Ask the Dark (2 page)

Anyhow, this Tuckie Brenner, he got took four/five months after Tommy Evans. They say he was playing in a field round the time of sundown when it happened, wintertime. Other boys he was with left him to go home and so he was alone, and that’s the last anybody seen him, ’cept they found a scarf he was wearing lying on the ground later. Marvin and me, we hung posters again but ’cause nobody ever found Tommy Evans it felt like a waste of time.

After Tuckie got took the whole neighborhood went a little crazy. Everybody was scared and putting up fences and new locks on their doors and some boys said their daddies bought guns and such. And no boy my age or older, up to eighteen, was allowed out after dark. Curfew, they called it. And even though there weren’t no curfew in the daytime there was a lot more police cars in the neighborhood, and we was s’posed to walk round only in groups of three or more if we could manage it.

Round the time all that started I was still staying up nights. Couldn’t sleep since my mother’d died, about two years back. Most nights I’d be up till morning, ’cause my thoughts bothered me, and I couldn’t make’m stop.

But just lying in bed made me antsy. So I started going out. I’d see them little branch shadows waving on the sheet hung over my window, sort of calling me away. Then I’d get up. Floors might creak, so I can’t walk the halls—I climb out the window. I hold tight to the shutters and crawl around. I pass my daddy’s window and there he is under the covers, a lump in the dark.

House used to be apartments, so there’s a fire escape out back, made’f wood. Wouldn’t do any good in a fire, burn right up, but it’s great for climbing. Down at bottom I’d run crost the yard to the alley and in a minute I’m free.

I’d keep real quiet and hear the wind whistle through the trees, and cars swish by out front, and sometimes even the ring of a train far away. I never had to worry ’bout getting seen, ’cause at three or four in the morning ain’t nobody out but me.

Most nights I just stayed in the neighborhood. Nothing was going on. Just houses dark and yards empty. Course it was scary at first. I even creeped around the woods in places so dark I felt maybe I should run on home. But it weren’t too long afore I was used to it, and would go anywhere no matter how scared I got.

Like I said, I started doing this after my mother died, two years back in springtime, and at first I stayed close to home. But when summer came I got all bold and sometimes snagged my neighbor’s bike to ride downtown, going through side streets and alleys so cops won’t see me and ask me why I’m out so late. I loved it down there, with the buildings quiet and hardly a car going by anywhere, but all the streetlights still on and me riding through the cool wind. City was all my own. And thinking didn’t hurt so much like when I was lying in bed.

You can imagine how it got in my way when the curfew come a couple years later. But I still snuck out some nights. And it was funner than ever before. Because now the curfew was up it felt different at night, more dangerous for sure, but real wild too, know what I mean? ’Cause since them boys got took I knew something bad was out there in the dark. And that gave me a feeling. Sort’f like a tingly feeling I get when I know something’s up for sure.

A few months after Tuckie got took I went out early while it was still dark and ran down to the woods. I was headed to this man’s house I know, man who leaves his lawn mower out in his yard all night. He don’t never use it, so I figured I’d take it away, maybe make a go-kart out of’t, real electric go-kart like some boys have, with a wood frame and metal sidings.

Coming ’long the trail, branches batted my face, and soon my feet was sloshin’ in my shoes all wet from the grass. I went down crost the stream and then uphill to where the houses was, huge houses all lost in the trees, behind a big stone wall higher’n my head. Moss on them stones was slippery from dew, and I smacked myself good on the elbow climbing over, and then tossed down to the other side where I crouched low lookin’ round the dark.

I didn’t see the mower. So I went over to the toolshed and looked in the window that had glass with chicken wire in it that don’t break, reinforced glass. There it was, right inside. Mower, I mean. I could just barely see it in the little red light glowing off some tool chargers.

I tried the door but the old man had locked it good, and that made the whole walk through them woods worth nothing at all, ’cept for scaring the shit outta me. I was wet, besides, ’cause the dew had soaked my pants and shoes, and my face was all scratched up and bleeding from cutting through brambles in the dark.

So I went back. It was getting light, and I was coming through the woods toward the stream. I was right below where the wood-chip trail cuts over the field up from where the stream gully is, and there’re some big houses farther up, behind big trees.

