Darkansas

by Jarret Middleton

“Rape is all right,” Malcolm interrupted. “That is what you are saying, isn’t it?”

  “Fuck no, he deserves what’s coming to him,” Harrell said. “I ain’t one to keep defending him. Like I said, it gets tiresome.”

  “Waitresses everywhere will rejoice,” said Malcolm. He could tell Harrell was uncomfortable. “At some point it’s not your problem. You’re being a good friend and all, but I have been back here, what, a week? He jumped me in the parking lot outside the bar and who knows what he would have done to that girl if I hadn’t happened to hear her scream. You say it’s a matter of time. The time is here, Harrell.”

  The silence was shattered when a caterer dropped a stack of chafing trays down the stairs. Malcolm shot to his feet and stormed out to the landing. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, startled. “I thought these were supposed to go up here,” the girl said.

  “What makes you think they go up here? The wedding is outside.” Malcolm held out his arms and looked around, incredulous. “Outside,” he yelled. Harrell helped her pick up the trays as they both went back down the stairs.

  Though it was early afternoon, the house had already filled with guests and more continued to arrive. Jordan careened through the front of the house, working on his third day drunk. He made a commotion bumping into an end table, knocking over a ceramic clock. Elizabeth broke from a group of her relatives and hurried over to pick the clock up off the floor. “Not a scratch,” she said, examining it for damages. “Would you look at that.” Elizabeth looked around, then forced Jordan’s limber weight to a corner in the living room. “Where in the world have you been? Malcolm was worried, all of us were.”

  “I don’t like it when people worry about me.” He did his best to dismiss her concern. “Plus, I’m not about to upset the bride on her wedding day.”

  “You better not be.” Elizabeth forced a nervous smile, then pulled him close. “Listen to me, take a deep breath. You are around people who love you. There ain’t nothing to be afraid of here. We are here to celebrate love, to celebrate family.” Jordan tried to pull away but Elizabeth tightened her grip on the back of his neck. “So sober up and go get dressed.”

  Jordan’s head pounded, his brain sopped with alcohol. He cinched an eye closed and the room came into focus. The house was lined from wall to wall with acquaintances, friends of the family and their children, and people he did not recognize. He walked through the crowd, slowly progressing toward the kitchen. Hands reached for his shoulder and slapped him on the back. Voices leapt out in recognition, calling him by name. Faces solidified and memory began to fill in the gaps. An old bandmate of Walker’s stopped Jordan in his tracks.

  “Jordan, it’s Jim Cleary,” he said jovially. “I haven’t seen you since you since you were yea tall.” He gestured with his hand beside his waist.

  It took a moment for Jordan to recognize him from the photograph in the downstairs hall. “I know you. You played music with my father.”

  “From the sound of it, it’s you who’s making the music nowadays. Your father couldn’t be more proud, but I’m sure you hear that all the time. It was good seeing you, Jordan. Enjoy the ceremony.”

  Jordan walked past him with a furrowed brow. He stepped around Elizabeth’s aunts, Ashley and Mary, as they wrangled together a group of fidgeting children for a picture. He recognized Malcolm’s old boss, Ben Ringgold, talking to his wife by the island in the kitchen, where he poured black coffee from a carafe and downed the cup in a mouthful before refilling it. Harrell came up beside him, speaking in a hushed tone. “My parents are right behind you, be cool.”

  “We are so delighted for your brother,” said Harrell’s mother, embracing Jordan.

  He reciprocated the stern handshake of Harrell’s father, who thanked Jordan for having invited them.

  “Don’t thank me,” Jordan said.

  “He means your whole family,” she corrected her husband. “Y’all must have worked so hard to put all this together. Rest assured, the big day is finally here.”

  Harrell kissed his mother on the cheek and promised he would catch up with them before the ceremony. Harrell and Jordan joined Baron and Johnny outside on the deck. Johnny was already smoking and handed Jordan one from his pack, lighting it. Jordan exhaled smoke with the air still stuck in his lungs from inside. “That was strange,” he said to Harrell. “I thought your parents hated me.”

  “What are you talking about? My parents love you. Couldn’t tell you why, but they do.”

