Scared of the Dark

by Easton Vaughn

  “I don’t like personal questions. Anything you were to ask me would probably ruin the mood of the moment.”

  “There is no mood of the moment,” Deborah said. “Both of us are standing here hiding from our ghosts.”

  “I love your accent,” he said, not wanting to enter into any conversation about ghosts. He had too many dogging his every move.

  “What?”

  “Your accent,” he said again.

  She shook her head. “You’re mistaken. Lost whatever accent I might have had a long time ago.”

  Merritt cocked an eyebrow. “You’re Trini, correct?”

  Surprise lit up Deborah’s eyes. “I grew up in Chaguanas, eleven miles south of Port of Spain. How could you possibly know I was Trini?”

  “Not hard to figure out. You still have a lilt,” Merritt said. “Your “both” sounds like “boat.” I don’t hear the accent with every word you say, but it’s music when it creeps in.”

  “I’ve completely forgotten the personal question I wanted to ask,” Deborah said. “That was your intention, wasn’t it?”

  “She was having an affair,” Merritt offered.

  “What?”

  “I imagine you wanted to know about my ex-wife.”

  “How could you possibly know I was going to ask you about that?” Deborah’s mouth gaped open. “You’re scaring me here.”

  “Don’t read into it. Just a hunch.”

  Deborah hesitated, then nodded. “How did you find out about it?”

  Merritt exhaled, shook his head, frowned. It would be best to move this conversation in a completely different direction, but something about Deborah set him at ease, made him drop the wall he’d built around himself. The lilt, maybe. “The guy sent a letter to my job site,” he said, starting slowly. “I was sitting and eating my brown bag lunch, covered in sawdust and sweat, wishing there was something to erase the constant thoughts in my head of a seize in Kunduz—the dust, the blood, the children. The foreman came over with a white envelope. Nothing written on the front except for my name.” Merritt laughed sadly. “Be careful what you wish for. Right? That letter erased any thoughts I’d been having about Kunduz, that’s for sure.”

  “What was the letter?”

  “From the man my wife was creeping with,” he said. “Detailed how good she tasted to him and his favorite hole of hers to explore. He must’ve been left with a poopy diaper one too many times as a baby, developed some kind of anal fixation. That’s all I’ll say on that.”

  Deborah groped for something poignant. Came up with, “That’s rough.”

  Merritt nodded. “Yeah.”

  “What did your wife have to say for herself?”

  He looked over at Deborah. “Knew I shouldn’t have started this with you.”

  “Too late to turn back.”

  He sighed. “She’d suffered alone while I was in the desert. Raising our daughter by herself, wondering if she’d get a call that my truck had driven over what looked like an empty milk carton, but was actually a rigged improvised explosive device. Claimed she’d been having vivid dreams about helicopters. She couldn’t get the sound of the rotors out of her head. In one, they lowered the chopper close to the ground and dumped my body out.” He paused and licked his lips. “But she said reality was worse than the dreams for her once I actually came back. She wouldn’t mind me doing another tour.”

  “Ouch.”

  “The boyfriend was in the service, too. I should’ve known. My wife didn’t know an IED from an IUD.”

  “Double ouch.”

  “She wanted it to work out with us, though,” he said. “Claimed her boyfriend was lashing out with the letter because she’d broken it off with him. She didn’t want him. She wanted us, our family.”

  “You believed her?”

  He shrugged. “I started questioning everything. Every second that wasn’t accounted for…I wondered. Started looking more closely at our daughter. Was her coloring off? Did she have my eyes? My nose? Any of my features? Checked through the dirty laundry so I could sniff the crotch of my wife’s panties.” He shook his head. “Should have been sniffing the seat of them instead, considering how her boyfriend liked to roll.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Needless to say, they didn’t stop their thing. When I found out for the second time I went ahead and divorced her.”

  “But still crept over every now and then?”

  Merritt shook his head. “I’m an emotional dude, I admit it. I couldn’t have handled that.”

  “But?”

