Tripping Back Blue

by Kara Storti

  Who did this? Only Orah and I are aware of this place. Even Dan didn’t want to know; he told me to just go get the stuff.

  I almost want to laugh. Howl. Except for the part of me that wants to climb in with the skeletons. I pat down my pockets, feeling the slight relief that I had the foresight to bring it, maybe I knew this was going to happen and that I would need a little something to keep the peace. Ha. Like I’m at war with myself, and this needle is a pen to sign the treaty. At least I’ve still got my humor, and that’s saying a lot in a shit storm. I’m shaking my head, wow, just wow, they should at least make a low-budget film out of this. I take out my lighter, got everything lined up, wait, wait, what was it that Orah said? Orah says a lotta shit, I answer out loud, giggling. Oh yeah, damn, this place will spontaneously combust if I dare light up in here . . . but . . . but . . . it’d be a great way to go out, you know, go out with a bang, a crypt-bang, bones shattering, the remnants of indigo dust gracing the air, floating up, up, up. Me, in pieces too, I would intermingle with the Klaskis and it’d be one big party, raise the roof. I bite my lip and concentrate on my thumb on the Bic’s flint wheel, imagining myself flicking it. The flame would swallow me at breakneck speed, and I’m almost sure it would barely hurt.

  But why would I do that when heroin is much more pleasant? I don’t even remember crawling outside, I don’t even remember the needle going in, I just know the slump and the wave and the roll and the oh, oh, oh. The no experienced before is replaced with a yes; my head teeters on my neck, my limbs feel separate from my body and as soon as the apex hits, I’m needing more. More yes. Less no. Again. Slump, wave, roll, oh—if the sweetest dream could be liquid, that’s what is gushing through every passage, tunnel, crevice in my body, a dream that overflows and spills and coats me with an internal glaze, my brain eats the dream, my heart is the clock that paces it, and my eyes that possess my soul grasp and catch hold. But only for a blink.

  It’s not enough. What’s that? More yes! Less no! I’m supposed to . . . Dan . . . again. Again. A—

  -----

  A crow. So close. Even in the dark I see its terrible eyes. What do you see, friend? Wasted lump of a person. Utterly useless. The truer than true epitome of fuck-up-edness. It takes all my effort just to move my head, but when I do the stink of vomit assaults me. I’m not exactly sure where I am or what I’m doing here and I get the sense that I’m lucky to be forming thoughts, even lucky to be alive. I try sitting up, but it’s too much movement, I try wiping off my shirt, but there’s too much stickiness. I strain to pull it over my head. At least I can do that. Plants are damp around me and then here it comes, the realization of where I am and why. Indigo gone. Bargaining chip gone. The will to problem-solve is gone too, and that’s no good, because usually I’m a pro at it. If I don’t have that, then who am I? Rock fucking bottom, that’s where you are, homeboy. I drag my hand down my face and somehow I know that my skin has a green pallor, the green of an almost-OD. What have I done? I study the crow, still next to me, it’s watching and then pecking; hopping to the side yet not leaving, it wants to witness me, the hot mess that I am, a guy who screws up everything and everybody within a twenty-mile radius.

  What time is it? The moon is a faceless clock. Finally I’m able to push myself up, paw around for my cell phone until I find it in my backpack, where the indigo should be by now. Holy shit. It’s already one in the morning. My life is good and over. There’s no point in telling myself to take deep breaths and calm down. I don’t think my heart can take the sprint it’s running, I’m close to blacking out again. I should already be at Dan’s right now, already going west on Old County Road. No one’s late for Early. Shit. I’ve got calls, voice mails, texts, everyone in my life coming at me from different angles, Dan, Stacey, Faith, Bryce, Peter, fee-fi-fo-fum, I’m done. What the hell am I going to do? How am I going to explain this? I wonder if this is Orah’s doing. A little heads up would have been nice.

  My mind goes on default mode, crows, yeah, crows, I know a lot about them, I’m pulling myself to my feet as I think of the facts, like how they recognize faces, that they have the biggest brain-to-body ratio among bird species. When a crow is unable to crack a nut for food, it drops it on a highway so a car can run it over—studies show they’ve learned to drop nuts under smaller cars so the meat inside isn’t completely obliterated. If a crow is dying, a bunch of other crows attack it to death, hence the reason a group of crows is called a murder. Ruthless creatures they are, intelligent suckers, loving to pick and pluck at tendons and bones.

