Ask the Dark

by Henry Turner

  It’s all right, Richie, I say. Nobody’s gonna think you did anything.

  He looked at me. Yeah? Bullshit! They’re all gonna think it! Who am I? Used to drink, quit college, I haul garbage! All I am is this neighborhood, I got nothing else!

  Nobody will think it, Richie, I said. Dryker’s a fuckin’ nut.

  Richie didn’t talk now, just shook, something I seen him do before. Strong a man as he is, I think that drinking he used to do hurt his head, and there’re some things he just can’t figure out, ’specially when’s he’s bothered.

  Dryker talked to me, too, I said, and I was telling true, because about a week before I’d stopped him on the street and asked him some questions.

  I told him I wanted to catch who’s taking the boys, I said. Know what he told me? Said he didn’t want to hear none of my accusations, like I even had any or if I did I’d just tell’m to lie about people. Laughed right in my face. Said what I had to have was proof. I said, What proof? Know what he said? He said, The man himself, that’s all I’ll take from you.

  He’s an asshole, Monkey Boy, Richie said. But you’re right. Only way to do it is catch him. Somebody’s got to catch him. Only way to clear my name!

  We dropped the washer at All Brand Appliances down at Twenty-Eight and Calvert, and Richie got forty dollars for it, which had me wishin’ I had three/four hundred old washing machines. Then we headed on back, him still in the same sort of pissed-off cocky mood he’d been in before, his face with that tight-grin look and wide-awake eyes like he expected shit to happen, and was maybe like one clock-tick away from making shit happen.

  I didn’t see that going away, his mood, I mean, but I could see he was feelin’ a little more used to having been chucked in jail, and the main thing he did, now that he was back in the neighborhood, was look long at any neighbors when he passed’m on their lawns, and slow down going by them, giving them a kind of hard-starey eyeball, as if the whole neighborhood and not just one dumbass cop had accused him of bein’ a child killer.

  That was his way and I didn’t say nothing, till I said, Richie, you gonna help me with something?

  Yeah? he said.

  I got twenty-three hundred dollars. ’S what I made this summer. I gotta make it make more. Buy something and sell it.

  What you want to buy?

  Don’t know yet, I said.

  Having something other to think about sort of cooled him, I could tell. He thought a minute driving along, and then looked over at me.

  Hmm. Buy and sell. Where at?

  Downtown market. We’ll make a bundle.

  Again he thought a minute, sometimes his face looking serious, other times grinning and laughing a little like he thinks what I’m saying is a joke.

  Finally he says to me, Nah, I can’t do it right now. I got a big job. Hauling. And that’s something we gotta talk about.

  What’s there to talk about? I say. ’Cause me, I’m thinking I really don’t want to spend a day with Richie hauling for chump change when I could start on making some big money.

  I really need the money now, I say. For saving my daddy’s house! Won’t you help me? I can’t sign the permit myself!

  Richie, he grins a little hearing ’bout the house, ’cause he already told me he don’t think I can make all that money. Then he says, Well, this gonna take just a day or two. And you won’t be hauling. I need you for something different. You don’t do it I gotta ask Skugger, and that boy don’t know how to work. Anyway it ain’t a problem for you. You already know the lady.

  Who’s that?

  Now he grins real wide. Miss Gurpy.

  I couldn’t say nothing, just stare. He looked at how surprised I was and laughed right at me.

  Now don’t go thinking I swiped the job from you! he says. You’re the one who told me ’bout clearin’ her gutters! So I went by and asked about her whole house. It’s filled up with forty years’ worth of junk! She gotta clear it ’cause she’ll get an injunction and get put in a nursing home, ’s all she can talk about! That’s something you put in’r head! She doesn’t want that sort of trouble, Monkey Boy. Anyway I’m no stranger to her. I worked a little for’r a couple years ago.

  I took a second to catch my breath. I was gonna get a chance at looking at them boxes! I felt like yelling right then and there.

  You say you got room for me on it? I asked.

  Sure, Monkey Boy, but why you changin’ your mind? I thought you were so hot to double that twenty-three hundred?

