Every Dark Place

by Craig Smith

  Tamara wants to ask him something. With her big grey-blue-grey eyes like a cloudy day.

  The pink lips of her mouth so tiny. So clean the skin. Pie-fed-plump. A virgin because no one has tried. Her dark-haired sister Tabit is the pretty one. Baby sister is the pretty; with baby sister boys have tried. And big sister hates it. Poor, sad Tamara Merriweather. Curious. Lonesome.

  Ready for miracles.

  ‘I better go study.’ Tamara drops her eyes miserably.

  ‘Pastor says you prayed for me, Tammy.’

  She smiles. How pretty she is when she smiles and blushes at the same time. Her plump,

  milky flesh burning suddenly. And what did you pray for, Tamara? It is the question Will does not need to ask. ‘We have a youth group?’ Uncertain, frightened, eager. ‘This past year,’ she tells him bashfully, ‘we prayed twice a month in the group, then in private, too.’ Her private prayers have turned the world upside down. Will is here before her in the flesh.

  ‘Is your boyfriend in the group?’ Will asks.

  ‘I don’t have...’ Silence for an ending. Blushing the colour of her lips. Blushing hot.

  WILL SLIPS TO THE BATHROOM like a shadow and takes a long hot shower. Finished, skin puffy with a clean he has not known for ten years, he leaves his hair a bit damp for the girls to see and steals the scents that lay forgotten on the white porcelain. Lavender for love.

  Tamara in her room listens to headphones as he passes. She looks up. Smiles. At dinner Mamma Rachel asked about homework. A lot, Tamara said in answer. So solemn and determined. Then to Will, she had better go study. But here she is looking at her quiet desk, listening to some dreamy song. Will goes on without pausing and sees Tabit peeling her sweater over her head just as Will comes past her half-opened door. Looks up now that she has done it.

  A wrinkled blouse that is pulled out of her jeans. He catches a glimpse of her flat belly, but that is all she shows him. That and the pretence of surprise. She heard you coming! This is for you.

  Black hair tousled. Black eyes testing. White flesh teasing. A Preacher-man’s daughter is the devil’s own!

  For Tabit, Pastor weeps in the night. Dark and thin and so hungry for ... something.

  Does she even know? Of course she knows. Those eyes know from the beginning of the world.

  Tamara dreams; this one is different. Thin red lips with a snake of a tongue; little hatchet blade of a nose, like Pastor’s. Flat small butt, quick, lean thighs. What won’t you do when your day comes, Tabit? Will glides quietly into his room, closing the door behind him. He stares a moment through his lone window into the cold wet night. Pastor lives in the suburbs, but the city is not far away.

  He studies the night only a little while, the divinity of darkness, then pulls his curtain. He slips the bathrobe off his shoulders. It falls in a wrinkled heap at his feet. An obscenity of disorder in a room that he has already straightened twice this evening. He walks around the piled cloth with wicked glee, then picks it off the floor guiltily and hangs it neatly. He wipes it carefully so there are no wrinkles. Now he walks in a prison-cell-circle. He watches his own nakedness in two mirrors. One shows most of his body. He is weed-thin, a tiny man who should have been a girl. His blond hair is long. His face is thin. His eyes are his glory: hypnotically blue, dazzling blue. Bluer than the sky.

  Will falls to bed with a sigh that he does not utter. His first sleep as a free man. He tries to think about pretty Tabit Merriweather, but her image fades. He dreams again of other times.

  The dark and the rain. Missy in the hole she thinks will be her grave. Missy. Beside the likes of Missy, Tabit and Tamara are lilies of the field. So pretty and soft, so soon to pass away.

