“See, Darnell,” Donnie said, his voice soft and slow. “If you’da had a piece, you coulda shot the dog before he got you.”
“Fuckin K-9,” Leon said.
“Yeah, and the cops woulda smoked me too fast,” Darnell said. “Don’t trip like this, Donnie. Too many brothas gone—Max Harris gone, Tiny gone, remember?” Donnie held the gun stiff-slanted across his leg.
Vernon stared at Darnell still, the grin gashes long beside his mouth. “When your time come, ain’t nothin you can do. Outta your hands, when your time come. Brotha.”
“Shut up,” Leon said. “Let’s hat, man. I hate hearing that metal music.” The white guys leaned against their doors, staring at the Bronco. Vernon pointed the nine-millimeter to the glass and said, “Take out the speakers?”
Leon said, “Stall out with that, before one of em got a daddy on the force.”
“They can’t see in the dark,” Vernon said. Donnie drank deeply and dropped his bottle on the floorboards.
“I gotta show you somethin,” Leon said to Darnell, pulling out of the dirt lot and heading down the road toward the air base. He got onto the same highway Darnell used to take down from the station. Leon was silent, and Donnie and Vernon talked blurry in the backseat, too low for Darnell to hear. When they got closer to the base, Leon said, “You see the ramp?”
“Yeah,” Darnell said, looking at the freeway bridge rising over the route they were on. Leon went up the long, gentle slope. Darnell saw two Mexican guys standing next to a beat-up Monte Carlo. Leon passed them, and Darnell saw the base spread out over the valley, the planes, buildings, runways.
Leon said, “Mexicans and brothas always breakin down, right, cause they drive sorry-ass old hoopties.” He spoke softly, and Vernon didn’t stop telling his long story in the backseat.
“So?” Darnell said. “They need a ride, I guess.”
Leon smiled. “No, man. They workin for the consultant’s friend, watchin for when the DEA plane take off. They got a phone in there, and they call up.”
“Damn,” Darnell said.
“See?” Leon said. “My man got all bases covered. You could keep makin cash ducats. He like you cause you know all that geography, and you adaptable. Like me.” Leon was back on the freeway now, cresting over the hills they’d just left, and through the mist of smog Darnell could see Rio Seco like he used to when he came home from the station. The four powerful beams of the auto dealerships’ searchlights circled the sky on the eastern end, and the silvery-blue finger of the police helicopter’s beam traveled the Westside.
“Yo, man, what the fuck you doin?” Vernon yelled, and Darnell and Leon both looked back to see Donnie put the small gun to his ear.
“This baby-nine got bullets?” he asked dreamily.
Leon pulled off the freeway at the next exit and said, “Stall out with that shit, Donnie. Give Vernon the gun.”
Darnell was afraid to reach back there, Donnie staring at the ceiling of the Bronco, the muzzle touching the tiny ridges inside his ear. Vernon said, “Give me the gun, fool.”
Leon pulled over to the side of the street, and Darnell saw past Donnie’s face that it was the main residential avenue in the Ville. He said to Donnie, “Don’t trip, man. Come on. Give it up.”
But Donnie pushed the seat forward and got out of the car, stood on the sidewalk with the gun in his mouth, then moved it to his thigh. Then he pushed it into the soft skin between his eyes, hard, and Darnell could see the circle of a dent. Donnie pointed the gun at Vernon, who had gotten out, too. “You didn’t tell me, man. Do it got bullets?” Donnie whispered, and Vernon’s face contorted with anger.
Donnie turned and threw the gun in the sewer. It clattered into the low hole in the curb and they could hear it land in the dry, hollow space under the street.
“Fuck you, nigga!” Vernon yelled, pointing the nine-millimeter at Donnie, who stood, his face blank.
“No bullets, huh,” Donnie said.
“Why you throw away my cash, fool?” Vernon yelled, and Leon stayed put.
“Donnie,” Darnell said, but he didn’t move either. His knee pressed against the door frame, and he hung in the open space. “Donnie.”
“What you gon do,” Donnie whispered, “shoot me?”
“I should bust a cap off in yo ass right now,” Vernon said. “I ain’t for playin.”
“So?” Donnie said, smiling. “I already got one bullet. You got some more. So?” He spread his hands, palms out, and said, “Come on.”