Then I stopped.

A boy lay on the bank of the stream. He was naked, that boy, ’cept one shoe, with his body on the sand and rocks but his head partways in the water, the hair waving like weeds in the stream. He lay on his chest but his head was turned to the side and I saw his face good, all covered in cuts and blood.

I looked a long while, but I didn’t say a word, or yell out.

It was Tommy Evans.

I seen a piece of paper sticking all red and bright to his dead, naked ass. I walked over real lightly, stone to stone and not leaving no marks in the sand. I figured if it was me lying there I wouldn’t want no trash sticking to my ass for any and all to see. So I bent over and snatched it up. I knew I couldn’t just throw it over once I touched it, so I put it in my pocket. Paper stuck to my fingers a second when I did that, ’cause glue was on it. Then I crost the stream and climbed a tree real high, till nobody could see me, but I could see everything, peeking down through the leaves and branches.

I figure it was ’bout six when a jogger ran by huffin’ and puffin’, steam comin’ out his mouth. But he didn’t see nothing. A little after that came one of them goody-two-shoes families, out to pick up litter so’s to keep the woods neat. They dawdled on the wood-chip trail, picking here and picking there, stuffin’ what they got in trash bags. The kids was dressed for camp in little uniforms, and their daddy wore a gray suit and everything else for work, ’cept his feet and pants legs was stuffed in galoshes. They didn’t come near the stream, though. When they was gone I had to take a leak and did it down through the branches, making no noise at all.

Then a lady came out from a house I could just see through the trees, and she came down to the water. When she saw, she screamed her head off, running back up to her house.

I climbed down and ran. No one saw me. I knew it wouldn’t be five minutes ’fore the police was there, swarmin’ all round, and damned if I’ll be stuck up in a tree all day.

I took a trail that headed for a street. Walking along I swat branches, and let’m swat back at my face just for fun, and it hurt a little. I stuffed my hand in my pocket and felt that piece of paper.
Well, at least I got the trash off’m,
I thought, and I made to toss it away, but that didn’t seem right. So I hung on to it, squeezing it twixt my fingers.

I was thinking back on how Tommy Evans used to call me nasty names, bad ones. Shit. I wouldn’t care now what all names he’d call me, if he could get up and walk around again. But cut up like he was, I knew that couldn’t happen.

I come out the woods at them two towers where the college students live behind their school, dormitories. I had to ford the stream, climb a hill, and climb a wire fence, right up over the barbed wire. Then I let down and crost the parking lots, slinking ’tween the cars and looking inside. But I didn’t see nothing I wanted and didn’t even try the doors, which all was locked anyways, prob’ly. So I went crost the lots and up the street, into where’s all the houses is in the neighborhood all lost in trees.

Chapter Three

This the same day the letter came, but I weren’t home then. I was feeling too riled to go home ’cause I seen Tommy Evans, found him, I mean, though I never told it till now, ’cause wouldn’t you’f wondered why I was in them woods so early in the first place? That’s why I never told it.

I wanted to see what I might hear ’bout it before going home, who they think might’f done it and so on. One place to do that was Shatze’s, so I figured I’d head up’ere, running through backyards and alleys. But afore I got there I seen Richie Harrigan goin’ by in that old pickup he drives. He yells, Hey, Monkey Boy, come ride with me! And I figure I might learn more drivin’ round with him than hanging round Shatze’s with Marvin, so’s I went over and got on in.

We drove around back alleys looking for what we could salvage in yards, and asking neighbors what they had in their garages we could maybe take away. Some of them alleys are real narrow, and driving through’m in Richie’s pickup the branches was smacking on the windshield like to break it, and the tires was bumpin’ over the broken ground, so we inside was bouncin’ crazy on our asses, damn near smacking our heads on the window frames.

But we didn’t find nothing.

Finally Richie had this idea to go check out the big fields behind his old high school ’cause there’d be cans there to bag up and recycle, maybe make a buck off that. I knew that was time to quit. I knew ’cause I’d done it before with’m, and once he started picking up cans and bottles he’d go on to other junk like old tires and empty boxes and anything he could get his hands on, thinking maybe he could sell it for scrap, but really thinking it was his turn to go pickin’ up the whole damn neighborhood, like it’s some sacred duty he got to get it all clean.

