Death Waits in the Dark

by Mark Edward Langley

  Sykes’ expression became slightly distant. “Including you, there’s only six of us left, sir.” He looked at the mahogany, flag-draped coffin. “We’re all here.”

  Arthur nodded. “Lead the way, Corporal.”

  They moved quietly through from the room where later the sliding pocket doors would close to allow Joshua Derrick’s family a few moments to have their own last remaining bit of privacy with him. They crossed the foyer and passed a small but neatly organized cherry desk where a thin, gray-haired woman sat guard in a dark skirt, white blouse, and crisp suit jacket. The hallway behind her was covered in period wallpaper that spoke of a less hectic time, when people weren’t so concerned with the talking heads of dysfunction that now inundated the visual airwaves and minds that had not been brainwashed by smartphones. On the other side of the foyer, an ornate staircase rose to a second story where Arthur assumed offices now resided in rooms that had once been bedrooms. They continued quietly, weaving through the friends and relatives of Sergeant Derrick until they reached what had most likely been an expanded servant’s quarters and that now had been converted into a room where food could be displayed like a golf course brunch buffet.

  Once through the doorway, the room revealed a handful of round tables and padded chairs. A long counter off to the right displayed assorted foods and snacks. Another counter at the far end of the room had been loaded up with black sentinels of brewed coffee, two-liter plastic bottles of various soft drinks, foam plates, and plastic utensils.

  “Ten-hut!” Sykes announced.

  Arthur recognized the four men in the room right away. Two of the men, seated at one of the tables, quickly jumped to their feet with a crisp salute. The two by the buffet, who had been concentrating on shoveling food onto their foam plates, suddenly spun to face the doorway and did the same. It took only a split second for smiles to brighten their faces and an awkward joy to fill the small room. Hands that had saluted were pushed forward for handshakes before the men returned to either their seats or to raiding the buffet.

  James Basher, a cross between Dolph Lundgren and the Incredible Hulk, sat at the table. His nickname, “Bash,” came not from his name but from the size of his fists. Dave Lugowsky, who sat next to him, Arthur remembered had earned the nickname “Lugnut” because of his resourcefulness at being able to Frankenstein any truck in the combat zone by utilizing whatever he could scrounge up to armor an add-on kit for a vehicle. The two men waved Arthur toward an empty chair while Sykes went to fill his own plate. Lavar St. James and Mike Dokozinski filled their red Solo cups with pop, plus one for Arthur, and sat at the table. Sykes finished gathering his food and drink, pulled up a chair, and squeezed himself into the group.

  “A toast,” St. James said, holding up his red plastic cup. “May our brother finally find the peace in death he sure as hell didn’t find in life. Till Valhalla!”

  The men all tapped cups. “Till Valhalla!”

  Arthur took stock of his command, or what was left of it. He studied St. James and Dokozinski—on the surface both appeared unfazed by the trauma of war. St. James’ eyes were clear, and he showed no signs of what the shrinks at the VA would call meeting the DSM-5: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. There were six men from his unit dead already whom the VA had failed. Left to fend for themselves, they had taken the only avenue open to them to stop the pain. And he had buried them all.

  Dokozinski’s blond crew cut looked good on his blocky head. High and tight. And by the look of his body, Arthur could see that Dok had kept up his grueling workout regimen. Bash, on the other hand, was harder to read. There was no giveaway, no clue in his looks or behavior that Arthur could pick up on. Lugnut was another story altogether. There was some kind of vibe that emanated from him like a scattered high-intensity frequency that Arthur just couldn’t put a finger on. The skinny kid who had wrangled a .50 caliber machine gun on top of a scout truck in the provinces of Afghanistan hadn’t added much weight to his frame since he had been home.

  “How you guys holding up?” Arthur asked. “I know it gets tougher … tougher every time one of our own falls.” Arthur studied their faces. “We all still carry our demons.”

  “That’s why some of us just say ‘fuck it’ and blow our fucking brains out,” Sykes said before spitting out his chewing gum into a napkin and drinking again from his red plastic cup. “There’s plenty of scars on the inside no one can see.”

