Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

  Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights

  A Novel

  Susan Straight

  For Delphine, my smallest queen… dreaming peaceful midnights.

  Serious thanks to Derrick Sims, Anthony Harper, Brenda Richardson, Paul Embleton, Holly Robinson, Jay Neugeboren (Darnell’s first friend), Richard Parks and Pat Mulcahy, Gail and John Watson, Alberta and General R. C. Sims, and Dwayne Sims, who redefines brotha-man-hood every day.

  Message to my nieces and nephews: Heads to the sky, eyes to the stars.

  Contents

  Toe Up and Smoke Dreaming

  Sprung

  Hard Work

  Confinement

  Security

  Burning

  To Ask

  Trails

  Oklahoma Remorial

  Tracks

  Migration

  Proper Care and Maintenance

  Wild Wild West

  Ashes

  El Dia de los Muertos

  About the Author

  TOE UP AND SMOKE DREAMING

  DANELL WAS WHORE OF the day. He looked again at the calendar. December 3—Tucker. In the dark pantry he found several jars of Ragú, and then he went outside with the trash. The station was still on high alert, and pine needles scraped the screens; the wind was steady. All day the crew had been out for little boot-stomper fires everywhere. Brush went up from an exhaust spark, a train wheel striking track. Nothing blazes; just weeds near wheels. The air was so dry he felt it deep in his throat even with his mouth closed, felt it rush down his nostrils to steal his spit. Smoke in his crotch, his armpit hair. The creosote bush and manzanita seemed to crackle, waiting, ready.

  He looked at the dying flowers beside the wooden sign: CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY—FIRE STATION 42. When the seasonals got laid off, Fricke, the only man on permanent crew at this deep-woods station, would replant the flower bed, rake, paint, and wait for the next fire season.

  Darnell smelled the soot dark in his collar. Brenda couldn’t wait to watch him wash the smoke out of his clothes one last time. He tried to imagine her belly rounder; spoons clinked in the kitchen, coffee steam riding the faint dust.

  Fricke. He never lets the ho make coffee. Darnell went for the door, smiling, remembering the first time Fricke had explained whore duties to him. Damn—almost eight months ago? The sound of the words had been jarring to him that first week at the station: Whore. We’re going to the store. That’s your job.

  “Smell it?” Fricke asked. He whistled softly on the hot coffee. His mustache hid his mouth, and Darnell knew he was smiling only because of the two tiny lines cut deep below each eye. When Fricke kept his face blank, the lines were white grooves in his sunburned face. “You can’t tell your lady Brenda what she wants to hear. Smell that chaparral crackling dry? You aren’t going home yet.”

  “Yeah, I watched the sky,” Darnell drawled, sitting at the table. “I sniffed the wind like a good rangehand. Your only buffalo soldier.” The windows turned purple and lightened. “Why you up?”

  Fricke raised his brows. “Why are you?”

  Darnell stared at Fricke’s eyes, blue like old Levi’s. “At least eighty-five degrees yesterday, and the wind’s still hella strong.” He heard muttering from the hallway. Perez and Corcoran were awake. “Everybody’s tired as hell of bein up here.”

  “It’s December,” Fricke said. Darnell was silent. “You’re not tired.”

  “Naw, not me. And not you.” Darnell stood up and put his coffee cup in the sink. The sun edged out, and the sky was bright as noon, no moisture wavering anywhere. “Scott’s toe up again?”

  “Does that mean he’s playing dead?” Fricke asked, smiling.

  “What?”

  Fricke raised his foot stiffly, boot flexed. “Toe up, playing dead.”

  “Damn, man, you guys and your r’s. Whore of the day. In my locality, we say ho. Tore up. Toe up—he’s drunk.” He went back to the pantry, leaving Fricke laughing at the counter.

  But the call came before breakfast. The fire had been going since early morning, about the time he and Fricke had been drinking coffee. On the engine, Fricke said, “It was way deep in the canyon and the lookouts didn’t even see it until now. Zero humidity and the fuel’s thick as it gets. Up there behind Ortega Highway—where that chaparral hasn’t gone up in fifty, sixty years.”

  “What kinda asshole’s building a campfire now?” Scott asked, rubbing the short blond bristles he called hair. Darnell saw them glisten thin as needles when he looked past Scott at the brush along the road.

