Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  “He is beginning to emerge from the shadow of his father. They are practically spitting images of each other,” said Andridge. “Walker Bayne was unruly and arrogant in his time, too. Only he was much better at hiding it. Jordan has been fitted for violence. His mother’s passed, he’s estranged from his brother and hates his father. I would say it’s a safe bet.”

  “You were the one who said never to work off an assumption. Remember where that got us last time? You were forced to intervene.”

  “Who said I was assuming?” asked Andridge, sipping his drink.

  “We do not yet know who will be responsible for the rite.”

  “What do we know about Malcolm?”

  “Compared to Jordan? He’s been a pillar of order his entire life. Good career, owns his home, genuinely loves his soon-to-be wife. From what I have seen, he can be cold, but not enough to kill. He has no reason. The risk would be too great. Too much to lose, nothing to gain. That’s why he is good with insurance. He is excellent at gauging the outcome of a situation. His actions have never been as severe as his brother’s, nor as unpredictable. He has been a watcher his whole life. He is born from water.”

  “He doesn’t have to have a reason, it only has to happen,” Andridge stressed. “He may not be as docile as we think.”

  Cob sniped his cigarette. “Jordan and Walker are alike,” he conceded. “But Malcolm and Jacob? It doesn’t add up. Jacob was far more violent. He killed a Klansman, if you recall.”

  Andridge let out a dry laugh, troubled by a cough. “No, of course they’re not the same.”

  “We have been at this so long that when we don’t have a good feeling, like this one here, when these boys been gone a decade and now all of a sudden they are both back, the one getting married and the other I don’t know what—making amends, I guess—and we have not seen them or kept up with them the entire time, we don’t know their true natures, and if we don’t know what it’s in their nature to do, then we don’t know what they’re capable of,” Cob argued. “We could have easily missed something.”

  “Keep an eye out, then,” Andridge told him.

  Cob wiggled his empty in the air. “Want another?”

  Andridge handed over his jar. “Do the blind see God?”

  Malcolm curled his knuckles along the stock of a Browning T-Bolt, tightened his jaw, and pulled the trigger, blowing his shoulders and neck back from the puff of gray that danced in front of him. A small audience of young nieces, nephews, and cousins stood at a safe distance clutching their ears, faces fattened with surprise. An assortment of rifles, pistols, and revolvers were laid out on the picnic table—the Browning, a Remington compact, an M&P .40, Ruger 9 millimeter, and two .22 pistols that were perfect for young ones eager to shoot.

  Twenty years before, Walker taught him in that same spot on a cold November morning. The winter sun spread weakly across the trees. He remembered the lessons of his father and repeated them to his captive young audience. “Never point a gun at another human being,” he said.

  “Unless you want them to die?” one of them asked.

  “Unless you want them to die,” Malcolm repeated. “Spread your stance, like this.” Walker had jostled Malcolm’s leg a little too hard and his sneaker slid on the frozen grass. He dropped the gun and it hit the ground, firing off to the right. Walker dove out of the way, smacked his son’s crying face, then pulled Malcolm out of the mud and into his arms. The gun he had dropped was the Remington compact. Malcolm loved that gun. He walked over to the table and picked it up. “Which of y’all wants to shoot?” The kids rushed around him and Malcolm had them line up so they could fire into the woods.

  Mary and Elizabeth sipped coffee in the kitchen and listened to the light cracks erupt between cheers from the children. Walker in his slippered walk snuck up behind the two backs huddled in front of the window.

  Elizabeth leapt and held her hand to the base of her chest. “Jesus,” she breathed.

  “Nope, still waitin’ on Him,” Walker joked.

  “Just the man I wanted to see. I have a few questions about the ceremony.” Mary jumped right in. “Who is going to be here at six on Saturday to instruct the caterers for setup? Someone’s got to be here to sign for FedEx at eight, too. Are you going to be home, or should I have them leave the package by the downstairs door?”

  Walker was barely paying attention.

  “Hello? Are you listening?” Mary asked. “It’s priority. Someone has to sign for it.”

  “One of the perks of having this wedding in my own backyard is that I have to walk from here to about there to attend. Ain’t I footing the bill? I don’t need to hear about it every minute. People’re around,” he said. “Take care of it.”