Leon got out, stood by the hood, and said, “Shut the fuck up, both y’all. Vernon, put the damn gun away or I’ma smoke your ass my own damn self. I ain’t for playin, neither. Get your ass in the car before five-o cruise up here. We in the Ville, nigga. Y’all both gon get us killed.”
Vernon looked down the street, then shook his head. “You trippin,” he said to Donnie, getting back into the Bronco. “Sit your ass up there, cause I don’t want to see your face.”
“No,” Leon said. “You walkin, Donnie. Cause I can’t have you gettin me busted. Later.”
Donnie smiled and started walking down the sidewalk into the Ville. Darnell looked at Leon, turned the handle. Leon shook his head. “Man, talk to your boy,” he said.
“Talk to your boy,” Darnell said, low, so Vernon wouldn’t hear.
Leon gunned the engine and said, “I’m tellin you, you need to get paid, Darnell. The man ready to see you.”
“Yeah, see ya!” Vernon said, leaning out the window. “Glad not to be ya!” The Bronco pulled away, and Darnell followed Donnie down the sidewalk.
TRACKS
THE VILLE STREETS WERE wide and pale, houses set far back on blank squares of lawn with tall palms shooting up in the sky, Charolette’s favorite head-thrown-back palms: the ones whose trunks he’d leaned against to pull Brenda onto his chest for one last kiss, in the dark, away from her father’s front door. Brenda was home now, sure he was with some other woman or at the riverbottom fire. And Donnie was winding around the streets.
He ran down the slope after Donnie, who kept his head down to watch his feet. The sidewalk was white as chalk. He stopped running, stared into a dry dark sewer opening, low and long. Would the baby-nine wash away, if it ever rained? “Donnie!” he said, but Donnie didn’t pause, even when Darnell clamped his hand onto the wide shoulder. “Man, we can’t be stridin around the Ville at night. We got no vehicle, nothin on us, look suspicious as all hell. Come on—I gotta get back.”
Donnie went up Brenda’s parents’ street instead. “Brenda’s mama took care a your leg, huh?” he said, dreamily. “Maybe she can fix up my leg.”
“Man, it ain’t your leg,” Darnell said, passing the New Yorker in the driveway. The light was on in the back, which meant her father was working on the patio. “Been a long time since you came up here with me,” he told Donnie.
James came to the door, holding a schoolbook with his forefinger jammed into the pages to hold his place. “Darnell?” His thin face was all eyes under the baseball cap.
“Hey, James, can you get your mom for me?” Darnell said.
“My sister sick?” James said, working his tongue in his mouth.
“No, man, I just need to ask your mom a favor.” Darnell squinted in the glare of the porch light.
“What’s wrong, Darnell? Brenda ain’t called.” Her brows were drawn together tightly. “Y’all go to Oklahoma Day?”
“Yeah,” Darnell said. “Brenda’s at home.” He heard a faint tapping of metal from the back.
“Etienne fixin on a water heater,” she said, seeing his hesitation. She looked at Donnie. “What’s wrong with you, baby?”
“I know you fixed Darnell’s leg up,” Donnie whispered, staring at her so hard that Darnell heard her breathe in. “My leg ain’t healed.”
Darnell said, “Maybe you could give him some a that tobacco.” He looked at the street. “We gotta go, Donnie.” Behind her, he saw the familiar baby portraits of Brenda and James, hung on the entry wall. Brend
a’s roomy beige cheeks—he thought of the dark-welled circles under her eyes now. She ain’t called her mother to talk about me. I have to call her.
“I can’t do nothin standin here like this,” Mrs. Batiste said, but Donnie’s face slid shapeless, and she said, “Wait.” When she came back, she handed Darnell a string with knots. “Remember?” she said, looking into his eyes. “That one already got prayers on it.” She paused. “I don’t know if they worked for you anyway, Darnell.”
He couldn’t look at her, and he saw Mr. Batiste come out from the back gate, his face moon-gray in the sensor light that snapped on in the driveway. “Hold this,” Darnell told Donnie, giving him the string. “Come on.”
He let Donnie keep up or fall behind, passing the circled glare of each streetlight, the wheels speeding past. No force tonight, he thought. No bangers. Come on. Through the groves, past his father’s street. Can’t go to Pops’ house unless I want to answer some questions. Can’t go home yet.
“Why y’all even make a fire when it’s this damn hot?” he asked Victor when he reached the small blaze in the lot at Jackson Park.
