This Darkness Got To Give

by Dave Housley

  Traffic ground to stop-and-go and he looked over at the car next to him—three hippie girls who couldn’t have been much older than eighteen. They were laughing and nodding along, the head bob somewhere between a dance and a confirmation. Pete waved, attempted a version of the same nod, lifted his hand in a greeting. The girl behind the wheel lowered her window. She looked straight ahead and Pete realized that she was edging closer to his lane. “Hey, man,” she shouted through the window.

  “Hey!” Pete said.

  “You got tickets?” she said. “Extras?”

  They had counted on this scenario, but not until he actually got to the show. “Look around,” Nutter had counseled. “Find the Deadheadiest Deadhead you can. Somebody who looks like they haven’t paid a bill in years. That’s who you want to connect with.”

  “We need a miracle, man,” the girl said. She reached into the back seat, then turned forward and took a drag from a joint. Pete knew this was coming, too, but the juxtaposition—while driving?—still threw him for a loop. She smiled. She was pretty, with long chestnut hair and eyes that he guessed were sleepy when she wasn’t high, too. Pete realized how long it had been since he’d even talked with a woman. He wondered what Padma was up to right now, what she would think if she could see him.

  “I have three tickets,” Pete said. “Two extras if you want them.”

  “Sweet!” the girl shouted.

  “Sweet,” Pete said. The word felt foreign but nice in his mouth, like he was trying out a greeting in a foreign tongue.

  “I’m Sunny,” the girl said. “Follow us.”

  Traffic was picking up and he could see the stadium, a concrete hulk in the distance. He watched as the girl pulled in front of him and they made their way along with thousands of other cars. Sweet. He was now the kind of person who said “sweet!” in regular conversation, in moving cars, on the way to a Grateful Dead show. It seemed like a pretty good start.

  Chapter 18

  July 2, 1995. Outside Huntington, WV.

  Cain moved aside the van’s heavy curtains and peeked out. Cornfields rolling gently into the distance, a half-moon framed against the blackening sky. Parking the van here, even on such an isolated road, behind a stand of trees, had been a stupid risk. He couldn’t run like this anymore, floating around like a teenager who had just taken his first mushrooms, lurching from place to place, leaving bodies in his wake, all of it without so much as a line on a map to follow.

  Everything—survival, freedom, even ending it all, if that’s what he decided to do—depended on timing, on having a plan and seeing it through, even if that plan was no more specific than what parking lot he would be sleeping in and which city he was headed toward next.

  He had to get back on tour. It was the only place where he could make some kind of life, where he could be what he was now without giving up entirely what he had worked so hard to become after the change.

  He opened the door and stepped outside. It was warm, with a light breeze that carried smells of livestock and manure. Cows. So this was West Virginia.

  The tingling had started in his fingers by now. It had been two days. Like clockwork. The cramps were just starting in his stomach, a thin line of hunger, a twist that he knew would become a throb and then what he could only think of as a paralysis. His mind had been locked on the pain, desperately and futilely searching for any way toward release, focusing just on the pain, the feeling of it growing and gaining purchase on his body, one cell at a time. All the while, his body had been moving, lurching, propelling itself forward toward that poor clerk. He was like a zombie, a dumb creature overtaken by hunger, its mind in one place while its body moved steadily toward whatever it could do to sate the hunger. He had been no more in charge of his body than a monarch flapping toward Mexico.

  Not this time. He started toward the cornfields and followed the scent of the cows. This was what he would be eating if he was registered anyway, some combination of cow and synthetic human blood and whatever else they put in there to reduce—how did they did say it?—“biological urges or other socially inappropriate behaviors.”

  He followed the cornfield over a ridge and then he could see them, ten or fifteen cows standing along a small creek that ran from a stand of woods all the way up to a farmhouse that stood dark against the mountains. The house was maybe a half mile away and he could see no lights, could hear no noise, no other sounds of activity. He had learned to trust his senses and they gave him no pause other than the steady twist of the cramps in his stomach, the tingle that was moving up his forearms, as if he’d hit his funny bone and it simply wouldn’t stop.

  The cows stood, flicked their eyes back and forth, hustled away from the creek as he made his approach. He was, he remembered again, an animal, a hunter. There was a place for them in a natural ecosystem, some said, although in order for it to make sense, you had to take humans out of the top rung. In order for it to make sense, you had to imagine a world where humans, or at least traditional ethics, didn’t really exist at all.

  The pain twisted in his gut and started to throb up his spine. Again, he felt as if his body was taking over, moving quickly now toward an ancient cow with black and white markings, a huge gut that nearly scraped on the ground as she struggled to follow the rest of the herd. They were making noise now and a light went on in the farmhouse. Cain’s body stopped the cow with a bite, and he let go while the warm blood exploded into his mouth, while he felt every cell retreat, control come back into his brain. A gunshot went off and he sucked harder. He heard a motor start up, let the cow drop onto the ground with a thunk, and slipped into the forest. He registered the movement of his body, quiet and efficient, the satisfying feeling of vaulting over logs and between trees, making his way through the woods and then doubling back toward the van. He was vaguely aware of not thinking, the freedom of his mind momentarily turning itself off, allowing instinct to take over.