  “Yeah,” Dok chimed in, “when you’re in the CZ, it’s like death is always right next to you, whispering in your ear.” Dok took a big gulp from his cup and swallowed hard. “And it’s always hard not to listen. You just can’t fucking get away from that shit.”

  “Any of you have luck with the VA?” Arthur said.

  They laughed.

  “They had me seeing a psychologist and a psychiatrist,” Sykes replied. “I told them both I didn’t want any drugs, that too many guys I knew had a shitload of bad reactions to ’em. They said, ‘okay, we understand, no drugs.’ Then I had another appointment a few months later, and they handed me a prescription for goddamn pills!”

  “What’d they give you?” Dok asked.

  Sykes huffed disgustedly. “Trazodone.” He shrugged. “I ended up takin’ ’em, but all they did was fuck me up worse, so I flushed ’em.” He shook his head, thinking back to it. “By then, it was too late. I’d already lost my wife and my kid. I was just in too many dark places for her, I guess. She couldn’t take it anymore, so she took my son and left. I got divorce papers served on me a month later.”

  “That’s rough, man,” Dok said. “But let me guess: the pills made you feel like shit and the nightmares they were supposed to handle got more vivid?”

  Sykes looked from under his brow at him. “How’d you know that?”

  Dok nodded. “Happened to me too, bro. The silence will kill you, man. Nothing worse than the silence inside your own head.”

  Arthur’s cell phone suddenly began to vibrate and buzz in his jacket pocket. He apologized for shattering what was turning into a badly needed support group and moved away from the table. Pulling out his phone, he saw the name and tapped Accept. Immediately he heard Margaret Tabaaha’s frantic voice filling his ear.

  “Both my sons are dead!” she screamed between sobs. “Someone murdered them! Someone has taken them from me!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Arthur apologized to his men, promised they would stay in touch, and went back to the reception room where he sought out Sharon before leaving the funeral home to drive out to Flat Iron Rock. She told him not to worry, that she would stay with Kathy Derrick, and after that, if Arthur was going to be too late getting back to pick her up, she would find something else to do in town until he returned.

  Slipping on his sunglasses, he shed his dark suit jacket as he walked outside and into the sweltering afternoon heat. He tossed the jacket onto the back seat of the Bronco as he climbed in; the tie soon followed. Sharon had been after him to vacuum the Bronco for months, but he gave little thought to the fact that Ak’is’ dog hair covered the cracked vinyl of the back seat. He removed the towel he had draped over the steering wheel to prevent the sun’s rays from burning his hands, tossed it on the passenger seat, and started the truck.

  Heading west on Highway 64, he followed its gradual turn northward before being caught by the horizontal traffic lights where West Pinon Street turned into West Bitsi Highway by the Speedway gas station. When the green arrow appeared, he made the turn and continued west. The high, blazing sun continued to push its heat through the windshield of the Bronco as Arthur adjusted the air-conditioning to high. He knew the compressor under the hood was fighting a losing battle and had even given a quick thought to stopping for one of those AC-in-a-can jobs every auto parts store now carried, but it was too late for that. Not even the flipped-down visor could abate the sun at its current angle, and he feared it would only get worse until th
e big orange ball sank completely into the melting horizon.

  The drive to Flat Iron Rock from Farmington took less than twenty minutes, enough time for Arthur to let the desperation he had heard in Margaret Tabaaha’s voice truly sink in. The thought that she had just lost both of her sons simultaneously was too much for him to even comprehend. He could hear the wrenching of her soul every time he replayed their conversation in his mind.

  As he passed the blocky profile of the Northern Edge Navajo Casino on BIA 36 to his left, he could see the image of Flat Iron Rock rising tall against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. Why would anyone have done such a thing? Who could have had a reason, or thought they had a reason, to kill Tsela and Tahoma Tabaaha? Arthur remembered that he had been home on leave and had known the boys since the day they were born. He had even taken pictures with his phone and sent them to their father half a world away. In the ways of the Bilagáana, he would have been referred to as their godfather. His gut churned slowly as he drove, while his heart ached a pain that he could only imagine was a thousand times worse for his first love.