“Old dudes like to cook on it,” Victor said, nodding at the three older men who sat on the couch under the pepper tree, eating something out of cans. The crowd of younger guys around the abandoned porch was thick with liquor and sweet weed-smoke and hollering. Darnell took a sip of the 8-Ball Victor handed him and looked at Donnie, who had slumped into the front seat of someone’s car. Brenda had been slumped like that with Charolette on her chest when he left the park. Donnie sleepin, and how I’ma get his big self out the car and to his house? Brenda ballistic-hot by now. Darnell took another drink and handed the bottle back to Victor. He felt the liquor line his head with warmth, the heavy film sliding behind his eyes. I don’t see how these guys drink every day. Like Pops’ song, this give me a virus called the blues. Ronnie came to sit on the curb and get a taste.
The string, knotted, was clutched tight in Donnie’s fist, resting on his thigh. I hope it works, man, cause I’m about to get my sorry butt in trouble for you. He said, “Keep a eye on Donnie, Victor.”
At the pay phone, he said, “Brenda?”
“What.”
“You take the El Camino home?”
“No. Santa dropped by.”
“Brenda. Donnie freaked, he went off and tried to kill himself. But he’s sleep now, and I gotta stay with him, okay?”
“How he try to kill himself?”
He took a breath. “Vernon had a piece.”
Her voice shot up. “You went with Leon and Vernon again?” Then she whispered. “Then you aren’t coming home, huh? It’s worse than a fire.” He could hear cries in the background.
“Charolette ain’t sleep?”
“She slept too long at the park, while we were waiting for you.” She was silent, then, listening to Charolette cry, too. The howls were regular, high circles, tiny sirens that raced around the bedroom walls.
“Darnell,” she said. “It hurts worse. It’s not just me waiting now, like when you were in the mountains. You have to go or stay, because she knows.”
Darnell looked out at the shadowy figures walking in the park. “You could find somebody better.”
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t look. I would think about you.”
Victor was standing when he walked back. “You see Andretta—remember that fine body from school?” he asked, raising his chin toward the house, and Darnell saw her talking to two men. She smiled—four of her front teeth were missing, and the white bottom teeth were a straight line like a cigarette lying in her mouth.
“She looks bad,” Darnell said.
“She still got a body, but she sprung now, so don’t nobody want that,” Victor said. “And ain’t no problem with her teeth, cause they just get in the way for what she gotta do.”
Darnell watched her leave, go into the alley with the men. Her back was so thin, exposed by her halter top, that her shoulder blades stood out like wings. Darnell lifted the bottle to his mouth, closed his eyes.
Ronnie laughed. “Feel better than the nappy, and you ain’t gotta worry about no babies.”
Victor said, “Darnell like babies. Huh, Daddy? You just check on yours?” He narrowed his eyes. “So she almost one and a half, right? Y’all gotta whup her yet? She a stubborn chick, that’s what your pops say.”
Darnell stared at the asphalt, seeing Charolette’s face wet with tears now. “But she smart, too. I had to pop her hand about dangerous stuff, like the stove and the chain saws, but she ain’t into pain. She don’t do it a second time.” He put his palms over his eyes. But me—I ain’t got no sense.
Victor said suddenly, “You talkin about whuppins. Man, my stepfather used to beat my ass.” Darnell opened his eyes, saw Victor’s pupils glassy-hard. “Beat my ass every day. Nigga beat me for breathin wrong. For chewin too fast. For lookin at him.”
“All kids gotta get whupped,” Ronnie said, frowning nervously.
“Not mine,” Victor said. “Cause I use the jimhat every time, don’t care who the hoochie is. I heard Robin Harris, man—any baby get through the Latex, you could name him Samson. And then he could whup my ass.” He drained the malt liquor and threw the bottle into slivers against the curb. He and Ronnie headed down the street.
Donnie’s breath filled the car, so Darnell kept the door open and let one foot dangle in the gutter. He stared at the small fire, the stacks of scrap lumber piled near the tree. Two fire seasons gone, and I ain’t never gettin called back, he thought. No cash. No insurance. Brenda the one with everything. She could sit around with all the other women, always talking about “triflin brothas ain’t about nothin.” He remembered sitting in the dark yard one night while his father and Roscoe talked about someone who’d driven into a tree. An older man, laid off. Eight kids. Insurance.