  This gives me a last-minute idea. I don’t have much time.

  -----

  I never thought my car could push close to one hundred, but there it goes, engine groaning, body creaking, I’m riding the clunker like a thoroughbred horse. Good thing I had a clean shirt in the trunk. I arrive at Dan’s house in record time, disaster written all over me.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he asks, getting into the passenger seat. My stench, my eyes, my everything assault him. “You’ve been using. All the times you could have used, you choose tonight to do it? God, Finn, you’re risking our lives here, don’t you understand that?”

  “I do, I do.” I clench my jaw, preparing myself for more Dan-sized fury. “There’s one other kink that you should know about.”

  “What now?” He presses the back of his skull against the headrest.

  “When I went to the crypt, all the indigo was gone. Completely gone.” I’m leaning over the steering wheel, an old man hunch, having a hard time seeing the lines of the road. The probability that I murdered half of my functioning brain cells is high and the will to persevere, the will to even live, is bottoming out.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” he asks, fuming.

  “I think Orah may have—”

  He puts his head in his hands and groans long and loudly.

  I say quickly, “But I have a contingency plan. Get my pack from the backseat.”

  He rustles around in the back and brings the bag to the front, unzipping it with annoyance. He pulls out a femur bone from the crypt and other bones too. I tried to pack up as many as I could, without thinking of the blasphemy I was committing to Orah’s relatives. The pact that I made about never sharing the crypt has to be broken—I have no choice. Would the ghosts of the Klaskis past understand?

  “This is the proof that Early needs so he can grow the better strain. We tell him where the crypt is, we say the crypt is the origin.”

  “He’ll want to know why the flowers in the crypt are gone.”

  “We can just tell him that it is between harvests, and that indigo grows back quick.” Dan looks doubtful, but he knows we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get there. I go on. “We’ll make up some excuse about how Orah got confused about the origin being in the Adirondacks, you know, because she was having a stroke and not thinking straight.” In my periphery I see Dan mulling it through, or maybe he’s just astounded by my major league stupidity. “Don’t you see? This’ll work. We don’t have the indigo, but we’ve got the bones, and that’s the crucial element to this whole thing.”

  The bones are in Dan’s hands. When I stole them from the crypt I was astonished at their surprising smoothness and light weight. Dan regards them with disgust and sadness, until resignation spreads over his face. He returns them to the bag and places it at his feet, then wipes his hands on his pants.

  Without any inflection he says, “I guess it will have to do.”

  Chapter Forty-five

  Old County Road at two in the morning is deserted. No one comes out here because there’s jack shit around, no farms or houses for the next fifteen miles, a few shacks are set back in the woods, hunting cabins that aren’t used anymore. At last I see the moose-crossing sign and start to slow down.

  Soon there are two cars behind us, one with its lights flicking on and off. It’s the same Lincoln Town Car sedan from earlier today, and the other is a Humvee-sized SUV, silver, tinted out, rims blinging
in the moonlight. I pull off to the side of the road, palms slick with sweat, as the car inches up behind us. I reach for the door handle—Dan motions me to stay put. Even through the shut windows I hear the orchestra of crickets, I see the light-show of fireflies, and it makes the road lonelier because there are so many of them and so few of us. A growling in my stomach, rancid taste in my mouth. Vomiting again is definitely in order. After several minutes, the driver-side door of the sedan opens, and Leo approaches my car with a graceful gait for such a huge man. I knew he was monstrous but I didn’t realize the extent of it as he strolls toward us. Once he’s at the window, he directs me to roll it down. His eyes flit from me to Dan. It takes all my willpower not to vomit all over him.

  “We were hoping Dan would join us,” he says. “Get out of the car.”

  Dan raises his eyebrows and isn’t surprised when we both are searched. With my legs spread apart, I can’t help the quaking of my knees, I can’t stop the rivers of sweat trailing down my back, can’t ignore the fact that I got no knife, no lighter, no nothing. Of course Dan takes it like a champ, and I envy his steadiness from police training or years of experience or his wonder-boy genes. Leo turns us around, his expression expectant.

