Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

  TWELVE

  ELIZABETH DREW BACK THE opaque curtains that dressed the windows in the living room and watched the caterers in white collared shirts carry banquet tables and wheel out racks of chairs for the rehearsal dinner. Her attention drifted to a grainy picture of Malcolm and Jordan’s mother, Mercy, framed in gold on the mantle. She thought it must have been from the late seventies. Her plain brown hair was parted evenly to each side, her milky complexion poured aside wide lavish eyes.

  Walker startled her. “Thinkin’ on Mercy?” he asked.

  “She was beautiful,” Elizabeth said, clutching the cheap frame.

  “Loving that woman treated me to graces I thought a world like this could never offer,” said Walker. “The beautiful are dealt a particular sort of cruelty. No worse than anybody else, of course. Just different.” Walker’s voice caught brittle in his throat. “The world she gave me, it was enough for a lifetime. I don’t need to love again.”

  “Malcolm doesn’t talk about her much,” she told him. “They grew up without her?”

  Walker brushed her aside to stand in the perennial light of the window. “She succumbed to uterine cancer four years after she had the boys. They had just begun to grow into the people they would become. Neither Mercy nor I saw it coming, how it set so fast. She wadn’t ever lively about much, but she was sturdy as oak and almost never sick.”

  Elizabeth listened intently, framed by the window, holding the top button of her blouse.

  “You know everything that happens with cancer? Tired all the time, cramping won’t quit, can’t eat nothing. It all happened in the span of two months.” His voice broke, he covered the scruff of his mouth. “We were headed into winter, thought maybe she had a virus. Her color went. That’s when I knew it was more. That Thanksgiving me and the boys took turns feeding her stuffing and pudding at the hospital. The only way I’d leave that room was to get flowers and the paper. I pulled a new white rose from a bouquet someone had sent and held it under her nose each morning. Waking her became harder to do. Pretty soon all she did was sleep, and so I slept on the floor beside her bed.

  “Her family came from Fort Smith, we never got on. Her father hated Catholics more than Jews but not as much as blacks, and her mother blamed Mercy for every ill that befell them since she shat her out in that Depression-era shack and left her for dead. I told her she finally got what she wanted. They said their goodbyes, I wouldn’t bring the boys in until they left. Folded back the sheet, sat them in her arms.” Walker let Mercy’s last moments wash over him. “Never saw her so serene as she was then. In that moment, I saw all that was supposed to be, this life of ours, what I thought the future might have been. I had a vision, that the boys were older, with wives and kids of their own running around this old place. Mercy was older still, tears of joy like jewels, proud of what we created. She died in her sleep the next morning.”

  Elizabeth nestled her head on Walker’s shoulder and together they watched the caterers walk back and forth in front of the window.

  Malcolm led a train of people up the back steps. Harrell, Russ, Baron, Johnny the bartender, and Josh Bodine, the bass player from Jordan’s first band, procured bottles from the fridge and crowded around the island in the kitchen. Malcolm walked past Russ as though he didn’t exist. He was only there because Harrell begged Jordan to let him come. Malcolm called for Elizabeth and found her standing with Walker. She shook her solace and asked about all the excitement.

  “That would be the lineup of scholars Jordan put together for my bachelor party,” he joked.

  “He told me not to say anything,” she admitted. “He was working real hard these last few days to pull it together.”

  “An impressive last-minute effort, as always.”

  Elizabeth rubbed his arm. “You’re going to have so much fun.”

  “Where’s he got off to?” Malcolm said, looking around the living room. He glanced at his father.

  “Don’t look at me,” said Walker. “I ain’t seen him since yesterday.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t seen him?” Malcolm asked.

  He went out to the hall and asked the guys in the kitchen if any of them had talked to his brother. None of them had. “He just told us to show up here,” Baron explained. “We figured he was with you.”

  “Then what the hell are we doing here?” Malcolm threw up his arms and paced beside Elizabeth.

  The guys had already been putting down beers at an industrial rate and were starting to grow restless. After a few attempts, Russ managed to get Jordan on the phone. “I got him,” he told Malcolm. “He’s in Springfield.”

