Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

  “How long you been sitting there?” he asked, pushing himself up out of his slouch.

  She checked her Rolex. At least something hadn’t changed. “A half-hour or so.”

  And now the question he dreaded. “Your daughter?”

  Even in the waning light he could see the tears brim in her eyes. “I don’t know who I was fooling, Caleb. You knew all along what I’d find, didn’t you?”

  He lowered his head. “You had to try. I kept hoping you’d beat the odds.”

  She drew her head back sharply, sniffed. “No. Not me.” Diane ran a hand through her hair, then wiped it on her jeans. “Denver. What a godforsaken place that is now. I saw them eating dogs before I left.” She pulled a tissue from a pocket and blew her nose, now red against the pale of her cheeks. “I bet you think it was just an empty house I walked in on, don’t you? Well, not exactly. I found this envelope on the kitchen table with my name on the outside. My ex’s handwriting. Wanna hear it?”

  “Diane, you don’t hafta do this.”

  “Yeah, I do.” She wore an oversized Broncos jacket over a cableknit sweater, and from a breast pocket she pulled out a paper whose creases looked well worn. “‘Congratulations,’ it says here at the top. ‘If you’ve managed to come all this way to find and read this, you’re doing better than I could ever manage.’

  “‘Diane, believe me when I tell you I tried calling a million times but couldn’t get through. I’ve sent letters. I don’t know if you’re still alive, but I write this on the chance you are. And if you are, I know you’ve been making the same futile attempts to reach me. Ironic, isn’t it? We spent the last three years of marriage in the same house without communicating, and now that we’re finally trying again, the world won’t let us.’

  “‘But enough of that. Tracey died two days ago, in the early afternoon. Today’s a Friday, July thirtieth, so that would’ve been Wednesday. It happened very peacefully, if that’s any consolation at all. I imagine it isn’t. She kept asking for you, and I kept telling her you were on your way. What else could I tell her? And now I don’t feel so good myself. Nobody seems to get any better from this, but I don’t care anymore.’

  “‘I suppose all I want to say now is that despite how things ended between us, we had some very happy years. Since I can’t say it in person and convince you I mean it, you’ll have to take my word for it. And thank you, Diane. Love can change, that’s true, but I don’t believe it ever truly departs. Not the way we left it. So in that sense, I can still say that I love you. Good-bye, Ray.’”

  Diane sat calm and composed for a moment, then carefully folded the paper and slipped it back into her pocket. “That’s it,” she said hoarsely.

  Caleb sat every bit as still. He’d lost a child, a spouse…but he felt no more adequate to say anything than if he were still part of one big, happy family.

  Diane stood, arms limp at her sides, and she sank into the couch beside him. Around them others moved, other conversations murmured, dishes for the evening’s meal clinked. Someone in the shadows laughed.

  “I spent weeks in that house,” she finally said. “I lost fifteen pounds. But I couldn’t leave yet. I had to go through everything of Tracey’s again, and again, and again. Sleep in her bed. Look at her pictures. Read her books. Smell her clothes. You can forget everything but a smell, you know that?”

  Caleb reached an arm around her and drew her tightly against him. She placed a hand on his stomach, and soon he felt the warm wetness of tears against his shoulder. Diane quivered with the effort to keep it under control and gave up.

  “I’ve needed a hug for so long,” she said, voice breaking.

  Caleb tried his best to deliver.

  7

  A haze of smoke drifted about the high ceiling, twining around the steel rafters. Fires burned in a dozen barrels scattered around the gymnasium. Bleachers and folding seats were, for the most part, filled on the lower level. The nosebleed section was empty. Crowd sounds echoed and rolled, unheard here for many months. The last time had been for a high school basketball game. Tonight they were here to watch struggles of life and death.

  The gym floor remained open and uncluttered, firelight reflecting a mellow orange in its varnished shine. The floor was recessed between two low walls that ran the length of both sides, the railings wrapped with barbed wire. At one end sat a stage, similarly blocked off. At the other end, a sheer wall rose out of the floor, home to a silent scoreboard. All the exits from the floor down to the locker rooms had been blocked with heavy wooden barricades…all but one.

