Out of Darkness (11 page)

“It's nice here,” she said. “In San Antonio, everything looks thirsty. Not like this.”

“There's beauty here for sure.” He smiled as he stood up and stretched. “If I don't get some paying work done, my ma will tan my hide tonight. I'm supposed to be one county over digging ditches right now.”

“Of course,” she said, jumping up. “I was going too. Thanks for the help.”

“Bye, Naomi.”

 

WASH
Wash shot his best friend Cal a look. Cal's bellyaching was not a welcome sequel to the morning with Naomi. “Nobody asked you to come,” Wash said.

“If I don't,” Cal said, “I won't have a dime to my name. And a dime is what I need to get into the dance hall Tuesday.”

“Colored Night,” Wash sneered. “There's motivation.”

For a while, Cal's wheezy breathing was the only sound between them. “Hey, see where that footpath breaks off?” Cal asked. He pointed to a narrow trail off to one side. “Scoot was saying the other day that that's the way to Tall Man's place. Think that could be?”

Wash shrugged. “From what I hear, nobody finds Tall Man; he finds them when he's got whiskey to sell. I wouldn't expect any path to go straight to his door.”

“You're probably right. People that come to live out here don't want to truck with anybody else,” Cal said.

Wash raised an eyebrow. “And you're an expert on the backwoods folk? You've lived on Liberty Street since you fell out of your mama.”

“All I'm saying is, Tall Man went off to live in the woods for a reason,” Cal said.

“I'd like to try that,” Wash said. “Just light out.”

“Good luck. Your daddy's done planned out your whole life. You cain't go off to no shack in the woods; you're going to the Tuskegee Institute to get learned.”

Wash scowled. “Wouldn't mind a little peace.”

Cal fell silent for a moment. “You want to hear what I heard about Tall Man and his brother? He did the same, did you know?”

“Made whiskey?”

Cal shook his head. “Naw, lived way out. You're saying you never heard this?”

“Just tell your story, Cal,” Wash said. He wasn't going to beg for some yarn that was sure to be more gossip than truth.

Cal gave in. “My aunt SueSue said Tall Man's brother, Blue was his name—”

“Short for Blue Balls?”

“SueSue said he was real dark, kind of blue-black. Anyway, Blue went to work on a logging camp in Louisiana, but Tall Man was digging ditches for the oilmen over in Kilgore right after the Boom hit. Money was better logging, but he wanted to stay close to home and be with his honey. SueSue said she died trying to have a baby. Baby died, too.”

“And so did their pet goat?” Wash rolled his eyes.

Cal ignored him. “When Blue came back, he didn't stay with his folks in Egypt Town or the Bottom but went and built himself a cabin on some backwoods scrap of land. Nobody could pin Blue down for why he wanted to be way out like that when before he was plenty sociable. Folks started noticing things, like how he bought flower seeds and carried home more food than even a big man like him could eat.”

“We're five minutes from the oil yard,” Wash said. “You'd better get to it if you want to finish your story.”

“Well, talk started that Blue had some Louisiana gal tucked away in that little cabin of his. But the question was, why wouldn't he bring her around none?”

“Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe she was ashamed of not being married.”

Cal shook his head. “You know that ain't it. Plenty of folks take up with each other. Even more back then when the logging camps hired blacks and the men went off to the camps and found new lady friends. So it came down to either Blue's gal was crazy or she was so ugly that he didn't want to claim her in public. Folks started teasing him till he'd get real mad, but he still wouldn't bring her down.”

“And none of the fine ladies of Egypt Town could satisfy their curiosity with a little housewarming visit?” Wash asked.

“No one knew for sure where he was staying. At least until the day when Dusty Matthews—you know, from the icehouse, only he was just a kid then—until Dusty decided to follow ole Blue back to his hideout. And do you know what he saw?”

“Oswald the rabbit.” Wash said. Before Cal could answer, Wash jogged ahead of him toward one of the creeks that fed into the Sabine. He sped up and jumped across the creek. The water was low, but the bed was deep. Jagged rocks stuck up through the red clay. These were things you worked at not noticing until you were safe on the other side.

“Show-off,” Cal grumbled.

