Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  “I should get married more often.” Malcolm hoisted his whiskey. Elizabeth hid away behind her glass, red from all the attention. As they drank and caught up, Malcolm could not help but notice Russ staring at him. He looked away, but Russ persisted, setting Malcolm in his angry, harrowed glare.

  In so many words, Russ blamed Malcolm for the loss of his arm. Russ had worked on a logging crew that was cutting in the woods a few miles from the Bayne house when Russ ripped into a pine with an iron rod spiked through the trunk. The chain spun from his saw, sending the jagged metal teeth clear through his arm and embedding them in the back of his head. He was lucky he wasn’t killed, but Russ didn’t see it that way. Nurses drew his blood at the hospital and his toxicology came back positive for alcohol, opiates, and methamphetamine. Malcolm was in his first year as junior clerk for Ringgold Insurance, the same company that denied Russ a settlement for the result of his accident. Russ’s employer refused to file a compensation claim and fired him as he lay in the hospital bed recovering from a series of surgeries that left him bankrupt. Russ had greater demons to fight, but he never forgave Malcolm for being involved.

  Jordan headed out to smoke and saw a young woman wavering on a bench by the front door. She hit her head on the armrest and nearly fell at Jordan’s feet. Johnny yelled from behind the bar that she should call a friend or he would be happy to call her a police cruiser. She picked up the falling weight of her head and somehow managed to dial a cell phone that she mashed into her cheek. “Come get me,” the girl slurred, “or they’re gonna make me take a cruise.” The voice on the other end tried to ascertain where she was. “I’m on a bench,” she said, loud and slow, as though she could not hear her own words. The girl reached out for Jordan’s pant leg as he walked past. There was a time when just that would have been enough, and he would have woke beside her the next morning, the two squinting at each other, trying to remember how they got there, but he kicked her away as though sloughing off a small animal.

  Johnny the bartender joined Jordan outside. They stood on the curb blowing smoke and rolling gravel beneath their feet.

  “That’s great about your brother,” said Johnny. “Girl’s stunning.”

  “Tell me about it. Speaking of brothers, Adam still around?” Jordan asked.

  “In a manner of speaking.” Johnny blew a heavy breath. “Crashed his bike about five months ago in the hills on 540. It was dark, started raining, went over the rail straight into nothing.”

  “Jesus, man. I’m sorry.”

  “He ain’t dead,” said Johnny. “Sum’ bitch is laid up at home smoking weed and playing Xbox. Thought the accident would wake him up—boy, was I wrong.”

  He kicked the small stones and Jordan him asked if he was going to the wedding Saturday.

  “Wasn’t invited,” he said.

  “Well, you are now,” Jordan told him. “If you’re not busy Thursday night, come to the bachelor party. Should be a time.” Johnny nodded.

  A beat-up red Civic swung into the lot and stopped short at the curb. The driver’s side door shot open and a woman stepped out in a mess of jingling bracelets and wild brown hair. Leah Fayette took a few hard steps toward the door, but when she saw Jordan the rhythm of her heels clicked to a stop. Johnny flicked his cigarette and ran back inside the bar.

  “So, it’s true,” said Leah, looking anywhere but ahead.

  “Whatever you’re going to say—”

  “I don’t intend to say nothin’. You know what? Fuck you. Don’t preempt me, you don’t get to anticipate what I am going to say. As far as I am concerned you are a figment, a sad ghost. Go find someone else to haunt.”

  Jordan had no other recourse but to remain silent and light another cigarette. He offered her one, but Leah stormed away, then roared back a moment later and lit her own.

  Jordan asked how she was doing.

  “What?” Leah replied.

  “I mean, what are you doing here? Are you, you know, meeting someone?”

  “Wouldn’t you love to know.” She worked to retain her composure. “I came to pick up my friend. Apparently she’s shitfaced.”

  Jordan recalled the girl on the bench but didn’t see the point in mentioning her. “My brother’s getting married,” he said.

  “Good for him,” Leah said. “No, seriously,” she added, peering at a passing car. “I always liked Malcolm. Tell him I said congratulations.”