  One way in, one way out. Simple. Travis’s idea. Peter Solomon’s concept. The sport of heathen kings.

  “Who’s he fighting tonight?” Hagar asked. He and Travis and Solomon and a few others were in the first couple rows of folding seats at center court. The wired railing ran directly before them. “You said it was a surprise.”

  Travis grinned, reaching into the cooler beside him for a fresh beer. Foam dribbled down his chin. “It’s a cop, big son of a bitch. Got a head like a cinderblock. Diamond got busted by him once, and recognized him one day last week, told me about him. So we recruited him for tonight.”

  Hagar nodded and rubbed his woolly chin. “Take some convincing, did he?”

  “He’s still not won over on the idea.” Travis pointed out to the center circle on the gym floor. “But once he gets out there, he’ll play along.”

  The crowd’s murmur erupted into a roaring cheer when Pit Bull stepped from the locker room doorway onto the floor and took center court. He raised his arms aloft, thick muscles rippling along his sides. One hand clenched a tapered club, the thick end tipped with a heavy steel rattrap, its serrated jaws open and ready to spring. Pit Bull was shirtless and wore his ever-present collar, along with leather motorcycle pants and steel-toed boots. His focus was maniacal in its intensity, and his eyes sought out Travis.

  “For you, Travis!” he shouted, barely able to make himself heard. “All for you!”

  Diamond bounded out right behind him, lithe and whip-thin. He wore a dazzlingly loud shirt and a comically giant pimp hat perched on his head. He raised one clenched fist in the air and a battery-powered megaphone to his mouth.

  “Say hey, motherfuckers!” he cried. “Welcome to another night in the suburbs!”

  The crowd roared back, and Travis swept his eyes over them. Enthusiasm was high, but not unanimous. There were those who sat quietly, looking merely curious, or scared, or in a few cases, like they reserved the right to be sick. But no one was here against his will.

  Diamond hopped over to Pit Bull and massaged one bunched shoulder. “You know this boy…my man, Pit Bull Pearson! Yeah, you seen him wrestle on the TV a while back. Starting tonight, we gonna show you stuff they never ever coulda put on the tube!”

  Diamond bobbed his head, resting the megaphone on one cocky hip as he waited for the crowd to quiet down. Then, “Now let’s meet our special guest!”

  A large, haggard man stumbled from the shadows of the locker room. A moment later, the two guys holding rifles at his back came into view. The man’s white shirt hung on him like a drape, and his eyes darted wildly from Pit Bull to the crowd surrounding them above.

  “No friend of mine,” Diamond said. “Maybe he’s a friend of yours. Or maybe he got no friends at all here tonight! Mister-officer-sir Clinton Murphy of the late great St. Louis Po-lice! Let’s make him feel real welcome tonight!”

  The crowd responded with a mix of applause and boos. Murphy brushed his unkempt hair back from his forehead and rolled up the loose sleeves of his shirt. He shrugged off the press of the rifles at his back, then grudgingly snatched the weapon handed to him: a baseball bat with a railroad spike driven through the end.

  Diamond twirled his hand in the air with a broad flourish. “And now it’s showtime!”

  Diamond and the pair of armed escorts ducked back i
nto the doorway and watched as Pit Bull and Murphy squared off. An initial hush fell over the crowd as the two circled, clubs cocked back and ready to swing. Smoke churned into the rafters and the fires crackled. Dull orange reflected in the sweat of both faces, from the slick sheen already covering Pit Bull’s back.

  Pit Bull swung first, to an immediate roar from the crowd. He brought his club slashing down toward Murphy’s shoulder, and the cop blocked it with his own, with a loud grunt and a clack of wood. Murphy sent his foot up between Pit Bull’s widely stanced legs, and the wrestler went down on his back.

  “Be just my luck that fucking cop would kill him first night out,” Travis said to Hagar.