  He was there when their father had been killed in Iraq and felt an obligation to take part in the now eighteen-year-old brothers’ lives like a father, to be there for them whenever they needed it. Somewhere in the halls of time, he knew he had failed them. And they were good boys, too, whose maternal clan had been the same as their name—Tábąąhá, the Water’s Edge People clan. Their paternal clan was the Tó baazhni’ázhi, the Two Who Came to the Water clan. He remembered their maternal grandmother had been born for the Kinyaa’áanii, the Towering House clan (one of the original four clans and Arthur’s own) and that their paternal grandfather had been born for the Haltsooi, or the Meadow People clan.

  The boys had been a gift to a loving family who had taught them to live in the teachings of the Blessing Way and the Protection Way. Arthur couldn’t understand how something like this could have happened. But in today’s world, so often it was not what you taught your own children, but what others had taught theirs that would have life-changing effects.

  The teens would have had to have been targeted by someone, Arthur had already established in his mind. Of that much he was sure. He had never heard of them getting into trouble at school or in the community. Was it just some nutcase trying to make a statement? he wondered. Or some sick bastard filling his racist need to kill an Indian? In today’s social climate, who the hell could know? He shook his head sadly. Sometimes, he admitted to himself, it really feels like things haven’t changed much in the last hundred years.

  Arthur tapped the brakes and suddenly made the left turn onto BIA Route 363. If he had been paying any less attention, he would have missed the handwritten 363 scribbled on the back of the stop sign in a black Sharpie and missed the turn altogether. The Bronco’s big tires burped across the steel cattle guard as Arthur glanced at the smattering of rundown trailers and tan NHA housing with their sandy-brown roofs that sat off to his right. Scattered around them were piles of wood and other debris, both working and derelict automobiles, children’s toys and a few smaller buildings that sat among the buckwheat plants, Indian rice grass, and scattered junipers.

  The short stretch of pavement that lead away from BIA 363 quickly ended beneath taut power lines that stretched between the tall blackish-brown wooden poles that flanked the freshly graded dirt road. Arthur remembered seeing the Navajo Nation DOT graders a while back moving slowly though the landscape, followed by the CAT vibrating rollers that compacted the stone-and-sand surface into a hard-packed road. He watched as the dust filled his rearview mirror before being swept away by the prevailing winds that blew the hot, baking air across the valley.

  The view ahead was clear. More buckwheat and junipers were scattered perfectly by the creator’s hand and dotted the land from the low, flat mesa on his left and down the slope to his right until his eyes lost sight of it. He took a breath. This was the kind of solitude that made him want to breathe deep, to hold the air satisfyingly in his lungs for a moment before letting it go. He kept his eyes transfixed on the long, hard-packed road ahead.

  The graded road made a slight swerve to the left as it moved over a land scattered with small tracts of ragged housing that sprang up at the ends of unmarked spurs that swung off at intermittent distances toward them on his right. The road seemed to become packed even harder in some areas and looser in others, forcing the Bronco’s wide-lugged tires to dig into the softened sand to move itself along. The road swung left again then straightened out, and Arthur could see Flat Iron Rock clearly silhouetted now against the bright backdrop of a clear sky. He also noticed the flashing lights of Navajo Unit 18 standing guard by the greenish and elongated triangular metal gate covered in the red-and-white reflective tape. The word SHIPROCK on the front fender, along with the green-and-yellow swath down the side, made Arthur smile slightly as he pulled up and stopped. The driver’s-side window of Unit 18 rolled down, and Arthur recognized the twenty-seven-year-old behind the wheel.

  “What are you doing here, Arthur?” Officer Brandon Descheene called out with a curious stare. He was sitting comfortably inside his air-conditioned unit, the toothpick clinched between his lips moving as he spoke. His short black hair was covered by a white straw cowboy hat that sat above dark sunglasses.