I could get me some insurance. I got the .25 in my jacket in the Spider. No—you don’t get money if you do it yourself. Get Vernon to smoke me. Yeah. Icy brotha probably laugh silly and do me in a second. In a shot. He stared at the pepper branches melting dusty into the dark sky. But then I’d be a “known associate of criminal elements,” like they say in the newspaper. Probably wouldn’t get Brenda no cash.
He pushed in the cigarette lighter idly, pulled it out to watch the red circle pulse and fade. He used to love pulling it out on cold mornings for his father to light a cigarette. A baby dot of fire, in a little tube. Fire—that’s a better way. Like in the mountains. I could set a fire and be tryin to put it out. Or the riverbottom. Like a hero. Then Brenda could be right. You want to get burned, huh? she always said. She never saw me in the mountains. You gotta know the fire—like Fricke said. Yeah, like he sayin to somebody else now. Hey, I remember everything Fricke said. Not like Scott. Like the poison oak. If I was doin a fire right now, and a mat of poison oak went up, the smoke would scorch hell outta my lungs and knock me out. And I wouldn’t even feel no flames.
Donnie’s breath shuddered loud in his throat. Darnell walked back to the phone. Brenda said, “H’lo?” in a sleep-deep voice.
Darnell watched the pulsing knot of embers in the vacant lot. No one was near the fire now, and the circle was growing smaller in the pit. “Brenda,” he said, tongue thick.
“Darnell?” she whispered.
“Brenda. What if I don’t come home and some other brotha can take care a you guys? Somebody makin serious ducats, right, and plus you ain’t gotta worry about him. Right?” He held his mouth close to the receiver, smelled thousands of other breaths.
“Darnell,” she said. “Come home now. Or stay away. I still love you, but you the one running.”
“You gon let some other dude beat on my girl?” he whispered, leaning his forehead on the cold metal. “You gon let some other dude touch you?” He heard her breathe in sharp, and he said, “You ain’t gotta wait.” He hung up.
The fire was dead-gray now, the sky lower, dropping late night. The car’s windshield was silver-webbed, and Donnie’s eye
s opened when Darnell pushed his shoulder hard. “Yeah, brotha, near bout midnight, time for you to go home. Wake up your brain, man. You acted a fool.”
Donnie stared at the ceiling, blinking, silent. He didn’t lift the hand that clutched the string. Darnell sucked his teeth impatiently. “Here, man. Lemme show you.”
The string was warm, damp when he took it from the fingers. Donnie watched as Darnell tied it around his ankle. The dark skin was ashy at the anklebone, above Donnie’s flip-flops. “It got prayers on it,” he told Donnie. “And the gun got bodies on it. Make up your own damn mind, okay?”
Donnie’s mouth trembled loose. “Thanks, D.,” he said. “Thanks, brotha.”
He walked to Picasso Street alone, opened the door of the Spider to get his jacket. A window creaked at the sideyard, and he froze, but then he heard nothing else.
Through Treetown, he kept striding fast, listening for booming or sirens. He heard footsteps a few times, but when he turned around, he didn’t see anything. He’d left Donnie sitting in the car. Walking faster, he found a narrow path before the arroyo, and he slid down the riverbottom embankment. No concrete here, just the steep slope of loose dirt and dry straw-stemmed wild oats packed thick under his boots. At the bottom, he sat on a downed trunk, feeling the tingle of heat across his shoulders in the cool night air. Not since the mountains, he thought. I’m never out at night workin now. Except with Leon—that ain’t workin, that’s just drivin.
I could get to work right now. Go off into that big stand of arundo cane, start a little conflagration, and be the first one already workin hard when the crew gets here. Cane go up in a wall. He heard coyotes howling in the distance, heard the answering barks of dogs close by, and he stiffened. Wild dogs? Still, he listened to crackling in the cane, in the vines, but it was light bird rustles. Maybe rats running in the palm fronds overhead. Then he heard heavier steps, moving branches aside, coming down the path that led from the arroyo.
The steps were slow—they stopped, began again cautiously, and Darnell felt the fan of heat flush his moist back. He reached into the jacket pocket and felt the gun, pulled it out slow, his movements silent on the crumbling wood where he sat. The gun felt so small in his hand, not an ax or shovel or hose, and he trembled. Don’t trip on that shit. The squared-off barrel nudged sharp at his knuckle when he gripped it, cupped the hand and gun in his other hand, pushed it into the air in front of him.
Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights Page 27