  “Enough of that,” Baron interrupted. “What happened to you after the bachelor party? I heard you disappeared.”

  “Something I had to take care of. Everything is fine now.”

  “You mean someone.” Johnny blew smoke down his beard, looking around at the guys. “You know he’s back with Leah, right?”

  They exploded in a commotion, pushing and shoving Jordan with cajoling congratulations. Jordan warded them off. “Maybe the next wedding will be yours,” said Harrell.

  “We’ll see if we make it through today,” Jordan countered.

  The boys were already working on their buzz and argued over which bridesmaids they had eyes on. Jordan retreated to examine an unfamiliar welling of relief. When he realized that he was the only one responsible for keeping this rising feeling of peace from taking hold, he resigned and let it spread to everything around him. If he didn’t know any better, Jordan guessed this was what home felt like.

  Josh Bodine hopped up the porch steps by twos, looking frazzled. “Here’s the deal,” he told Jordan. “We’ve got too much music gear and too little time to load it. I was hoping you could give us a hand?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Behind a closet door hung with garments, Elizabeth inspected her delicate skin, the way it wrapped around the thin curves of her exposed collar bones. She pinned up the last of her hair and covered her chest as her mother came in dangling a white silk slip from a hanger. They were using Walker’s bedroom as the bridal quarter. There was enough space, an attached bathroom, and most importantly, it sat at the far end of the upstairs hallway, away from the steady bustle enveloping the rest of the house.

  Mary was struck by the beauty of her daughter laid bare. She knew she was a grown woman, but she saw her daughter at all ages across all times in the portent of youth that glowed in her bright expression. She could see through time, back to the nubile skin of her baby, to her birth, and before, when Elizabeth was nothing more than an unformed vessel, a yearning, an idea. That child looked back at her now, never having been diminished, only added to and built upon. The tears were quick to Mary’s eyes as she kissed her daughter’s forehead.

  “Mom, you can’t start that already. Get it out now. Once I do my makeup, you are forbidden from crying,” Elizabeth warned her.

  She cleared the wavering pools from the bottoms of her eyes and handed over the slip, which Elizabeth hung beside her dress on the back of the door. Mary caressed the pattern on the crest of the hem and thought it felt like crushed flowers. When Elizabeth came out in the slip, Mary lined up behind her in the mirror, held her around the waist, and kissed the back of her neck. “This is going to be so good for you two,” she said. “You have been doing so well, working so hard, this makes it all worth it. I know its cliché, but really it will,” Mary said.

  Elizabeth looked at her mother behind her in the mirror and asked if that was what marrying her father did for her.

  “My marriage to your father, short as it was, turned out to be the happiest time of my life. We had you, pure joy shining on both our lives. It was like the universe gave all the happiness we could ever wish for right back to us. I have no complaints, dear.”

  “It can turn so quick though, can’t it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “We don’t need to talk about that. I am happier than I have ever been, I’m about to watch my sweet daughter get married. This should be one of the happiest days of your life,” she said. “Happiness doesn’t just come
, you have to work for it.” She brushed her daughter’s hair back. “You have earned this, Lizzie. Remember to enjoy it.”

  “Funny you say that, Mom. Turns out I have a lot to be grateful for.” Elizabeth hovered her hand around the slender paunch of her stomach and they glanced at it together in the mirror. “I’m pregnant,” Elizabeth whispered, crushed by tears.

  “Oh, honey,” Mary cried. She squeezed Elizabeth and barraged the side of her face with kisses, sobbing.

  “Malcolm doesn’t know. I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell him.”

  “No time like the present,” she said. “He’ll be so happy.”

  Elizabeth’s aunts crashed into the room pouring champagne over a handful of crystal glasses.

  “You girls have good timing.” Mary looked at her daughter intently. “Elizabeth’s expecting,” she announced.

  A chorus of high-pitched screams enveloped the room as the women surrounded her with one big hug. “Malcolm doesn’t know?” they asked.

  “It has all gone by so fast,” she said. “I was going to tell him tonight.”

  “You already got him on the hook to marry you, hun. What can he say?” Margaret was boisterous and already a little buzzed.