“Go on, granny.” Wash nodded at the fallen tree somebody had laid over the creek. “I came this way to make sure you'd have a way.”

Cal stared into the creek and hesitated.

“Come on.” Wash got out his wristwatch. “Let's see if you can beat your record. I think it took you seven minutes the last time we crossed here.”

Cal glared at him and eased out across the log, crouching low to keep his balance.

“Don't lose your glasses, man,” Wash called.

Cal jutted his chin out to keep his glasses well back on his nose, but he kept his hands close to the tree. When he was almost to the other side he dove onto the bank and scrambled up, grabbing at the brush for balance.

“Three minutes, forty-two seconds.” Wash slid the watch back into his pocket and gave a single, mocking clap.

Cal exhaled and brushed the grit off of his hands. “You fix everything else, how come you don't fix the band on that watch?”

Wash shrugged. “I meant to, but now I'm used to it. And sometimes I don't want to know the time. Now, are you gonna finish that story?”

“So Dusty saw Blue going up to a little shack in the woods. Said there was clothes hanging out on a line in the sunniest spot there was. And there was flowers, too, planted neat in old oil cans that somebody'd split in two. And then when Blue went to open the door, Dusty saw a white woman in a raggedy dress come out and give Blue a kiss.”

Wash felt a sudden coldness between his shoulder blades, a tightening in his groin. He could feel the pull of the story, its inevitable downward turn.

“Thanks to Dusty's big mouth, the talk went around that Blue had him a white woman hid up in them woods, but nobody knew if it was true. They'd never seen her and couldn't really count on what Dusty said since he was just a kid. Some folks said she wasn't white, just looked it from afar. Said how in Louisiana a lot more mixing happened during the slave days.”

“So they let them alone and then the two of them took off for someplace else? If that ain't the ending, I don't want to know any more,” Wash said.

“Black folk didn't like it much, but the white folks...” Cal shook his head and paused. “You too sissy for the rest?”

“Tell the damn story, you little shit.” Wash swatted Cal's arm.

Cal jumped back. “No telling how the white folks caught wind of what was happening. But one way or another, a crew of old loggers and some of the roughnecks who came with Pop Joiner, they all decided they'd ride out in their sheets and pay Blue a visit. Some say it was Tall Man that left the tracks they followed, others said Blue himself was careless. Anyway, I guess the gal looked white to the whites, and that was enough to get Blue hung by the tree in front of his house with his balls stuffed in his own mouth.”

“Jesus,” Wash breathed.

“Tall found Blue. SueSue said some of the folks over in Kilgore still have the photos they sold down at Longhorn Drugs. Souvenirs.”

Wash felt the story lodge in his gut.

“Well,” Cal said. “We almost there?”

“Just about.” Wash swallowed hard, then tried to smile. “Better start pretending you're a hard worker. It's just over that rise. And hurry up. We don't get out there before every other black fool, we'll be out of luck.”

 

NAOMI
Naomi braced herself back against the seat. Henry drove fast and then faster, a grin plastered across his face.

When the truck hit a bump, Cari and Beto flew up off the bench. They stayed standing, bouncing with excitement and the rough road.

Naomi yanked them back down.

“Aw, let them have a little fun,” Henry said. “Just stay out of the way of the gear shift, and it don't matter.”

“Slow down a little, please,” Naomi said.

Henry shook his head like a dog, then raised a mud-splattered arm and whooped, “Black gold ahead!”

“The twins didn't have dinner.” Naomi had been laying food on the table when he'd burst into the kitchen calling them all out to the truck.

“Never mind that. Once the oil comes in, the place'll be crawling with folks. Somebody always sets up a stand to sell burgers. Well's gonna come in any minute now. Salter didn't believe me, but I knew that was the spot.”

Naomi seethed. Almost everybody at school and church and around town had some connection to the oil field, and when there was nothing else to talk about, people would start in on stories of things that had gone wrong. Boiler explosions, well fires, men slipping into the tanks they were cleaning, sinkholes that opened up right under the happy spectators who came to celebrate a new find. All she could think of was the risk—and how willing Henry was to put Cari and Beto in the middle of it.