  Chapter 11

  Friday 8:00 a.m., March 19

  I STOPPED FOR BREAKFAST ON the way to the office. I had had enough mornings like this

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  to know the routine. Heavy on the grease, a few extra cups of coffee. I had wanted to hit the ground running, but it took a while. I was sore and sick and tired. Just looking at folks turned my stomach sour. I kept feeling I was on the hunt for Sarah’s killer again. I kept waking up from my foggy thoughts with a cold shiver. By the time I got to work, I was feeling physically ready to take on the problems of the day, but I had somehow worked myself into a low boil of a rage, as though all of this were very personal. I caught Garrat just as she was walking out the door. On impulse I asked her if we could talk. She saw at once the ragged edges of a sincere hangover. ‘Ten minutes,’ she told me, and led me back into her office. ‘I talked to Missy Worth,’ I told her. Garrat looked faintly curious, nothing more. I expect she smelled the booze melting out of my pores. ‘Will Booker is the man,’ I told her.

  ‘I never doubted it.’

  I walked to the window and stared at the empty grey sky. ‘I talked to some people.

  Lawyers. There’s a rumour going around that you’re planning on cutting your losses when this thing blows up. And we both know – ’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I turned and saw an honest face: the kid I’d known

  years ago who thought nothing of walking in on the governor’s meetings. Only the kid had died in Pat Garrat the night her father fell, and this kid was a lie. As good as they come, but a lie no less.

  ‘If you need for me to fall on my sword, I will, but don’t play games.’

  Garrat swore. ‘Don’t turn paranoid on me, Rick. I need you.’

  ‘If you want Will Booker, you’re going to have to take him on yourself. Sending Massey after him is just smoke and mirrors. People who know this business see right through it, Pat.

  That’s all I’m saying.’ She looked at her desk, and I knew I was right. She knew exactly how she meant to play this thing. A bit of catastrophe, a bit of housecleaning afterwards. Maybe Massey because he was worthless but definitely the old drunk.

  ‘Look, Rick, nobody knows how this thing is going play out.’

  ‘Save it for the kids! You’ve got a problem on your hands and you’re dealing with it.

  Fine. Do what you have to do. Just be up front with me. I had a job when I came onboard. I’ll get another one when you bounce me out of here. Just don’t throw the friendship away.’

  ‘Sit down.’ I took a seat and worked hard to meet her gaze. We were like a couple of teenagers who had just found out that the world was not going to cooperate with our fantasies.

  ‘If there’s a way to try this case, I’m going after it,’ she said staunchly.

  ‘ You’re going after it? I thought Steve Massey was prosecuting this.’ She hesitated. I had caught her in another lie, and she was doing a fast shift-and-sort on the best way out of it.

  Trers> goinuth being the last option. ‘I don’t expect you want to hear it,’ I said, ‘but when your daddy was the prosecutor in Shiloh County – ’

  ‘You’re right,’ she snapped, cooling the air between us. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  I looked away as I murmured my bit of truth, ‘He took the big cases, Pat. He didn’t run and hide when the likes of Len Griswold was coming to town.’

  ‘The world’s changed, Rick.’

  ‘Nothing changes, Pat!’ I caught her up in my eyes. ‘Nothing ever changes!’

  Lazily, a woman suffering her fool’s jests, ‘So how would my old man handle it?’ There was a twitch somewhere in the smile she offered, the way a cat will move its tail when its patience is gone.

  ‘With eloquence! Evidence be damned, he would talk that maniac back to Death Row!’

  ‘First rule of politics, Rick, in case you’re interested. You don’t have to win them all, just make sure you don’t lose the big one.’

  I swore angrily. ‘You sound like Steve Massey!’ She did not blink, and she did not back down either. I was five seconds from the unemployment line. So I took a shortcut. ‘Get another investigator, lady. I’m done.’

  She showed genuine surprise. Whether or not she was relieved, I could not say. ‘You wan
t to think about that, Rick?’

  ‘It’s all I’ve been thinking about. You’re making a mistake, Pat. I won’t stand by and watch it.’ I stood up and put my back to her. At the door, I thought about one more shot, but instead I just kept on going.

  I got a couple of boxes together and had my desk cleared in about five minutes. Mostly dead ink pens, bent paper clips, and empty whiskey bottles.

  Chapter 12

  Friday noon, March 19.

