Dark Places (34 page)

“I just don’t have it, man, I just don’t. Tried to scrape it up earlier, but I just, I was going to come try to find you, I just got here myself, I can give you the last of my weed in the meantime—”

“You want to say hi to Diondra?” Trey interrupted.

Runner started, then smiled. “Oh, hey Diondra, hehheh, wow I must be drunk, oblivious!” He pretended to close one eye so he could see better, made a little jump on the tips of his toes. “Heh, yeah drinking myself cross-eyed because I’m so freaked out about this situation.”

“Runner, you want to look at who’s next to Diondra?” Ben had barely turned to face him, he was trying to think of something to say besides,
Hey Dad,
but he couldn’t so he just stood there, waiting for the inevitable shittiness to happen.

Runner peered through the dimness of the bar and didn’t recognize Ben.

“Hi … there,” he said, and then to Trey, “That your cousin? I can’t see too well, night vision, I need contacts but—”

“Oh my God,” Trey said leaning back to pretend to laugh but looking enraged. “Take another look, asshole.” Ben wasn’t sure if he was supposed to display himself better, like some girl hoping to scam. Instead he stood rigid, staring at his dark flop of hair in an old Schlitz mirror on the far wall, as he watched Runner sidle up to him, reaching a hand out toward him fairy-tale-like, as if Runner were a troll and Ben some awful treasure. He kept getting closer, stumbling on Ben’s foot, and then they made eye contact and Runner yelped, “Ohhhh!” and seemed even more nervous. “Hair’s not red.”

“You remember your son, right, this is your son, isn’t it, Runner?”

“It is, my son! Hey Ben. No one can blame me for that one, hair’s not red. I didn’t even know you knew Trey.”

Ben shrugged, watching Runner’s reflection back away from him in the mirror. He wondered how much Runner owed to Trey, why Ben felt like some ransom victim, not that Runner would actually care if he was up for ransom. He wondered too, how accidental this visit was. It had seemed like spur of the moment, but Ben was guessing now that they were always going to end up here tonight.

“I don’t get it, Runner,” Trey continued, talking one notch above the country music. “You say you don’t have any money, Ben here says you don’t have any money, and yet, you had that giant stash of weed just a few weeks ago.”

“Wun’t good weed though.” He turned his shoulder toward Trey, cutting Ben out of the conversation, shooting backward glances at him, trying to push Trey toward the center of the room by standing closer and closer to him, Trey not moving, finally saying, “Get off me, man,” and Runner settling back on his heels.

“Nah, nah man you’re right, it wasn’t good stuff,” Trey continued. “But you were charging like it was.”

“I never charged you nothing, you know.”

“You didn’t charge me because you owe me, dipshit. But I know for a fact you were charging $20 for a dimebag, now where the fuck is the money, you give it to your wife to hold?”

“Ex! Ex-wife,” Runner yelled. And then: “I was trying to
get
money from her, not give it. I know she’s got money there, even when we were married, she’d hide money, rolls of it, hundreds, from the harvest sales, and stick it in funny places. Found $200 in the foot of her pantyhose one time. Maybe I should go back.” He looked over at Ben, who was listening but trying to pretend he was teasing Diondra, his finger twirling Diondra’s hair, Diondra only partly playing along.

“Can I talk to you about the situation over there in private?” Runner pointed over to a corner where three tugboat-sized men were playing pool. The tallest, a pale, white-haired old guy with a Marine tattoo, propped his pool cue up and puffed his chest out at them.

“Right,” Trey said.

“You can talk in front of me,” Ben said, trying to sound like he didn’t care.

“Your son needs money from you, just like I do,” Trey said. “Maybe worse than I do.”

Runner turned from a shriveled position under Trey’s black-lamp eyes, and headed back over to Ben, raising himself to full height. Somewhere since summer Ben had grown. He was just a little bigger than Runner now, 5’5”, 5’6”.

“You owe Trey money? Your mom said you’uz in trouble. You owe Trey?” he blasted at Ben, his breath yellow—beer and tobacco and maybe a mustardy tuna salad. Ben’s stomach grumbled.

“No! No!” He was aware his voice sounded nervous, cowed. Diondra shifted her weight next to him. “I don’t owe anyone.”