  “Uh-uh,” Fricke said. “Target shooter. Crews are coming from Ventura and San Diego.”

  Darnell glanced back at Corcoran and Perez following in the second engine. “Where we headed?”

  “We got the west flank, cause there’s a bunch of new houses out there past Seven Canyons,” Fricke said. “You know, the rugged ranch life-style for people who drive to their office buildings in LA to play with pencils.” Fricke smiled.

  “Yeah. Let’s save these rugged individuals’ new homes, built where the chaparral is supposed to burn itself clear in the natural world. Hope you guys slept good last night.”

  Darnell bit his lips. Raycraft, the regional guy, was coming up to the station today, and seasonals could get sent down for good. No, baby—not today. Not with this big one. A conflagration. Fricke loved that word. Panic shifted from side to side in Darnell’s stomach, swayed with the shoulders beside his, wobbling loosely with the lurches as they went around the curves. Used to the rhythm after the long drives up and down the highway, Darnell tried to breathe to keep the bubble of scary air from jumping into his lungs.

  You ain’t scared of the fire. You scared this is the last one. Raycraft ain’t lookin to call me back for next year unless Fricke pushes. Raycraft don’t like my name, my face.

  He saw houses behind a beige wall and wrought-iron security gate that said CANYON ESTATES. Up the narrow highway, they dipped over the ridge, and Fricke said, “Your date, gentlemen. She’s gonna take you through the night.”

  They packed the gear, Corcoran sucking his mouth into a lipless line beside Darnell. “One a these fifty-year jobs,” Corcoran said. Darnell felt the fire shelter, a foil tent in a packet on his hip, and he gripped his Pulaski, the long-handled ax-hoe. He tramped after Fricke, seeing the smoke quilt-thick over the sky. No billowing, delicate start-up puffs—this bruise already stretched for miles in the wind.

  They started cutting the line, leaning into the gusts, and Darnell felt the prickle above his hipbones, stronger even than when Brenda pulled her fingers up his thighs. His shoulders stretched wider, skin melting away. “Goddamn this wind!” Scott shouted.

  “Goddamn a target shooter!” Perez yelled back, and smoke flew into their mouths.

  Fricke checked the line. The wooden handle was slippery-slick in Darnell’s hands, the chamise and creosote flying in chips. He couldn’t hear the others now, only the roar he knew was coming this way. The roar pulled in all sound, erased everything but the tremble of flame. He couldn’t tell what time it was, but they were facing the sun when the airborne tankers dropped water and Phoscheck. The liquid hung thick in the air before it laced down.

  In the early darkness, they could see the south flank of the fire racing up one of the canyons. They went over the ridge and down into the next descent, and Perez fell out on the decomposed granite slope, his bad ankle rebroken. Darnell helped Fricke pull him up the gully, Perez’s upper lip high over his gums the only way he showed the pain. My man know he ain’t cut out for this, Darnell thought, feeling the crystalline pebbles slide under his boots. His ankle broken twice—he better not try and come back next year.

>   When he half slid back down to find the others, he saw the fire advancing up the slopes across the valley, jagged blood lines glowing in the black. “Goddamn chain gang,” Scott said again and again, and Darnell heard the thud and cracking of Pulaski blades hacking the thin fire line. No dozer gettin in here—these canyons are hella steep, he thought. Corcoran muttered somewhere nearby in the dark. The roar of the fire was like a blanket over them, high above the harsh breathing and cusswords, the skittering of animals against leaves and branches.

  The wind lifted the smoke and brought it back around, gusting even harder toward midnight. The metallic taste of what he’d eaten still harsh in his throat, he lay down with the others. “If the wind shifts, it’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Fricke said. “Just catnap.”

  Darnell felt the granite crumbly underneath him, smelled the manzanita leaves. Seven Canyons. Fricke had told him early in the season about the firestorm, the one that swirled through so many years ago, like a bomb, picking up speed and exploding down the chutes to char a crew of seven men. Each of the canyons was named for one of them. Darnell thought hard, trying to recall the map. Miller—that was one of them. Schmidt. Neuborn. The next gust was so hard it threw pebbles against him. Darnell Tucker Canyon. Raycraft wouldn’t like that one. A colored canyon. Named for “the colored kid,” like Raycraft called him when he thought Darnell couldn’t hear.