  “She came begging, talking about how sorry she was for wrecking our family. Came up with some foolishness about us getting remarried. Used my daughter to tug at my heart, I guess you could say. I wasn’t able to do the marriage thing again, but I moved back in.”

  Deborah snickered and shook her head. “Nice happy ending.”

  “To her credit the next guy didn’t come along right away. I think she waited a month after I moved back.”

  “Jesus.”

  Merritt nodded. “Not a letter writer, this second guy. No. He was a reader. I pretended I was going to work and followed my ex-wife to the library. Watched her give head to this guy back by the Large Text Mysteries. I nearly lost my mind.”

  Deborah gave him a look.

  “I suppose nearly isn’t fitting,” he admitted.

  “We’re perfect for each other,” she said. “You hate women, and I hate men.”

  Merritt shook his head. “You’re wrong on that one.”

  “You don’t hate women?”

  “No,” he said. “I hate everyone.”

  She smiled and nodded toward the sand. “Even better. Hand me that bottle of Cutty.”

  Merritt’s face broke into a crooked smile as he bent for the bottle. He shook his head and uncapped the Cutty Sark, pressed the opening to Deborah’s lips. “Salud!”

  She took a big swallow, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I have a confession to make. I didn’t have the best of intentions when I decided to come watch the sunrise with you. I was feeling angry and discarded and depressed, and I thought about you and your invitations and thought you might be the means to an end.”

  Merritt nodded. “Men and women have been using each other since the first Granny Smith tree.”

  “I feel worse now,” she whispered. “You opened up about some very personal pain. I didn’t deserve that.”

  “I’m a big girl,” he said, smiling. “Buffy the vampire slayer, remember?”

  “You still want me to make that up to you?” she asked.

  “I do believe the Cutty Sark is working,” he said.

  “Can you make me feel good, James?”

  “The sun makin’ hot,” he said, meaning the atmosphere and not the actual sun.

  Deborah’s smile made it all the way to her eyes. “You’re not supposed to know that phrase. You’re not Trini.”

  “Knocked around with a girl that was. She loved the cockstand.”

  Cockstand. Erect penis.

  “Mmm.”

  “You’re gonna moan me right out of my shorts, girl.”

  “Jeez-an-ages,” Deborah said, sighing, her tongue thick with alcohol and Trini-speak. “We cast a long eye on what we cyah have.”

  “For sure,” Merritt said. “From the first time I saw you wiggling that bamsee when you walked, I wanted what I couldn’t have.”

  “Jus’ so?”

  Raw animal heat hung in the air like haze. How long had it been since Merritt had been with a woman? He looked at Deborah, dark eyes and soft skin, shorts riding up her thighs, shirt tight against the swell of her breasts.

  “Can we lie in your tent?” she asked.

  He moved her to his bed—a pile of blankets he’d taken from Candace’s tent—and eased Deborah down on them without a word. It started wordlessly as well. Merritt gripped her right ankle and raised the leg, slipped her toes in his mouth. Deborah’s eyes closed and a soft moan escaped her lips. Merritt wor
ked his way from the foot up the back of her leg, licking the calves and behind her knee, feeling her shudder as he lingered there.

  She raised her hips so he could slide off her shorts.

  Her pubis was shaved clean.

  He began suckling her, her juices dribbling from the corners of his mouth and down to his chin. She wiggled, trying to escape, but he chased her with his tongue.

  “Yuh fadda head,” she screamed out, the accent, the words, inspiring him all the more.

  He entered her unsheathed. Pushed into her wetness with a ferocity that was extreme, even for him. In her warmth all thought dissipated—his bloody hands from last night, the white boy’s tortured screams, all of it left. His ex-wife’s affairs. The daughter that was lost to him. All of those thoughts gone.

  “Jeez-an-ages.”

  Merritt pushed deeper, then raised her legs, rested an ankle on each of his shoulders, cupped his hands under her butt. Push. Push. Push.

  She gasped with pleasure.

  He growled as the heat started at his toes and worked its way up. A deeper growl as his life seed exploded into Deborah.