  “You are terrible,” Mary told her.

  “What?” she replied. “It does unexpected things to them. My Randy was petrified at first. He grew up an only child. Even though he was a grown man, he went right back to that, as though it formed the basis for how he was going to be a parent. It brings up a whole lot you don’t expect, that’s all I am saying.”

  “Why do you have to be so contrary?” Mary asked, defensive. “Give me that,” she said, taking the bottle of Jouet away from her and refilling her and Elizabeth’s glasses. “Here you go, sweetie. Don’t pay any mind to the lamentations of the old and depressed.” Mary fell back in a chair, crossed her legs, and swigged her champagne, unable to shake the enamored look from her face. “See what you have to look forward to?”

  A worn Martin D-28 and a Sterling banjo with a signature scrawled on the drum hung from hooks above Malcolm’s head. He reclined in one of two leather smoking chairs in blue boxers and an unbuttoned collared shirt. Walker inched forward in the other chair, handed his son a crystal tumbler of Colonel Taylor, then leaned back and sipped from his own. “This wedding brought us back together,” Walker told him. “Elizabeth is just a doll. Mary and Ashley have been a pleasure to have around these past few days as well. You did good, son.”

  “Ah, I see.” Malcolm laughed and nudged his father. “You just like having women around.”

  Walker twirled the amber liquid in the deep of his glass. “Maybe so,” he said. “It has been a long time, hasn’t it.”

  “Why didn’t you remarry?” Malcolm asked in earnest.

  “I meant to. Never got around to it, I suppose.”

  Malcolm inhaled the burn of the whiskey. “For once in your life, give me the real reason, please. I want to know.”

  “It’s not like that,” said Walker. “Time gets away from you, is all. It’s elusive, the more you go after it the more it pulls away, and the more it takes with it. After your mother died, I panicked. I didn’t know the first thing about raising you boys. Mercy was a saint, in that regard. She had the sense women have to create a home, make a place proper. I ain’t come from that. When she passed, my heart broke. Not only did raising you and Jordan become my responsibility, it became my way of coping. I did my best to move on, but if I’m being honest, I don’t know that I ever did. Only later I learned that I may not have dealt with your mother’s death in the right way. I never rebuilt a home for either of you, and before I knew it, I turned around and this place was abandoned. You were working full time at fifteen, like I did when I was your age. I wasn’t going to stop you. Your brother was already a handful of hell by then, there was nothing I could do. It was too late. Everything was already set on its course. It took a lot of years sitting here alone for me to realize what I done. I ain’t proud of it, but it was all I could do to get through.”

  He stared into his glass, gathering himself. “But that’s not going to happen to you. You and Elizabeth got your whole lives before you, and I’m just so proud.”

  “Like you said, we’re back here now, after all this time. For a celebration, no less. Maybe it did turn out okay,” Malcolm assured his father.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Malcolm cleaned up and put on his suit. Guests milled around the porch and the driveway, filing into the backyard. Well-dressed couples, single bachelors, elder widows, and spritely children poured into the house. They shook hands and hugged as waiters ticketed jackets and brought drinks. The dull thud of music could be heard through the basement walls.

  Jordan pushed his way into the music room with Malcolm’s groom party, their eyelids slack and ties loosed. Harrell pulled the cork from a bottle with his teeth and produced a handful of Habano cigars. After an hour, Mary came downstairs and announced that the bride was ready. Malcolm straightened his tie one last time, then went over to Jordan and straightened his disheveled vest. They lined up in the corridor and waited in front of the basement door. Malcolm led them out, and it was only when he took his first step onto the gravel that he noticed it had been raining for quite some time.

  SEVENTEEN

  RAIN FELL ON ELIZABETH as she proceeded to the altar in flowing white. Malcolm stood under the awning watching his bride approach on a wetted tract of emerald. She reached the step and he took her hand. The small crowd quieted when Herbert Reed, the elder pastor from Walker’s church, raised his hand and began the ceremony. He thanked young and old, family and friend for gathering as witness to the union of Malcolm Bayne and Elizabeth May Truitt. He joked that he was sure the rain was a sign of fertility and growth. Seated in the front row, Mary forced a knowing look with her daughter.