  The tiny stones hit Fricke’s gear, next to him. Darnell stood up. He imagined bears running from the fire toward him, coyotes low, tails streaming. The fire ate at the chaparral in waves, rolling fast as a tumbleweed. He gripped the Pulaski and walked away from the others.

  Up the canyon, he looked toward the ridge where the fire would crown. Fricke would see it and yell, “Crowning!” and the others would stagger to their feet, clumsy as bears in all their gear. Darnell moved through the thick brush, felt the branches snatch his legs. If you dug a hole six feet deep, you’d have enough air to breathe when the firestorm raced over, trying to suck the oxygen from your mouth, reaching all the way inside to pull it from your lungs. Because you wouldn’t burn up, just like that, like people thought. The fire would be black because your eyes would be closed.

  He stopped to touch a tree, and closed his eyes—the roar was closer, stronger. When a deer leapt into the canyon past him he thought about their bellies, tight in the spring when they walked slowly up the napalmed feed trails, their round pale awkwardness the same color as Brenda’s belly skin, lighter, thinner, every week.

  The wind-smoke swirled around his ears now. Fricke? Was that Fricke calling, “Tucker!” or one of the others cussing in his sleep? He lay next to a white boulder, a dome beside his arm, his coat an envelope where he could breathe inside. He had the fire shelter—a turkey cooker, they called it. But the flames would take your breath fast. Not like bullets—unless you got a slug in your brain or your heart, that shit would pound into your leg or your gut and tear you up. He’d seen a guy shot in the parking lot at school once, screaming, rolling, and humping on the asphalt. Cuco Rojas—pressing the ground like he was praying it would hold in his blood if he pushed flat enough. The fire would race over, the sound would whisper and pop and roar. He saw the veins inside his eyelids, the veins along Brenda’s hips, traced and crossing. His boots pointed to the sky. Toe up. Toes up. They were heavy, and he flapped them against the ground, letting them fall to the outside and then pulling them back inward to crack against each other, sole to sole, toe to toe. Toes up—pounding so loud someone would hear, so hard he felt his shins quiver. He had to keep up the pounding until Fricke came.

  He lay with his shoulders propped on his pack near their engine at the temporary fire camp. Corcoran’s pale feet faced him, the balls round and pink as baby hams. Darnell felt the sweat along his spine and neck cool, with his T-shirt loose, his coat off. His nostrils were thick with soot; his ankles still felt swelled hot in his high boots, from the long walk out from their position. It was cooler today, and once the eastern flank had been knocked down, the strike team called in from up north would be mopping up. Darnell closed his eyes; he didn’t want to see Fricke’s blue stare.

  “So they called in that hotshot crew from San Bernardino, huh?” Perez said. His ankle was fractured slightly, wrapped stiff.

  Fricke said, “They just got back from Oregon. Some job up there, where they saved a hotel. They love that danger. Right, Tucker?”

  Before Darnell could turn his face, Perez said, “Nineteen guys?”

  “Three women,” Fricke said.

  “That’s the kinda woman for me,” Corcoran said, fanning his fingers through the curly hair by his ears when he sat up. “She don’t mind dirt.”

  “Just don’t try to get a piece of her ass in the shower,” Scott said, pointing to the shower truck at the edge of camp.

  Darnell looked at all the engines, the shower, and food trucks. “Damn—was that a serious overtime shift or what? I’m tired as hell.”

  “Yeah?” Fricke said, looking at him.

  “When that strike team got here, man, that was it,” Corcoran said.

  “You see that Sikorsky copter, dude, that sky crane?” Scott said. He loved vehicles. “Picked up two thousand gallons from the lake like it was a swallow.”

  Darnell stared at the branches and said idly, “When do we torch feed trails?” and Fricke stood up, tossing a stick at his leg.

  “Don’t you need a goddamn break, Tucker? You want to get back to work right now, huh?” He looked at his watch. “Weren’t you whore of the day when we were last home? Get your ass back to the kitchen if you want to work.”

  “Fricke, baby,” Corcoran said, his head cocked. “You that hungry?”