  He fell away, breathing heavily.

  She lay there for a moment, catching her own breath, then sat up to watch the sky once again.

  “It’s been a while for me,” Merritt said.

  “Like riding a bike,” she said softly, “I suppose.”

  “I would ask how’d I do,” he said. “But that’s like asking a personal question. Probably best not to get an answer.”

  “Well, I wasn’t yelling because you were hurting me,” she told him.

  Merritt smiled. “That’s nice to know. Thought you might’ve caught a cramp in your leg or something.”

  “It’s probably pointless, but I’m feeling victorious right now.”

  “I can relate,” Merritt said, something dark and heavy in his voice.

  “Did you…did you harm the men who were with your wife as well?”

  “Another personal question. Still haven’t learned, have you?”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She let out a breath. “You must have some questions for me? It’s only fair I answer a few.”

  “Thought we just decided that wasn’t a good idea?”

  “Let’s make this a morning of bad ideas,” she said, smiling weakly. “Ask me a question.”

  “You’re regretting this already?”

  She shrugged. “The calibration on my moral compass has been off for some time. Mama would pass me some licks if she knew I was involved with a married man.”

  “And then sleeping with another man to get back at him,” Merritt added.

  Deborah nodded. “Yup. This is definitely one of the crazier things I’ve done.”

  “Are we gonna be crazy ever again?”

  “You see those flying monkeys in the sky?” she asked, smiling. “Or is it just me?”

  Merritt looked up, held his own smile. “You’re crazy, woman. The monkeys aren’t the ones flying, they’re riding on the backs of those winged sheep.”

  She looked at him, touched a hand to his bare chest. “Thank you for this.”

  “We have to stick together,” he said. “No man, or woman, is an island unto himself.”

  “You seem less tense than when I arrived.”

  Merritt nodded.

  “Would you like to talk about the neutral thoughts you were having earlier?” she asked. “I’m a good listener, among other things.”

  “I pushed a little too hard last night,” he admitted. “I do that from time to time.”

  “The vampire you slayed?”

  He looked at her, but didn’t speak.

  “I heard he escaped,” she said, “but that you brought him back. Heard he scalded Sheldon pretty bad. Heard he killed Candace and was going to leave her to die on the side of the road.”

  He nodded, still said nothing.

  “Sounds like he had whatever he got coming to him,” she said.

  Another nod from Merritt.

  Deborah pursed her lips. “Look, Shepherd has built something here, and it’s remarkable. Remarkable doesn’t mean perfect, mind you, but it’s enough to protect.”

  He nodded once again. “What exactly have you told Noah about his illustrious father?”

  “I don’t know what you think you know. I haven’t even said who Noah’s father is.”

  “I—”

  “Yes,” she said. “You caught me creeping with Shepherd. I’m guilty of that. And it shames me. But you’re making a big leap to assume Noah is Shepherd’s child. I had my boy before I even came here.”

  “You done?”

  “I resent what you were suggesting, is all.”

  Merritt said, “Shepherd confessed it to me.”

  That short-circuited whatever anger she was prepared to show.

  “Noah’s like most everyone on this island,” she said after a long stretch of silence. “He’s young, but he idolizes Shepherd. The man has an appeal about him that’s hard to explain. It’s impossible to avoid his charms. He’s larger than life. I figured it would be selfish of me to ruin that for my son. So I haven’t told Noah anything. I know he’ll ask one day. I’m not sure what I’ll tell him then either. He knows about Shepherd and Lemon. What will he think of me?”

  “Their marriage is hardly legal.”

  “That’s the justification I’ve given myself. It doesn’t make any of this easier, though, let me tell you.”

  “Your son’s in good hands,” Merritt said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “The children are our future,” she said.

  “You actually think about the future?”

  She smiled, nodded. “I do. As do you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re making a move,” she said, fixing her eyes on him. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it until now. You’re too ambitious to be happy just being Shepherd’s right-hand man. And he trusts you like family. More than I had realized. I can’t believe he told you about Noah.”