  Mary shook her head. “Get out of here, then,” she said. “Go on, go.”

  Walker smirked as he shuffled past, happy to oblige.

  Young Miles sat on a picnic table, swinging his legs as he pushed his small fingers into the grooves one of the rifles. The wood stock was faded, scratched with smooth lines, and the steel around the barrel was tarnished. “What about this one, Malcolm? It looks old,” Miles said.

  Malcolm picked it up by the military-issue strap. “This is a Japanese T-5, a knockoff of the Ml.” None of them knew what that meant. “This rifle was used in World War Two.” The remote age of that fabled conflict prompted their intrigue and immediately they wanted to shoot it.

  “No, you can’t shoot it,” said Malcolm. “This thing is bigger than most of you, you’d go flying right back into the house.” Malcolm laughed and held it high as they reached for it anyway. “Fine,” Malcolm said. “Y’all search through that box, see if you can find some thirty-aught-six ammo. If you find some, maybe we’ll see if this thing still works.”

  Their small hands dove into the box. Nine-year-old Mary Ann counted her ability to read among her talents that exalted her above the rest of the children. She sat on top of the picnic table, reading the numbers printed on the boxes of bullets. “Here it is!” she yelled, handing the box to Malcolm. He tried loading the magazine, but the brass shells were too long to fit in the clip. Jordan walked out of the house and Malcolm asked if he knew what ammunition the T-5 took.

  Jordan peered into the recesses of the rifle. “It’s Japanese,” he said, examining it. “Probably takes some fucked-up caliber. It’s not in the box?” he asked. “Did you check in the barn?”

  “Can you do it? I’m watching the kids.”

  Jordan gave him a look.

  “Just check the barn,” Malcolm insisted.

  The cavernous breadth of the barn enveloped a car that sat beneath a cloth which Jordan folded back, revealing the faded brown ’74 Eldorado exalted on blocks of cinder like a shrine in the middle of the floor. Two large tool chests massed the far wall beside a workbench caked with grease. Jordan ducked under the jack beam that held the hayloft overhead and entered a side room with tall, packed shelves. He pulled a couple of boxes free from their imprints of dust and stacked them at his side until he spotted the distinct metallic green of a foot locker that was lodged far in the back. He grabbed hold of the tarnished buckle and slid it forth to the edge of the wood. He pulled the leather straps through the locks at each side. The clasps on the front were rusted shut, but Jordan strained until they flew open.

  He unearthed the personal effects of his grandfather Maurel’s tour in the Pacific—medals, a ration tin, knife, official papers, telegrams, and letters. He dug out a munitions case and found the oddly calibered .707 rounds for the T-5. The machined cylinders were cool between his fingers. There was a black-and-white photograph that Maurel had taken of Walker and Jacob as children, fidgeting in their Sunday best in front of the same barn where he now stood. There were telegrams from his wife and a few letters from Maurel’s brother, Casey, stuffed into a leather satchel.

  Jordan squatted against the wall and read his grandfather’s letters. Apparently, Maurel found the tropics to be murder—clothes soaked with sweat, soggy feet festering
in their boots, skin hived and malarial, no relief to be found from the fire of the air. Elephantine beetles got in Maurel’s tent one night and crawled out with dime-sized tokens of his flesh held in their huge, mechanical jaws. He wrote to Casey when he couldn’t sleep, which was most nights. He kept the letters tucked away in his pack until he found a way to mail them all at once. Men clung to any constancy in order to survive the crushing alienation of foreign skies, unending gunfire, and the ferocious shells that hit all around when it was least expected. Maurel did his best to eat, shit, and pray as though death were not constantly lining him in its sights.

  The hot season was not much different than summer in the Ozarks. Heat flooded the valleys in molten waves and would not lift for days. They would march at night and stop by noon. They would drink tea in the shade, beer at the creek, and pass white whiskey around the fire. Some of the boys sang songs that reminded them of home while Maurel laid back and looked up at the sky, daydreaming about the girls in a nearby village. Though he was soon to ship out, Jordan was surprised to read Maurel telling Casey that he would not be coming back home. Because of what happened to Pa? Casey asked in his last letter, a reply that went unanswered. If that’s what you’re getting on, Marl, you needn’t worry. That’s all blowed over now, I swear. It’s like none of it ever happened.