  “We have something better than indigo for you,” Dan says.

  Leo makes a face. “What are you telling me?”

  Dan turns to me. I’m more versed when it comes to indigo history based on what I’ve learned from Orah and Stacey—knowledge that he chose to ignore.

  I start in. “I think you’re underestimating the importance of the bones to grow indigo,” I say. “I’d stop focusing on the origin if I were you, and on the bones. I’ve got some in a bag in the car. They’re from Orah’s ancestors. They make the best indigo, the strongest. You can start your own crop from these, instead of using the bones of random people. To sweeten the deal, we’ll give you a crypt in the D-Town Cemetery. It’s protected and hidden, there are more Klaski bones in there, and it’s all you’re ever going to need for a nice setup.”

  He signals for me to get the backpack out of the car. I do it slowly, my movements almost comical, so Leo doesn’t think I’m up to any funny business. There’s a lump in my throat the size of a fist.

  “This is not what we asked for. We want the location of the original indigo site. You said that you would tell us.” He takes the backpack of the remains anyway. “Why weren’t we aware of this in the beginning—of the Klaski bones being the important part, and this crypt you speak of?”

  “Because I wasn’t aware of it,” Dan says. “The drug was ruining my family, turning them into addicts. I didn’t want to know about it. Finn’s the one who found out about it and told me. This is a good deal for you. Everything related to indigo is yours now.”

  Leo smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Dull and flat. He runs his hand over his close-cropped hair. Then he stalks back to the sedan with the bag of bones and opens the back door. Dan gives me a reassuring look. He hasn’t stated his full case yet. There’s still time.

  Another of Early’s thugs climbs out of the SUV, dragging someone along, with a gun to her head.

  Stacey.

  My Stacey. Dan’s Stacey. That’s when we both yell Noooooo, it’s our instinct to run to her, and we do, but Leo sees this coming and shoots at the ground before us. One bullet sprays fragments of road in our eyes. My breath feels jagged going in and out of my throat, I wipe dirt and debris out of my eyes and hair. Dan’s trying to bargain, talking a talk that is just jumbled words and desperate promises . . . we’ll do whatever you want, I’ll talk to my people in the NYPD about easing up on you, we’ll give you every site where indigo grows best . . . while Stacey whimpers with dirt-stained tears. Her hair’s a mess, there’s a shadow under her eye that might be a bruise, Jesus Christ, these people, monsters, how could they even think about causing her harm? Dan is nowhere near his steady disposition right now, hands waving, running his mouth at mach speed, not sure what he’s saying as I step back, feeling oddly removed from the situation. I’m colossally powerless.

  Leo’s just standing there, no expression on his face, while Dan is continuing to negotiate, persuade, convince, and failing miserably. The guy who’s holding Stacey has his sights on me, wide stance, gun at his side. His hair is crow black and he has one of those butt chins. Early slides out of the car—which is still running with the headlights on—cane first, his demeanor somber, sympathy all over his face. He nudges Leo out of the way and places a decrepit hand on Dan’s shoulder. A frail dude Early is, cane looking like the only bone keeping him upright, khaki pants baggy on his stick legs, still wearing that straw hat I saw before. He smiles at me sadly, like he really feels bad about the course of events.

  “Charles,” he says to the goon holding Stacey. “You may let her go.”

  Charles pushes Stacey against the car so she doesn’t move. She slumps to the ground; they tied her hands behind her back with rope.

  My anger, my powerlessness, my panic all collide inside me, and the most awful birds come to the forefront of my mind. Vultures. Their piss is so powerful it destroys bacteria in the filth they trudge through. Cassowaries. They have a five-inch-long claw and a kick powerful enough to kill a man. This is the exact force I need but will never have.

  “The whole family attended,” Early says, looking around with what might pass for a smile. “I like this. It’s exactly what I envisioned. It’s a roundtable to discuss our beloved indigo. The problem is, I don’t want it to be ours. I want it to be mine. I like the sound of that much better.”