So I went home.

First he drove me not too far from his house, which ain’t nowhere near my house, me in the truck bed now ’cause he wants me to hold down this mess of loose posters he found on the street. We did hear about Tommy from some people we saw, parents on lawns, mainly, who we was asking for junk. They said he was found and he was dead, and it was sad to hear it. More’n sad, really. Horrible. But there weren’t no word on who done it.

So there I was up Richie’s way and I gotta walk home. That Richie, he got money—I mean his daddy has it—but me, I live on this one skinny little street about a mile from him, where people who ain’t got so much live. I was walking feeling that piece of paper in my pocket, same one I got off Tommy Evans, because I tell you my mind was sort of stuck on him, and wondering who the hell might’f killed him. Because I didn’t really tell you how he looked. His face, I mean. And I ain’t gonna tell you. But it weren’t something a person does, I mean no regular sane person.

Second day of summer vacation. Hot. Bright. Me, I’m walking through the neighborhood with a nice breeze blowin’ in the trees, and sunlight shining off the house fronts as I go passin’ by. Tell the truth, when my mind got off Tommy, I was feeling pretty good, especially since I’d dodged Richie, who by now was prob’ly up to his waist in weeds digging up trash like a crazy man, for no special reason at all.

Then I passed the house, and that should’f clued me. Should’f let me know what might be up at home.

See, about a year ago—no, more’n that, two years ago, now that fall’s come round again—was just when my daddy was painting that house.

I stopped and come up to it, it all quiet and neat and now painted perfect, where before it had looked haunted with rusty window screens and tarpaper peeling off the roof and dead leaves everywhere. Perfect it was, and I looked at it, the sun shining down and the cool breeze on me. I looked at the eave, the top one there, up by them box-windows three in a row.

I’m talking now about the time just after my mother died, when all them bills was coming. Doctor bills. First there was just what they call “deductible,” then the whole thing went crazy because the insurance company stopped paying at all. Make ends meet my daddy took on more work. He was working too much, sometimes going at two jobs a day, say eight hours on a house job, then maybe four after dark and by lamplight, going over a fence or shoring up a pipe or you name it.

That eave up there, that’s where it happened. My daddy was out painting one night, there where that little piece of roof give just enough inches for a foothold. He took a step back, and
pow!
Tripped on a power cord, all snagged up. Fell off that roof. Hit bushes down at bottom. Messed up his back good—fractured the spine.

After that he’s in the hospital. Can’t pay. So next up came the mortgage. Second mortgage. My daddy owned the house. Paid for it by workin’ all his life. But a man came to him and told’m it’s worth a damn sight more’n what he paid, and with a second mortgage he could make hospital payments.

I’d like to shoot that man.

Anyway, he did that, my daddy, to pay up best he could. But it weren’t enough. And while all this was happening and my mother’s funeral expenses come and Daddy can’t work at all no more, we start going out to Social Services.

Welfare. Medical. You name it. Little offices where all you do is wait forever and when somebody do come out to see you, they never give you what you want and look at you like you ain’t washed your clothes.

So I just stood there. Lookin’ at that house. I thought maybe there was some kind of secret there. Some kind of answer. The eaves and the drainpipes and the gutters looked all complicated like a riddle.

But there weren’t no answer. Just wood and tarpaper.

I walked on. Didn’t think about it. Just kept going. Walked along the sidewalks and half hour later I come up the stairs to our place and went inside.

Straight back’s the kitchen, that’s where Daddy was sitting. Sittin’ still, squat, and gray, not moving, letter on the table. I come in, amble past, and get a drink of water at the sink. He don’t move at all. It’s dark in there ’cause the window curtains is drawn, but he don’t open’m, I do.

I say, How’re you, Daddy?

He don’t answer for a while. I’m leaning on the sink, drinking my water, and he says, They’re taking the house.

How so?

He ain’t looking at me, just staring down at the letter. He got his glasses on, ones that bug his eyes. I can’t pay, he says. Missed too many payments. Now they want it all. Foreclosure. We have three months. Pay or quit.