  “Do you want to—” Jordan mumbled into his chest. “I mean, you are welcome to, if that’s something that would, um, interest you.”

  Leah drew smoke, studying her phantom. She stepped closer to him. “We have a long way to go before that would ever be a reality.”

  To have Leah that close incensed him and he took in what about her had retained its dark, warped shape and in what ways, in outer appearance anyway, she had changed. Ultimately, though, he found himself contemplating how she had remained withdrawn after all these years. “I read somewhere that we make our own reality,” he told her.

  Leah threw her smoke and headed inside.

  The group stood around the trunks of their cars moving from congratulations to goodbyes, Malcolm repeating the logistics of their big day while Elizabeth brushed off compliments and stored new numbers in her phone. In the commotion, Russ, rudderless from a number of drinks, leaned close to Malcolm and whispered beneath his breath.

  Malcolm asked loudly for him to repeat himself.

  Russ stood apart from the rest of the group, dead-eyed and morose. “I said, it takes a bitch to marry a bitch.”

  Jordan felt the heat rise between them. He knew his brother was deciding whether or not it was a good idea to beat Russ into the pavement right there in front of Elizabeth. In an effort to defuse the situation, Jordan did what came to mind first and tripped himself onto to the ground, scattering the contents of his pockets across the pavement. “You’re just going to stand there after tripping a guy, Elizabeth? That’s low, even for you. Come on, help a poor wretch.” She laughed and Harrell leaned down and helped her haul Jordan back to his feet.

  At the next bar, they clanked down a round of shots and Malcolm joked that Elizabeth made Jordan behave himself. She did have a calming effect on him, something more than manners.

  “So, Jordan,” Elizabeth said with a drunk tongue. “Why did you really go to jail?”

  “Lizzie,” Malcolm protested.

  “No, its fine, she’s family now,” Jordan assured him. “For being an idiot,” he told Elizabeth. “I went to jail for being an idiot.” “Yes, but what does that mean?”

  “It means one night I had myself about twenty drinks, give or take, and went on a bender that ended with my truck plowed through the front of a nursing home in Alamosa, Colorado. The cab was sitting at an angle on part of a steel door frame and a bunch of smashed drywall, so I climbed out and wandered inside. Apparently, I found a service kitchen and cooked up a bunch of tortillas for the residents of the nursing home, who were curious to know who was making all the racket. The cop told me that I was under the impression I was making a late-night snack at my apartment in La Veta, over an hour away. A nurse and a couple of officers found me with some elderly folks in their slippers and nightgowns laughing about God knows what, eating tortillas and having a ball. When the police cuffed me and took me out, they all waved at me and shouted, ‘Goodbye, Jordie! Hope you have fun in jail!’”

  Elizabeth could not contain her laughter and spit her drink on the table. Malcolm was unable to read his brother, but the laughter spread to Jordan as Malcolm sopped up the mess with a handful of napkins. Elizabeth apologized.

  “No need to be sorry,” Jordan told her. “It’s good to talk about these things.” He couldn’t get to the end of his sentence before both of them were overcome again like a couple of children with an inside joke. She asked him to keep going with his story, and Jordan caught his breath. “Well, prison is a pallid hell I’d just as soon not discuss. When I got out, I lived in a little valley at the foot of Blanca Peak.
Not very far from the jail, even. You’d think I’d have wanted to get as far away from that place as possible, but I was empty. A blank slate, no fight left in me. There was nowhere else to go. I just wandered outside the gate and thought it was pretty, so I stayed. Big sky, quiet nights. Didn’t know a soul. Got work hauling steel girders off the loaders that came up the pass. In the summer I slept outside. Didn’t even have a guitar. Hard work and a little anonymity will do a lot to heal a person.”

  They ordered another round from the waitress, and Jordan noticed a group pointing in their direction from the bar. A girl hopped off her stool and made her way to their table, two men at her side as she approached hard and tough. “How’s bout paying your bill and movin’ on out of here?”

  “Just ordered another round, actually. Thinking of staying a while,” Jordan said, lamenting being seated on the inside of the booth.