  He neared the place where he had parked. He slowed. Noise. He crept closer, his mind awakening from whatever had happened when he had taken flight. Active meditation? Instinct?

  He wanted to think about this more but there was no time. A three-wheeler was sputtering behind the van, its headlight illuminating the license plate. A man, older, with a baseball hat, sweatpants, and mud boots, was writing in a notebook, his head moving back and forth between the paper and the license plate. Cain walked quietly, but quickly. The man was muttering to himself, tucking the notebook into his breast pocket. He smelled of smoke and whiskey. Cain bit into his neck and yanked him off the three-wheeler. They landed on the ground and he drank.

  Chapter 19

  July 3, 1995. Noblesville, IN. Deer Creek Amphitheater.

  The first thing he registered was the heat. It was hot. Way too hot. He was sticky, sweaty. Need to turn the heat down, he thought. Open some windows. He had to go to the bathroom. He would relieve his bladder, start the coffee maker, turn down the heat, and hit the bed for another hour or so of sleep. He wondered what time it was. A few short months ago, he thought, he would be heading to Special Readings, listening to Padma talk about her latest date or the new ridiculous thing her sister had said.

  He listened for the chapel bells, the scrape and mutter of students moving toward eight o’ clock classes. Outside, he heard birds chirping, car doors opening, groggy small talk. Car doors? He opened his eyes. A row of skeletons dancing in a line stared back at him, each of them doffing a top hat, holding a cane out to the side. They were close, too close. A few feet away. He turned onto his side and realized that he was sleeping in a van or a camper, in a makeshift loft. He smelled smoke and coffee. Marijuana.

  He was at the Grateful Dead concert. Indiana. He was an undercover agent for the Department of Defense: Invasive Species Division. School was a long way away.

  He remembered the girls, hanging out with them before the show, then the long migration into the concert itself. Inside, it was much like outside, a self-regulating free zone where laws seemed to no longer apply, w
here bikers and grizzled hippies shared pipes or pills or cotton candy with teenagers and middle-aged guys alike, where children toddled among passed out fraternity boys and groups of young ladies in billowing hippie dresses gathered near the exits to spin like dust devils along with the chugging, psychedelic country music.

  The girl, Sunny, had promised to be his tour guide. “Your Julie McCoy,” she said, referencing a show he hadn’t seen for years, as she packed a bowl in broad daylight soon after settling up for his extra tickets. Nutter had been right. The tickets were all he needed to make his way in this world—they served as a reference, introduction, and legal tender. He thought about the envelope full of tickets locked in his glove compartment: Deer Creek, Riverport Amphitheatre, Soldier Field. Four tickets to each show, plus his new salary and the per diem he would never be able to spend out here on the road, and he was in pretty good shape.

  He felt something on his crotch, something pushing up under the mattress, slowly. He realized how badly he had to go to the bathroom. But where was the bathroom? And what had happened last night after the show? Whatever was pushing up from the mattress pushed again, quicker this time, a bump up and down.

  They had met up with some of Sunny’s friends—older people, dirtier, people who looked like they’d been on tour for at least the duration of this one, and some of them, maybe, for years. They had hung out, drinking beers, the rest of them smoking cigarettes, Pete accepting the occasional joint or bowl, something Nutter had told him he would absolutely have to do if he was going to pass as even a marginal Deadhead. And then he’d done something they’d told him to never do under any circumstances: he’d taken a pill.

  He was drunk. High. But that wasn’t all. He knew, even this morning, that he was possibly still tripping on whatever he’d swallowed. His training told him it could have been anything from cat tranquilizer to pure acid to sugar pills, or anything in between. He took that pill not because he was weak or wasted. He’d taken it because finally, for once in his life, for the first time he could remember, he actually felt like he fit in.

  The foot pushed again at his crotch, bounced him up and down twice, and he leaned over. On the bottom bunk, the girl, Sunny, smiled back at him. “Good morning, sleepy,” she said. “You ready to go and get that stuff?”

  Chapter 20

  July 4, 1995. Outside Terra Haute, IN.

  They were at a rest stop. Where, Pete had no idea. Somewhere off Route 70. He accepted the girl’s offer of a toothbrush—fresh in the wrapper, produced from the glove compartment—and followed her toward the bathrooms. It was morning, but not very early. Around them, a few other Deadheads were stirring, meandering toward the bathrooms or sneaking into the woods. By the dog walk area, a couple changed a baby on a beach blanket, two small pugs wrestling nearby, identifiable as Deadhead dogs only by their tie-dyed bandanas. In the middle of the heads, normal people—families and truckers, men and women in suits and ties—bustled in and out, got their business done, bought a soda or grabbed a map, and hustled back to their cars. Pete had finished early and was waiting for the girl, Sunny, looking at a map of the state of Indiana.

  “Yeah,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’re in Indiana. That was a thing you were asking a lot last night.”

  “Indiana,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Indiana before.”

  “Mentioned that, too,” she said, a tease in her voice.

