest, and he closed his eyes. “Depend on how shit go. Like what’s in the air. My auntie use to say that. You can’t stop it if it’s already floatin in the air.”
Darnell looked out the window, but he couldn’t see if the forests were thick, if the geography was different, if he could recognize chamise or trees. He smelled the last trace of smoke from the gun. If I die, man, I ain’t even me. All I got is a comb and a wallet say I’m Marcus Smith. “What if somebody look real close?” he had asked the consultant.
The man had shrugged. “Who ever looks close, real close, at a young man like you? A cop, if he wants you, he doesn’t have to look at you. If he does, you probably look like Marcus Smith to him.”
No trippin. Vernon pointed the gun out the window and then brought it back in, nodding at Darnell. “You just like your homey Birdman—always starin at the trees. We almost there?” he asked. Darnell stared at the freeway, a twisting dark artery through the next pass. No animals, just yellow eyes reflecting now and then in the night.
North Side. There was always a side, Brother Lobo said. East Side. South Side. The Westside.
He sat at a table in Rob’s apartment, watching two girls in the living room. Rob passed him a small brown cigarillo. “Swisher Sweets, man, try these,” Rob said. “Make cigarettes taste like trash.”
Darnell lit the cigarillo and smelled the pungent sweet smoke rise into his face. Honeyed brown poured into his chest. Rob smiled. “So Leon been tight with you since baby days, huh? I didn’t move to the Westside till I was about sixteen, man. My moms from Terracina.”
Darnell pulled in the smoke, felt it circling through his blood, drifting into his head. “Terracina bangers tried to cap me a little while ago,” he said, his voice far away. “Impala.” He felt the weight of the tiny gun Vernon had slipped into his jacket when they found the apartment. A Raven Arms .25. “You wanna die up here?” Vernon had whispered. “I ain’t takin your ass home.”
Rob cocked his head to listen. “Them vatos from Terra are bolo wild,” he said absently. Then he called to his boy, a Portland brotha with a shaved head, “Go see who comin.” The girls watched. Darnell glanced toward the bathroom, where Vernon was. The Portland boy mouthed a name to Rob, and Rob nodded.
Five more people came into the apartment, and Rob huddled with the two guys to do business. Darnell closed his eyes and sat back in the stiff kitchen chair, letting the sweet smoke curl around him. All Vernon had remembered was a bridge, but they’d found the place. And in the bedroom Vernon had taken product out of his huge jacket pockets. Product, cane sugar for glowing embers. Darnell had begun to pant, his throat so closed with anger. “You had that in the car with me? Damn, Vernon, that’s big time at the government gym. Shit! That for Leon or the consultant?”
“For sale.” Vernon had smiled, and Darnell had punched the wall, splitting two knuckles that stung in his mouth. This ain’t procedure. He went back to the chair where he sat now, staring at the blank wall. Rob didn’t have a phone. What time was it now? She was already asleep. Hey, baby, I tried to call you, but…
He felt the smoke slow his breath, his pulse, and he knew he’d have to sleep before they started the drive home. About twelve or thirteen hours, Rob said.
Rob frowned at one of the girls, who was getting loud. Another one, across from him in Rob’s chair, smiled at Darnell. “So you from LA,” she said, her voice high and sweet-slow. “You gon stay with Rob?”
Darnell took the cigarillo from his mouth and shook his head. “Not hardly,” he said, his voice echoing in his ears.
Rob was leaning over her shoulder then. “Hell, no, Quelle, he ain’t stayin. He lucky. Man, I told Leon I ain’t into the cold and shit. Can’t keep no kinda nice hooptie out here, no place to cruise.”
Darnell closed his eyes, put his head on his arms. When he yawned, he felt gravel spread behind his ribs. “You want me to get you somethin to eat?” the girl said, close to his ear. He thought of Brenda, standing at the stove with her neck bent, and tried to shake his head. “It’s always warm down there where you stay, huh?” she went on, leaning over him. “And y’all got all kinda clubs, not like here. I always wanted to go to LA.”
“I’m from Rio Seco,” Darnell mumbled, moving his eyes to see her face.
“That sound even better,” she said, and he saw the way she held her lips, like she had a secret inside the slippery part, smiling with just a lifting of one corner. “That your Lincoln?”
Darnell didn’t answer. She had stars beside her eyes, those tiny moles gathered in a loose cluster at the top of her cheekbone. Brown skin, and the small black dots moved when her lips pushed the smile into her cheek. “You gon get some rest before you go?”