  “That was two days ago, man,” Darnell said. “Scott’s turn now.”

  Driving with the horizon still rust-tinged behind them, they were silent. Fricke had found Darnell while he lay staring, listening to the firestorm approach. When they were back on the fire line later, Fricke held him by the shoulder and said in his smart-ass drawl, “I don’t know why you didn’t get over that death-by-fire shit when you were younger; I can’t classify that as normal behavior.”

  Darnell looked at Fricke’s eyes, even lighter with the smudges of black underneath from where he’d rubbed his dirty sleeve against his face. “Normal is I’m on the street at home and some brotha step to me cause he think I said somethin, so he pop the trunk for his shottie. Normal is like my homey Max, when we were kids and he got too close to a train, right? Normal is I go out cause of somebody else. Nothin to do with me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fricke said, hard, and Darnell blew the dust from his nose.

  “Yeah, you do,” he said, and he turned toward the creosote.

  Purple evening drifted down from the huge pine trees around the station. Perez and Scott turned the video back on, and Corcoran went for the showers. Fricke headed for the kitchen to make coffee, like he always did after a fire, and Darnell thought: Damn, I know this dude better than I know Brenda sometimes. Hella long season. I’ve known Brenda since I was a kid, but I’ve seen Fricke more this year. I know she read the paper and saw the fire. Let me go in there and call. Is the season over yet? That’s what she want to know. You ready to come home? He looked at the rims of black around his fingernails, in his knuckles, and clenched his hands.

  Corcoran went past him and yelled from the kitchen, “Tucker! You gonna eat this burrito?” Darnell remembered the bag of fast food Scott had brought.

  “Damn, Corcoran, don’t you never wait for somebody to offer you food?” he said. “You gotta scavenge everybody’s grub daily?”

  “Is it a red burrito?” Corcoran hollered. “I like the green ones better, the ones with jalapeño.”

  “It’s my burrito, okay?” Darnell said. “Don’t matter what color it is, I’ma eat it.” He went outside to sit on the cement slab and take off his boots. He heard Scott whisper something, and Perez laughed. Yeah. Lemme guess what you said, Scott, with your predict
able ass. It’s his, so it’s a black burrito.

  Scott was always talking smack when Darnell could barely hear him. It was a red burrito, the milder kind. Brenda said the baby craved red burritos. She bought two fifty-nine-cent red burritos every day on her lunch break. Her mother said all that hot sauce meant the baby would have a lot of hair when it was born.

  Her pops is on swing shift now, so he’s gone to work. Let me call now, he thought, rubbing his forehead. She gotta be worried.

  The phone was in the kitchen, and Scott had slammed a pot onto the stove. “Everybody bitches no matter what after Fricke cooks,” Scott grumbled. “He makes all that fancy shit—what the hell was that last thing he made?”

  Darnell folded his arms. “Black-bean soup,” he said, grinning, and Scott frowned. You okay on the fire line, man, but you ain’t too sharp, Darnell thought. But he liked Scott when they talked about cars. “Cioppino,” he told Scott. “Italian fish stew.” He saw Fricke carry his coffee across the driveway. Darnell had waited until everyone was out of the kitchen to ask Fricke how to spell it. The thick stew reminded him of the Louisiana gumbo Brenda’s mother made for special occasions.

  The phone rang and rang, and he imagined her standing near her mother’s lemon-fronted oven, at the sink with the see-through white curtains, where he used to stand outside and poke his face while she washed dishes. No one answered, and he hung up. The tomato sauce in the frying pan was thick at the edges, red-black, and he told Scott, “You don’t have to kill tomatoes, man, they’re already dead.” Scott shrugged. “You don’t care what you eat, huh?”

  Scott said, “I care about what I drink, dude. That’s why I’m so healthy, cause I kill all the bad germs in my stomach every night.”

  “Yeah. Whiskey medicine,” Darnell said. He went outside, heard Fricke’s boots crunch the leaves, and the laughs and card clicks behind him from Corcoran’s eternal poker game. Fricke and Scott would drink, especially after the long shift they’d done on the big fire, and the thin, gold liquor scent would mix with the pine gum on his boot soles when he came in from the trees. Corcoran would play Rolling Stones while Scott and Perez argued for Megadeth.