  Murphy swung downward, but Pit Bull did a backward tuck and roll, and the spike scored deeply into the varnished floor. Prone on his belly, Pit Bull swung his club one-handed, parallel to the floor and into Murphy’s shin. The impact sent him staggering to one side, then hopping, and Pit Bull was up again.

  “Yeah!” cried Travis, spraying beer. “That’s my dog!”

  They were both hurt now, and both in fury. They met at center court in another clash of weapons, in sweat, in spittle, in grunts through clenched jaws. Clubs and fists and legs flew as the audience swelled with frenzy. It was primal, it was savage. The advantage swung one way, then another, back and forth. It was blood and sinew, sweat and foam.

  Murphy swung wildly and his spike grazed a foot-long, shallow gash across Pit Bull’s bare chest. The blood speckled his white shirt, mingling with spatters of his own. Pit Bull kicked forward into the cop’s ribs; then he moved in closer and punched the handle of his club across Murphy’s jaw, and two teeth popped out in reward.

  Murphy made another wild swing that sheared the spike through the calf of Pit Bull’s leather pants, cutting into the meat of his leg. The wrestler buckled and went down on his knees as Murphy, spitting a drizzle of blood, staggered forward and raised his club above his head like an executioner’s axe.

  And for Pit Bull, it was time to spring his surprise.

  He shoved his own club forward like a spear, punching it into Murphy’s abdomen, seeking the rib cage. Finding it. The rattrap sprang closed, biting into flesh and muscle with sharp steel teeth. Murphy shrieked, reddened mouth stretching wide, wider, as he brought the club down in a sloppy arc that Pit Bull easily dodged.

  Pit Bull twisted the club, bringing an ever-widening stain of red across the front of Murphy’s white shirt. He braced himself and kicked out again, sending Murphy’s spiked club thudding across the hardwood. He twisted again and ripped his club free, and it trailed shredded tatters of cloth, and worse.

  The outcome was beyond question now. Only how long remained a guess. And it didn’t take long at all for Pit Bull to efficiently demolish the other man. And when it was over, with Murphy dangling upside-down and dripping from the barbed wire blocking the stage, Pit Bull limped back to center court and raised one arm to acknowledge the crowd. They loved him, adored him. No chants of Creepy Carl from these people. He was among friends. Family.

  He moved several painful steps forward, blood seeping down the back of his leg and into his boot. He looked up, eyes resolute and seeking, seeing the fire and the smoke and the arms waving up above, but paying them no heed. And then he found him again, the man who’d given it all back to him: purpose, a reason for being, a reason for his life.

  “For you, Travis!” he cried, and tears rolled down his face. “All for you!”

  Travis sat with one foot hiked onto the railing in front of him, and he paused with a Budweiser halfway to his mouth. Slowly he nodded toward Pit Bull, figuring the guy would stand there all night and maybe even bleed to death until getting some kind of acknowledgment from him. So he nodded, lifting the Bud in a toast.

  And at last Pit Bull limped his way toward Diamond and the others in the locker room, the slapping echo of the crowd at his back.

  * *

  The show went on for another ninety minutes. There were more fights, mostly grudge matches, some of which ended in death and some of which didn’t. Not only had they discovered a new spectator sport in the arena, they had deemed it to be a new judicial system as well. To wrap things up, they sent in someone from Maplewood who had refused to work for Travis and the others. They sent in after him a pair of hungry Dobermans. The dogs won, and since there was no feasible way to bring them back under control, they were shot.

  So much for tonight’s episode. Stay tuned next week, same time, same place.

  “Fucking A,” Travis said, and stared regretfully at the last beer from the cooler by his side. He gazed out over the carnage-strewn court. Not much good for basketball anymore. Then he looked back with a broad grin. “Anybody else horny besides me?”

  “I pity the bitch that ends up in your bed tonight,” Hagar said.

  Travis’s face drained of good humor. His eyes narrowed as they bored into the center circle of the arena. “You know who I want to see in there next week? The little prick that hurt my men last week.”

  Hagar and the rest fell quiet. It was still a sore subject.

  “Asshole dislocates Lucas’s shoulder, spreads his nose halfway across his face!” Travis clenched the Bud can until metal crimped and foam surged over the top. “And Feldman’s face looks like he took a chainsaw to it!”

