Ask the Dark (20 page)

I mean, yeah, he meant a time a year or so back when he throwed my daddy out the bank. Daddy’d come in asking for money or to complain about that house loan, I forget which, and Mr. Harrigan, he’d cussed’m and tossed’m out, and that did rile me, I s’pose, which had me chucking that paint.

But Mr. Harrigan was looking at me, ain’t took ’s eyes off me. He says, Billy, no price can be put on what you have done. For my son, and for the Colonel’s. You must understand that.

I was staring at’m. What the hell could I say to that?

I said, Thank you.

Once Mr. Harrigan was through telling me ’bout all he done, he shook my hand and my daddy’s and said he was needing to get back to the bank, and he shook the Colonel’s hand too, but the Colonel said, to me and my daddy, said, I’d like to stay a moment longer and have a word alone with Billy, if that’s all right with you, sir.

He called my daddy sir, he did.

My daddy, he said, Sure.

And then it was just the Colonel and me, and we was alone in my room.

Now I ain’t said it, but the Colonel, he was all got-up like for a parade. Had on his dress uniform, they call it, with one of them hats like a cop wears, ’cept with gold and silver on it, and gold and silver on his uniform, too, and shiny shoes all black, and enough little colored plaques on his breast pinned there and enough medals and bars to make your head spin. And I forgot to say, too, but all this time he had a box in his hands, nice-looking box, closed with a sort of silver clasp.

But he didn’t say nothing at first. Just stood there looking at me.

He was biting his lip to make his mouth still, and his eyes were almost gonna cry, but not with sadness, with something else. I mean his face was sort’f shaky.

He said, Billy, when you woke in the house, you broke out and could have run home. Is that true?

I said, Yessir.

But you went back in the house and found my son, even though that man had beaten you for over an hour?

He was starting to cry and I couldn’t look at him. I said, Yessir.

He said, Billy, there are some people . . .

Then he couldn’t go on.

Second later he looked right at me and started again, said, Billy, once I saved a few men and was given a medal. Some people might think the same thing could never happen to you. I won’t allow that.

He opened the box in his hands and took out a medal on a string, ribbon sort of string. Star-shaped medal. He come over to me and looped it over my head. Then he stepped back. I’m presenting you this, son, for acts of uncommon valor. I used to think I knew what courage is. You have improved my understanding.

He stood straight and saluted me.

God damn.

I looked at the medal, looked down at it hanging there. Then I looked at him’n said, Thank you, sir. And I saluted him back, which made him happy, I guess, ’cause I seen him smile a bit.

We didn’t say nothing then. And me, I thought about some things I’d heard.

Fact is, I knew that the Colonel never really took to his son Jimmy. Up my way, you always hear that kind’f thing about people, families, ’cause nosy people talk, saying he liked better the one named David, or Davey, like he was called, who died in the war, but really ’cause he got sick on a transport boat. And people knew now how Jimmy bopped my nose that day with that basketball, because you know how Richie said a neighbor lady said she seen him beat Jimmy up and told Dryker? Well that same lady talked now about how Brest had hit me, which she’d seen and knew about all along but never thought to tell until just now.

So thinking about what really happened that day in the house, I said, Sir, I don’t really think I deserve this. Jimmy, your boy, some people have said nasty things about him, said he didn’t stay like I did. But he didn’t run away from me. You gotta know that. He come back just like me and he pushed’m. And he ain’t done that, I wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure and I know it. He’d been in that hellhole for weeks with that nut, you gotta understand that. Me, I’d only been there a few hours, that’s all. You gotta know he was brave, sir. You gotta understand that.

Colonel Brest, he didn’t say nothing for a minute, but I seen a little light in his eyes.

Then he said, Billy, I’ve known grown men afraid to do what you have done.

No, sir, I said. They’d’f done it. I weren’t all that brave, honest. You just had to be there. Anybody would’f, ’cause there weren’t no other way.

He crooked a smile then, like he knew something somewhere behind what I said that I didn’t even know myself. Then he said, nodding his head and his eyes bright like he was looking not just at me but at a whole bunch of people, said, Billy, they all say that.