  “I…” he started, but wasn’t quite sure what to say. “What exactly…”

  She let out a belly laugh. “Yeah, I was waiting for that,” she said.

  “I don’t usually…” he said.

  Another belly laugh. A woman with three small children lifted sunglasses off her eyes and glared, but Sunny didn’t seem to notice.

  “You were pretty fucked up,” she said.

  The woman gasped, covered the ears of the youngest child. “Some people,” she said, and hustled the family back out toward the parking lot.

  “You didn’t notice that?” Pete said. He felt out of place in his tie-dye and necklaces. He wanted a shower, a cup of coffee, the Washington Post, and a cinnamon Pop-Tart.

  “That bitch? How could I not notice that, man?” the girl said. She traced the map from “you are here” east, her finger trailing back toward Ohio. “I notice when people say things like that,” she said. “But I’m trying not to care. You know?”

  Pete nodded. He watched a young guy, only a few years older than him, walk out of the bathroom tightening his tie. I’m at work, he reminded himself. I have a job. A really well-paying, important job. That guy, suit and tie guy, is probably selling some kind of pharmaceuticals, office supplies. I’m in the front lines of the war on…what did they call it…invasive species.

  “You know?” the girl said. “You told me you were a gentleman last night. Certainly acted like you were concerned for my fragile chastity.”

  His mind was blank. “What?” he said.

  “Everybody was so fucked up,” she said. “I still can’t believe they cancelled a show. That, like, never ever happens.”

  “Did you hear anything about why?” Pete said. “I mean, I heard about some crazy stuff…”

  “Gate crashers,” she said. “They sent out a letter. Don’t you remember reading that last night? ‘This Darkness Got to Give,’ it said.”

  Pete looked at the map. They were a long way from Chandler University, a long way from everything he had known.

  “This darkness got to give,” he said.

  “A little dramatic but I get it,” Sunny said. She fumbled in her purse. “From that one song, you know? New speedway or whatever.” She slid a dollar into the snack machine, punched some numbers, and a cinnamon Pop-Tart fell with a thunk. She handed it to him. “Let’s get going,” she said.

  “Where are we going?” Pete said. He opened the Pop-Tart, handed one to her, took a bite of the other. There were not many things better than the first bite of a cinnamon Pop-Tart and he realized with a jolt that he was starving.

  “We’re going to make that deal,” she said. “Unless you got cold feet?”

  “Deal?” he said. He was wondering how many Pop-Tarts they had in that machine, if it would look crazy if he bought them all.

  “Your tickets for my friend’s doses,” she said. “Wow. You really were fucked-up last night, weren’t you?”

  Chapter 21

  July 3, 1995. Aberdeen, MD.

  Jenkins waved his badge at the guard—another kid, but this one with a military bearing that he could tell was real—and gave him Tibor’s name. “How long you expect to be in there, sir?” the guard said. He tapped something into his computer.

  “An hour. Maybe just a half hour,” Jenkins said.

  “It true he used to be a cop?” the guard said.

  Jenkins searched his face, but there was nothing there but one professional asking a question of another. “Yeah,” he said. “My partner, for a while there.”

  The guard nodded, and Jenkins could see him mentally checking some box. So the stories about the old guy in unit 8B were true? He pressed a button and the gate opened.

  The door was sitting open when Jenkins got to the apartment, the guard outside looking left to right with what Jenkins knew was precision and purpose. Training. “You Jenkins?” he said.

  Jenkins held out his badge and a twenty. “Take a walk?” he said.

  “I’ll have to remain outside, sir,” the guard said. He was short and stocky, with a nose that had been broken at least once and an eyebrow that formed a single line across his head.

  “Just two pros talking,” Jenkins said. “I know you’ll stay outside but it…it doesn’t feel quite right to me.”

  “Recognized,” the guard said, “but I’m not authorized to leave visitors alone with residents.”

  Jenkins gave him his cop look, the one that cut through the bullshit. It was a look he’d perfected under Tibor’s guidance and one that he knew saved him hours, maybe days, worth of time each year
. It was a look that said, “We both know this is bullshit, so let’s get to it and move on with our lives.”

  The guard stood his ground silently, and Jenkins pocketed the twenty, went inside. The old man was back in his chair, his blanket over his legs, the Washington Post crossword sitting on the side table. The case files were spread out on the dining room table, each victim in a row, chronological order. He’d placed a line of coffee mugs between the last few and those that had preceded them.

  “You were right,” Tibor said. “These last few, they don’t connect. Something happened.”

  “He’s sick. I think he…she…whatever. Something is wrong with it.”

  “It. Fuck you,” Tibor said, but he kept his attention on the table. He took a sip of tea. “We don’t get sick,” he said.

  “Never?” Jenkins said. “Ever?” He used the tone he hadn’t employed for years, the one that asked for the inside scoop. It was the reason the feds had paired him up with Tibor to begin with—to catch a predator, you had to understand the predator, and nobody understood either side better than a ninety-five-year-old vampire who used to be a cop.

  Tibor took his tea and sat down. He glanced over the crossword. Jenkins noticed the smell in the apartment—clean, antiseptic, a little medicinal. It smelled more like a hospital in there than it didn’t.