“Hope we make it in time,” Henry was saying. “It's like nothing else you'll ever see. Loud as heck, too, when that oil comes up. Might want to plug your ears.”

Henry swerved suddenly to the left, steering the truck down a rutted side road. The headlamps pierced the gathering darkness.

Some creature dropped straight down in front of the truck. Naomi gasped.

“Do you think we hit it?” Beto whispered, looking at Cari.

She shrugged.

Soon they had to slow down because trucks were parked bumper-to-bumper up and down the side of the narrow dirt road. Naomi thought Henry would park there, too, but he kept driving. “We park up front. There's one bonus from being the derrick hand who's a slave to these old rigs.”

There was light at the end of the road, and they pulled into a bulldozed clearing. Henry double-parked beside one of the company trucks and threw his door open.

The twins piled out behind him before Naomi had even opened her door. She stepped down from the truck and slammed the door.

“Carrie, Robbie!” Henry was halfway to the rig, but he stopped to call back to them. “You stay right there with Naomi, don't go no further. I tell you to drop back, you'd better listen fast. And mind your sister, you hear?”

So now they were supposed to obey her; at least there was that.

Naomi studied the scene from the outside in. Men smoked at the edges of the clearing, waiting to see how big the strike might be. Most of them wore oil field gear and had probably been tipped off by rig workers who'd gone back to the yard. But ordinary people were arriving, too. Seeing some rich man get a little richer was something, and there wasn't much else to do in East Texas on a Saturday night. Folks wandered around the clearing. It was packed red clay, scraped clean of trees and grass. Spotlights shone on the drilling machinery. Workers hurried around the base of the derrick.

The oil derricks were everywhere in East Texas. Most of the derricks were leftovers, Henry said. It wasn't worth the trouble to break them down when wood was so plentiful and cheap that you could just build new ones. So the odd towers of crisscrossed boards dotted the landscape, taller than most trees but not near as pretty.

Naomi hugged herself tight and wished she'd brought a sweater. “Are you two cold?” she called up to the twins. They were squatting right at the halfway point where Henry had told them to stop, watching the men working.

“No!” they shouted together.

Naomi could feel the hair begin to stand up on her arms with the cold.

“Here.” A heavy jacket settled onto her shoulders. She turned quickly and saw Gilbert Harris from church. He was a year older than she was and had already graduated. Like just about all the men and even some of the boys from school, he worked in the oil field.

“Oh—well, thanks,” Naomi managed. She thought about giving the jacket back, but the warmth was too welcome to deny.

“You were shivering so hard, looked like you might end up digging a hole to China.” He toed the ground with his boot. “This one's definitely coming in soon,” he said.

“Do you work on this rig?”

Gilbert shook his head. “Nah, I'm a low man on the totem pole. I do whatever needs doing. If the pumper's out sick, I hook up sucker rods to pumpjacks. On a rig, I can fill in as lead tong hand. But mostly I'm stuck being a tank cleaner. Got to work my way up.”

Naomi shifted from one foot to another. Tommie Kinnebrew had introduced her to Gilbert one Sunday after church, and he'd said hello to her a few times. Other than that she'd never spoken to him.

“Too bad about the trees.” She nodded at the bald expanse in front of them. She scanned it and spotted Cari and Beto talking with a few kids from their class.

Gilbert laughed. “It's not like we're going to run out. Those pines grow up like weeds, don't you worry. Hey,” he touched her arm lightly, “you can smell the oil.”

Naomi sniffed, but all she could smell was the tang of cologne mixed with sweat coming off of the letterman jacket.

“A little like the ocean, a little like gasoline,” Gilbert said. “That's oil for sure.”

The twins noticed the smell, too, lifting their noses like hunting dogs catching a scent. “It's coming from over there!” Beto shouted, pointing toward the rig.

Beto was running toward the rig before Naomi could call him back. A moment later, a black geyser exploded through the wooden frame of the derrick. It was too loud for him to hear her screams.

She started to run, but Gilbert was faster, shouting something over his shoulder as he charged after Beto. Naomi grabbed Cari. She could feel her little sister's heart pounding through her rib cage.