  THE FIRST THING I DID WAS head for the Dug Out to bolster my resolution. Around noon, I remember, I swaggered into the Shamrock with a good buzz going and pushed toward the bar like a man on a mission.

  So began the long drunk that is never finished. At least that was my goal. I had spent too many days like this not to know how to do it up right. It’s more than alcohol. It is a state of mind. It is the art of thinking about the poor suckers who work for a living while you smack your lips on a cold bitter brew. It is the righteousness of never being forced into a compromise.

  Drunkenness as an act of holiness. A mostly desolate tavern on your first day of unemployment. Leaning on a pool stick and playing hard for quarters against other loafers as the afternoon fades. Tapping a fender as you drive away at four and not giving a damn either.

  Dodging the amateurs at happy hour, and going where only the serious drinkers bend an elbow.

  Catching a ride somewhere and stealing a few crackers so the em"> gt="1eght="last dollars of the day can be used for what God meant them to be used on: more beer, by God!

  Chapter 13

  Friday 6:30 p.m., March 19.

  A KNOCK AT WILL’S bedroom door. He comes out of his holiness and into the dirty light of day. ‘Will?’ the voice calls. Tamara. Sweet, soft, cherubic Tamara. Will sets his Bible on the bedside table and stands up. He straightens the covers. He opens the door. Tamara steps inside.

  Tamara stands close. Too close for it to be an accident. ‘My dad wants to see you in his study.’

  She steals a glance around his room. Her eyes fix on his bed. ‘Something about the lawyer calling,’ she murmurs.

  Will does not answer for a moment. He stares into her grey-blue-grey eyes until she looks at him. He studies her plump cherubic cheeks as they flush under his hot gaze. Pink goes to red. Her breath catches. Her weight shifts awkwardly. ‘Close the door,’ he whispers to her.

  Why? She asks with a tilt of her head but not a word spoken. ‘Close it.’ She studies his naked feet. ‘Are you afraid of me, Tammy?’ A whisper, a dare. She shakes her head, but her eyes cannot lift to his. ‘Close it,’ he tells her again.

  She turns and steps out of the room, then closes the door until only her face peeks back at him from the dark hallway. A timid smile. She is playing with him. Closing the door as he asked her to do. ‘I’ll tell him you’re coming down,’ she says. There is no sound beyond his door after the latch clicks shut. She is listening. He listens, too. Finally, she moves away, but he knows she has almost come back to him.

  ‘I GOT A CALL FROM Len Griswold just now, Will,’ Pastor announces when Will comes to his study. It’s a big room with hundreds of books. Will scans the titles and thinks about Pastor’s good life. Pastor has never wanted, never suffered, never sorrowed. The Lord loves him as purely as he loves the Lord. Like Job, Will thinks. Blessed Job, whose soul, the Devil wanted.

  ‘It’s good news, son. The appellate court has refused to hear the state’s appeal! Len says he expects Pat Garrat will drop the case in a week or two. No way now they can win!’

  Will nods simply. ‘Praise God.’

  ‘Dinner, you two.’ Mamma Rachel, with the trim figure and pretty smile. Will turns and meets her gaze. Her faith is like Pastor’s, but Will wants to know where her God is in the dark of night. When the Lord withdraws his protection, will she curse His indifference or pray all the harder? She leans into the stairwell and calls up to the girls. Pastor and Rachel and Will wait together for the two girls to come down the stairs. Tabit arrives first. She meets Will’s gaze when her mother is not looking. She lets him know with a glance that if he’s after Tamara he’s wasting better opportunities. Tamara follows. Tamara’s step falters when she sees Will’s quick smile answer her sister’s look.

  That is good. She won’t deny him the next time he asks her to do something.

  g

  she sees W>

  Chapter 14

  Midnight.