  “Taking his sweet ass time getting back here?” Malcolm asked.

  “Sounds like he’s on a pretty good drunk.” Russ downed his beer. “Says he can’t drive.”

  Malcolm clenched his eyes and Elizabeth rubbed his shoulder. “All right,” he said abruptly. “Get your shit, we’re going to Springfield.”

  The Chop House was famed for serving sides of cow larger than blown tires in a setting of catalog décor and fake candlelight. Wine was poured and orders were placed, and since most of the bachelor party was made up of Jordan’s friends, not Malcolm’s, conversation was painful at first. Jordan faded in the far seat of the booth. Baron took responsibility for rousing him back to life by feeding him some aspirin that Jordan chewed instead of swallowed, and the guys all watched as the blue dust fell from his tongue. He folded his forearms on the table and planted his head.

  Baron nudged him awake, waving a wine glass below his nose. “Hey, pal, drink this. Right bank Bordeaux, the good shit.”

  Jordan slurred softly. “When did you get into wine, big shot?”

  “Shit, I’m cultured.” Baron took a sip, feigning the learned reflection of a sommelier. “Remember my brother Derek? Yeah, he’s queer now. Works for a wine distributor in Sonoma, ships a case home every Christmas.”

  Jordan raised an eye above the table, grabbing the glass and somehow drinking from it. “Derek’s gay?” he asked.

  Baron nodded.

  “Good for him,” said Jordan.

  Enlivened by an unseen force, Jordan swung his glass to the center of the table, spilling a trail of wine across the white cloth. “I want to toast my brother,” he announced, forehead still planted flat on the table. “We may not have been the closest brothers these past few years, but that is my fault. I think a lot of things are my fault because I done a lot of bad shit.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Malcolm whispered.

  He smacked his tongue against his teeth and sipped his wine before continuing on. “I’m not doing anything. I’m saying for the first time that I am trying to do something. Something good, you know? To be good, I guess. To be good to myself. To you, Dad, Elizabeth.” He hiccupped. “I like your bride, Mal. She radiates pure goodness. I don’t want her to hate me. I want you guys to call me on a day like a Tuesday and say hey, we were talking, and we want you to come down to Little Rock for the weekend. Stay with us, it’s no problem.” He maintained a grandiose gesture with his raised arm.

  “There’s a lot I don’t say, but I will. I have a lot more to give. You know, I see everything? I am a watcher, so says the gypsy in Marfa. Observing is my role, she told me. Suffer is what I do.” He clutched his shirt, shaking loose a phantom. “You are the doer, that’s your role. All you ever do turns to gold. I followed your every step because you just knew. You knew when I shouldn’t have jumped my bike, when cops were going to crash the party, when rain was coming hours before any signs of a storm. You got one killer instinct. How did you do that?” he asked. “Everything is so inherent with you. That is why you and Elizabeth, it’s going to be good, you’ll know what to do.” He raised a stained glass, his hand covered in wine. “To us miserable fucks, to goodness, and truth. To you.” Jordan toasted his brother, and the low voices of the men adhered.

  “What was the original plan before we had to come up here and grab this degenerate?” Malcolm asked the grou
p.

  “We were supposed to go to New Orleans, stay in the French Quarter, hit a strip club, end the night at a riverboat casino,” Harrell explained. “Sorry, man.”

  “I have to say, that sounds like it would have been so much more fun,” he joked.

  Jordan shoved him ahead on the bricks.

  “All is not lost. We just have to find a place we can gamble.” Malcolm was attempting to level with Jordan but he had slowed behind and stood at the curb, staring at a building across the street. Malcolm paced back to his brother. “Hey, I was just fucking with you,” he said.

  Jordan pulled a silver case from his jacket, lighting one of the cigarettes Walker had given him. Baron’s low voice hollered after him and they all walked back up the sidewalk to where he stood. Jordan pointed across the street, smoke between his fingers. “That there’s the Little Theatre, used to be the Landers Theatre. Tons of people played there. Flatt and Scruggs, June Carter, Roy Acuff, Red Foley, Pee Wee King.” He stopped. “Come on,” Jordan groaned. “Speedy Haworth, Tex Morton, fucking Les Paul?”