  For a second I couldn’t explain myself. Felt like a damn fool for having ever said no. I didn’t wanna answer too quick or say too much, ’cause it wouldn’t do having him thinkin’ I’m antsy to get in there, and have’m start asking questions.

  So I waited a minute and sort’f moved my shoulders like maybe I didn’t care about nothing. Then I said, sort’f sputtered, Well, you’ll do the other thing after, the market, I mean?

  Sure, if you’re still up to it. You coming on with me? I’m starting tomorrow, and you know what she says she’s got?

  What’s that? I ask.

  Rats, he said, grinning crazy.

  No way, I say.

  Oh c’mon, Monkey Boy! He was laughing now. What, you wanna say no again? His voice is sort of happy now, like he thought rats was something I wanted to hear about. And for a sec he took his hands off the wheel and held’m up ’bout two foot apart.

  He says, Big ones. Big fucking nasty rats, and she’s right, too, ’cause she had me in yesterday and I seen the rat shit all over, them little black peas. Whole attic, Monkey Boy! Wanna help me do it? I’m gonna need a hand for rats.

  I don’t know, I say. How much you payin’?

  Give you a hundred. Ain’t a rip-off. I got truck costs and expenses.

  How we gonna do it? I say.

  Shit, he said, smiling, looking down. Same as before.

  With a gun? That shit’s crazy, I said. I’m still picking pellets out my ass from the last time!

  He looked up bright, eyes like half-crazy, that frazzle he gets sometimes. No, Monkey Boy! I got a new one! I hold the gun, you flick the lights! What else you want to do? Use traps? That’ll never work, damn rats are too smart. And we can’t use poison. Old Gurpy’ll probably eat it herself. C’mon, he said, that grin still on his face lighting up his eyes. Another hundred’ll help that buy-and-sell thing you want to do.

  I shook my head a little. Being in an attic with Richie Harrigan and a gun weren’t something to take lightly. But I couldn’t skip a chance of seeing all what’s up there.

  I nodded. All right, I said. But I am gonna stand behind you.

  Sure you are! he said. And he smacked my shoulder with his hand like to seal the deal, too hard I thought, and we went driving on.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Coming home I let the screen door bang shut, and I saw my daddy. He was coming up from the kitchen, wearing one of them check shirts he wears, baggy one, and his cheeks was just gray grizzle ’cause he ain’t shaved, and his eyeglasses shine like chrome rings on his face. He looked a little jolted to see me, like I busted in on his thoughts.

  Oh, hi, son, he says. Help me here, will you?

  I don’t move. I’m looking at him, then down at something I don’t believe I see.

  Boxes.

  At his feet are about twenty of’m, all cardboard and cut down flat, so now what he’s doing is taking this roll of packing tape and making them all back again, folding the flaps and taping them down.

  Daddy, what’re you doing?

  He’s still looking at me, face just as gray as his hair.

  I’m gonna pack, son. Start it, anyway. We’ll need more boxes when move time comes.

  Move time? I say.

  He don’t say nothing for a minute. Stares at me.

  That ain’t necessary, I say. Daddy, we still got more’n three weeks! It’s wrong to do this! You can’t just give up! We gotta do something—

  Billy, he says, you can’t make the money in three weeks. The ho
use belongs to the bank now. It ain’t mine no more.

  You worked twenty years for it, I say.

  Billy—

  Twenty years, I say.

  Now he looks down at the boxes at his feet, and the others he already taped and folded, stacked against the wall there.

  Leezie left, he said quietly. She told me ’bout the baby. She gone to live with Ricky.

  This time I didn’t say nothing. Even though I’d known it was coming, I couldn’t believe she’d really gone and done it. First my mother dies—now Leezie goes. It was like my whole family was over and done with.

  I just stood there looking at the floor, the floor of worn planks Daddy never shellacked or repainted ’cause he was always working on other people’s houses. I sort of let out a breath, and then I went out the hall to the living room where I dropped on the sofa, that sofa I’d found in an alley thrown out a few years ago and that Richie Harrigan and me’d brung in the house, ’cause we never had th’money to buy a new one.

  I looked at Daddy.

  Leezie’s livin’ with Bad-Ass? I said, like I ain’t heard.

  Yes, he said.

  You know he got brothers? I asked.