  Early squats in front of Stacey, slowly, painstakingly, as he uses his cane for support. He places a crooked finger underneath her chin, forcing her to tip her face up to meet his gaze. Her bottom lip trembles, and he studies her, tilting his head to see her from all angles. I want to kill him.

  “Leo and Charles have done their best to get Stacey to disclose the origin of indigo.” He pats her cheek. “She says she knows nothing. But I know she’s lying, based on what Orah told me when she rambled on about telling her grandchildren about the Adirondacks.” He looks up at the clear night sky wistfully. “You must wonder why I seem so obsessed with this. It’s because as my life nears its end, I want to know how this beautiful drug began. To be in the midst of its true, original spirit is all I ask for.”

  How did he know Dan would be here and that he should take Stacey? And what the hell did Early’s goons do to her? She’s half in shock, half crying. It’s not right, I’ve got to do something, someone’s got to take action around here, all Dan’s doing is talking and talking and no one’s listening. A shudder runs through me and I fling myself in Stacey’s direction. I end up with my arm twisted against my back—I howl something awful—and Charles’ gun against my head. Leo points his at Dan. Checkmate.

  Early nods at Charles, who lets go of my arm. I should shut up, keep my mouth closed, but I can’t help it, I have to try to get him to see things my way. “The Adirondacks don’t matter,” I say, not liking the desperation in my voice. “The bones matter. That’s the key. They’re the only thing that matters.” I’m repeating myself. There’s no use.

  Early ignores me. He walks slowly over to Dan, clacking his cane on the pavement. “I should have asked Billy about it when I had a chance. But he’s gone, isn’t he? Gone into hiding? Let’s see if we can’t pull something out of Stacey.”

  Early lifts his cane and cracks it over Dan’s head. He doesn’t go down, tough bastard, but falls to his knees, dizzy and ashen, holding his hand up to his temple.

  Stacey screams.

  Early asks, “Stacey, I think you’re holding back information from me, aren’t you? Why don’t you tell me, sweetheart, or there will be more of this.” He nods to Charles. Uh oh. Charles splits my forehead open with the butt of his gun. I grunt as I crumple to the road. I’m not sure how much more of this my brain can take.

  “What do you say, Stacey?” Early asks gently. “Do you want to keep seeing your father get hurt?”
/>   Stacey just stares, too stunned to say anything; she’s sunk into a state of cannot compute.

  “They’ll both be dead and gone if you don’t speak.”

  Charles has a gun on me again, what’s new, and Leo has pulled out a knife from somewhere and is holding it against Dan’s neck.

  “Okay—okay . . .” she says slowly, swallowing. “I’ll show you where. There’s no way you could find it on your own . . . it’s too far out of the way. Just leave them alone.”

  I look at Dan. He’s completely confused. He has no idea if she’s lying or if there really is an origin. Soon he’ll realize she isn’t lying and he’ll find out where Billy has been the whole time. If he’s allowed to live. Without rhyme or reason, he’s shoved and kicked in the face by Leo. Kicked over and over again. A grimace of pain, a moan, then a sickening crunch. Stacey screams. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Stop, please stop, I told you, I’ll give you what you want, he doesn’t know, just leave him alone. I’m up next, I’m sure of it, I wonder if I’ll feel my broken skull before I’m lost to the dark.

  “Thank you for cooperating,” Early says. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to come alone. I respect your father too much to bring him along.”

  Stacey says quickly, “Finn has to come. He’s the only one who knows how to harvest it properly.” This girl does not cease to amaze me. How the hell does she know about the intricacy of harvesting? “I bet you don’t know how to do it without losing half of it. I bet your guys here have never done it before. The indigo flowers are more delicate than the flowers you grow.”

  Early considers me, frowning. “Charles, tie him up too and put him in the trunk. You follow us in the SUV.” Charles does as he’s told, and soon I’m hog-tied and squeezed in the trunk as the lid slams over my head. There’s barely enough oxygen, and I’ve got no cell phone—the two essentials right now for survival. I have no idea what they’re doing with Dan. However, I now have the chance to protect Stacey. I would die for her if she asked. But I’d really rather save her. I just have no idea how this is going to play out and I have no plan. Who is Finn without a plan?