  “Maybe you don’t hear so well,” she spewed. Jordan recognized her fetal-alcohol drawl as the same woman who recited the dire warning to his voicemail before he came back.

  “Hey, fuckface, she’s talking to you,” one of the guys said.

  Before Jordan could do anything about it, he watched as his brother rose to his feet, gripped the neck of the man closest to him, and slammed his forehead off the corner of the table. Drinks jumped and leaked rivers of booze. The ketchup broke and salt and pepper shakers rolled onto the floor where the man fell bleeding. The girl covered her mouth in shock. Malcolm moved with his fist cocked toward the other one, who flinched and backed away, then he stared the shivering girl dead in the eyes. A big bouncer grabbed Malcolm from behind, but not before he kicked the man on the ground once more, forcing a gasp from his lungs. The bouncer corralled Elizabeth and Jordan together with Malcolm and forced them out the door. The tough girl sobbed on her knees, cradling the bleeding man’s head in her lap. “Get up,” she pleaded. “Baby, please, get up.”

  The three drove the winding road home in silence. It took a while for the adrenaline coursing through Malcolm to wane. As Jordan drove, Malcolm stared out the back window and fought the undeniable truth that a small part of holding that man down and pounding his flesh felt good. Something about it felt natural to him. He had not apologized to Elizabeth, who sat horrified in the passenger seat. Jordan kept his eyes on the road and contained his obvious excitement. Finally, his enthusiasm wore down Elizabeth past her limit. “That’s enough, Jordan. It’s not funny,” she said.

  “No it’s not,” he said, smiling. “It’s just, well, usually that’s me.” Jordan looked at his brother in the rearview mirror. “You stuck up for me,” he said, exaggerating big deep breaths, as though refreshed by his brother’s valor. “My stars,” he joked, hitting Elizabeth on the leg. She returned a fuming specter that threatened to exceed mere displeasure and careened instead straight toward eternal judgment. Malcolm knew that look, though he hadn’t seen it that intense in a long time. Jordan leered away from her general direction and kept his eyes glued to the road the rest of the way home. When the car pulled into the driveway, Elizabeth got out and slammed the door.

  “Don’t worry about her, she’ll be all right,” Jordan assured Malcolm, still sulking in the back. “How you doing? Still all tuned up?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s natural,” said Jordan. “It’ll pass.”

  Malcolm squinted out the back window, searching the molasses sky. “Natural,” he scoffed. There was no such thing.

  SEVEN

  ANDRIDGE GRIEVES’ EYES GLOWED as he gazed into the stone hold. The old one reclined in a hide-back chair, the confines of which he far outsized. His lean, wizened relief looked as though it had been chipped from the side of a mountain, a countenance that had given birth to his many nicknames—Hill Devil, Shadow Hat, Weatherhands, the Carrollton Creeper. Most rumors went out with each generation of schoolchildren telling stories, sometimes about a reclusive hill dweller, a ghost turned manifest, other times a child-killing hermaphrodite who lurked at the dead ends of streets, stalking the foggy hollers that grew deep beyond local creeks. Those children became adults, and whether they ended up teaching at the schoolhouse, bagging groceries at the local store, or favoring cheap booze and strong pills as passable diversions from the misery of poverty, they all continued to talk, trading ghost stories and superstition for hearsay and gossip about everyone who came around the corner.

  Legend placed Andridge about town between the market and Eberle’s feed store and the deteriorated lanes in Felson Woods, a desolate expanse that ran against the far southern edge of the Bayne property. Edna Jackson, a teacher at the elementary, told anyone that would listen about the time she crossed Grieves on the forest road that led to the electric station. It was late, almost dusk. At first she mistook him for strange weather, on account of the gray day. When a strong wind blew she swore it tore right through his overalls, jacket and all. She thought he might have been approaching her, invisible like an apparition, and cowered out of terror. When she looked back, he was gone.