  This was the truth as far as they knew it—that it was all Jason’s doing, although they didn’t yet know his name. On the way back from the liquor store, the two victims had decided against mentioning Caleb. It was bad enough that they’d been bettered. But to admit that it had all been started by an old man, older than both their fathers, would’ve been just too much.

  “We’re gonna find him,” Travis said. “And then the cocksucker is gonna spend hours wishing he’d never been born.” He whirled and aimed a blunt finger at Solomon, who’d uttered scarcely a word the whole night, who’d been content to watch the fun. “Why can’t you help us out on this, huh? Something we really need?”

  Solomon drew his head back, firelight glinting from the blue ice of his eyes until they appeared orange. “Travis, I’ll overlook it just this once, but don’t make a habit of trying to piss me off.”

  Travis clamped his lips tightly together, scowled at the floor.

  Given the description Lucas and Feldman had brought back, Solomon had a good idea it was Jason. He could’ve given up the name to Travis, if not a location. But sometimes a little uncertainty is good for the soul. It makes you work harder. And why stack the cards too heavily against Jason from the beginning? Not very sporting.

  But even Solomon was unprepared for what happened several minutes later, as they readied to leave and make the trip back to Union Station. And satisfy a few of the night’s urges, for the nights were growing long and cold.

  Diamond met up with them in the lobby, trophies of past glories of dead basketball teams lined in wall cabinets behind them. Diamond had a lanky blond guy at his side. The guy’s hands were stuffed into his jacket pockets, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other like he had to piss.

  “Anybody got any bleach?” Diamond said, pointing to a wide smear of red on his shirt, though it blended well. “Pit Bull, shit. He hugged me!” He laughed, then jerked a thumb at the kid beside him. “Got somebody you just might want to talk to. Sanchez brought him over from Union Station ’bout a half hour ago.”

  Travis stood and looked him head-on, up and down. Tall, skinny, all wide-eyed and nervous and trying to pretend he wasn’t.

  “I know who trashed your men last week,” he said. “Sir.”

  Travis glanced over at Diamond, who wore an ear-to-ear grin.

  “I do believe we got us a Judas,” Diamond said.

  “My name’s Billy. Billy Strickland.”

  8

  They left on the kerosene run just after ten in the morning. Where was autumn going so quickly? It was already the day before Than
ksgiving. Not that this year’s feast would come close to what everyone was used to.

  Jason was driving a Dodge pickup that Rich Patton and Jack Mitchell had brought back to Brannigan’s shortly after he’d first showed up. Funny thing about trucks…you got behind the wheel and soon began feeling like the road owed you a bigger share. Luckily, these days, the road was more than willing to accommodate.

  “And you say this place is on Delmar?” Jason asked.

  “Yeah. Delmar,” said Billy. “Army surplus store with a big sign on the building. The place is a gold mine, but that kerosene stock they’ve got is really what’ll come in handy this winter.” He bounced one leg incessantly, drummed out rhythms to unheard songs on his knees.

  “You seem in a good mood today.”

  He grinned. “I guess my biorhythms must be up today or something.”

  Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all, Jason thought. In the nearly two months he’d been here, he’d never actually been one-to-one with Billy, and his first impression had been formed when Erika had led him across the bridge. Then, and every day after, Jason got the feeling that Billy was looking at him as a defiler of sacred ground. He didn’t like it, but when he put himself in Billy’s shoes, he could at least understand it. At any rate, maybe Billy was finally willing to let bygones be bygones.

  “You have a date last night?” Jason said, remembering Billy being gone for at least two hours at a time when everyone was normally in the store. “That why you’re so hyper today?”

  “Last night?” For a moment, the muscles of Billy’s forearms tightened, then relaxed. “Nah. Who would I meet, huh?”

  “The singles scene’s not what it used to be around here.”

  “The pickings are slim.” Billy pursed his lips and traced shapes on the inside of the windshield. “Speaking of, what’s going on with you and Erika these days?”