Then he come up a foot and looked down right at me.

Billy, he said, Mr. Harrigan and I have talked. We intend to give you anything you want. It’s all we can do.

I raised my hands open at the sides.

I got a hundred grand, sir. I don’t need nothing.

It’s all we can do, he said.

Okay, I said, seeing he was dead set on it. I’ll think about it.

He was waiting.

How about a bike, I said.

That’s not enough, he said.

What’s enough?

I’ll be judge of that, he said.

I said, Um, hmm.

He was quiet a minute, looking at me, then he said something, and I could tell it was something he was waiting to say all along.

When you are a bit older, I can have you enrolled in officers’ training school, if that interests you. You would make a fine officer, Billy, I am certain. I would provide the highest recommendation for you. We want to ensure that neither you nor anyone in your family ever finds themselves in a difficult situation again. Some boys are born to privileges you have not had. It would be my privilege were you to allow me to give them to you.

Damn. I had to think a minute.

Well, sir, I said, I appreciate that, and I’d do it, but see, I’m a little busted up from what went on, and might not get in for that. Got this tic and all? But really, you see, I got this idea about me’n my daddy, working together, doing something like that. That’s what he wants, Daddy, I mean, my mother, too, afore she died, so I figure it’s what’s best for me.

Now I was confused, everything coming all at once, but that offer there, it got me thinking. I mean, that ain’t just something you throw away.

So I said, Well, sir, you know about my sister, how she was feeling bad about all that was happening and got herself pregnant? I know it don’t excuse nothing, but she was just feeling bad.

Yes, Billy, he said.

Well, the boy who’s the father, he ain’t a good boy. His name’s Ricky, Bad-Ass Ricky, we all call him, scuze my language, and he—

I know who he is, Billy, the Colonel said. What about him?

Well, way he acts, he just gonna wind up in jail, and that ain’t good for Leezie or the baby. So I was thinking about this offer you makin’ me, that training school?

He don’t say nothing but I see a look come in ’s eyes. Sort’f smiling look.

Then I realize I’m smiling too, and really about to laugh out loud, ’cause I say, Well, way I see it is
he
oughta be the one to go. He’s thinks he’s real tough and maybe he is, and that training school’d prob’ly keep him outta trouble, know what I mean?

That Colonel, now he got a big smile on his face, and I see it.

So I say, barely say, ’cause I’m laughin’, Could you imagine him in officers’ training school? Them drill instructors? Oh, that’d be funny! Oh, that’d be
rich!

By this time we’re laughin’ and I’m laughin’ and he’s laughin’ and he got tears on his face ’cause that’s where his feelings went. And I swear to God, I’m laughin’.

Billy, I—I—I’ll see what I can do! he says.

Then he straightens hisself up and says, But Billy, that’s still not for you.

I felt a little shy. Really didn’t want nothin’. The house was fine. Leezie was gonna be okay ’cause they said they was getting her a nanny so she could stay in school, forgot to say that. Even that dumbass Ricky was gonna be fine, though I can hardly think ’bout the shit he’ll go through.

I had the goddamn Congressional Medal of Honor, for God’s sake.

’Cause that’s what it is.

Then it hit me.

Something I’d thought about so much I’d damned well forgot it. Something that had been on my mind for months and that I’d thought of over and over, and is prob’ly the only reason I been saying this lying here flat on my ass in bed, talking into this recorder Sam Tate loaned me yesterday, digital recorder that don’t even need no tape but just records anything you say for hours and hours, sixteen straight hours, like it says on the box.

’Cause I was thinking ’bout my daddy, how he fell off that roof and how he could never pay and almost lost the house and had nothing left to do.

So I looked up bright.

Well, sir, there is one thing. It’s kind’f complicated. And might be a little expensive.

He did look a little nervous.

But he cracked another smile anyway.

Chapter Thirty

Well there you go.

That’s how my daddy got his fruit stand.