  She didn’t say, he said.

  I knew a boy who drowned once. He was my age, and he jumped in the water down Robert E. Lee Park, jumped off that railroad bridge. Banged his head going in. Didn’t knock him out, but it did make him breathe when he was underwater, and his lungs filled. We dragged him out, and thank the Lord there was a doctor having a picnic ’bout twenty yards away, and he run up. First he looked real doubtful, ’cause he saw the blood on the boy’s face and figured he was dead, but he gave him mouth-to-mouth anyway, and it saved him. Boy was Sam Tate. And you know what he said? He said it weren’t bad, drowning. He’d gone faint right off the bat, and weren’t bothered. What hurt like hell was the water coming out, he said. And me, I’m bringing this up ’cause for a second there, after hearing Leezie had really gone and done it, I was gonna say some such thing like I felt I was drowning, but that ain’t so. Because with drowning, you dead in a minute and don’t give a shit no more. But with the shit I was hearing, death would never come and it was all just gonna go on forever.

  She can’t live there! I yelled. His brothers are worse than him! One’s a goddamn Marine Corps ranger! She talks big like she can handle it, but what if she can’t! What if they beat her and call her names and make her do all the work, and all have their nasty way with’r when Ricky gets sick of’r! How the hell you let’r go!?

  Everything I yelled seemed to hit him hard, so I shut up.

  She can take care of herself, he says, his voice so weak I hardly hear’m. Then he looks straight at me, his face full of pain, and says, She’s strong, Billy. Strong like your mother was.

  Right then I didn’t care how strong she was. My head felt on fire. Yeah! How do you know?! All you done for the last year is sit around doin’ nothing! You hardly even talked with’r!

  I couldn’t stop her, son. And she’s right. We all have to go.

  Where we gonna live?! I say.

  I don’t know, he says.

  Then he looked up. I—I know about a place downtown. Sober men’s housing.

  Daddy, that’s ridiculous! Living with them drunks, you’ll start up again, I know it.

  He acted like he didn’t hear what I said, and just said, I heard about it at my AA. It’s only a hundred a week.

  Yeah?! My brain felt hot, my face, too. What about the goddamn house and the fruit stand! Ain’t you even gonna try! What about it!

  I don’t know, son. I—I—

  He looked like he was falling apart, gray and small and weak and old, and his clothes all wrinkled, wrinkled as his skin, and it looking gray and dead too.

  AND WHAT ABOUT ME! I yelled.

  And that’s when he started crying, just an old gray man shaking and crying, not making a sound but his body rumplin’ like he wanted to die.

  I don’t know, son! I don’t—

  No, you don’t! I hollered. So I’ll tell you! Put away the boxes! You don’t need’m, hear me? We still got three weeks left! This ain’t the time for acting crazy!

  He just looked at me.

  I got up. Put’m away! Keep’m if you want to. But don’t tape’m yet. You give me three weeks, hear me? I want’m. After that, do whatever the hell you like!

  Saying that, I went out and ran crazy down the stairs to the street.

  I walked up the street and beside me was trees and plots of ivy and raggy-looking weeds knee-high in vacant lots and sometimes flowers in plots in front of houses and also flowers wild and just growing up from where seeds had lit. And I was thinking, batting this reed I took out the ground at trees I passed, of how my daddy was the boy now, sitting there all tightlipped and saying nothing, just wanting to tape his boxes, like he was afraid I’d be mad if he asked, like I was the daddy now and he was the boy, needing my permission to do something he wanted to do but didn’t really know hisself if it was right or wrong. And this the same man who before my mother died and he hurt his back was the strongest man I ever known and nobody ever pushed around, he wouldn’t stand for it, but was all broken now and letting me talk to him in a way he’d’f once whipped my ass for so good I wouldn’t’f sat down for a week.

  That’s the kind of shit I was thinking about, and it weren’t no fun, neither. But I kept on walking, walking through alleys all day, sometimes hidin’ in garages so’s not to get seen by no cop, ’cause I sure as hell didn’t want to get sent home. Around sundown I saw Marvin drivin’ by but I ducked down so’s he wouldn’t see me, ’cause I just felt too damn riled.