  Other more nefarious actors used to come around. Magicians, seers, myth hunters seeking tall tales and local lore, motivated by boredom or a small desire for profit. They thought Andridge was a regular boogeyman, a myth and nothing more, even though they had come to search for him or else prove he never existed. Inevitably, one or two did come face to face with Andridge, and upon learning he was real they fled down roads of solace and locked themselves in cabins and motel rooms muttering about the devil.

  Obediah Cob, his partner and oldest friend, was a fully grown homunculus whose origins were nothing short of a mystery. He imagined his poor Missourian parents giving him up for adoption at the turn of the last century, but Andridge once suggested that an alchemist could have conjured him from a meld of earthen substances. Semen and ewe blood, sunstone, willow sap, sputum, and manure. Cob was aware of such attempts throughout history and remained wary of their success, though he respected the depths of the dream that made up the world.

  He was half Andridge’s age and nowhere near possessed the powers he did, but Cob had peculiar abilities his own. His one true gift was his ability to speak the language of everything in the world—human and animal languages, plants and elder trees, shadows, aural entities, ancient ghosts, and the newly dead. Andridge suspected these capabilities upon their meeting in a Missouri antique shop in the spring of 1919. He had stopped in to inquire about a Vauclusian mirror that had made it out of France before the war.

  The owner of the shop was a stout German whose brutish tone drove Andridge away from purchasing the mirror. Frustrated to lose such a lucrative sale, especially in times as lean as those, the owner stormed behind the counter, cursing as he slammed boxes around. Andridge was unable to understand German, so at first he thought the man was cursing to himself, but as he walked to the front of a showroom cluttered with relics and choked with dust, a peculiar little man came into view and Andridge realized the owner was berating him. Though it was unintelligible, it sounded like a nasty tirade, one the little man shrugged off as though he was all too used to it, before he replied to the hostile shop owner in his own calm, distinctive German.

  Andridge pressed himself over a cloudy glass case and waved to get their attention. “Excuse me, sir. May I speak with you a moment?” he called to Cob.

  The German hobbled out, apologizing for his dimwitted employee, but Andridge interrupted him. “No, you misunderstand. I wish to talk with that dimwitted employee, not you.” Cob snickered as he came to the front of the counter and stepped atop a red leather case. Andridge asked his name.

  “Cob,” he said. “Obediah Cob.”

  “Have you been working here long, Obediah?”

  “A couple months. Told me I wouldn’t be hired anywhere else besides the carnival, so I should appreciate the opportunity he has given me. Pays a pittance, fancies himself ecumenical, but he’s just full of Protestant nonsense. Honest, I think he likes having me around. He needs someone to yell at.”

  “Y
our German is very good, he can’t hate that. How many languages would you say you know?”

  “A great many, indeed,” Cob said.

  Andridge looked him up and down, enamored by the young man. “Tell you what, Obediah. How would you like to come work for me?”

  “Doing what?” Cob asked.

  “A great many things,” Andridge said. “I am getting on in years, see, and could use someone to assist with my work—an assistant. I quite like the sound of that. You seem of right ilk and, if I may be frank, in possession of talents that are going to waste here. You would be praised, not berated. Your pay would more than increase. What do you say?”

  The two exchanged a long, studious glance. Cob returned to the back room to work his coat over his shoulders and fish a rare trinket from a box below his desk, a small solid gold casting of an eagle that he fit into the bag hanging from his shoulder. He turned to the shop owner and said in German, “May you die alone among forgotten treasures,” and walked through the door that Andridge held open for him.

  Obediah returned to the cabin and Andridge asked where he had been. “I followed the Bayne boys,” he said. “They got in a tussle and were ejected from a local establishment.”

  “That Jordan has a mean streak to him yet,” Andridge observed.

  “Actually, it was Malcolm. I was surprised myself.” Cob laid a tray on the table next to Andridge’s chair that held fixings for drinks. He pulled two cigarettes from a pack, lit both with a gold lighter, and handed one to Andridge. He stood at the side of the table preparing gin sodas. The fire cracked, ice hit glass, and cocktails fizzed as they discussed the brothers’ arrival. Cob voiced his concern. “I know you said Jordan is the one who has been chosen, but do you really think he could be a killer? I’m not sure I see it.”