  Russ shrugged in his jacket, Baron did little to hide his look of unknowing. “I heard of Les Paul,” said Harrell. “He’s the guy that makes the guitars.”

  Josh Bodine keeled over, laughing. Jordan looked at the lot of them. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” he said. He jogged across the street after a passing car and disappeared into the alley beside the theater. By the time they filtered into the alley after him, Jordan had gotten a foothold on the bottom rung of the fire escape, the whole iron apparatus clanking under his weight.

  Malcolm peered up through the grate. “What are you doing up there, exactly?”

  “Finding a way in,” he answered, the orange pin of his cigarette glowing above their heads. Josh sprinted ahead and caught the lowest corrugated rung. He took the same route and joined Jordan on the walk.

  “This is great and everything, but I would rather not have tonight end in breaking and entering and a trip to the Springfield jail. I do have to get married Saturday.” Malcolm knew his brother could not hear him, so he went back to the street and looked both ways, casually accepting his role as spotter in a felony. “Selfish son of a bitch,” he seethed to himself.

  Five minutes later, Josh came down the mounted rungs and peeked over the side. “He’s in,” he whispered.

  Malcolm was last to climb through the tall window that let out in the men’s bathroom on the second-floor gallery. The group had already split up and Malcolm followed the red velvet as it curved around the balustrade until a staircase went in two directions. He took the stairs down a level to a concession stand that had a cleaned popcorn machine and candy in a glass case. He reached the lower balcony and wrapped his palms over the polished brass, rows of seats and the enormous empty bowl of the main room spread below. Hollow steps and the chatter of voices swirled up from the stage. Unknown to him or the rest of the group, Cob shifted his small body through the folds of the curtains, always watching and rarely seen.

  Malcolm navigated a meandering hallway that let him out in a service kitchen. From there another switchback of stairs emptied onto the cavernous backstage. He came from behind a curtain to the left of the stage and stopped at his brother’s side.

  “Didn’t this place burn down?” Malcolm asked, looking out at rows of dark seats.

  “Twice,” said Jordan, craning his neck at the Napoleonic cornices and restored crown moldings. “Dad played here, you know. I saw a picture of him at the house. He played live on television, a show called Five Star Jubilee.”

  Malcolm faced Jordan until he looked over at him. “What are we doing here, Jordan?”

  Jordan had sobered up and regained his wits. “I saw Uncle Jake yesterday.”

  “Wait, what?” It took Malcolm a minute. “I didn’t know you guys talked.”

  “We don’t. First time he seen my ass since we were in grade school. He was pretty hard to track down. I asked him why he and Dad don’t talk no more. I don’t know about you, but I never knew what really happened between them. They had some kind of falling out. I couldn’t have asked Dad, he sure as shit wouldn’t have told me. It was the only way.”

  Malcolm didn’t say a word, he just shook his head. Some aspect hidden in him was revolted by speaking about the past in any regard, but especially as though it could be changed, or that there was anything at all to be gained by going back and revisiting it. He had worked hard to get where he was and Jordan was busy digging up what had long been buried. “Get to the point,” he said.

  “Jake blames Pa for killing our grandfather,” said Jordan.

  “Yeah, and how’s that?”

  “They were hunting in the mountains. Dad was supposed to clean up their campsite after dinner but left deer trimmings out by Grandpa’s tent. A bear wandered into camp and mauled him. He bled out before they could get to a hospital, so Dad put him out right there in the backseat.

  “I never knew why Jake stopped coming around, or how Grandpa died, come to think of it. Ever wonder why we know so little about what has really happened to this family? I’m no saint, I know, but look at us. Nobody talks to each other, we all live separate lives. Mom’s dead, Dad’s alone. We are scattered in the fallout of some tragedy none of us can recognize, let alone name.”