  After it got dark I walked some more, until I was standing in the alley outside Simon Hooper’s, where inside the fence that dog, Bear, was scruffin’ around the yard with Hooper yelling out, Sit! and Stand! and Go!

  It was just a joke being there, I thought, because with Daddy taping them boxes everything seemed dumb-fuckin’-stupid. I mean, why work all summer in the first place? Why do any fuckin’ thing? But after Hooper took Bear in I went up a tree anyway and looked over the board fence. There was nothing. House was dark. Car weren’t parked in the yard. I was just wasting my time.

  But I figured, Fuck it. So I dropped and ran, and in no time I was outside Miss Gurpy’s down on Church Lane.

  It was dark in there, too, I mean no window lights. She hits the hay early I bet. So real quick I went through the side yard, ran out back, and went up them old rotty stairs. I come out through a bramble bush, and there it is. The car, I mean.

  The sideviews and wipers was already fixed. Course I knew he’d do that, elseways he’d get stopped for sure, and what with selling drugs to kids he couldn’t have that, so he’d took a little trip to the parts store.

  I stood there about five minutes ’cause just look­ing at it had me feeling better, like I was doing some­thing worth­while. My face was all scrunched up. I was thinking about Daddy, Leezie, the house, and couldn’t damn well hide it. But right then I felt my face go blank, and all the bad feelings went right out’f my mind.

  I’d come up to the car. I mean I’d come out the bushes where I was hiding where no one could see me. And real slow I got down on my hands and knees, right there at the rear bumper. What I seen I could hardly believe, felt like cold air blowing through my ears. ’Cause this old car got license plates from Florida.

  Florida, where Tuckie Brenner was found.

  I was still crouched low when the hands grabbed my shoulders. He never said a word. He was too smart for that. All he did was try to tug me up, but like a flash I tossed back and must’f bumped him hard, smacked his nuts, maybe, ’cause he fell with a oof!

  I never saw him. I jumped up and tore through the bushes. I tore down the hill, and I could hear him coming, smashing through the brush. But he never called out, never said a fuckin’ word. I ran zigzag, and when I got to the woods I still heard him, but farther back, and he’s breathing heavy. I can’t yell for nobody, he’d get me
faster than they could come. I gotta hide. So I go around a high bush right at the lip of the stream, ’bout a ten-foot drop. I jump down, hold on to the vines, and stop breathing. I’m on the wall, and it’s pitch-dark. But he comes on. I hear him stop above me, and I know he’s looking out. If the vine pulls free I’m fucked, I know it. I hear him breathing, and another sound, like a growl.

  I don’t even move my eyes. And in a minute I hear him running on, until he’s far away.

  I stayed there an hour. Heard the stream running under me. Never felt safe, but after a time I let go the vine and slid down until my shoes dunked in the cold water. Daddy, the house, Leezie. Never come in my mind. Took the longest, darkest way home. My head was empty ’cept one idea.

  That man wanted to kill me.

  Chapter Nineteen

  So now I was sitting in the dark.

  Weren’t moving at all.

  Neither was Richie.

  Just sitting.

  Earlier what we done was cover the windows. We covered’m with cardboard and then blankets and then over the blankets we put black tarp, plastic tarp, three-ply. Then tape around the edges, taping it all down. Same sort’f tape plumbers use, duct tape.

  Richie’s foot’s over my foot. I mean his boot’s over my shoe.

  But he ain’t moved yet.

  And we wait.

  We done the windows not just for light, but for sound, too. Light, there ain’t none. None. I mean, usually in a dark room—and I’ve snuck around plenty of dark rooms—you wait a minute and your eyes get used to it and you can see the outlines of everything around you. But not now, because with no light there’s nothing for your eye to get used to.

  So you just sit.

  Then you hear it.

  First something off to the side, where stacks of magazines is, sounds like a flutter of pages. Then a light sort of sound, like drumming your fingers on a piece of cloth, all pitter-patter, can’t hardly hear it. Then it skitters crost the floor. Then another sound, which scrapes a little. That’s the dish on the floor we put out with the cream pie. But I don’t hear it long, ’cause I feel Richie’s boot press down and I flick the switch on that extension cord I’m holding.