Slippin' into Darkness

3:31 A.M.

The old piece-of-shit Ford truck takes the turn too hard and everyone yells-Griz Cody behind the wheel, Bat Bautista riding shotgun, Todd and Derwin and Marvis slouching in the back. Twelve-packs of screamin’ cold Bud Dry slide across the scarred bed toward the rear of the truck and Marvis is afraid that the tailgate is going to disintegrate because it’s pockmarked with rust and looks like it is suffering the advanced stages of leprosy. But the tailgate doesn’t have leprosy and it doesn’t disintegrate because it was made in Detroit by real American working men with union jobs and that means it is made of sterner stuff and can stand up to whole kegs of beer let alone miniscule and nearly powerless cans. So the twelve-packs slam against the tailgate and ricochet toward Marvis and Todd and Derwin just as the truck makes another sharp turn, this time onto a gravel road. Marvis is so drunk and high his teeth are numb and he can’t even feel the wind whipping his face or the itchy flakes of white powder under his nose- drunk as a house nigger on the day the massa died his daddy says-and the truck shudders out of the turn and he loses hold of the projector and it skids across the bed and threatens to batter the tailgate just like the beer did but a renegade twelve-pack heads it off, ramming the projector with all the intensity of a particularly vicious defensive lineman in a Bud Bowl commercial, stopping it cold in its tracks.

And those beers will never amount to anything, Marvis knows it, because his daddy says that sports ruin young beers and rob them of bright futures and hardly any of them ever get to be in a Bud Bowl. Derwin MacAskill doesn’t know that, Marvis’s daddy says, became he’s a Stepin Fetchit lawn-mowing kind of Negro who makes the rest of us ashamed. Marvis worries that his daddy spoke through his lips but it doesn’t seem likely because Derwin is laughing high and long at the Bud Bowl lineman caroming around the truck and Marvis would laugh like Derwin but Marvis’s father is in his head saying that lawn-mowing black idiot laughs like a baboon and someone should teach him some manners because he is an embarrassment. Marvis chuckles at that assessment because he is nothing like a baboon and certainly wouldn’t be mistaken for one under any circumstances but he can see that Derwin does kind of resemble an ape if you look at him the right way. He is not like butterscotch Marvis he is really black. Black as unsweetened chocolate and black as Guinness Stout. And then Marvis’s chuckling ends because it tickles his numb lips and he notices that Derwin’s laughter is gone because Griz Cody has put the pedal to the metal and the truck is roaring and Griz is roaring a rebel yell, damned ignorant cracker, Marvis’s father shouts, damned stupid redneck doesn’t he know that grit-eating cracker army was stomped into the ground back in 1865? And Todd chimes in with a rebel yell and even Derwin chimes in because he’s a lawn-mowing baboon, that stupid burrhead doesn’t even know what he’s doing that nigger needs to be taught a lesson! Marvis even thinks about shouting but his daddy is in his head and his lips are numb and he only manages a squeak like a little church mouse, like a little insectile shutterbug.

And even the horrible percussion of gravel battering the wheel wells is more joyous than Marvis’s impotent laughter. The gravelmetal sound is like the brittle rattle of gunfire and it scares Marvis and his balls shrivel up and hide inside his belly and then the next sound really scares him because it is the unmistakable sound of ancient Detroit-manufactured truck bumper smacking chain-link gate. The gate doesn’t give because it is American made just like the truck and the lock doesn’t give because it is a Masterlock and also known for purebred American toughness that cannot be challenged by a wide array of weapons with impressive calibers but the chain that secures lock to gate was unfortunately manufactured in Mexico and it pops as easy as a Tijuana wetback’s cherry. Marvis finds himself whispering, “God those people mess around with that Spanish Fly and they have too many kids and they put every damn one of them to work in some foundry turning out mile upon mile of inferior chain.” And his father agrees. It’s because they’re Catholics and you know about the Catholics with guns in their basements and orders from Rome to drive the rest of us straight into the gutters through overpopulation and they’ll all end up in this country every one of them with our jobs because they can break right through every chain at every border crossing and they know it because they planned it that way and that’s why they made the links weak.