  “Margaret Tabaaha called me. Told me to meet her here.” Arthur looked ahead and noticed several figures moving in the desert scrub flanking both sides of the dirt road. He turned his attention back to Officer Descheene, who hadn’t changed much since Arthur had helped him fill out his application for the department a few years back.

  Officer Descheene exited his unit and walked over to the Bronco, glanced toward Flat Iron Rock, then back at Arthur. “Not a good sight, I don’t mind telling you. Not good at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Both took head shots, ánaaí.” Officer Descheene used the Navajo word for older brother and studied Arthur’s eyes as he leaned on the Bronco’s door. “Not a good sight.”

  Arthur nodded and let the news sink in. “You mind letting me through?”

  “Not at all. Prepare yourself though,” he warned again. “Like I said, not a good sight to see.”

  Descheene walked to the gate, pulled the T-handle, and swung the long arm of the triangle-shaped blockade open. The metal hinges of the gate cried from its weight in the heat. Arthur waved a “thank you” to Descheene as he held it open for the Bronco. Arthur proceeded up the dirt road and watched the gate close behind him in his mirrors. The road now began to rise slowly and then dip, then rise again and then curve. The Bronco rocked and creaked as its suspension tackled the undulating ground. The truck soon straddled a section where the ground had split, and it rocked more as it climbed the grade upward, past the cast-aside remnants of trash, old tires and the skeletal remains of an office chair that looked out over the small canyon to his right.

  Arthur turned off the truck’s inadequate air conditioning to save on the gas feeding the 351 Modified powerplant and rolled down the driver and passenger windows, along with the tailgate window, with the touch of three switches. The instant he did, the heat of the 105-degree afternoon swarmed inside the truck like the dry heat of a 400-degree oven after opening the door. Once the displacement of the tepid cabin air had been swallowed up by the August swelter, he rested his left arm on the door edge, searing his forearm on the decorative chrome strip. An expletive left his lips and melted into the hot air, and he quickly brought his arm back inside the Bronco and drove on.

  Arthur passed another rusted metal tube fence off to his left where someone could easily turn off and be led farther into the scrubby hills toward whatever homestead or party place might be hiding among the cliffs. Arthur took note of the ragged mattress that was laying on the ground by the gate as he moved toward the Flat Iron, which became more prominent the closer he approached. The giant wedge of sandstone protruded from the land like a monolith, backlit
by a cerulean sky and overwhelmed by a blazing sun.

  The Bronco’s suspension moaned, and the truck listed to one side as it moved up what had become, as of that morning, a heavily trafficked road that led to a murder investigation. Another entrance soon sprang up to Arthur’s right. He could see a tan fence made up of six sections of painted steel piping protecting an oil well pumpjack that stood unmoving twenty yards behind it. Arthur pushed the accelerator, and the truck growled up the grade up to where a small mixture of Navajo Nation district vehicles were casting red-and-blue ghosts against the shaded side of Flat Iron Rock. Arthur stopped the Bronco and got out. Slamming the door, he heard that same hollow sound he’d heard for years before stepping toward the revolving lights.

  Arthur could see the jacked-up Suburban belonging to Navajo Police Captain Jake Bilagody farther up the hill on the right side of the cretaceous monument, but there was no sign of Bilagody’s large frame, nor anyone else Arthur recognized for that matter. Officer Descheene had been the only familiar face. This piece of land, as well as the Fruitland and Kirtland formations that comprised the area, rested just inside Crownpoint District 3’s border on the Navajo Reservation. Its border butted up against District 2 of Shiprock to the west, which was part of the large Eastern Agency along with Chinle District 5 and Kayenta District 6—all under the command of Captain Jake Bilagody, the commuting captain, as Arthur affectionately called him since he and the other district commanders were continuing to play musical chairs with the Window Rock district since the resignation of the Navajo Nation police chief

  Arthur’s eyes squinted momentarily against the sun as he noticed Margaret Tabaaha running toward him. Her long black hair, the hair he remembered so vividly from their youth, shimmered and billowed as she ran. His heart absorbed the beauty of the woman in the stone-washed jeans and white blouse, who could still motivate his testosterone level to rise exponentially. He forced that thought away quickly.