  EIGHT

  1938—THE MINE COLLAPSE

  Casey Bayne was on his way fishing when he came upon a tarp that had been camouflaged with detritus from the surrounding hill. He drew it back and uncovered an underground cavern where a homemade still piped sour steam into pure moon juice. He grabbed a single Mason jar and climbed back out, then held the clear liquor up to the sun and laughed.

  Casey made sure to fix up the site to erase any evidence of his being there before continuing on to Bethlehem Creek. He sopped along the muddy bank until he found a spot, rolled his pant legs, sank in his scrawny shins, and cast his jig for catfish and perch. That night, Casey brought home a stinking bucket of fish and handed the half-drunk jar to his brother, Maurel.

  “Whosever rig that is won’t be too happy when they find someone’s been pinching their product. Liable to keep an eye out, Case.”

  “Covered it up like I wasn’t ever there,” said Casey. “Gone wait a week, let suspicions clear. I want you to go back there with me and together we’ll grab as much of that dew as we can get our hands on. We’ll go at night, one trip only, whatever fits in the wagon.” Casey wavered where he stood, giddy and drunk.

  A rarified vapor snaked from the mouth of the jar and nearly blistered the whites off of Maurel’s eyes. He shrank back, fumbling to screw the lid on. “That’s the stupidest idea I have ever heard,” he said.

  “I know it is, that’s why I need your help.” Casey wrestled the jar back from Maurel and sucked a huge gulp off the lip that knocked him back into the rickety chair, searing his mouth. He pushed both eyes closed with his fists, like someone had just dropped a lit coal on the back of his brain.

  “I don’t want to cause you any distress here, Case, but I’m gonna need you to think real hard for just a second.”

  Casey splayed over the table, nodding.

  “There are only two ways this plays out,” Maurel explained. “That spot belongs to some hiller, maybe a farmer—could be an honest one at that—and that honest farmer’s out of work like everyone else round here and maybe, Case, that still and those jars are all he’s got to his name. To earn a living and feed his family. Maybe he’s fine guarding ’em with his life, ’cause you take that away and heck, maybe he won’t give a damn to shoot you right there. That’s the better option of the two.”

  “Yeah, what’s the other, then,” Casey slurred.

  Maurel stood from the table and raked his features in a sobering draw. “Who you been doing your best to keep clear of, down the end of the road past Tremble’s Farm?”

  “Who, Dunny?” asked Casey, wary.

  Maurel hauled a five-pound bag of potatoes from the floor of the pantry and landed it on the counter. He flicked a slit in the burlap, a few potatoes fell out, and he scrubbed the dirt away in the basin. “That’s right,” he said. “Dunny McShay, whose brother you beat near to death last summer.”

  “He’d been woopin’ on Genie!” Casey yelled. “Beat on ar lil’ sister’n believe that’s what’s comin’.”

  “That boy deserved it, no doubt,” Maurel reasoned, “but now his brother and the rest of them want you deader than shit.”

  Casey tossed a pinch of tobacco over a creased paper, fastened the roller, and torched the fat end with a flame.

  “If that still out there don’t belong to some poor cabbage fucker, I bet my right pocket it belongs to the McShay gang. If it’s part of one of their rackets, then they got others, and that means they’re watching them around the clock.” Maurel did his best to make some sense, but he could already tell it wasn’t going to take.

  Their sister Genie came up the back holding a basket of apples and onions. She was tall and thin as a poke. Her fair complexion showed off her ease of spirit and constant joy, which invigorated anyone lucky enough to find themselves in her company. She put the basket on the counter, drifted by the stove, raised herself up on her toes, and kissed Maurel on the cheek.

  “Hello there, brother,” she said, glimpsing the potatoes. “Mm, I can’t wait to eat, I’m jus’ about starved.”

  It was that irrepressible shine his sister lost for a while when she was caught under the yoke of the McShay boy. He smiled at Genie, glad she had her glow back. Their mother, Eleanora, was not too far behind. She came through the house and shooed Maurel away from her counter. “We eat in one hour,” she declared, producing a wrap of butcher’s paper that all of them eyed. She unfolded it to reveal pink cuts of pork, which she sprinkled with salt and crushed peppercorn.