“Then why am I supposed to be giving you money I work my damn tail off for, huh?” Runner said, his voice bitter. “That’s what I never understand, this idea of handouts: alimony and child support and the government with its hands in my pockets. I barely can support myself, I don’t know why people think I need to take three extra jobs to give money to my wife, who has her
own farm
. Her own
house
on the farm. And four kids to help her out with it. I mean, I sure as hell didn’t grow up thinking my daddy owed me a living, my daddy oughta give me money for Nikes and college and dress shirts and …”

“Food,” Ben said, looking down at his broken boots with sloppy-joe stains on them.

“What’s that? What’s that you say to me?” Runner was in his face now, those blue irises rolling around in the yellow orbs like fish on the surface of a bad lake.

“Nothing,” Ben mumbled.

“You want money for your hair dye, that it? Want money for the beauty parlor?”

“He wants money for his girl …”Trey started, but Diondra was giving him quick axes across her throat, no no no.

“Well, I’m definitely not in charge of buying things for his girlfriend,” Runner said. “You his girlfriend now, Diondra? Small world. But definitely ain’t my business.”

The men at the pooltable had stopped playing altogether, sneering at the scene, and then the white-haired guy limped over, put a firm hand on Trey’s shoulder.

“Problem, Trey? Runner here, he’s good for it. Give him another twenty-four hours, OK? On me. Understand?” The man had a wish-boned stance, like gravity was pulling him toward the ground by both
legs, but his hands were muscled, sinewy, and they pressed into Trey’s shoulder.

Runner smiled, wiggled his eyebrows up and down at Ben, signaling they should both be pleased. “Don’t worry, buddy, it’s OK,” he told Ben. “It’s OK now.”

Trey tightened his shoulder under the man’s hand, seemed about to shrug it off, then stared into the middle distance.

“Sure, twenty-four OK, Whitey. On you.”

“Appreciate it, Injun,” the man said. He winked, made a cheerful, creaky noise with his mouth like he was calling a horse, and rejoined his friends, a rustle of laughter going up from the group just before the pool ball clacked.

“Piece of shit pussy,” Trey said to Runner. “Tomorrow night, here. Or so help me, Runner, I will hurt you.”

Runner’s victory rictus, that Halloween smile, faded, and he nodded twice, and as he was turning to the bar, snapped, “Fine, but then stay out of my business.”

“Man, I cannot wait to stay out of your business.”

As they started to leave, Ben waited for Runner to say something to him—sorry, see ya, something. But Runner was already trying to talk the bartender into giving him one on the house, or maybe on Whitey, Whitey would stand him a round, and he’d already forgotten about Ben. So had Trey and Diondra, they were busting through the doors, and Ben stood with his hands in the front pockets of his pants, caught sight of himself in the mirror, looking so different, and he watched himself in the mirror as he turned around to Runner.

“Hey, uh, Dad,” he said, and Runner looked up, annoyed he was still there. It was that feeling of pestiness that made Ben want to make Runner respect him. He’d felt the tiniest jingle of camaraderie before—that word,
buddy
—he wanted it back. He had pictured, just a quick flash, him and his dad at the bar, having a few beers together. That’s all he really wanted from the guy, just a beer together every so often. “I just wanted to tell you something. It might make you feel, I don’t know, good,” and Ben started grinning, couldn’t help himself.

Runner just sat there, sleepy eyes, not giving any expression.

“I uh, Diondra’s pregnant. I, uh, we, Diondra and I are having a
baby.” And then his smile split wide for the first time, for the first time really feeling good, saying it out loud like that. Going to be a dad. A dad, with some little one depending on him, thinking he was
it
.

Runner tilted his head to the side, lifted his beer sloppily, and said, “Just be sure it’s yours. I doubt it’s yours.” Then he turned his back on Ben.

OUTSIDE, TREY KICKED
the side of his truck, screamed between closed lips. “I tell you what, that old crew better die off soon, because I’m sick to fucking death of them protecting their own—you’re telling me it’s honor, it’s not, it’s old white guys trying to hold on to the last bit of business before they start shitting themselves and need name tags attached to them so they know who they are. Fucking Whitey!” He pointed a finger at Ben, the snow everywhere, floating down Ben’s shirt and melting on his neck. “And your old man is a piece of crap if he thinks I’m believing his line of bullshit. I hope you’re not too attached to him because I’d like to flush him like a piece of shit.”

“Let’s just go, Trey,” Diondra said, opening the door, ushering Ben into the backseat. “My dad is going to come home next week, and I’ll be dead anyway.”