  Elizabeth took in the faces gathered under a scaffold of rolling clouds and immersed herself in a rightness of place. Then she looked to the skinny, confident boy she had met one afternoon on her way to the campus library, standing now at her side, ready to stand there for life. Malcolm’s was a secret language she had learned to speak. She had been an open book for most of her life, a trait that first gained Malcolm’s interest and later his love. The closer they became the more he felt his love returned in ways he never could have fathomed. Malcolm came from people who wore themselves like leather, hearts guarded to withstand the next catastrophe. The surety of disaster lodged itself in his blood. No matter how safe, happy, or fulfilled, Malcolm was descended from a line for whom, more often than not, the worst tended to occur. Elizabeth had undone some of that hardwiring of inherent distrust. She softened his indifference, broke down his inner defenses, and he let himself turn into a person he actually wanted to become.

  A nurturing, challenging embrace that led them there, held in the breadth of hills and the river, to be married on land that Malcolm’s ancestors had fought to keep, whose every decision to persist in sparse times led directly to Malcolm’s life and the introduction of love into her own. Elizabeth felt a swell of gratitude, thankful for the persistence and continued renewal of the land itself. This deep appreciation formed the foundation of her vows, which she began to speak.

  The ring was a thin gold band with a small stone at the center, which, after completing his repetition of the same vows, Malcolm slid onto Elizabeth’s trembling finger, then she did the same for him. Pastor Reed raised the timbre of his voice, orating to the crowd. “By the power vested in me by the State of Arkansas, and the Church of our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.” Malcolm pulled Elizabeth closed and kissed her, sensual and slow, to a rising tide of cheers. They clasped each other’s hands and raised them overhead, then walked together through the applauding crowd. Many festivities had taken place on Bayne land—birthdays, reunions, holidays, concerts, parties, and auctions—but never had there been a wedding, until today.

  Childr
en ran in small suits and dresses, soaked from the rain and sliding in the mud. The house filled up with those looking to get warm and dry. Mary assisted Walker in fixing hot water for tea as the caterers carried out trays of shrimp and cheddar grits, hush-puppies, and stuffed mushrooms. The bar outside was crushed by a line of eager drinkers. Ladies carried full armloads of white wines and vodka tonics back to smaller groups. Men talked and stood to the side holding beers.

  Stunning in a robin’s egg dress, Leah Fayette brought Jordan a beer and kissed his newly shaved face. “I brought my friend, Marissa,” she said. “Hope that’s fine. You met her the first night you were back. She was so embarrassed by that.” Jordan waved and Marissa offered a head nod in return. “Looks like Harrell’s already hitting on her pretty hard.” Leah laughed.

  “I can get him to leave her alone if you like,” Jordan offered.

  “Nah, it’s good for her, Harrell’s nice enough,” she said. “So, how are you feeling? Did all that turn out okay? You know your brother came looking for you.”

  Jordan lit a smoke. “Suppose I never will learn the truth about the whole thing,” he said. “Don’t feel crazy no more, though. Ain’t in some things’ nature to be known, I guess.” He finished his drink and stared off.

  Leah wrapped both arms around his sides. “All you need to know is how fond I am of this man standing before me,” she said, pulling him close.

  A pang of feedback rang from the stage, followed by the clean thumbing of a blues chord. Rubin Bodine plugged in a beat-up Gretsch and took the stage with his band of old-timers, sons and grandchildren, which he introduced as the Moon Falls String Band. They settled into a slow tune that got hips swaying and saw Malcolm lead Elizabeth onto the floor for their first dance. When the fiddler picked it up, etching an energetic melody that quickened the tempo, Walker stepped in and took Elizabeth’s hand. Malcolm swayed to the edge of the parquet panels sopping with rain and grabbed Mary Truitt by the waist and swung her among the dancing crowd. The warmth of celebration and drunkenness propelled dancers across the floor. Wicker torches reflected in pools of water floating with blades of grass. The stage was lit by a single floodlight, the beam cut by sideways rain.