  “We’d been drinking. It was the alcohol talking. You know Shepherd can’t handle the stuff anymore.”

  “I know. And you’re planning to take this away from him,” Deborah said. It wasn’t a question.

  Merritt said nothing.

  She gripped his arm. “It’s okay, James. I won’t mention what I know to a soul. I’m riding with you to the end. But I want you to remember that when everything goes down. I was meant to be First Lady of our lil’ paradise here. By hook or by crook.”

  “You’re crazy, woman.”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The fatigue of a sleepless night was beginning to catch up with him—both his concentration and vision were starting to tilt and whirl. The air was cool on his face, the sun not quite bright enough to make him squint his eyes. His gums were sore from all of the grinding he’d been doing with his teeth. Much of the skin on his arms and face was burning hot like a ripe red pobleno pepper. His mama had cooked with them, and on good days he could still taste their spicy flavor on his tongue.

  “This’ll settle you,” Miss Amelia said, her gnarled fingers grasping a paddle-shaped bottle of amber whiskey.

  “Nuh, uh,” Sheldon said, shaking his head. He wasn’t about to articulate the fear that whiskey inspired in him. Wasn’t about to tell her of the days after his daddy had gone bad. Sitting by the window of their cramped apartment, dressed in the same dirty jeans and white T-shirt stained yellow at the armpits. Sipping from a brown paper bag wrapped tight around a bottle of whiskey, and changing for the worse each time he brought the opening to his lips.

  “It’ll help wit’ the pain,” Miss Amelia said.

  Again, Sheldon shook his head. “I’ll manage it without that stuff. Nuh, uh. Nuh, uh.”

  He remembered the strange anger that bobbed to the surface in his daddy once he started drinking. His daddy would move from the window and find Eon, their German Shepherd and Golden retriever mutt, in her usual spot
just inside the kitchen. He’d kick her in the ribs, laughing as she squealed and scrabbled for purchase on the cracked linoleum. One time he made his way to the sink, recklessly emptying it of dishes, plates busting to slivers on the floor, and pulled out his penis while Sheldon and his little sister watched with horror from the doorway. His daddy took aim at the gray-black scuff marks in the white sink, drilling the marks with urine that smelled like stale beer sweat. Afterward, he grabbed a knife from a drawer and settled down at the kitchen table and whimpered and stabbed at the air. This was all after Mama had died, and Sheldon would wonder, despite not being a great thinker, if his father’s strange anger was somehow connected to her absence.

  “Tryin’ to help you, chile,” Miss Amelia said, breaking his thoughts.

  “My skin feels cool now,” he replied. “Thank you. My skin feels cool now.”

  They were by the sheds, Sheldon lying shirtless on a makeshift hammock that he’d fashioned out of several bed sheets and tied between two willow trees. Miss Amelia hovered above him, propped up by a thick but twisted branch she used as a cane. Earlier, she’d broken an aloe vera stem in half and treated his burns with the gel. She turned, thinking he couldn’t see her, took a swig of the whiskey herself and dropped the bottle in the pocket of her loose-fitting house dress.

  Sheldon didn’t call her out on it. “Why’d that man throw hot water on me?” he asked. “Why’d he do that?”

  Miss Amelia wiped at her mouth and shook her head. “James from the Bible says that wisdom from heaven is first of all pure,” she said. “Then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. The man that hurt you is none of those things. He’s the devil, chile.”

  “He seemed nice.”

  “A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” she said, “just as Merritt has been telling us.”

  Sheldon frowned. “I didn’t do nothing to him. I was trying to help him. I was trying to help him.”

  “The devil can’t be helped, chile.”

  “Mr. Merritt gonna see to it they kill him?”

  “No point in worryin’ your mind ‘bout that.”

  “They done that before?” he asked. “They killed someone had the devil in them?”

  “Time for me to make my way back,” Miss Amelia said, struggling to turn. Sheldon jumped up from the hammock and took her frail arm and helped right her course.