And the truck races through a narrow gauntlet of pine-green trees dripping spicy scent, rusty trees sighing in the breeze breathing their last breaths, black dead trees ready to burn heavy with the smell of dirt and dust and Marvis sees them all racing away from him, the living and the dying and the dead running away from him and everything that runs is shadowed in demon red from the glowing taillights. And no one cuts the running trees because no one comes here anymore. All those trees surround this place and hide it from view but now the trees are running away even the dead ones.

And tonight it is important that they stay. Tonight an audience is a necessity. Marvis knows that because he holds one cold metal reason in his hands and another reason made of plastic is spooled and waiting in his pocket. The sky opens up above him and the gauntlet is gone and now the trees rimming the perimeter are so far away that they are lost in the shadows and their scent has been eclipsed by the smell of the salt air that rides the night, rolling from the black Pacific over low hills, and Marvis would turn and see where they are going but now the truck is airborne, climbing slight mounds, launching itself, landing, climbing again, launching again, and cold steel poles wait in the darkness, a line of them crossing each mound waiting to spear the truck and trap it like an unwary bug on an entomologist’s pin board. But Griz Cody is not willing to be pinned and the truck escapes danger and the passengers escape danger because they are so willing to challenge it, all of them except Marvis that is, and the only wounded are a few beer cans that jump and land and rupture open, leaking cool clean refreshment onto rusted metal and again Derwin laughs high and long and Marvis’s father starts up but Marvis is suddenly willing to challenge danger and tells his father to SHUT UP.

All is silent. Marvis’s father says nothing. The truck is dead on a mound under the cold moon, under a looming wall that is an empty white expanse of the gigantic variety pockmarked with gray, diseased with ashy barnacles that are killing it like Marvis imagines the rust is killing Griz Cody’s truck, like the rusty black blight that is killing the pine trees.

Doors slam. Someone helps Marvis to his feet. He stares at the drive-in screen. It is gray and almost dead but it is what he has always wanted always needed and he knew that he would have it some day. And now someday is here and he forgets everything.

He forgets the photo shop. He forgets Shelly Desmond and the other young girls who pose before his cameras. He forgets his nosy neighbors and the money hidden in his bedroom closet and the video recorders whirring in his basement. And he forgets the mysterious car in Joe Hamner’s driveway and the mysterious woman behind its wheel and he forgets the whirring rasp of a speed-winder and he forgets.

He forgets everything but the thing he dreamed about when he came to this place as a teenager. The pristine white screen looming above him and the movie painting it with color, his name up there so big that no one could ignore it so big that no one could forget it.

WORLD PREMIERE! A MARVIS HANKS, JR. PRODUCTION!

And it’s really going to happen. Griz sets the projector on the hood of the truck. Todd is saying something about the bulb, how it can’t be strong enough, but Griz says that’s why he parked so close idiot, that’s why he practically parked in the playground under the screen. And Todd gets mad and says, well, if you’re such a fucking genius how are you going to plug it in and Griz doesn’t say anything, he just unlocks the plastic storage box behind the truck cab and fires up a portable gas-powered generator and plugs in the projector cord and a small white square appears on the big screen and Derwin laughs high and loud.

Marvis’s dad doesn’t say anything. Marvis says, “It’s a world premiere.”

“Let’s celebrate, then!” Derwin says, and he does a line right off the hood of the truck, snorting Detroit rust and cocaine, and then he pops a beer. Todd does the same and Griz does the same. Bat is rooted in the shotgun position and looks dead but for the smile on his face and Marvis sees that and says uh-uh not me I don’t want no more.

Because Marvis doesn’t need it. He hands Griz Cody the loop of film. Derwin is running around, jumping dead speaker poles, and finally he jumps the fence and climbs a decaying jungle gym and hoots at the bright white square of light. Marvis joins him, climbing the monkey bars, wrapping his arms and legs around them until he’s not quite sure he’ll remember how to untangle himself. He watches as the white square becomes a blot of color and he hears Derwin scream, “FOCUS. FOCUS!” Focus comes switchblade quick and Marvis is surprised when he doesn’t see his name he sees Todd Gould’s basement and April Destino on that pool table and the colors have faded over the years as old 16mm is wont to do and April’s skin is almost parchment yellow and her young gray eyes are tired and defeated but still as gray as gun powder as cold as granite, and the pool table felt is almost brown, almost the color of a sick man’s shit.