Ben felt like hitting himself. The one thing he wasn’t supposed to tell, and he’d wasted it on Runner. Ben was so angry as soon as he got in the backseat, he began punching it blindly, spittle shooting from his mouth, fuckerfuckerfucker, kicking at the cushion, banging his knuckles on the roof of the car, hitting his head on the window glass over and over until his forehead was bleeding again, Diondra yelling,
baby, baby what
?

“I swear to God, I swear to fucking God, Diondra, fuck.”

Annihilation
.

He could never tell Diondra he’d told.

“Someone should fucking die,” Ben spat. He put his head in his hands, could feel Trey and Diondra consulting each other, silently, Trey finally saying, “Your dad’s a fucking douchebag, dude.” He threw the car into reverse and squealed out into the street, knocking Ben against the window. Diondra snaked a hand back and stroked
Ben’s hair until he sat upright, barely, a pile. Diondra’s face was green under the lamplight, and suddenly Ben could see what she’d look like in twenty years, flabby and pimply like she described her mom, her skin hard and wrinkled, but with that electric glow from the tanning booths.

“There’s stuff in the glove compartment,” Trey said, and Diondra popped it open and began rifling through it. She pulled out an oversized pipe crammed with leaves, the pot spilling everywhere, Trey saying
easy now,
and then she lit it and toked in, passed it to Trey. Ben reached up a hand—he was almost sick now, so shaky from lack of food, dizzy from the streetlights fluttering—but he wasn’t going to be left out. Trey kept it from him. “Don’t know if you want this, buddy. This is me and Diondra’s thing. Hard-ass weed. I’m serious, Diondra, it may be tonight, I need the power in me, I haven’t felt it in too long. It may have to happen.”

Diondra kept looking up ahead, the snow dizzying.

“Ben might need it too,” Trey pushed.

“Fine, let’s do it then. Take a left up here,” Diondra said.

And when Ben asked what was going on, they both just smiled.

T
he sky was an unnatural purple when I left the Lidgerwood bar, bouncing on backroads toward the Superfund site. I wondered what it said about me, that my own father was living at a toxic waste dump and until now I’d neither known nor cared. Grasshopper bait. Bran and molasses and arsenic to help end the grasshopper plague back in the ’30s, and when folks didn’t need it anymore, they just buried it, bags and bags, open-grave-style. Then people got sick.

I wished I had someone with me. Lyle fidgeting in the seat next to me in one of his shrunken jackets. I should have phoned him. In my nervous rush to get down here, I hadn’t told anyone where I was, hadn’t used a credit card since filling up in Kansas City. If anything went wrong, no one would miss me for days. Those guys at the bar would have the only clue to where I’d be, and they didn’t seem like good citizens.

This is ridiculous,
I said out loud so I knew it. I shivered when I thought of the reason I was looking for Runner: a goodly amount of people believed he killed the Days. But I still couldn’t make it work in my head, even without the alibi. I had trouble picturing Runner using the axe, in truth. I could see him grabbing a shotgun in a temper—
raise, cock, pow—but the axe didn’t fit. Too much work. Plus, he was found at home, asleep and still wasted, the next morning. Runner would have gotten drunk after killing his family, yes. But he wouldn’t have had the discipline to stay put. He’d have gone on the lam, accidentally announcing his guilt to everyone.

The dump site was marked off by cheap metal fencing, jagged holes cut into it. Waist-high weeds grew everywhere like prairie grass, and tiny bonfires flashed in the distance. I drove along the perimeter of the fence, the weeds and loose gravel rattling against the undercarriage of my car more and more insistently until I came to a stop. I closed the car door with a quiet tamp, my eyes on those distant flames. It’d be about a ten-minute tromp to reach the camp. I slipped easily through a wire-snipped hole in the fence to my right, started walking, foxtail swatting my legs. The sky was draining quickly now, the horizon just a cuticle of pink. I realized I was humming “Uncle John’s Band” to myself for no good reason.

Scraggly trees stood in the distance, but for the first few hundred yards it was all rolling, waist-high weeds. Again I was reminded of my childhood, the safe feeling of all that grass grazing your ears and wrists and the insides of your calves, like the plants were trying to soothe you. I took a few loose strides and jammed the point of my boot into a woman’s ribs, actually feeling the bones part as the leather tip slid between them. She had been curled on the ground in a puddle of piss, her arms wrapped around a label-less bottle of liquor. She sat halfway up, groggy, the side of her face and hair caked with mud. She hissed at me with a withered face and beautiful teeth. “Get off me, get off me!”