  “What the hell is going on with you?” Malcolm raised his voice. “You never used to give a shit about any of this. Dad, Uncle Jake, me. You are not going to put this picture back together again, Jordan—it’s broken,” Malcolm yelled. “It’s been broken so long that it’s the only way it’s ever going to make any sense. Stop looking for something that isn’t there. Move on, it’s all we can do.”

  “Why does it piss you off so much?”

  “Because I learned to live without you, Jordan. Just like you did without me or the rest of this family. You’re a little late to the party. I know you know now, and I think that’s great, but just because you know how truly awful you were, how disappointing it was to even look in your direction, that does not change how much hurt you caused. Just because you are now facing the heartache that befell our family, that doesn’t change history. It won’t make Dad and Jake inseparable again and it won’t bring Grandpa back. Mom will not wake from where she sleeps. It won’t change the years both of us were away. We don’t get to choose when chaos finds its way into our lives. It just happens, and we persevere. There is no great understanding.”

  Jordan wandered to the opposite end of the stage, watching his friends kick their legs over the seats in the first balcony. Their watery image rumbled in his eyes. Malcolm followed him and Jordan wiped his arm over his face. “I would love to be able to move on, but I ain’t like you. I have nothing to move on to. I have been walking away my entire life and it always leads to the same outcome.” Jordan’s voice grew hoarse and undone. “I won’t emerge unscathed like you, perfect and whole. I am not whole,” he yelled. “I have never been whole. Instead of wanting to die every moment I am awake, all I know how to do is be sorry. If that makes me weak, pathetic in your eyes, fine. That is all I have left, all the time in the world to learn what’s been lost and fix what’s been broken. What is left for me to do now is mend and do everything I can to stay in one place long enough to create something new that wasn’t there before.”

  “I don’t think you are pathetic,” Malcolm assured him. He wrapped his arms around his brother. “But if I am being completely honest, I do think this is one of the most pathetic bachelor parties I have ever witnessed.”

  Jordan laughed, wiping his nose on his cuff.

  “Now, can we go get drunk and lose our money like self-respecting men?”

  Malcolm’s bachelor party set out looking to gamble. Josh was least drunk among them and elected to drive. They got off the highway and crossed small wood bridges on languorous country roads scored over arms of water. They stepped out of Josh’s car at the end of a dirt road beside a river whose gyres shifted in the darkness.

  The Lucky Laurie was a riverboat
casino moored outside the city in a tributary of the White River. Low-hanging coils of yellow bulbs cast a dull haze across the water and willows. It was certainly not New Orleans, or even Kansas City, but it would have to do. The Laurie had a storied past as one of many pleasure boats that popped up mysteriously in those waters offering game rooms, homemade booze, and local girls. No headlining act, not even a sign. When there was heat, either between competitors, or more likely raids from state agents, they would loose their moorings and drift further downriver, never to be caught in the same place twice. Men from neighboring counties were known to pay well for a solid hint at where the Laurie might stop to pick up new passengers. Before her there was Dick and Laramie’s Bottoms Up Pontoon, whose portside at night read PLEASING TO THE EYE in broad red letters. In the forties, Bottoms Up competed with the Sun Bather and Mississippi Bend, who traded days of the week drifting the sandy road end where the boys had just arrived. One of the oldest boats, the Dame de Loisirs, captained by Mms. Elena Belle, an ex-madam from Metairie, kept a working alcohol still on board and a stable of pretty French and Creole girls. It used to have its own dock out back of Fred’s Bait and Mortgage in Jefferson City and would crawl along Missouri river lines, drawing on a clientele of wholesome men and filth alike.

  Obediah Cob knew it well. He waited until Malcolm, Jordan, and the boys filtered inside before making his way up the ramp. He drifted between crowded card tables and the farthest rows of quarter slots, keeping his delicate senses attuned to the brothers.

  Violin and accordion music sighed under talking and steady drinking. Harrell, Russ, and Johnny found the bar. A waitress in a silk corset with cobalt lace took Baron by the arm and a grin spread across his face. “Hi sugar, my name is Julia. You need anything, you just let me know.” She led him to a table in the corner.