Marvis looks away. Sees the hard circle of light pouring from the projector. Sees the truck with Todd and Griz leaning against the grille, gone-to-seed asses planted on the bumper. Can’t see Bat Bautista rooted in the shotgun position but can imagine him there, imagine his frozen smile as he watches himself rape April Louise Destino.

“Bat’s up!” Derwin yells. “All right! Go man go!” But Shutterbug doesn’t turn to see. He has his eye on the truck, on the projector, on the hard circle of light spilling from the lens, on the cold slivers of ghostly ectoplasm steaming from the vent grille mounted next to the collection wheel. And behind it he can see forever, forever in the cold slivers of light. “Look at Todd! Fool used to have hair on his head! Get ’er, Todd boy, get ’er!” Shutterbug sees the silhouettes of Chevy if-this-vehicle’s-rockin-don’t-bother-knockin vans and muscle cars-Cougars and Mustangs and Barracudas and Trans-Ams. And silhouettes inside the cars, he sees them, too. Passion-wrapped shadows and it ain’t just a concept he can see them clearly. The girls from his wall are in those cars. He can smell the scents they wear, scents he has memorized so thoroughly that he can pick them out over the smells of fresh motor oil and stale popcorn and the electric sizzle of car heaters. And those beautiful girls are watching the world premiere of his film while eager hands explore their bodies, eager tongues and lips brush their young skin.

Derwin screams. “Yeah man! Look at me! Man! Hard-body! Eighteen and ready! Oh man the bitch is in trouble now!”

“What kind of trouble?” Todd wants to know. “She need a lawn mowed or something?”

“Shut up, asshole! Just you shut up your motherfucking bald self! You watch close and see what a real man got!”

Shutterbug wants to know how to be a real man but he doesn’t turn to look. He can’t take his eyes off the cars, all the dark passionshadows staring at him from behind half-fogged windshields dappled with dead bugs. He knows they aren’t real. Not the muscle cars, not the tangled bodies, not the crushed yellow jackets and broken moths. Wrapped in the monkey bars, he tells himself that they are only illusions. They are ghosts from 1976 and they would never come here again because the part of them that loved this place is dead. But Shutterbug also knows that he sees them, and he sees what his film is doing to them even if they are only shadows he sees how they react to the freak show on the big screen. He sees how it drives them wild in their big cars, how they tear at each other in the hard light of April’s torment, how they kiss with shadow lips and bite with shadow teeth.

He can almost hear their joyous screams and the name of the film must be April Destino Goes to Hell.

Four men. A beautiful girl. A brown felt hell with pockets full of brimstone.

And then Shutterbug does hear a scream and it comes from Griz Cody and it rides over Derwin’s laughter and Todd’s howls of derision. “The bitch!” Griz screams. “The bitch!” And it is as if he actually forgot what happened, actually convinced himself over the years that he had shoved his limp cock into April Destino and she had loved it and loved him, convinced himself that he had not ended up slapping her with his limp dick and pinching her like a sick fuck until his self-loathing rose to a point he couldn’t control and his fat fist closed around an eight ball.

“What a man!” bald Todd chides.

“Ain’t another like him!” lawn-mowing Derwin says.

Griz Cody’s fist slams against the projector. It tumbles. Crashes. A metal arm snaps off and is caught in a tangle of skunk cabbage and the smell is pure licorice, pure black because the projector’s light is gone and the shadows are gone behind it. Gone. The cars and the vans and the ghosts of 1976 are torn to bits and gone.

But the scream remains, though it doesn’t belong Griz Cody. Shutterbug thinks that it is April screaming her lungs out in the dark basement because she is trapped there and wrecked on spiked punch and now they are raping her with an eight ball. But the truck lights bloom and he realizes that he is screaming because he can’t squirm free from the cold grip of the monkey bars. The shadows are gone but they won’t let him go. And Derwin helps him, laughing at first but then with genuine concern in his voice he helps Shutterbug back to the truck, Shutterbug scrambling there on hands and knees, tearing his palms on hard gravel tears that spill from

April’s granite eyes.