He stood up, head draining to blank, and said, “I’m goin in here and sleep for a minute, Rob.” He nodded at everyone, including the girl, and Rob followed him to the door of the bedroom. “That hoochie yours if you want it,” Rob said.
Darnell looked at the bathroom door, still closed. “I need some rest, man,” he said, but when he was in the bedroom, lying on his stomach in his T-shirt and boxers, he knew he would hear her come in.
His head rang so loud and fuzzed from the cigar that when he turned to see her his eyes felt left behind his forehead. He had slept for half an hour; his mouth was coated thick. She sat beside him on the bed, leaned down suddenly to press her soft chest into his shoulder blade. “You relaxed now? You drivin a long way home, I know you want some company.”
Darnell felt her mouth hot on the back of his neck, her tongue sliding wet. “I could keep you awake while you drivin,” she whispered, and her hands slid under his hips to touch him. He felt her breast shift, her mouth along the back of his arm, and he knew he would turn over.
Her voice rose suddenly. “Ooh, you got cut back here?” Her fingers touched his leg. “This one look like a turtle.” Darnell lifted his face from the pillow to look behind him, at her hand moving off the scar. Round-humped shiny, the scar was long as her finger. He had never seen it. “And this one even longer, like one a those worms, you know, with all the feelers?”
A centipede, with stitchmarks splayed like tiny legs. Where the teeth tore when the cop pulled the dog off; the jaws wouldn’t open, the voices yelled, because he wasn’t lying still enough. His shoulders were suffused with cold now, and she said, “What kinda girl gon cut you down here?” Her lips were on the scar then, wet breath-hot, and her teeth were hard behind the softness pushing. He jerked up off his stomach and said, “You gotta go, get off me. Get out, okay?” The scars pulsed cold now, air hitting the wet. Her mouth trembled, the moles still, and he pushed her back toward the door, carefully.
“When you leavin?” she whispered, and he shut the door, knowing Rob wouldn’t let her come back in if he’d sent her out.
He curled on his side under the sheet that smelled of other people, shaking. The teeth raking his skin, the shouting. “You’re moving!” The burning in his leg, the air on open wet tissue, the voices cracking sharp on the radios. Donnie calling out to him, the warm oil-scented cement under his face, the exhaust lingering in the air. Darnell heard Vernon talking through the wall, and his heart beat too fast. He smelled sweat. Reaching over to the pack of cigarillos by the bed, he broke one open and rubbed the tobacco on the dirty sheet all around him, the curly-sharp bits clinging to his hot palms.
Shouts came from the living room, and he pulled on his pants. Rob was arguing with another man who’d come in, and Rob’s boy was standing with arms folded, hand deep in his armpit. Darnell saw Vernon sitting on t
he couch with Quelle, smiling as usual. Rob smiled, too, and nodded at the girl standing next to his customer. “All I said was she hellafine.”
The man glanced at Darnell. The girl wore a short dress and ankle boots; her hair shone in loose spiral curls. “Yeah, but Hellafine with me,” he said. “Hellafine here is mine.”
“She could be with him, man, if you was elsewhere. Like a grave,” Vernon said softly, enjoying himself. Darnell kept his eyes on the man’s hands, held too still.
“So you strapped, nigga?” the man said. “So who ain’t?”
“If y’all gon do the pow-pow bang-bang, step to it,” Vernon said, pulling out the .380, and he held it slanted loose. “I ain’t for playin.”
The man backed up, reaching for the door, and Darnell saw that smoke filled the whole apartment now. Rob laughed, and the man pulled his girl out the door. But Vernon pointed the gun at the door and held it. Rob said, “I hate sugar cane. They either beggin or they all wild and shit.”
“I’m gone,” Darnell said, buttoning his shirt. He grabbed his jacket and felt for the wallet. The manila envelope with money from the jeans was in the bedroom, in a small bag, and when he came back out, Vernon still sat on the couch, the gun loose again in his fingers. “I’m gone,” Darnell said again, glancing at the girl with half a constellation near her eye.
“No, you ain’t,” Vernon said. “Cause I ain’t ready.”
Darnell walked toward the door. “Shoot my ass,” he said. “Then you gon have to catch a plane, okay?” He pulled open the hollow, flimsy door. This ain’t procedure. I ain’t getting yoked this time. I’m quittin before I’m terminated.
OKLAHOMA REMORIAL
THE APARTMENT COURTYARD WAS hot by the time he got home. One of the Mexican women from #3 stood at the washer, pulling out wet, tangled clothes; she heard his shoes on the concrete and turned, but she smiled when she recognized him. She always touched Charolette’s chin and whispered, “Muy bonita.”
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights Page 22