  Maurel and Casey tried to fit through the small back door at the same time, their bodies wedged against each other, and Casey spoke low to his brother. “I don’t care about that McShay bastard nor no damn hiller,” he said. “Tomorrow night I am robbing that still.”

  The vibrant moon was dampened by a cover of clouds that gave the night a soft, pervasive illumination, like a high-powered bulb diffused by a heavy shade. Maurel was already tense from his brother’s criminal aspirations and found the atmosphere of the night foreboding. They had borrowed their father Zuriel’s diesel wagon and drove until the road ended. Maurel killed the heavy grumble of the engine, hopped from the truck, and set out with Casey along the creek bed.

  He followed his brother through the dense brush over mud and water that ran shallow across roots and stones. Casey’s gait disintegrated into the trees and left Maurel far enough back to lose sight of the ratty white shirt and oily chestnut locks that swayed between his shoulders. Maurel stomped along, realizing Casey had no idea where he was taking them. Maurel was frustrated further that, because they were supposed to be on a mission of stealth, he could not raise his voice a piss above a whisper to find out where Casey had gone.

  A rustle rose in the brush to his left. Maurel pinioned with a punch at the ready, but when he turned, the tread of his boot slipped in the mud and he was laid flat on his chest. The lower half of his body was pulled into the creek and he craned his neck to see Casey slapping his knee, laughing like a moron.

  “I found it,” Casey said. “Not five minutes that way through them trees.” He pointed ahead into the dark. “Come on, let’s get you up.” He gripped Maurel’s wet shirt and pulled him to his feet. He found the tarp and drew it back, exposing neatly stacked rows of precious, incubating shine. Before ducking below the messing, Maurel looked around. Wind sweetened the air, hushed the trees, and sang in the creek. He gripped the jerry-rigged skeleton of four-by-fours for support and lowered himself into the hole.

  “Wow,” said Maurel. “You weren’t kidding.” He ran his thumb on the seam of messy welds that joined the cap arm to the base of the tank. The bottom of the still was shored up with dry quarters of wood, like a heart
h.

  Casey rubbed his hands together and whistled. “There is a wheelbarrow over here,” he said. “It’s small, but it should do the trick.”

  They took turns laying the filled jars on their sides until they were stacked eight wide and four deep. Maurel told Casey they were full and could not fit anymore. Casey paused in his tracks with two jars planted in each palm. A tortured look of disappointment and half-wit ingenuity screwed his face in two directions. He placed one of the jars back on the shelf, then popped the clasp on the other and swallowed three difficult mouthfuls. His body coughed in protest, but not before he did it again, getting down most of the jar in the time it took Maurel to look on in awe and then convince him to stop.

  The barrow load was heavy and slid over in the mud but they managed to wheel it all the way back to the Ford. The jars fit on the slatted bed just fine. Casey pulled his long strands of hair back and paced in the dirt, boozy with adrenaline. “I wanna go back,” he kept repeating. “There’s at least four more hauls left and we only got one. Come on with it, Marl, it’s our only shot.” But Maurel would not hear a word. He secured the head of their haul with rope and snapped the tailgate shut.

  “You better get, ’cause I’m leaving either way.”

  A few miles down the only road out, headlights came up from behind. Maurel saw the two yellow beams continue to wander around each switchback and swerve past every bend. He rolled down the driver’s side window and glanced over the edge of the road, down tumbling shelves of loose rock and scattered trees. The aged truck hummed past two forks and came to a four-cornered stop. The right went to town and straight led to a state road that served as a local timber and mining corridor that met with the highway, so Maurel cut a hard left and continued on a desolate dirt road that rose and fell with the shallow slopes of the hills.

  Their house came into view as they flew past Tremble’s Farm. Maurel slowed to turn on the horse road that ran adjacent to the house. As he did, the commotion raised their father from his bed. Zuriel ran to the window and parted the curtain to watch his own truck kick a trail of dust through the woods. As his truck sped off, another one appeared, two men crouched in back of the bed hollering commands at the driver. The engines roared into the forest. Zuriel buttoned his gray thermal and rustled in the closet for his shotgun. He handed it to Eleanora, who sat up in bed, concerned. “Shoot anyone who comes through that door,” he instructed.