“The bitch,” Griz Cody mutters. “The bitch.”

Todd and Derwin trade Sonny Liston stares and Shutterbug is sure they are going to tear into each other for the cracks they made about being bald and mowing lawns. But Bat Bautista steps down from the shotgun position. “It’s okay,” he says, his lips hardly moving, the grin still frozen on his face. He keeps saying that it is okay and Shutterbug doesn’t know if he is talking to Todd and Derwin or to Griz or to all of them. “This wasn’t any fun,” Bat says. “The bitch is dead and she ruined it for us. But we’ll get her. She wasn’t ever anything. We’ll go to the graveyard. Piss right on her grave.”

Griz laughs. “Hell no. We’ll do better than that. We’ll dig the bitch up. We’ll-”

“You sick cracker,” Derwin says. “You always was sick and you always will be.”

“No,” Griz goes on. “Remember the big fiberglass cow on top of that dairy on Springs Road? Remember how we used to steal it every year and put it up on the top of the high school?”

“Yeah,” Todd says, scratching his bald head. “Yeah?”

“We’ll put her coffin right up on top of the high school,” Griz says. “Prop her up like Jack-in-the-fuckin’-Box. Right up there for God and everybody to see”

“Yeah!” Todd says. “Yeah!”

“I don’t know,” Derwin whispers. “I’m all for pissing on her grave, but I don’t know if I’m up for this digging her up shit.”

Shutterbug can’t believe someone actually spoke those words in the world he has known. He can’t believe it. He bends to the one-armed projector and takes the reel. The old film slaps against his wrist in the warm breeze. And then he finds himself saying, “No… No.”

But they are already at the cemetery when he says it.

The four jocks stand a good distance away. From Shutterbug’s perspective they look like the shadow people of 1976. But he knows they are not shadow people or ghosts because he can feel their fright.

Derwin says, “Somebody already did it, man. Some sick fuck already dug her up.”

“Who?” Todd wants to know.

“Too weird.” Griz Cody’s knees pop as he bends down. He hands something to Bat Bautista. Gingerly.

“Broken beer bottle,” Bat says. “Somebody’s been out here playing graveyard baseball.”

“They still play that?” Derwin asks.

“Somebody does,” Bat says.

Shutterbug wants to ask who it was. He wants to know what graveyard baseball is. He wants to know why there is a hole in the ground where April should be. He wants to ask these questions, and he wants to join the four men who brought him to this place, but he realizes that he can’t, because he can’t move. He looks down.

Shadows pool at his feet like thick snakes, pouring, spilling, twining around his ankles.

The shadows gasp and exhale and the sound is a low whistle. Shutterbug screams. Truck lights flare. The thick snakes collapse, but the shadows remain in the light.

Not snakes. Human arms.

The wounded man with arms like snakes draws a heavy breath and doesn’t move again. He is on his back and his thick arms extend from his sides and his palms are open to the night sky above. He exhales and the sound is a low whistle. A bandana of blood circles his forehead, coursing from his scalp and filling the hard wrinkles above his white eyebrows.

The others are talking but Shutterbug cannot take his eyes off the wounded man. He watches the man’s chest rise and fall rise and fall and soon no one is talking to him, they are only talking to each other.

“Somebody bashed that old dude but good.”

“Man, we better call the cops.”

“An ambulance.”

“You’re crazy. How are we going to explain the grave?”

“I don’t want any trouble. I don’t need any trouble.”

“I’m not losing my job over this. I got a family.”

“Shutterbug,” they say. Then with some urgency, “C’mon, Shutterbug!”

Then it is quiet once again and dark once again. The truck is gone. Bat and Griz and Todd and Derwin are gone.

The man on the ground is still there.

And the shadows are back, spilling from April Destino’s grave. A slow black surf washes around Shutterbug’s ankles and it smells like the cold blood of the earth. He runs from it but it shoots from the ground, splashing his heels, cold and wet and gushing like a reptile’s blood like the cold blood of the earth and he can never run fast enough to escape it.