One funny thing I’ll tell you is I’m lying here in my room talking into this thing Sam loaned me, and I guess it’s around eight now because the sun’s down outside and the pole lights just came on over the community center lot. And anyway, just a minute ago who comes knocking but Leezie.

She says, Billy?

I say, Yar?

And she opens the door, pops her head in. You hungry now? I made you something.

Me, I say no because I don’t want to stop. I gotta finish this, Leezie, then I’ll come, I say.

Leezie, she come all the way in now and stands over my bed. You want the light on? she says. I say no ’cause I like the light coming in from the pole lights.

How ’bout your pain pills?

Took’m, I say.

Leezie visits every day to make my food and I say, How can you, with your belly big like that? But she flushed red like to smack me and said, I’m here to make you dinner every day. And I said, seeing her so mad to do it, I guess you are. She says, Don’t you want me to be nice to you? I say, Sure, if you feel good about it. She says, I do. Now standing there, she says, Where you at telling? ’Cause I already told her everything and she knows, so I say, Just a few minutes more. She thinks a sec and says, All righty. You call for me, then?

I say, Yar.

You gotta see how pretty her face is. Real clean-looking and young, ’cause of this baby she don’t eat much but vegetables and drinks this water outta bottles like she read to do in a magazine, so the baby’s never sick. Quit smoking just like that, and ain’t drunk a drop, neither, and neither has that fool Bad-Ass, ’cause she don’t let’m. She bosses that boy like a two-year-old just like she said she would. And if he don’t do what she says, his brothers—and they even tougher than he is—they on his ass in a minute.

Don’t that make you laugh? Me, I’m laughing right now.

She’s standing there with the hall light behind her, and I ain’t never seen her looking so pretty. And how she walks out the door, that’s why I stopped to tell you this. Way she walks makes you so happy you could cry, ’cause that poor girl can hardly walk, and waddles like a big ole duck, and gotta turn sideways, ’cause my door is stuck and never could open all the way.

The Colonel and Mr. Harrigan, they both put up the money for the stand. Store, really. I told’m no. Said just show us the way, I’d use the hundred thousand, but they said that was my money, and meant just for me. So what they done was take my daddy down to City Hall for papers and permits and all that, and then helped him find just the right sort’f place to have the store, which was easy for them ’cause they know everybody in real estate, and buy all the whatnot of what he needs to keep the fruit and everything else, truck, too. So now what they doing is working on the sign, which gonna have Daddy’s name on it, and my name on it, and so I guess that’s that, that’s everything, ’cept what I maybe forgot.

’Cause there’re some things I can’t remember that I know I’ll never forget. I mean things I can’t remember ’cause they’re way down buried in my head, but where?

And some people, they want to know why I done what I done, I mean what kept me going, ’specially after I got hurt so bad. But to find that out I’d have to dig down so deep in myself there’d be nothing left but darkness, and I can’t go there. I’d have to ask the dark, and I can’t do that, ’cause the dark don’t answer.

But what I said’s enough.

’Cause I been talking into this thing Sam brought me since noontime, eight hours now, and I’m tired like I said. But you got all what I did, and that’s everything.

And if I left anything out it’d just be so’s not to scare nobody, as I get scared myself sometimes. ’Cause I won’t go out to no dark place no more come nothing, and can’t hardly tell you the chill I get when I jerk awake alone at night, dreaming I’m standing at the top of them basement stairs, back inside that dark house.

Acknowledgments

I owe the life of this book:

To my wife, Alma, and son, Hugo, whose constant love is my greatest support.

To my agent, Dan Lazar at Writers House, whose keen eye found Billy his best home.

To Anne Hoppe, editor extraordinaire at Clarion, who always let Billy speak for himself, and whose suggestions helped me make his voice even truer.

To my teacher, the great novelist John Rechy, whose special light showed me what I can do.

And to my wonderful father, brother, sister and late mother, who made me what I am, and gave me what I try to express.

These people made
Ask the Dark
possible and inevitable. They put this book in your hands. They have my deepest gratitude. I thank them all.

About the Author

H
ENRY
T
URNER
is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, he now lives in Southern California with his wife and young son. This is his first novel.

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