  I WROTE A CHECK AT the pool hall Saturday morning. I wandered back and put a couple hundred balls away in a kind of dreamy world. I spun the stick. I kept my feet dancing. I sent the balls sliding across the felt and wondered that such a broad expanse could remain perfectly level. So different from the world. I went for a big lunch at a place called Jeff’s Grill. Jeff burns his hamburgers on the outside and somehow keeps the meat juicy within. How the saints will fix them at the eternal cookout. I fended off a print reporter who was mostly just curious about what Garrat intended to do since she had lost her appeal. That she had lost her appeal was news to me. When I asked him for the details, he wandered away in search of greener pastures.

  After that I sauntered out to my car and drove to the Pastime on Poplar. At about six o’clock I ran into some professors at Charley’s. We spent three hours talking baseball, books, and the meaning of life. When it had finally settled on the one eternal, I sent them off to the Shady Lady, one of our local strip saloons. Myself, I passed on the chance to fall into a seat stage-side for a bleary eyeful of the feminist counter-culture. Not virtue, mind you. I just didn’t have the cash for anything but beer.

  I lose a few hours now. I do not quite know where I went, only that it was midnight, give or take a decade, and the prettiest gal in town and I were dancing in the street, just outside Simple Simon’s. We were oblivious the rain and traffic. Laughing at it, in fact, because folly is an aphrodisiac. Then there was a light, as from heaven. I recall looking around and seeing a friendly face in a blue uniform peeking out from a city patrol car. Maybe I wanted to move it inside, he said. He passed me a grin and a wink with the advice.

  I know all the old cops and most of the new ones. I was a city cop myself before I went over to the State Troopers, but that was a lifetime ago, so I walked toward this patrolman with a friendly smile.

  My next coherent memory is sitting with eight other men in the city jail drunk tank. I had a cut lip, bloody knuckles, a hotness at one eye, and some real heaviness in my back and leg muscles where I had enjoyed an apparently much needed ‘attitude adjustment.’ I’ll say only this of my night in jail: the tough boys let me be. And why not? I was the nightmare their mammas had warned them about.

  Chapter 15

  Sunday 2:00 a.m., March 21.

  RAIN. A WEEK OF IT AND no letting up. Missy Worth stood in the parking lot by her low

  slung Buick Skylark. Because the new Harley don’t come out in the rain. Probably a pretty nice car twenty years ago. Now even the chrome was rusting. She looked up angrily at the sky. Was it ever going to stop?

  Behind her a motorcycle blasted to life. Missy climbed into the Skylark and turned the key. It groaned before it turned over. She played the engine out for a while, as touch-and-go as a virgin. And she’d had one or two, so she knew all about virgins. She pressed the pedal with several light taps, then heard the rumbling take hold. She brought it on fast until the backfires started up. She looked over at Doo, who shook his head, hro Dlaughing quietly at the old Skylark.

  She had to get a new car, but with the Harley payments who could afford it?

  Missy waved at her friend with her middle finger and pulled out from behind the building, rocking through what looked like a footpath to the front where everyone parked except her and Doo, then to the pavement. She was beat down from five hard days of two-to-two. Not that she didn’t like the work! It was the greatest! Best job ever. It was only that... well, a month off would be great. Month off and roll!

  She had the trip planned if she could get the time off, or she got her ass fired. Star
t through the hill country further south, roll down beside the river and slip over to the Ozarks.

  Quick stop in Stillwater to see an old friend and then head southwest again. Destination: Santa Fe. On roads out there you could hit a hundred and the cops would just wave at you as you blew by. She grimaced suddenly. The river. She always felt something crossing it. Something in the air. Something old and mouldy in her memory. When she was a kid it was different. Loved the river. Loved the woods. Loved night. Stars in the sky: that was the best. The last ten years things had been different. She thought about her sister. How if Mary could come back, what she would see. Besides Will Booker walking the streets a free man.

  Missy shook her head with a familiar rush of rage and a sewer-full of guilt. If Mary came back, she would not recognise anything including her own sister. Eighty pounds heavier. Missy swore and reached into her purse for her cigarettes. She needed to go on a diet. She finished her smoke as she pulled up in front of her house on Elm Street. She tried to remember the drive.